Inkwolf

The lovely and beautifully designed planet Terra is filled with happy tree-dwelling, air-swimming, arts-and-crafts-making aliens. Unfortunately for them, the remaining humans of Earth, having exhausted all their planet's resources and now growing desperate aboard a dying spaceship, are about to start terraforming the planet.

Oh noes!

While populated with plastic-doll-like characters, plot cliches and deja-vu elements, Battle for Terra manages to provide enough new and different to be a good movie to watch. Unfortunately, it is much easier to poke fun at the cliches than to define what was good about it. (Invasion of the Left Wing Planet: the basket-weaving, sky-whale-coexisting, nature-loving aliens are threatened, not by humanity in general, but by humanity's general, the militaristic white male villain who throws a coup to take power away from the black and female speaking members of the council, who, of course, would never do anything so drastic as invade someone else's planet. At least, not without a majority vote.)

Okay, let me say some nice things. The world of Terra was beautiful. The decor, machinery and costumes all had a pleasing reality about them, and were temptingly tactile--I wanted to reach out and touch the rusty gears, the carved wooden figurines, and so on. The characters were mostly likable and sympathetic. And the science fiction elements were satisfying. There were enough twists and turns to keep the story interesting, and the level of angst and suspense was really creditable for this kind of film. The obviously inevitable happy compromise isn't reached until after it seems quite likely that the film will take a tragic turn after all. It's a nice change that the male and female protagonists are too busy trying not to kill each other for yet another bad cheesy romance. And the creators put far more effort into keeping up an atmosphere of suspense than in producing cheap laughs and frenetic action.

Beyond the cartoony elements, Battle for Terra reaches hard toward being a serious science fiction movie. And, at least in my opinion, it does so with a good deal of success. Thumbs up for the Liberal Planet of Air Mermaids!

When the Nohrin's land becamse barren, they moved on under the command of the evil Sedessa, murdering innocent Lockni and taking their land. Delgo's parents died in the purge.

Now, many years later, Delgo is a young adult, the Nohrin and Lockni have a fragile and bitter truce, and Sedessa is banished from the Nohrin court to a distant palace, her fairy wings removed.

Then the kind-hearted Nohrin princess saves Delgo's life, and a seemingly random series of misunderstandings erodes at the peace. But there's nothing random about it: Sedessa is plotting her return to power, and the Nohrin general is her ally.

This is a movie trying hard to be epic. There is a lot to like about Delgo--the backgrounds and animals are visually spectacular, as are many of the scenes, and with a little effort, the plot could indeed have been as epic as its themes of love and hate, war and peace.

Where did Delgo fall down? I'm not totally sure, but I believe the biggest flaw was the direction. Scenes that ought to have been powerful and emotional come off as flat, and I can only think it's due to the puppet-show-like animation, with little effort at what could be called cinematography.

Another niggle, for me anyway, was that almost every scene in the movie seemed reminiscent of something I have seen before. From Time Bandits to Prince of Egypt to Lord of the Rings to The Little Mermaid, this movie feels like a big hash of other movies' good ideas.

And though the creatures and world are beautifully created, the character designs are really weak. They do not look like fantasy races. They mostly look like plastic dolls of human beings in fantasy costumes. Star Trek characters. If they had been less human-looking, they may not have seemed so ill-proportioned and awkwardly jointed.

Add to that the most annoying comedy sidekick character I have ever experienced in a cartoon, and that's saying something.

So, my regrets for Delgo, and what it ought to have been, and what it could have been with more effort. A near miss, but a miss all the same.

Marketed as The Snurks in the US, and as Boo, Zino and the Snurks in the UK, Back To Gaya was an interesting movie with ups and downs. I am inclined to blame what I didn't like about it on the English translation and dub, since it was originally a German movie. (I actually majored in German in college, but I'm ashamed to admit I didn't even think of checking for an original language track on the DVD.)

Back To Gaya's convoluted plot, dark atmosphere, and scenes with mature overtones gave me the impression that the film was intended for older audiences than I would have supposed from the rather dimwitted dialog. Was it edited down for children? I wonder. Humor didn't translate over too well either in my opinion (or maybe that's just the film being German) Animation was rather puppet-ish, and some of the voices seemed completely wrong for their characters, the first of which can possibly be blamed on its being made in 2004, the second, again, on the dub. But the character designs are highly detailed, and so is the world around them. Gaya is beautiful, reality less so. There is a lot of effect lighting, often in garish colors.

Zino is the not-too-bright hero of Gaya, and Boo is his brainy but cowardly friend. They start out by taking part in a cross-country car race, the winner of which has been promised (by the mayor) a kiss from the mayor's unwilling daughter, Alanta (voiced by Emma Watson), who is secretly also taking part in the race, and pondering why she's the only one in all of Gaya with a British accent. (Just kidding about that last part, but I wondered...) As they drive across the country, Zino and Boo must cope with their own clutzy ineptitude and the nasty cheating tactics of the troll-like Snurks.

