ATLANTIS: THE LOST EMPIRE review

ATLANTIS reminds me of THE BLACK CAULDRON in a lot of ways. It succeeds better as a film, but is still a confused movie wanting to be too many things to too many people to be great at any one thing.

I applaud Disney’s attempt to leave the musical comedy fable as their sole source of animated storytelling, but in this… their first venture into straight adventure… though TARZAN was a toe in the water. However, they still don’t exhibit faith in committing to the genre.

Now, I’m well aware of the controversy over the character designs and concepts for the film allegedly being ripped off from a couple of different anime films, but since I’ve never seen either of the films in question, I am not going to comment on it. When I asked Robogeek about it, who had seen all the material in question, he basically said there were similarities, but basically it was bullshit.

My problem is that the character designs in the film are largely uninvolving and erratic. The cook and the communications lady and the old coot that financed the expedition… well, they’re all from an entirely different film. The Mole is from yet another style animated film. The Hispanic mechanic… from a Hernandez Brothers comix. All the other characters, they are stylistically similar in terms of rules of animation. They look ‘of the same universe’.

The problem that these jarring stylistic characters bring is that you feel knocked out of the story. Basically they are telling us an adventure story… Now imagine in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK or GUNS OF NAVARONE if suddenly you had a character played totally for laughs by Martin Short or Gilbert Gottfried. Or in GUNS OF NAVARONE’s sake… imagine if suddenly the David Niven character had been played by JERRY LEWIS.

All of a sudden these epic films would be unbalanced and unhinged.

So why did Disney do it? Because they felt that they may have been losing the under 6 audience. Well…. I saw this film in an afternoon Saturday screening here in Austin with an audience made up of parents and their children…. All ages. Sitting next to me was a little boy about age 6 and on the other side of his mother was a girl age 4 or so. The moments in the film that held them in utter silence? The action and adventure. During those scenes occasionally I’d here, "Whoa," uttered under their breath… Believe it or not, they seemed to be tossing in their seats a bit when the cook or mole were on screen.

These kids were interested, as was I, in the story of Milo, his co-adventurers and the Atlanteans. However, the story was continually interrupted with unnecessary below the bar humor that left much to be desired.

Did I like the film, yes… Did I love it, no. Overall the story was missing a punch and focus. It was definitely many times better than several of the recent Disney efforts… and had they had faith in the straight up adventure the film could have been great… but instead of using their time to further develop the characters and the story, they decided to be distracted by GAGS and LOW HUMOR, which was… like several of the characters… from another film all together.

What is great about the film? That is was adventure fantasy… that characters died, that characters were not PC, that the story took some risks… but it just didn’t follow through all the way.

Next time I highly recommend that Disney get stronger base material to work with… a work of Burroughs, Alex Raymond, Jules Verne, Conan Doyle, Ray Bradbury or one of the like and base a full on adventure on a great literary adventure story of scale and tell it straight…

However, I fear that the corporate environment at Disney is such that doing something new without the familiar is something that can’t be done. Why? Too many in the executive branch of Disney Animation can see only that which has worked before, and whenever something new is tried, they fall back… rely on that which they know. Comedy and gags. Children can be kept in rapt attention by adventure. Don’t believe it? Fine. Someone, somewhere one day will… and that movie is the one I’m waiting to see.

ATLANTIS is miles better than TOMB RAIDER and it is a tragedy that so many at Disney will lose their jobs because the marketing on ATLANTIS was lackluster and that the studio built no buzz in advance. Hopefully, we will see more in this direction… but right now Disney is where they were when BLACK CAULDRON was released… between directions… adhering to the past and striving for the future… First you must let go and boldly explore new territory with freshness. Which is what I was hoping was going to be done here.

This was a fun film that missed being great by quite a margin… but is a stepping stone to something new and great for this company… if they pursue it.