Inkwolf

Wow, this was a disappointing film. Previously I have been surprised and delighted by foreign films like A Fish Tale (Help, I'm a Fish) and Kirikou and the Sorceress. Unfamiliarity and originality often make up for a lack of Hollywood budget and Disney experience.

But not here. The production is awful--animation is poor and cheap and reckless. Cels overlap in the wrong order more frequently in one film than I've seen in a lifetime of shoddy Saturday morning cartoons, even if you decide that Doctor Quack's head going under the mattress of his hospital bed every time he ran around it is a bizarre sight gag.

The used-before storyline could have been forgiven, as it's still watchable, not too dumb, and decently scripted, but nearly all the character designs seem to be weak rehashes of Disney characters or marginally-modified character designs from Preston Blair's How To Draw Animated Cartoons. The evil twins have definite earmarks of Madame Medusa's DNA, and the barbell-pumping pooch is a dead ringer for old Trusty the bloodhound, compacted. Apart from that, the art had a early 1970's feel to the lines and in the color scheme. Faintly reminded me of Yellow Submarine.

Probably the nicest thing I can say is for the background art, which was occasionally sort of trippy with exaggerated perspective (70's-ish again) and at other times consisted of very nice, artistic line drawings that reminded me of...um..Disney movies...made in the 70's.

Anyway, a sad case of poor production values, reflected in the DVD, which was defective (so I couldn't play the ending) and which also sadly doesn't allow you to choose to watch in the original language.

To tell the truth, I've been pretty much afraid to rate this. When so many people love it, how can I come out and say I thought it was a whole lot of nothing, held together by bad songs?

(ducks)

Come on. Is a villain who whines for his mummy and sucks his thumb at all threatening? (Or funny? No.) Is the Sheriff of Nottingham at all scary with his hayseed Pat-Buttram-Mr.-Haney voice?

Meanwhile, against this not-so-terrifying duo is Mr.-British-accented-errol-flynn-reincarnated-as-a-fox character.

Seems like an unfair contest. Plus, they painted Baloo brown and stuffed him in a suit to provide backup. And they got a bunch of cute baby animals (and bland female fox) to look adoring up at Robin as he swanks around sounding nobly British. (Everyone knows Robin Hood really lived in good ol' American Redneck Country. Listen to most of the other characters, after all!)

Thank goodness for the amusing sidekick snake, Sir Hiss, the only high point of this dull, dull movie.

When I was a kid fascinated with the real Robin Hood, I desperately wanted to see this movie, but never got to. I might have enjoyed it more then. Now it's just agony to sit through.

I admit it. I'm biased. I've had my knife in this movie since, oh, I first heard they were making it.

I read and loved Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles before this movie came out.

Disney took elements from the first two books--The Book of Three and The Black Cauldron--and made a hideous hash of them, making wise characters dimwitted, and turning others into simperingly cutesy little Disneyites.

Gurgi, described only as a hairy, unkempt creature with its long hair matted with leaves, has been turned into something like a puppy dog boy.

The Horned King, that terrifying, villainous power who is only a pawn of the mysterious Arawn, is made into self-congratulatory, gloating Saturday-morning villain with a squeaky, whiny sidekick.

The implacable horror of the Cauldron-born--dead men reanimated, who have dim memories of their past lives but cannot resist the power of their master, and who go on attacking until they've been hacked into tiny bits--are reduced to a ghoulies-and-ghosties moment, which is at least somewhat scary.

Gurgi's heroic self-sacrifice is tainted by a cloyingly sentimental preceding scene awash with self-pity, and it is hardly surprising that he somehow miraculously survives at the end so all the kiddies in the audience stop crying. (I don't recall the movie's explaining why he lived, though I may have forgotten that.)

The Fair Folk look like refugees from a leprechaun convention.

But if you're illiterate and can't read the books, there's no reason you can't enjoy Disney's version. It's an enjoyable, though not exemplary, foray into swords-and-sorcery from the days when Dungeons and Dragons ruled the world.

Disney also more or less recycled many of the main characters, thinly disguised, in its TV series, Gummi Bears.

READ THE BOOKS, people!

The Book of Three
The Black Cauldron
The Castle of Llyr
Taran Wanderer
and
The High King
by Lloyd Alexander

I first saw this film in the theater when I was a Lord-of-the-rings fanatic kid. I loved it at the time. In recent years I came to wonder why so many people were bashing it.

I rewatched it and found out. Too bad you can't go back to your childhood.

There are some beautiful and exciting scenes and effects in the film, but often a sad lack of energy in the characters due to the rotoscoping and lacklustre voice acting (Legolas saying 'Fly, the enemy is upon us' in a disintered* tone, for example)...or misplaced energy. (The rotoscoped actors playing the Orcs jump and wave their arms exaggeratedly as they talk, in a display of poor acting which only a 90's Nickolodeon program could hope to emulate.) And the film covers only the first two books, and that rather haphazardly.

Still, worth seeing for a Lord of the Rings fan. The score is worth hearing, too: a bit dated now, and without quite the broad scope of modern fantasy soundtracks, it still has some enjoyable themes.

* This was originally a typo for 'disinterested' but I like it so much--and it's SO appropriate--that I'm leaving it.

A disappointing film with little going for it apart from some beautiful scenes and effects animation, Treasure Planet sends us over the often-rehashed terrain of Treasure Island, with very little attempt at originality. There will be no surprises here for anyone who's read the book or seen the previous Disney film, or experienced Treasure island in any other form. If you've lived your life in a hole and never seen or heard of Treasure Island before, you still will probably not be very surprised...the key shocker of the book, the betrayal of Long John Silver, is blatantly telegraphed long before it happens.

Attempts at humor are for the most part cludgy (though the flatulent alien was good for a giggle or two.) Worst of all, Jim Hawkins seems to be nothing but an appendage to the story...though it's clearly meant to be a character-building experience for him, he remains in a mainly reactive role, showing little character development or internal conflict at any point in the film.

Frankly, the epic failed to make a successful transition from great pirate story to space story. Cool-rebel-air-surfer-teen Jim rings phony, not so much a real character as a gimmick to lure teens and preteens in. It's clear the writers haven't made much effort to get inside his head and make him real. Captain Smollet is replaced by a hard-nosed female captain, to add gender diversity to an otherwise all-boy adventure. A Flubber-like, shape-changing alien sidekick adds little to the film. The defective robotic Ben Gunn is not as clever an idea as the movie clearly thinks it is. Aliens for the most part do not seem to be real and convincing beings (as in Lilo and Stitch) but refugees from Furry conventions and Saturday morning tripe.

(I did like the ship, though...)

Like the famous treasure of Captain Flint, this one isn't worth digging up: someone's been there before you, and there's little or no treasure left here.