Out of balance.

Rating: 4/10 (19 June 2009)

Blockbuster animated films need to walk a line between being eye-catching and silly enough to be fun for kids, while being smart and deep enough to be rewarding for adults. Any violence should be, well, cartoonish. This film didn't balance between being a kid movie and an adult movie well at all.
The animation was flawless. Ed Asner was perfectly cast and depicted. The silly stuff (Squirrel!) was there in painful overabundance. The film was eye-catching beyond description, especially in 3D. The story of the main character's loss of his dear wife, though, was gut-wrenchingly sad, and must have been utterly confusing to children. The fight scene where the too-evil explorer was shooting real bullets at a child with intent to kill him was far too violent and real for children. The villain's death was unnecessary.
Since I won't be showing the film to a child, I looked at it from a purely adult perspective, and found too much childishly silly content to make it a good film for my tastes.