So, what do you do when you lose the license to a property you’ve already invested a TON of money into developing and need to try and recoup some losses by any means necessary? Well, if your Warner bros. Apparently what you do is search your back catalogue for a franchise that hasnt had an airing in a while, slap them into the script and push on through whether it makes sense or not.

That at least is what was rumoured to have been the case with ‘The Banana Splits Movie’. The theory goes that Warner had the license to a ‘Five Nights at Freddys’ movie. wrote the scripts, booked the locations, started building the animatronics, when their licensing rights ran out and the owners of FNAF sold the rights on to blumhouse who offered more cash than Warner.

So! in order to fix the problem, they went into their archives, pulled the ‘Splits’ out of retirement to replace Freddy, Bonnie, Chica etc. and changed the Pizzaria location to a TV studio. Once you realise that this is very likely the case, a LOT of this films smaller plot details suddenly make a lot more sense.

The core plot of the film is that, it’s a young boys birthday and his (currently struggling in a toxic relationship) parents have decided to get him tickets to a taping of ‘The Banana Splits Show’ when they arrive at the lot, the kids older brother manages to convince one of the showrunners to take the kid backstage to meet the ‘Splits’ because it’s his birthday.

At which time, its actually revealed that not only is this the final recording of the show as its due to be cancelled. But that all of the ‘Splits’ are in fact animatronic robots. Who’ve been programmed by a psychopathic robotics technician with the order to ‘Keep the show going no matter what’

When the ‘Splits’ find out they’re about to be pulled off air, they INSTANTLY begin killing people…for some…reason? I dont fully get it either. but yeh. Cue an hour of running around and not really achieving all that much.

And viewed through the prism of ‘This was supposed to be a FNAF movie’ I could see how this could have been a somewhat more interesting opportunity. With a birthday boy going to his favourite pizzaria for his big day and a chance to meet the mascots turning sour when it turns out it’s the final serving day, and the animatronics are out to do whatever they can to keep people locked in the pizzaria and for the party to never end.

It makes the toxic parents angle feel a bit more realistic as I imagine in the original draft it was a bit more of a smaller scale operation, it makes the animatronics going on a murderous rampage make more sense, because in FNAF they’re inhabited by the ghosts of dead children who were murdered by the creator of the animatronics.

Once all of those elements were stripped away or altered enough to make a non letigeous ‘FNAF’ clone of a movie. It just becomes a totally nonsensical mess of a picture that prioritizes gore over any real semblence of a story.

Im not even saying that you couldnt make a decent ‘Banana Splits’ horror movie. Its RIPE for that opportunity, the show used to have cartoons running inbetween the live action segments, so this would have been perfect as some kind of ‘bad acid trip’ psychadelic nightmare anthology film with demented cartoons and psychopathic hosts.

Instead, NON of the format of the original splits makes it over in the translation, the gang are reduced to spouting basic sentences and catchphrases and thats about it. And that’s not to mention that the costumes themselves look PAINFULLY cheap, even compared to their 60’s counterparts, which; themselves were made on a tight budget.

In fact, this whole thing feels almost like a ‘Sci-fi Channel’ movie of the week, some kind of super cheap sub par ‘Asylum’ fodder, which again only reinforces that Warner had a money pit on their hands and wanted to spend as little as possible to recoup as much as possible with this thing.

The Scripts completley one dimensional, the plot itself doesnt develop much beyond the first act and that acts established that the animatronics are going to go nuts, any kind of character development or nuance goes out the window as this basically turns into a 60 minute dull gore movie. Non of the characters are particularly interesting, they’re all kind of stereotypical (and dated stereotypes even by 2019 standards) the resolution is incredibly dissatisfying and they tease a sequel that literally EVERYONE knows will never materialise.

the pacings painfully one note, nothing really gets explored beyond a surface level. it’s a HELL of a dull slasher flick. not quite bad enough to be annoying, but certainly heading that way.

The directions, of a standard. While it may look cheap and nasty in terms of creative vision and visual direction, I will give the film some credit that at least it hits the base level of quality. This is an ugly movie, make no mistake. But at least the director was in tune with the cine and at least the cine was touching base with lighting and the cast for the most part.

Less so is the cine, which is badly composed, lacking in any kind of creative zeal (this thing takes a page out of ‘Saw’s’ book and basically just colour grades all the shots to look a dirty brownish yellow tone, which again, for a film about a psychadelic group of animals having far out times. was beyond dissapointing. The edits kind of loose too, cuts dont feel correctly paced, theres an overeliance on CG to smooth over set issues. It just feels like the whole thing was a ‘We’ll make it work in post’ job. Only…when they got it into post, they realised that it wasnt going to be as easy as that.

The performances are really drab too, not one single actor or actress in this thing leaves a lasting mark or animates beyond the base level. Which is a real shame, because…again; this thing COULD have been a big colourful scary freakout movie, but judging by the performances, noone else seems to have realised that. just cold, lifeless, ultra basic, dead behind the eyes paycheck acting at its dullest. I was not enthralled.

One of the ONLY things that I did enjoy about this film getting made, is the soundtrack. and ONLY because it meant we got two new versions of ‘The Banana Splits’ show theme. which is one of the best theme tunes of the 60s. Otherwise this things drab. ULTRA drab.

‘The Banana Splits Movie’ was beyond dissapointing to me, not only does it come across as a threadbare and ‘made on the cheap’ production, but I genuinely lament the fact that, there IS a decent horror movie in the title of this film. and Warner bros threw it away because they *seemingly* lost the license to FNAF.

This had potential, and it completley squandered it. Not recommended. I didnt enjoy it, probably wont watch it again. I had planned to review this for my youtube channel, but after 3 years of sitting on it, waiting for the right place to slot it in, I realised I actually dont even care enough about it anymore to bother. Avoid.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-banana-splits-movie/