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If the makers of Atlantis had something to say in this film, its theme was (literally) drowned out by the emphasis on "special effects" over characterization. Almost as if in an attempt to "keep up" with the rest of the summer action blockbusters, Disney has ditched the character-driven, movie-with-a-message approach in favor of a Star Wars "shoot-'em-up" with stereotype heroes and villains.
The art is cartoony and the producers think that they can rely on computer generated images (CGI) of flying fish-craft and submarines to fill the gap. They are wrong, and the days of beautiful, handcrafted animation is fast flying out the window in favor of assembly-line CGI.
This movie is all spectacle with no heart. At times the film comes close to being a good, worthwhile movie, but frustratingly misses the mark so many times by copping out of talking about something meaningful and instead choosing to go with the glitz.
Another problem with the movie is the pacing. It starts confusingly and then begins to rocket along with a choppy story editing style that is not appreciated. The viewer is rushed out of the door along with Milo Thatch (voiced well by Michael J. Fox) and is left thinking "Gee there must be an awful lot of stuff that's going to happen once we get to Atlantis". Unfortunately, not much happens. The secret of Atlantis remains a secret with the story-tellers not really knowing how to explain the legendary island/continent. They are afraid to commit to saying where Atlantis is, even in a fictional story. Is it in the Atlantic? Is it in the Mediterranean Sea? Who knows? Nothing is hypothesized, even from a purely fantasy-based point of view. The viewer will leave the theatre asking themselves "Now what was that all about? What was the point of the movie? Why couldn't the surviving Atlantean's remember how to read when many of them lived through the disaster to the "present" day? And WHY did Atlantis sink?" and then promptly begin to forget about what they saw. There is nothing left to think about or mill over... except the loss of money in their wallets.
The characters and their motivations are equally unfathomable. From the eccentric zillionaire who founds the expedition with seemingly more money that existed on the entire planet in 1914, to the (spoiler) collective consciousness that enters Kida and VOLUNTARILY deserts its people!?! The crew are a collection of quirky, 2-dimensional people of anachronistically (for 1914) P.C. race and gender. The demolitions expert talks like he came right out of a Warner Brothers' Bugs Bunny short. Most of the jokes are gross one-liners that are largely missed by the audience for two reasons: They are delivered at lightning-speed pacing and usually mumbled. The way these supporting players do a moral turn-around near the end of the movie is hard to believe.
While we applaud Disney for trying to create animated movies for adults - and this is the first Disney not to have cute, talking animals or objects - it fails to make the transition. Younger children will be frightened by some of the action scenes and be left in the dark by the large amount of subtitles (when the characters speak Atlantean). In the first five minutes of the expedition, approximately 200 people are killed without a second thought. Obviously Disney thinks that if you didn't know who those people were, then why should you care? Again, the movie has no feelings on any level.
Mulan and Tarzan were the last animated movies produced by Disney that were done extremely well. Sadly, Atlantis harkens back to those failed attempts in the past such as the Black Cauldron and Hunchback of Notre Dame. Disney needs to get back to their roots. A sequel to Peter Pan is coming out shortly but one never knows what the results will be until you see it for yourself. And now that Disney has discovered Science Fiction one hopes that they will realize that that genre must have more than spectacle to it. We also hope that the upcoming "Treasure Planet", a sci-fi adaptation of Robert L. Stevenson's "Treasure Island", will have more heart to it than the unfathomable "Atlantis: The Lost Empire".


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