gorgeous but the bubble keeps popping

Rating: 7/10 (14 July 2008)

visually stunning, but unless I bring a Walkman, oh sorry, iPod, I need a little more. As a compositor, sometimes it's hard for me to watch CGI bonanzas like this; little things like shadow color balance being off blow my suspension of disbelief in an instant. It annoys me to no end that they can put tons of expert attention into texturing and lighting but then the walk cycles are clumsy giveaways. Just as i'm getting sucked in, something lazy blows it for me. When the little guys were shoving a big door closed, they looked like puppets. And when people get tossed across a room, their path should be an arc unless they're traveling superfast, NEVER a straight line. In the beginning, when the kid was talking, his lips never closed for Ps and Bs and stuff, and that little animal part of your brain just can't help but notice. I could find at least fifty examples if i watched it again; i rarely got sucked in for more than half a minute before another stinker dead-fished my face. And those of us who are fans of dark weird stories like we hope this would be really do NOT need cheesy overblown choirs to tell us when it's all grandiose and epic; would suit me just fine if i never had to hear cheesy bombastic cliché soundtracks ever again (why does Danny Elfman get all the jobs? he's gotten so intensely boring). The schmaltzy tearjerking moments had a lot of the people around me snickering. I thought the German voice-over was horrible, then I saw why: Seth McFarlane? what in hell was the thinking behind that? and the Barry Manilow thing was cute for a minute, but playing it over the credits was like a final smirky flip off. and the glitchy credits treatment was dumb. BUT, in between the buzzkills, there are some seriously stunning visuals. LOVED the golden army, and the big space they were kept in. The troll market was a total delight, wish we could have spent more time there. But come on, if you aren't going to go that final five percent, just don't even bother.