What none of these people realize is that they are all just characters in a popular children's television show.

But somehow, an evil genius breaches the wall between TV and reality to steal Gaya's source of power. The Snurks are the first in pursuit, hoping to finally find a way to make themselves heroes in their own world. They get sucked into the real world, followed by Zino, Boo and Alanta. After several nasty encounters with reality, the Gayans get together, see a news report about sightings of the missing TV characters, and set out to find the creator of their TV series (Voiced by Patrick Stewart) for an explanation.

It is clear that the creators of this film have read Inkheart. (By Cornelia Funke, also German: the movie sucked, read the book.)

The movie had mostly lost my attention by the time Boo had to fight an oversized robot, but it ended fairly well. Overall, I liked the storyline and the characters and the world of Gaya. I may be giving a half star more than it deserves, but I want to give credit for what I think was a botch job on the dub. Hope the movie deserves it.

It is harder to rate a film when its tone is grim and tragic. Am I only giving it two and a half because I don't like being dragged through an angst-fest? Or was the gloom justified by deep, meaningful insights which I am too straightforward and/or 'emotionally constipated' to appreciate?

Well, let's begin. Eternally underage pilot Yuichi arrives at his new airbase under a fog of gloom after an admittedly exciting opening aerial combat scene. He is a quiet, gentle character, reminiscent of Kino from Kino's journey, which allows all his surrounding characters to act out on their various psychological traumas. There he meets his mechanic and a girl who is the daughter of his commander and a Bassett hound who has nothing to do with the plot but made something charming and less grim to look at and listen to through the movie. Yuichi then meets his new commander, the chain-smoking Kusanagi, who is best known for killing her ex-lover, and his new wingman, who takes him out to pick up prostitutes at the local diner.

Of course, all of them are under age...but because they are immortally under age, it's all okay. Eventually, someone explains that the war in which they are sent out to die only takes place because humanity needs war to teach them the value of peace. Nobody seems to have a problem with this.

Life goes on without much changing but the gloom thickening, until the built-up angst explodes all over the place, resulting in lots of suicidal and ranting behavior. (Don't want to spoil the details!) It is essential to watch the credits as there is an addendum to the film partway through them. It all leaves us with the message that war is meaningless, human genetic manipulation is bad, and being an emo teen forever sucks more than anything.

But SkyCrawlers is very good at creating and maintaining a mood and atmosphere. The animation is uneven. At several points in the movie, I found myself watching a completely still screen as characters talked with their backs turned to the lens, and even when action was happening, it was usually slow and halting. When people did actually move, it was competently done, though, and scenes were full of moody lighting effects and filters which helped make the 2D animation somehow more real. Though at times the 2D and 3D elements blended well, the CGI airplanes were so real and gritty and 3D in their scenes that they made a marked contrast to the 2D or combined scenes that followed them.

The verdict: Not a movie for me. But if emo and angsty are where you get off, you may totally love SkyCrawlers.

It's hard to determine a rating for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Based on a well-known but short picture book, the film takes the story of the town where it rained food and gives it a framework.

From this point on it's hard to keep track of how many points to give the film and how many to take away. It can't be divided quite so easily into good and bad points as other films.

Bad: The story they use as the framework is the old retread formula used my most Disney cartoons: lovable misfit tries to succeed but gets no respect, tries again and sets horrible catastrophe in motion, averts catastrophe and saves everyone.

Good: The adult wanna-be inventor living in his Dad's back yard is funny and much less cookie-cutter-Nice-Guy than the usual protagonist of this sort of story.

Bad: They also pull out the same-old Father/Son relationship problems.

Good: Funny how it's finally resolved.

Bad: Same old predictable romance.

Good: Well, maybe not quite predictable at that! I mean, SPOILERS AHEAD!!! (You gotta love a movie where the guy woos a girl by making her a palace of Jello, and convinces her she's more beautiful with a nerdy pony tail and birth-control eyeglasses than when she was dressed up as a pretty, fashionable weather reporter.)

Basically, Cloudy-WACOM takes all the typical clichés of cartoon features and...well, twists them slightly. They don't quite succeed in actually lampooning them, though, or convincing me that their intention was to take the dead-dog-ordinary and turn it upside down. No, they just re-use the tired old themes and manage to do something a little more unique with them.

And yet, somehow, this film impresses me with its originality. I don't get it either...

There is also a ton and a half of visual appeal, from the charming ice cream snow scenes to the giant Jello mold to the deadly spaghetti tornado.

The humor is uneven. While parts of it are charming and hilarious, other bits are just...infantile. The Baby Brent character could be excised from the film without leaving much of a hole. And people who are upset by weight stereotypes could justifiably point out that the fat characters in this film (the evil mayor and the moronic Brent) are less than an appeal for tolerance. There also seems to be a little too much reliance on manic behavior by characters as a replacement for real humor.

Still, my impression of the movie was overall positive. Thumbs up!

Note: After three watchings, this movie is still funny and filled with delicious eye candy. I'm bumping up my rating half a star.