Die Abenteuer von Pico und Columbus

Do you remember A Troll in Central Park? You know, the film that had very annoying characters, terrible songs, a pathetic plot, and horrible writing? Yeah, but at least it had beautiful animation, solid character designs, cool looking visuals, and even the voice acting was even entertaining.

This........

Oh, boy. Where do I even begin?

It revolves around Christopher Columbus who wants to journey to prove that the world is round all because of a woodworm named Pico, who meets a fairy princess of the moon sprites, but is later captured by the evil swarm lord who wants to use the princess to find the sacred light in the Aztec temple. So, they team up with other animals like three rats and a beaver with an Eeyore-like voice to save the princess and battle against the swarm lord.

You think that the Germans of this horrid film tried to make a story about the Spanish explorer (in this movie he's Italian) traveling around the world, but you're wrong. There were so many things that were totally wrong with this movie.

The animation was awful. It had lazy character designs and inconsistent backgrounds. It kind of looks like Disney, but at most times, it looks like a Saturday morning cartoon.

The voice acting? Ugh! Don't even get me started on the voice acting. I mean, I love Dom Deluise, but he's just wasn't meant to be in this film. They've done a horrible job with their voice performances.

The songs? Oh, god. They were so annoying it makes me want to press the mute button. The only good song is the one by Al Jarreau in the ending credits.

The story was ridiculous. I mean, an evil swarm lord? Princess of the moon sprites? Sacred light? Is it me or did the Germans drank too many beers when they came up with this kind of crap. Well, at least it had done what it set out to do, but that's not worth sitting through this god awful torture.

The Magic Voyage is an awful film. It's horribly animated, poorly acted, and of course, the story is completely ridiculous. If there was some way to get to the Germans, I would say: BEGONE ALL OF THY!

Ahhh, bad animated films. We love these kinds of flicks don't we? We love moaning about the annoying characters that we want to bash their brains out, we laugh at the rushed and cheap animation and we cringe at the crappy songs that won't make any of the Disney songwriters cry in their sleep.

Now with this little beauty here called The Magic Voyage, you have to take it with a magic pinch of salt.

You can either call it a horrible horrible film that has no redeeming qualities and is just annoying to watch, or you can go the extra mile and call it a bad film but still unbelievably funny to watch.

Guess which path I'm taking Sherlocks? Yep, that's right, the second path because I found the Magic Voyage to be a hysterical piece of animated trash from our good ol friends in Germany.

Now I can sort of see what they were going for here, they wanted to give Disney a good run for their money and try to make an animated film. They tried but they more or less failed on all accounts.

The animation here is unbelievably bad, like Paddy The Pelican levels of awfulness. This kind of thing would feel more right at home on 70's Saturday Morning TV with some other "classics" like all those toons focusing on those popular stars.

Oh yes you're also in for a treat, because like it's little brother Felix The Cat, half of the dialogue doesn't even match with the lips. Great fun for all, you could take a shot each time they make this error.

Voice acting is pretty bad, not like Felix though but still bad nonetheless. Look Mr DeLuise, I love you man but you just wasn't right for the role of Christopher Columbus and the less said about that wood character thingy the better.

Are you a person who loves history? Too bad, better look elsewhere because this is also packed with tons of historical accuracy, it goes completely off the walls and makes even Pocahontas look even more accurate by comparison.

Oh yes and this film doesn't know when to take a quick breathe just like Felix, so it's pretty loud half the time. I'm pretty sure, if this film was a real person, it would be dead in under 10 minutes or so.

Magic Voyage was hysterically bad and incredibly funny to watch. It's basically a trainwreck that is so big you can't help but just watch it anyway. A gigantic failure for all involved and pushes animation back 80 million years. (Hold on, did animation even exist back then? Beats me.) Right, I'm off to make my own historically inaccurate animated film. Byyyeeee.

This could be, by far, the worst animated foreign film ever made. Surely it's the worst I've ever seen in a long time.

Why would the Germans try to tell a story about Christopher Columbus? This is insulting to history, insulting to children's intelligence, and, worst of all, insulting to Columbus and his crewmates. This is actually so bad I can't even put it in paragraphs. How bad is this movie? How is it misguided? How is it so insulting to history? Here's a quick checklist:

01. A Talking Bookworm Named Pico (Corey Feldman, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)

02. A Princess Firefly Named Marilyn (Irene Cara, Fame)

03. An Evil "Swarm-Lord"

04. Pico Telling Christopher Columbus (Dom DeLuise, The Secret of NIMH) That the World Is Flat When In Reality Columbus Figured It Out Himself

05. Columbus Going To The King & Queen To Tell Them His/Pico's Idea Of Finding The New World When In Real Life It Was The King & Queen Who Told Columbus To Find the New World

