Rating: Summary: Perfect movie for you and the kids! Review: Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore, John Leguizamo are just a few of the voiceover actors in this movie. It was very well written; the animation was amazing, using a combination of traditional anime cartoon style, and tons of computer graphics which together gave us a great movie that the whole family (including the kids) will enjoy. The voice acting was... bland, monotone, but steady and although it never won any awards for the voice acting, you can sit through it. It's rated PG for the action violence, but I think your kids can handle it. There's worse stuff on network television. If you're with the kids, rent this, it'll be perfect.
Rating: Summary: A Titan of Disappointment! Review: TITAN A.E. was touted as (to paraphrase) "What STAR WARS fans have been clamoring for!" Well, that's not really the case. Granted the visuals and animation (traditional to modern cgi) were excellent, but the movie seems to be slow and meandering at times and the characters are generic and not memorable. Lead Matt Damon (voicing the character of Cale) uses the same monotone voice throughout the movie whether he's having a conversation with someone or when he is in a tense situation). The other actors/voices fare a little better. The plot and story itself is too self-conscious and unintentionally complicated bogged down by jargon and explanation of what's going on. Remember how simple STAR WARS was but echoed tons of sophistication? TITAN A.E. tries too hard, and gets lost in its own (space) vacuum of wanting to be a modern space opra. Overall, a very forgettable accounting write-off for 20th Century Fox who probably thought they had another STAR WARS franchise on their hands (actually they never had the franchise to begin with because they gave it all away to George Lucas when they signed the original contract when the first installment was produced).
Rating: Summary: For the price of a movie rental one gets to keep it. Review: Titan AE bombed in the theaters, or so I heard, but that doesn't mean a movie is bad. It's no Star Trek, but it's not The House of the Dead either. Just because some would say it's not entertaining enough to make one forget the greasy armrests and sticky floors of the local cinema complex. (Granted not all movie houses are dirty and disgusting, but around my area they are...) But I'll say this, I like the film. Sure it's a bit cheesy at times, and the soundtrack doesn't make sense at times (20th Century Rock & Roll is still popular 1000 or so years later?) but quite frankly I fail to understand what is wrong with the acting, as some other reviewers have said. It's a fun movie to watch, with or without a home theater setup. The boy who becomes a jaded teen must save the human race from extinction at the hands of an alien race, yeah, that plot sounds familiar. But there's one catch, Earth has been blown to bits and there doesn't seem to be any habitable worlds for humans to settle on (I blame the Bush administration), but the movie doesn't touch on finding a new world to call home, even when humans and many alien races can live and work in the conditions in various space stations. But this kind of thinking isn't for Titan AE, and if something like that bothers you, then this movie isn't for you. Or maybe it is. It's like $5 new these days. For the price of a movie rental one gets to keep it and not worry about renting a scratched up disc. What do ya have to lose?
Rating: Summary: A Steal From the Budget Bin Review: Although I'm a fan of both "space opera" sci-fi and `toons geared more towards the older crowd, I didn't find "Titan A.E." to be a particularly interesting or original melding of these two elements. On the story side, I found the whole "boy-man-destined-to-save-humanity" angle that the central character plays a bit derivative of, and not played out quite as well as such previous sci-fi messiahs as the `Star Wars' trilogy's Luke Skywalker and `Dune's' Paul Atreides/Muad'Dib. I also would've preferred they put a little more exposition into-- and explained with a bit more detail-- the period between the Earth's destruction and the commencing of the hero's search for the Titan. On the technical end of things: although the folks who put this together made an admirable effort to meld both 3-D computer animation and traditional cel animation together as seamlessly as possible, It rarely ever looked quite right. This lack of cohesion is especially noticeable in one scene where a cel-drawn character is walking down a CGI spiral staircase. Or was he walking UP it? See, the thing looks so odd I couldn't even tell which direction the guy was goin' on the staircase! How's THAT for a case in point, eh? Otherwise, the `toonage was some of the most detailed and painstakingly-rendered I've ever seen in a non-anime feature.But even though I found the story and animation less than stellar, I thought some of the deleted scenes in the bonus features section were moderately interesting. A few parts of these scenes were rough-drawn, giving the viewer a little window into the animation process and what the film's producers worked with before adding the finishing touches to the `toonage. The feature-length commentary track featuring co-directors Don Bluth and Gary Goldman also lets the viewer in on the more technical aspects of producing animated features in general and `Titan A.E.' in particular. Sadly, I found their commentary so dry that I bailed out on them about twenty minutes into the feature. It also didn't help that they spoke in an almost hushed tone half the time, prompting me to turn the volume up just so I could understand them. Also included among the special features were the usual trailers and TV spots for the movie, and a behind-the-scenes special on the making of the feature. My viewing of the BTS special made me come to the realization that I've become rather tired of most of these "making-of" featurettes that they throw onto most "special-edition" DVDs nowadays. About halfway through the show I realized I really didn't give two doots about how the animation was done, or the voice actors talking about the complexities of their characters. Immediately after making this realization, I bailed on the special and decided to go do something a little more productive-- like writing this review about the DVD. And people say I'm a slacker... `Late
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