Click Poster to Purchase
 |  | Get Showtimes... |
Film: The Wild [G] 94 minutes
WIP™ Scale: $9.75
When 1st Seen: 14 April 2006
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Where Viewed: Bellevue Galleria Stadium 11, Bellevue, WA
 |  |
DVD | soundtrack |
Animation fans rejoice for this is going to be a banner year for you. Certainly, there will be a full, five nominees for best Animated film (unlike last year where they fielded only three—though I don’t know why Disney’s® Chicken Little wasn’t one of them since I thought it was awesome). In any case, this year there are supposed to be at least 14 animated major motion pictures. That is correct. Here’s what I know so far (already released: Curious George, Doogal, Ice Age: the Meltdown, The Wild and coming soon: Over the Hedge, Cars, Garfield 2: A Tail of Two Kitties, A Scanner Darkly, Monster House, Barnyard, The Ant Bully, Yankee Irving, Open Season, and Happy Feet). So, that number is not pure hype. What I cannot guarantee is that any of those not yet released will be good. I can guarantee, however, that if they bring in the money of Ice Age: the Meltdown, we are bound to see even more the year after this. So, if you mix amazing CGI animation talent with the magic of the Digital Cinema® technology (see my side bar on the topic), you have a movie that literally shimmers on the screen. Also, most of you know that in order to preserve its preeminence over the animated film genre, the board of Walt Disney, Inc® made one of the most prudent decisions it has executed since the hiring and retiring of Michael Eisner—the acquisition of Pixar® Animated Studios, Inc. Since the first Toy Story movie, Pixar® has established itself as the best and most consistent movie studio for CGI films. Look at their list: Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monster’s Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and coming this summer, Cars (all tolled over $3.2 billion in worldwide distribution income). Not too shabby. With Pixar® in-house, Disney® fans will be assured excellent, creative, and innovative films of decades to come. In any case, it has been nice to see that Disney® even without Pixar®, at least in my humble opinion, was able to produce to decently entertaining CGI animated films such as the aforementioned Chicken Little and the newly released Disney’s® The Wild. The latter of which, shall receive the remainder of the treatment in today’s review.
Disney’s® The Wild begins with a clever animated treatment of it’s classic Tinker Bell flying over Cinderella’s Castle logo that opens each film. This was cute and fun. From there, we zoom in to meet the two main characters of the story, Samson—The Wild, a lion, of course, and his cub, Ryan. At the moment, Samson is waxing on telling stories of his days of yore in Africa when he had to take on not only an entire heard of wildebeests, but also, an enormous secret weapon of the wildebeests—a 1400-ft, four horned, hot air breathing titan wildebeest. As a single parent, Samson has taken to telling Ryan these stories to help him develop his moral code as a future king of the jungle (or, in this case, the New York City Zoo) and to help motivate him to learn to roar. Unfortunately, Ryan, is having a bit of trouble getting his roar down which is a source of amusement for just about everyone in the zoo. If that sounds a little mean, well it was. They were quite nasty to the little cub, and this eventually provokes him to seek a way out of the Zoo and into the wild where he feels he will have a better chance of really learning to roar. His departure from the zoo, serves as the impetus, for Samson, and his curling team pals: Bridget the Giraffe, Benny the Squirrel, Nigel the Koala Bear, and Larry the Boa Constrictor to head out in a trash truck to find the Stiff Lady with the Torch and the cargo container containing the runaway Ryan. One of the Disney® animated traditions to which, in retrospect as an adult, I wish they weren’t so beholden is the need to add in scary, gleaming-eyed, evil characters. So, for example, in The Wild, we have a trio of rabid dogs foaming at the mouth at the thought of chowing down on our heroes. In any case, while The Wild looks and sounds sumptuous with every flowing hair on Samson’s mane, the story, of course, is what drives the W.I.P. Scale™, and I am sorry to say down a bit here. The story isn’t that fresh or inventive. The characters, with the exception of the humorous Nigel the Koala Bear (who’s apparently the world’s only English, not Australian, Koala Bear), are not very new. Haven’t I seen an entire series of Disney® Lion movies? Maybe they were called Disney’s® The Lion King? It’s so bad that as the band leads their rescue mission, they travel through Times Square (beautifully rendered, I must admit) past a big billboard advertising, Disney’s® The Lion King Musical. Hey, I’m all for product placement, realism, and etc., but they could have at least promoted their new musical version for Tarzan® instead. Well, anyway, the characters and the story were a tad recycled. Moreover, unfortunately, the episode culminates in a bizarre way once the rescue party reaches Africa, and they encounter a band of wildebeests headed by the egomaniacal Kazar. Kazar has grown tired of being at the bottom of the food chain (guess he doesn’t realize that he eats grass making it the bottom and him the middle, but anyway that is Biology 101 and this is an animated, make-believe movie with talking, singing, and dancing animals). So, he intends to lead his herd into eating a lion which he believes will turn them into the carnivores. Eeekkkkk...I just thought this part was all very nasty and needlessly creepy. Especially when the message that comes out when all is said and does is that we need to be true to ourselves—sort of just accept that you were born to be somebody else’s dinner idea. Ok, I am being pretty literal and critical here of the story. I am sure if you are 6 or 8 or maybe even 10, this kind of thing won’t bother you. Though it might be a little scary for you. This and a little interspecies loving between a squirrel and a giraffe? (Again, with the basic biology, sorry.) I just found the story, which tries hard to deliver some good messages, gets tangled amongst all these other messages.
When it comes to the talent behind the voices, I thought everyone did an awesome job, even William Shatner as the crazy Kazar. Eddie Izzard was hilarious, as mentioned, as Nigel. What I cannot abide, however, is when you can tell straight up from the first moment to the last that the voice of one of the characters is Kiefer Sutherland. I don’t know if it is his recent commercial voice overs or his voice over from 24, but I can recognize his voice a mile away, and once you place the voice, it’s hard to think of anything else. I never did figure it was James Belushi behind Benny or Janeane Garofalo behind Bridget. But, blast, I caught Kiefer Sutherland from the first roar, and this just kind of ruined Samson for me. I think Mr. Sutherland is great. Don’t get me wrong, please. But, I just cannot picture him as a lion. It’s not for me.
In the end, with an uneven, recycled story and that miscast of voices in the lead roar (pun intended), the net result is a film that has a lot of laughs--avoiding even one joke about flatulence (bravo!), brilliant CGI animation with loads of inside jokes and puns that were fun, but comes just short of hitting a triple—the runner gets caught between second and third and just narrowly makes it back to second before getting tagged out. Certainly, this film was not a home run. [note: I was going to use a curling analogy for the conclusion to this review due to the fact that, as I mentioned, Samson and his pals form a curling rink (team) and play in the zoo tournaments, but since (a) they violate the rules of curling by having 5 animals on their team, and (b) too many non Canadian people might not quite get it if I said the movie failed to deliver the essential freeze shot, I went with baseball instead.
Available for Purchase or Pre-Order on DVD
Find your movies at MoviesUnlimited.com.
The Wild [DVD](2006) DVD
| CD Soundtrack | DVD | |
No comments:
Post a Comment