Michael's Movie Grade: A+
Review: Directing team John Musker and Ron Clements helped redefine Disney feature animation with such films as The Little Mermaid and Aladdin. However they may have dine it again here, this film is an incredible mixture of what made previous Disney animated features so good and great new ideas as well . In fact this may stand as their best film and it is one of my favorite post-Walt animated Disney films.
The look of this film is incredible. The designs are very appealing, and the characters are very well animated. On top of this the film has a brilliant combination of CGI and hand drawn animation done through Maui's tattoos (the head of hand drawn animation was Eric Goldberg, who had previously been the supervising animator for the Genie in Aladdin).
The story is also excellent and told through brilliant filmmaking. The story is told using so many great devices. Making the first few villains comic for instance works fantastically. This makes the climax all the more exciting and makes the threat feel much stronger. In fact the whole mixture of comedy and drama is near perfect. The humor is not only quite funny but it always is there in service to the story and characters. The comedy uses a lot of self referential humor, this is not only quite funny but makes the fantasy all the more acceptable by also talking to the cynic in us that recognizes the clichés of this type of story, while not insulting them to the point of where we don't take them seriously enough. All this of course would be wasted if the characters weren't so likable and luckily they are.
The songs in this film are fantastic. They are in a more modern style quite different from what has been used in many previous animated Disney features. However they work perfectly and like many classic Disney films they are completely at the service of the story and characters. They work brilliantly. This is probably the best use of modern style music in a Disney film.
I think this movie does for me, what Frozen did for so many other animation fans (Don't get me wrong I loved Frozen but I am blown away by this film).
If you can't guess I liked this movie.
But don't go away we have a short to Review too.
Michael's Movie Grade: C
Review: Entertaining little cartoon.
This film a good message and great animation.
However this cartoon seems almost too short and the jokes miss as often as they hit.
Overall an enjoyable little cartoon, but not much more.
-Michael J. Ruhland
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