06.Stereotypical Crewmates

07. The Most Corny-as-Hell Dream Sequence Where Columbus Pulls A Spyglass Out of His Penis

08. The Crewmates Trying To Hang Columbus When In Reality It Never Happened

09. Talking Beavers Helping Pico and Marilyn Defeat the Swarm-Lord

10. Columbus Using A Sock-Puppet To Get The Long-Found Gold. Again, It Never Happened.

11. Stereotypical Natives In The New World

12. The Most Sugar-Coated Ending In Which the Natives Honor Columbus, Columbus, Pico and Marilyn All Heading Home Alive and Safe and Columbus Talking About How The World Will Improve Within the Next 2,000 Years. There's Not Even An Epilogue That Tells How Several Of Columbus's Crewmates Were Killed By the Natives.

See how bad this movie is? Not only that, it rips off Jim Henson's "The Dark Crystal" and "Labyrinth", as well as Don Bluth movies like "The Secret of NIMH", "All Dogs Go to Heaven" and "A Troll In Central Park" (and I thought THAT movie was bad.). The only saving graces of this movie are Dom DeLuise and Irene Cara. Other than that, it's loud, rude, and TOTALLY disrespectful to history.

** out of **********

Remember Christopher Columbus's voyage and how he found America? Do you remember Christopher's traveling companion Pico the wood worm? I don't either. Do you remember how Columbus's worst enemy was a swarm of evil bees who held some sort of bug princess captive? Neither do I. In fact, you can't even say this movie has any fact to it. True there was a man named Christopher Columbus, but that's all they got right (and the names of the ships), everything else just makes no sense. Whoever animated this must've been high, and whoever wrote it must've been mentally retarded.

Pico the woodworm (voiced by Corey Feldman) somehow becomes best friends with Christopher Columbus (voiced by Dom Deluise) and they travel off to prove the world isn't flat. Pico meets Marylin the fairy princess of the moon sprite (Whatever the heck that is), and keeps fantasizing about her. Columbus and his crew of 3 or 4 men, 3 rats and 1 woodworm set out and find America in about 2 days time, just like it happened in real life. The climax involves Columbus fighting a swarm of bees and trying to take gold from what looks like an Aztec or Mayan temple.

This movie should have never been made! What was the point of it? It makes no sense whatsoever. Columbus and a woodworm travel to America, okay, I buy that. They try to tell the tale, but also add an animated comic relief for the kiddies, but Pico isn't even a comic relief, he's the main character. Columbus is more like the comic relief and I've seen shots to the head that are funnier than Columbus's non stop ranting. The animation is freaking horrible! Half the time when a character talks their mouth isn't even moving. The swarm of bees that shouldn't have even been in the movie to begin with looked like a big swarm of feces, which is how I can also sum up the film...it's nothing but a big pile of feces. The character designs are also awful, with everyone having a big nose, including Pico who's nose looks like one of those Bugle potato chips. The dialogue seems ad libbed, as does the entire script. I know this movie was originally made in German, but seriously, couldn't they at least try to match the mouths instead of ad libbing bad dialogue the entire movie. Unfortunately, this is also a musical, with some really awful songs and even worse singing. The climax is anti-climactic and only lasts for about 2 minutes, never putting the characters in harms way, though it would've been much more enjoyable to see the whole lot of them killed.

If you couldn't figure it out, I hate this movie. It's the most awful animated film I've ever seen, and I've seen some real stinkers. This might be one of the worst movies ever made. It has no real plot and the animation is horrid. Avoid it at all costs!

My rating: BOMB/****. 80 mins. Rated G.

I saw The Magic Voyage as a big stickler for animation. The Magic Voyage is a terrible movie and somewhat pointless as well. On the other hand to its credit, it does succeed in what it set out to do, to inform and entertain the young audience, so I can't entirely hate on it. Although I realise the movie is really poor after many years of not seeing it, I loved it as a kid, hence what I said about what the film tried to accomplish.

The animation is really quite bad. The colours are okay-ish, but the background art is lifeless and the character designs especially the noses are odd. I liked the songs as a kid, I was shocked at how forgettable the melodies were and how inane the lyrics were as a young adult(19) though, and how little they do in telling the story or moving it forward. The story is unfocused and made up of overlong and disconnected scenes, while the writing is both laughable and bizarre.

The characters are also unmemorable and unengaging. The title character sometimes doesn't even feel like a title character, while Pico is very annoying. I do like the voice cast as in actors in general, but I just found them really bland here, yes even Dom DeLuise. So all in all, terrible but because of what it aimed to do I can't be too overly hard on it. 1/10 Bethany Cox