ZTC

WARNING: THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

I decided to get this on DVD. I'd read some pretty detailed info on it, seen a couple of images and decided to see it for myself. What can I say? It is everything a modern Disney film should be: good use of paint, digital art and CGI. The songs are upbeat and well-written (after all, they are all written by the guru of songwritiers, Phil Collins). I just thanked God - with the exception of a few lines from Koda - that none of the characters went and bursted into song.

The scenery and backgrounds are beautiful and realistic. The scene where "On My Way" started was drawn to the point of breathtaking beauty. The animation was fluent and the bears actully moved like real bears. Although I didn't find most of the lines comical, I found the DVD commentuary by the moose hysterical. And I quote:

(Tanana draws sketch on the ground, telling Kenai about the mountain)
TUKE: Hey, did she say that was where the lights touch the Earth?
RUTT: Yeah.
TUKE: Well, from my point of view, it looks like the lights touching McDonalds!

LOL

Balto was one of the first furry animations I watched. The movie came completely out of the blue for me, I wasn't even aware it had even been in cinemas. I decided to watch it, bearing in mind I was only seven, I knew what 'based on a true story' meant (though I took it a bit too seriously). It was only when I noticed Balto II on a TV listing for Sky Movies that I began to watch the film even more and began to analyse it.

The acting was OK; not great but OK. Kevin Bacon was great as Balto and Phil Collins was cute as the polar bears but the other characters, aside from Steele, didn't carry a spark with them. Their character designs were pretty standard and there was nothing really special about them. Being based on a true story; I looked up to 1925 epedimic and found they had bent - not tweaked - a few bits to make the story better. The storyline that the original events were sacrificed for seemed a bit too cliche: an outcast wants a popular girl who is eyed up by a popular boy who hates him so how is he going to get it? Easy, by travelling through freezing snow and blizzard for nearly 1000 miles to find medicine to cure her sick owner. Girl in the bag! Don't get me wrong, it's a great movie but it doesn't have the originality to be better. The animation was supurb and there weren't many bloopers to notice, the backgrounds of the Alaskan wilderness were very well detailed and some of the lines that the characters said were quite funny (I got people bumps!). It is dampened down for younger viewers, which impacted the story a little bit but I love it for its animation and the character style.

It was either this or Transporter 3 so I chose this since I wasn't in the mood for a thriller. I thought an animation would lighten my mood. God forbid.

Overall, the story is pretty decent and some of the gags are quite funny, though are quite forced. The story is pretty easy to compare to the previous one. Whilst in the first one, the animals stuck together and decided to find a way to solve the problems that the wild presented, in this one; they merely go off to do their own thing. A disaster in the making. As Greykitty said, there is too much to be squeezed into an hour-and-a-half film. And where the heck did the romance between Gloria and Melmen come from? Julian's antic were quite funny and I found his character as cute as ever, pity he didn't get much screentime nor the penguins. I hated the 'Lion King' rip-off storyline and the zebra plot was just annoying (it made me hate Chris Rock when you have about thirty thousand animals getting voiced by him). I have to defend the music a little bit, though mixing a legendary composer with a former member from Black Eyed Peas is not a good idea, the music worked for me but it still rested into my brain in the same way as a dentist's drill. Hardcore fans of the original would love this but, to anyone else, watch it once and then give the DVD a miss.