90 minutes of pure fairytale magic

Rating: 9/10 (7 July 2001)

I saw this movie half an hour ago and I'm still vibrating - the music, the characters, the animation, the story....wow! I'm definitely getting the score! And, as a first for me, the soundtrack with the songs on it! I don't usually buy any of that 'soundtrack' stuff and usually go for OSTs, but this movie integrated the songs so well that it should no way be missed! There are also some really cool camera angles, which I tend to watch for nowadays after seeing The Third Man
Recent trend emerging - vastly superior computer-animated features. How do these people seem to round up the funniest writers in the business for this type of movie? Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Bug's Life, Antz (not forgetting the non-CGI Chicken Run)...these are all hilariously written and they're all CGI films! Even the upcoming Monsters Inc. (dying to see it) appears to be even more funny and imaginative! Mind you, they're all Disney/Pixar and Dreamworks produced My instinct is that it's a big competition between Disney/Pixar and Dreamworks to come up with the funniest ideas and revolutionary technology for these films - thats a good thing about competition like this, it propels people to new lengths. Ever since The Lion King new life has been breathed into the genre of animated features. With the exception of things like Pokemon in all fairness.
The film itself is just so uplifting that the feeling and memories are bound to stay with you for days! Wise-crack, in jokes, identifiable characters...all great stuff. The dialogue between characters is so witty, funny and smart that you can identify with the characters extremely well and the relationships between them are sticking out like Boy George! It plays with great fun on the fairytale genre, with references to many different fairytales (and various other things, like The Matrix and Riverdance), using them to great effect, creating a magical atmosphere that is unsurpassed and greatly aided by the computer animation.
The music, as I said before, is absolutely amazing. Harry Gregson-Williams and John Powell do massive credit to themselves in the score for this movie, as they did before for the fab Chicken Run. You can definitely tell at times where Gregson-Williams' influence was most apparent, seeing as he is a student of Hans Zimmer! The songs, some of which most people should recognise, are integrated so well into the emotions of certain parts of the movie that they amplify these emotions, giving the viewer a real feel of the magic. Combined with the superb score (I can't say that enough) this truly is a feast for the senses, not least of hearing - it's a joy to both watch and hear.
The one thing I would say on the negative side is that the ending is a bit predictable and there is a brief slump into sentimentality, but then again most fairytales go this way!
Rating? 9 out of ten, without doubt!