Michael's Movie Grade: C
An enjoyable little animated comedy from Mexico.
To anyone familiar with animated movies, this film will feel incredibly familiar. The story of a father animal looking for his children who are in the hands of dangerous humans closely resembles that of Finding Nemo and many other animated feature films. Still there is a reason why stories become clichés and that is because they work and the story works pretty well here. Both the parents and the kids are likable and easy to root for. Because of this you care about what happens in the story. The villains are over the top enough to be fun, while still being threatening enough to serve their part in the story well. The action scenes (while nothing that will keep you on the edge of your seat) are fun and quite effective. While I doubt this film will make any of you cry, the more emotional parts of the movie hit surprisingly well.
This movie unfortunately falls into the trap that too many family films do, constantly throwing jokes at the audience for a feature length story. While this approach can work, more often than not it proves to be a fault. It is truly difficult to be constantly funny in a feature film and that was why even the feature films with comedy teams like Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello and The Three Stooges had romantic subplots and songs. Because of this for every joke that works here (and there are quite a few), there are multiple ones that fall flat. Still that does not take away that there are times when the movie is truly funny.
The worst part of the movie is that many of the side characters seem to be relegated to being one joke characters and for some of them that joke isn't even funny. This movie can also be pretty heavy handed when it comes to the film's message.
This is not a great movie by any means but it does provide a fun trip to the movies.
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