Animals United

The phrase "there's an hour and a half that I ain't getting back" springs to mind. I saw this movie with an easily pleased four year old, a hard to please nine year old and a somewhat in middle five year old. All of us in agreement that this was the worst film we had ever seen. Not funny, is the German sense of humour a little different, terrible plot, so preachy and obvious as to be positively obnoxious. Ahh getting annoyed even writing this. Save your money. Not even remotely on par with the normal Pixar/Disney efforts. Cannot believe it is still running in my local cinema, someone somewhere with "a message" must be paying for that, it cannot be commercial!

The recent years have spawned a great number of animated movies, as the animation studios are picking up pace and utilizing better graphics, dynamics and overall improvement. "Animals United" is actually a decent animated movie from 2010.

The story is about the animals of the savanna having no water, as man has build a massive dam at a hotel resort. And animals worldwide are also suffering from the effects of climate change and global warming. The animals band together to change this and make man see the error of his ways.

Initially the storyline is adequate, however, it is weighed down to a level where it becomes intolerable at times, because of the heaviness of the topics of which the story tries to incorporate; climate change and global warming. At times it just becomes too much of a propaganda against the mistakes people have made in the poaching and exploitation of Earth's resources. It really wasn't suitable for an animated movie, and worked against the movie as a whole.

As for the animation and graphics, well I enjoyed that. The images were nice to look at and the characters were well created and had lots of unique characteristics and personalities. Many of the animal characters were likable and nice, which would be a great appeal for the family movie aspect of "Animals United".

The English version of the movie had a good list of voice actors/actresses to its rank, and people did good jobs with bringing the voices out for each individual character.

Despite the upsides to the movie, I am going to give "Animals United" a 5 out of 10 rating only, because of the climatic and economical aspects that the movie tried to incorporate and painfully fleshing out that man is to blame. We already know that man is the culprit behind the sorry state of our Earth as it is today. And those heavy topics didn't have a home in an animated movie in my opinion, hence the mediocre rating, as it brought down the movie's overall enjoyment.

For a family movie, "Animals United" comes off as too heavy and too political. It is something that people from early teens and beyond could relate to and understand. But small kids and children? No, the movie's topic is too heavy for those. Sure, they could enjoy the animation itself and the characters, but not the story.

HOLEY UNDERWEAR! If you thought Captain Planet was preachy, just sit down in front of this crap-fest for a full dose.

From moment one, it's an attempt to blame HUMANS for climate, suggesting that polar bears don't know how to swim, that politicians go to the arctic for photo opportunities, that somehow, riding a motorbike automatically makes you a slothenly character who, even when there are plainly marked trash bins, would rather throw trash everywhere.

I'd like to sit down with the director and say, HEY MORON! WE AREN'T ALL LIKE THAT! Come down off your high horse and clean up YOUR OWN feces first.

Apart from everything everyone else has said, its pretty stupid that the Tasmanian Devil is more recognizable as the old Warner Brothers "Tas" than an actual Tasmanian Devil ( that don't really live close to Ayers Rock either ).

The real ones actually look pretty cute ( but they sound like devils ).

My 15 year old daughter left the room, even though she still likes other kids movies such as Frozen. My 9 year old is tending to criticize it all the way through.

Don't be fooled by the names in the cast, its really disappointing that such talent would put their name to a movie such as this. Avoid Do not pay money for the DVD. Its really lame

Despite trying with some cheap jokes, the overall tone of this movie is rather dark, but what really bothers me is the inconsistency of the story and the overabundance of factual errors and improbabilities, in this movie we have African buffaloes with fur, upper incisors and (in the German dub) a Spanish accent, saltwater fish in a large open-top tank in either Botswana, Namibia or Angola (evaporation apparently being a non-issue for these tanks), animals from all over the globe who arrive in these landlocked regions after leaving a bathtub they used to cross the oceans, a biplane with an ATGM launcher, etc.. The worst of all these factual errors, IMHO, are the vegetarian lion - the rest of the carnivorous protagonists don't seem to eat anything either - and the dam closing in all water (instead of letting through roughly the same amount as before since otherwise it would simply spill over), because these are obvious plot devices to indoctrinate children with the political messages of this movie (meat is bad, mankind is evil).