What the ....?

Rating: 3/10 (11 October 2007)

What was this movie trying to be? It has a serious social/political subtext, but its too simplistic and naive of a message to support the whole movie as entertainment for adults. It's got action and goofiness for the kids, but it's a bit scary and dark for young ones. While the double-entendres will go over their heads, there are adult usages of words you won't want your grade schooler repeating. The animation is generally impressive but the characters' faces range from human-like (Weaver/Sly Stallone) to weird and alien-looking (Z/Woody Allen) with a limited range of emotion. The big name casting doesn't work at all. Woody Allen does the same shtick he's been doing for almost 40 years and it's just bizarre to hear him in an animated feature with a plot like this. (At least in his old TV cartoon his character looked like him, but that really didn't work well either.) Sharon Stone is wooden and old-sounding as the young princess. The other characters are shallow clichés of their particular voice-actor's typical movie role (except for Walken, who does a great job of not being one of his usual nutjobs). I guess it was all a novelty at the time. As mentioned in other comments, the story line is a mish-mosh of old plots from much better movies or books. The music is high quality but odd in places. The only humor in the movie is Woody's, so if you don't find his routine especially funny, this will be agony to sit through. Whatever the movie was trying to be, it doesn't work now. It does occur to me, though, that maybe its entertainment value is as a study on early mistakes made during the rebirth of full length animated films aimed at general audiences. Thank goodness Hollywood finally figured it out.