Visually ambitious, narratively challenged, this Space Age animation, aimed at the Y.A. market (and above), has acquired cult status* following a financially disastrous rollout that halted careers and closed an animation unit. Just another day at the office for animator Don Bluth. (Two decades and counting since his last feature.) Dripping D.N.A. from STAR WARS and A WRINKLE IN TIME, it’s filled with YOWSA action set pieces (some with intriguing combinations of hand-drawn animation and tactile objects), but encumbered with leftover plot, dialogue and characterization, not much helped by its starry vocal cast. A front-loaded NOAH’S ARK tale, it never recovers from a super-charged action prologue destruction of the Earth & Moon. What could top it? Then on to the usual chase scenario for a lost parent who holds the key to regenerating a replacement planet, along with three leading characters awfully similar to Luke, Han & the Princess from . . . what was that film? Oddly, with so many life forms in the mix as support, our leads' tall, trim whiteness, a quarter century after A NEW HOPE, sticks out all the more. Famously, Bluth left Disney when he felt production standards were slipping, but for all his talents, he never had much of gift for story (or story editing, Walt Disney’s greatest talent as filmmaker), short-circuiting even his best projects.
AMBP: *Note the cultists got a 15th Anniversary poster.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Two years on, Disney animators came a’cropper on similar problems in TREASURE PLANET/’02, a Space Aged TREASURE ISLAND, dismal box-office/cult following. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/09/treasure-planet-2002.html
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