I felt safe watching this while I had better things to do after all I’d heard about it (again, Mark Kermode proving the most informative, even going so far as to contact a farming authority regarding udders on bulls, rofl), and in this respect I most certainly wasn’t disappointed. First of all, before we even touch the story and the script and the voice casting and stuff like that … it’s just a stupid idea and the animation is absolute crap. The current sponsor ad for ITV’s “Emmerdale” by Airwick looks prettier. Movies like this only serve to prove that some of the oldtime naysayers on the CG format were absolutely right … sure there’s a lot of good, but it’s also made a lot of people realise it’s a hell of a lazy way to make some moolah. Seriously – given a room full of Mac Pros I could probably produce this myself, voices and all. Seriously.

I wanted to give this my special WTF rating ‘cos I said what those letters stand for plenty of times through the duration. But, annoyingly, it does at times tap into kinda primal stuff and it manages to ever so slightly move even though it remains annoying. And the chicks are cute (don’t read that wrong – I really mean chicks … barnyard, remember?), and hey, I’m gonna tire of Wanda Sykes long after she’s unemployable, lol – though this movie definitely makes me regret that fact.

BTW, noticed this as I was checking out the IMDb stuff on the movie, I think the most telling thing about this movie is that John Debney’s score is nowhere near as good as his score for “The Ant Bully”. I can totally understand it – there’s just nothing to work with. If your heart’s not in it, it’s just not in it.

I feel truly sorry for the kids who see this and actually think it is the most fantastic thing they’ve ever seen (and I know there will be some). Do the future a favour and rent/see/buy anything else. It leaps into Lion King territory at the eleventh hour complete with African-influenced song, dead people dancing in the stars, and such, and it’s kinda the last straw (UGH! no effing pun intended). Just, for god’s sake, don’t pay money direct to see this. Either go pirate or TIVO it and skip through the ads. I’ve yet to see a worse movie than Timothy Hines’ War of the Worlds but this comes frighteningly close so soon since that debacle. I won’t even mention the point at which Paramount shamelessly plugs Charlotte’s Web, I’m guessing they decided if they couldn’t entertain they might as well advertise.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 29th, 2006 at 4:49 am in 1 heart, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.