Reviewed by Mike Belfance

The "Jeff Ching movie" has almost become an entirely new genre introduced exclusively to the 3dmm community. The closest definition I could think of for them is "a roughly animated drama movie that refuses to take itself seriously, and normally includes a few penis-related jokes". Jeff's latest movie, "Shit Happens" falls once again into that category, though the formula has improved slightly here. It took me a while to really decide what my final thoughts on this movie were after I watched it. Overall I think that while the movie has its fair share of problems (mostly the same stuff that has become staples for Jeff's personal genre of movies) the movie is good thanks to the well-written over arching story.

The storyline follows about a half-dozen people who are all having the worst days of their lives. At first these storylines seem completely unrelated, but eventually they all fuse together into one large, much more interesting story. To help carry the storyline along are some good voice actors who unfortunately, for the most part, have the same problem as Orcus in "Slightly Confused" (and me in "JDR Revival)- their mics suck. If you don't focus on it you can eventually look over this problem in light of the fact that the acting itself is good, although it can be hard at times, as some voices honestly sound like they were recorded over a police radio. Some voices are clear, such as Tuna, Jeff Ching, and Jaymond, but perfectly clear recordings seemed extremely rare here. Still, the storyline holds up, fuzzy voices or not.

Now it's time for the obligatory bad-animation rant that no review for a Jeff Ching movie would be complete without. Yes, the animation in this movie is borderline pathetic...and it crosses that border more than a few times. Jeff needs some good coaching on how to make handmade scenes. For instance, why is the rear view mirror in the car scenes made up of like 20 tiny cylinders? Buildings look more like giant card board boxes, and at times the entire landscape in a scene is mad up of one big squashed cube (which you can, at times, see the edges of- which makes it look like anything outside of that area just drops off into the vacuum of space). Jeff's movies come down to this- if you like the story, you're going to be able to overlook the animation problems, if you don't, well...the "eye-candy" definately isn't going to coax you into changing your mind about it. Personally, I liked the story, so the animation was something I could overlook. Actually, it kind of added to some of the comedic scenes a little. Luckily, for a couple of the emotional scenes your really suppose to take seriously, Jeff had the foresight to hand the movie to another more experienced animator. Good call.

I went into this movie expecting bad animation (sorry Jeff), so that wasn't my big problem with it. My only real problem with the movie, besides the problems with some of the voice actor's mics, was that it never really decided if it wanted to be a comedy or a serious drama. The scene with Mr. Penn going around being a total jackass, for instance, was hilarious- but it felt like it should have been in an entirely different movie. Also -- spoilers -- there's the whole hugely emotional scene where all of the hostages are hugging and saying goodbye, which soon has all of the seriousness zapped out of it when they cut to the next scene of the police negotiator- "You'll find that releasing hostages gives you a good feeling, like the first time you rape a dog." or something like that. I laughed because it was so random, but it didn't fit in at all. -- end spoilers --

All of the random stupid "Dumb & Dumber" style comedy thrown in made the drama really hard to take seriously. The comedy would have worked a lot better if it were more subtle.

As I said before, this is a movie carried entirely on the strength of it's storyline. The story is very well done, even though it does have a few plot lines that are undeveloped and some things that don't make a whole lot of sense, it still makes for a good watch. I'd say that based on the story alone it deserves a 60%, plus 5% for good voice acting. You know, what the hell, I'll give it another 5% for making me laugh out loud a few times, which leaves it with a 70% out of 100%. It definitely has a lot of problems, mostly concentrated in the "animation" department, but it's a well put together story, which is rare. You can also think of it this way- a lot of movies have a crappy storyline and are carried by whether or not you were impressed by the animation or not, so this is a nice change of pace. With less goofy comedy, clearer voices, and more competent animation skills, Jeff could make the best drama ever made in 3dmm. Until then, this is a nice step in the right direction.

70%