Thru the Moebius Strip

In some ways this is a combination between Epic, itself a 3D animation movie about entering a feudal fantasy world that is of a different size than our own, and Star Wars, from where a lot of the ideas were blatantly appropriated. I could criticize a lot of things about the film, but I won't. The bottom line is that I actually enjoyed most of it. What does it harm is actually the animation.

You may have seen other comments of mine where I dismiss the importance of animation style if the artistic vision is good enough. But with such a cliché plot and with a designer such a Moebius, anyone would expect a lot more from this film. As such, it becomes a barely average family movie, an attempt to copy the success of American animation films. You may think "why not? Americans remake everything they see making money in other countries.", but it works for them. Europeans want substance, are used to interesting stories and have no idea what PG-13 means. And you know the story of the copy of the copy of the copy, after all.

Conclusion: for a story about a teen from the future going through a portal to an alien planet to look for his father and falling into a feudal intrigue between two factions of giants, the film was ridiculously mild. I half expected them to burst into song at the end of the film. The 3D animation is caught between interesting world design and really shoddy technical implementation, but it's mostly bad and uninspiring. The result is average at most and truly not a 7, but just a bit more than 6, which for me is a failure.

I have been following this one for a while because I knew Michael Dorn is in it and I finally got a chance to catch it during the Hong Kong FilmMart. I have always known that Mark Hamill has done a lot of voices for animation (and his work here is excellent as usual) but after reading the messages here I just have to say this for the record: Michael Dorn's performance in the movie is great! And I don't find the evil king character animated to his voice overacting at all... in fact it's done very well. In general, I like the non-human characters better (same feeling for Shrek2... I find the animation for Fairy Godmother and Prince Charming somewhat odd compared to say Shrek or the Cat). Even if you are not a Trekkie like me there to see (sorry, hear) Mr. Dorn, you will like this one. The story has a timely anti-war theme and the worlds and characters created by Moebius for this movies are just amazing.

Well I guess this is probably not the worst animated movie I have watched or the best but I guess it decent.

Although, the animation isn't good and the art style looks too much like an old psp game. But, I guess that it what they were going for since it was made at that time.

Well, it is a 7/10 in my opinion as it actually had a good story and phanomnical voice acting especially seeing big names like Mark Hamil and Michael Dorn and seeing voice actors I see in my animes and cartoons I watch like Michelle Riff, Dee Bradley Baker, John Demita, John Dimaggo, Richard Epcar, David Writtenberg, Steve Blum and Lex Lang.

So yeah, I like it.

With names like Mark Hamill of Star Wars and Michael Dorn of Star Trek, and the unique images of the French cartoonist, Moebius, I was really looking forward to seeing this animation. But alas, it was my one greatest disappointment during my film hopping at Cannes 2004. Once you can get past the over the top acting, and line deliveries that made ones skin crawl, there was still the pathetic comedy moments that in itself was comical to witness how really really really badly it was executed. For budding animators/film makers, this is one to study as an academic would study Ed Wood films from the 50s. I'll give credit to the sets, which were quite spectacular in some instances - I usually don't notice these sort of things in movies, but seeing how bored I was I guess my eyes wondered to the least displeasing thing, the background. If you hate someone enough, tell them to watch this one. Or, perfect as a drive-in movie with a hot date!

Not the most memorable thing that I have ever watched but the first twenty minutes had some powerful accidental jokes that powered me through the rest and makes it hard for me to rate it any lower.