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"Atlantis"
(Reviewed June 1, 2001)
-
The only okay part of this very bad Disney animated movie is a very brief section toward the end that might remind you of the Warner Bros. animated classic "The Iron Giant." When large, robot-like figures rise from the sea to deal with impending disaster, everything looks and sounds pretty good--but that's because there is absolutely no dialog in the scene, and none of the movie's main characters are involved in the action.
The primary problem with "Atlantis" is that no human being should be forced to listen to Michael J. Fox's voice for any extended period of time, because the guy is just so damned whiny and annoying. Here he plays a very irritating would-be adventurer in the early 1900s who is rescued from a boring office job to lead an expedition searching for Atlantis. The expedition seems to have been put together by some Rainbow-Coalition minded diversity committee intent upon including nearly every minority known to man. Oddly, this works at cross purposes with the group's Puerto-Rican (I assume) mechanic, a girl who is drawn with such exaggerated Latina features that she looks bizarrely cartoonish (although, of course, with a heart o' gold). Then again, there's also a French fellow who digs holes in the ground Tazmanian-Devil style and collects dirt. Don't ask.
The movie makes no internal sense whatsoever, with way too many people and far too much equipment managing to make it to Atlantis even though we have seen all but a handful of the cast and virtually all of their stuff destroyed in earlier scenes. Also, the "white figures of authority bad, indigenous peoples good" theme is so heavy handed as to be offensive. Oh, wait a minute, white people aren't allowed to be offended. (I keep forgetting.)
Speaking of bad white people, blond Aryan goddess Helga is drawn quite fetchingly, for those of you into Aeon-Flux-type heroines. And what's-her-name, the Atlantean swimsuit model, also has a pretty good bod. (I saw this movie only two days ago, but I honestly have no idea what the main female's name was...which should tell you something about how well her character was written.)
And the story...yeesh! It's like some really boring Saturday-morning "action" cartoon padded out to an hour and a half. It is so uninvolving and flat, despite a lot of pointless noise, that it brings to mind the dreadful Fox animated bomb "Titan A.E.," a movie so bad that its release led to the demise of that studio's entire animation division.
One last carp: On a few occasions in "Atlantis," computer animation and line-animation are used together. This is a real mistake, because it invariably makes the audience wish the entire scene had been done one way or the other. The drawn animation (which isn't all that hot to begin with) looks very unfinished and sketchy next to fully-rendered computer figures.
Go see "Shrek" instead of this one, folks. "Atlantis" sinks...I mean, "stinks."
Back Row Grade: F
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