Michael's Movie Grade: B
A really fun animated Disney film.
This movie promises a big adventure and that is just what it delivers. This is a film that really takes you to another world. The world that our characters find themselves in is wonderfully designed. The design and artwork here is simply beautiful. There is a real attention to detail here. There are lots of little things that fill this world, that you may not notice all of them, but they still enhance your experience. Many of the scenes here are simply jaw droppingly beautiful to look at. Yet this world is also very well setup by the storytelling. Director Don Hall is a Disney veteran and has worked on Disney films as early as the late 1990's (he was a story artist on Tarzan (1999)) and has proved himself to be a wonderful director for the studio handling such movies as Winnie the Pooh (2011), Big Hero 6 (2014) and Raya and the Last Dragon (2021). He uses this experience to his full advantage and with the help of a clever screenplay Qui Nguyen, creates a world where the fantasy feels completely believable and is full of great atmosphere. Yet this movie has a heart underneath this. That heart is heavily present in the relationships between the Clade family, especially the men of the Clade family. These characters have a lot and common (even when they don't see it) but are still very much their own characters. You can feel just how much the three men care about each other in each scene, while at the same time understanding why there is some friction in their relationships.
Unfortunately, the story line here feels very familiar and similar to many other sci-fi films and recent Disney movies. This makes it hard to approach some scene without thinking of other movies. The film can also be very predictable at times, and I figured out what the big twist was going to be earlier than I should have. One scene is both a comedic scene and a scene meant to foreshadow and lead up to this twist, was so obvious in its foreshadowing that it briefly took me out of the movie. This film also presents its message in a rather heavy-handed manner, that is often told through too obvious on the nose dialogue.
The humor here can be a bit hit and miss. Some of the jokes are really funny, while others simply fall flat.
This may not be a perfect movie, but what it does well, it does very well. This makes it easy to recommend this film to any animation or Disney fan.
Unfortunately, the story line here feels very familiar and similar to many other sci-fi films and recent Disney movies. This makes it hard to approach some scene without thinking of other movies. The film can also be very predictable at times, and I figured out what the big twist was going to be earlier than I should have. One scene is both a comedic scene and a scene meant to foreshadow and lead up to this twist, was so obvious in its foreshadowing that it briefly took me out of the movie. This film also presents its message in a rather heavy-handed manner, that is often told through too obvious on the nose dialogue.
The humor here can be a bit hit and miss. Some of the jokes are really funny, while others simply fall flat.
This may not be a perfect movie, but what it does well, it does very well. This makes it easy to recommend this film to any animation or Disney fan.
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