Good, not great

Rating: 7/10 (17 March 2002)

I saw this film with five, eight, eleven and forty year old children. Between us, we've seen almost every animated film made in the last twelve years, in most cases multiple times. (We deliberately missed "The Emperor's New Groove" and "El Dorado" after reading early reviews.) The general consensus was that, while not up to the best of the computer-animated genre, it was entertaining and amusing. (I especially liked John Leguizamo's voice for Sid the Sloth.) We rated it as better than "Monster's Inc." but not as good as "Shrek" or either of the "Toy Story" films. Roughly equivalent to "Jimmy Neutron". Or as, my husband pointed out, he wouldn't pay to see it in a theater a second time, but he wouldn't be driven crazy by the kids playing it over and over once we got the DVD, either.
And the more players in the animation field, either traditional or computer-generated, the better, for those people like me who feel that animated films are generally underappreciated as an art form. (Personally, I think the fact that Disney no longer has a lock on quality animated features is all to the good.) I will keep an eye out for new features from this group.