Spark: A Space Tail

This animated film tells the story of a young monkey who lives in a secret fragment of a destroyed planet. He is trained by the two people who raised him, to combat the evil master of the universe. One day, he discovers the chance of prove himself and destroy the evil master of the universe.

"Spark: A Space Tail" is an adventure for young children, so I am not expecting much. What I'm impressed by is that they managed to get many big names to voice the characters. What I have not been so impressed by is the story, but then I'm not the target demographic that the film is aimed at. The animation is OK, but the characters are not as cute as I wished to see.

Being a huge lifelong animation buff, and always judging animated films as family films and as a young mature adult but a child at heart, 'Spark' could have been much more. Especially when considering the high calibre of vocal talent and that the concept was a decent one.

'Spark' is not an irredeemably awful animated film, there are a few things that make it a could-be-much-worse watch. One also cannot accuse 'Spark' of not trying, it's very low budget stuff but it isn't completely lazy. If anything actually 'Spark' tries too hard, and after watching personally was left feeling disappointed more than satisfied. Considering that people like Patrick Stewart and Susan Sarandon were involved one would naturally expect it to be better than it turned out to be.

The best thing about it is Stewart. The accent isn't great, sounding more Russian than Scottish, but of the voice cast Stewart is easily the liveliest of the bunch and the one who fits the most, the character fitting him like a glove. He does boast the odd amusing moment and conveys some dignity and gravitas. Jessica Biel also fares reasonably well, her voice is also a good fit and she brings a toughness and sassiness. There is the odd amusing moment, all with Stewart's Captain.

However, odd amusing moment is nowhere near enough. There are a lot of jokes and moments meant to be funny, but one knows there's something wrong when they're left stone-faced for most of them and few hit the mark. The space roaches were clearly meant to be comic relief scene stealers but ended up being completely pointless and annoying. 'Spark' injects a lot of references (the most recognisable being 'Star Wars') and Asian and Western genre ingredients that strives to be clever but ended up blatantly obvious and cheaply placed and random, not serving much of a purpose either.

There is a big problem with target audience and who it's aiming at. It tries to cater to both children and adults and sadly fails at both. Children will find that the jokes will go over their heads with them mainly being too young to understand them, they are likely also to have trouble following the story too (as a young adult who has seen her fair share of very layered films that do a lot and succeed that was one of 'Spark's' biggest issues). Adults on the other hand will find the opposite problem, they will get the jokes and the references but find them juvenile and dumbed down and dislike how they're placed.

Voice talent-wise, only Stewart and Biel come off successfully. The cast do their best but it was a case of too many of them not fitting their characters. Jace Norman (who is an older teenager himself but struggles to capture the attitude and mannerisms of a teenage character not that much younger) and Hilary Swank (voicing a character in need of dignity which Swank doesn't capture) are too bland and lightweight for their roles. On the other hand, Alan C. Peterson overdoes it and comes over as more hammy and over-the-top than menacing (some may argue that was the intent, but Zhong was never really a threat and was too exaggerated for a villain which didn't feel right within the film). Susan Sarandon, with her character's name guaranteed to induce groans, just sounded wrong, and everybody else has characters that lack personality or irritate which shows in their delivery.

When it comes to the animation, there is certainly far worse looking animation. It certainly isn't as cheap as the animation in the output of Video Brinquedo, Spark Plug Entertainment, the later 'Swan Princess' sequels or the ones for 'Alpha and Omega', or when it comes to traditional animation, the completely unnecessary sequels to animated masterpieces (like the one for 'The Secret of NIMH'), all of which showed a lack of effort. There's far better too, this is not intending to sound unfair but it does lack the finesse and polish of the best of Disney, Pixar and DreamWorks. A few decent colours here and there but a lot of it is blocky, flat and static with a distinct lack of imagination.

In terms of music, there is nothing memorable here and stylistically it doesn't gel. The characters, that are basically stock archetypes, are not engaging in personality and ones we don't get to know or care about with little growth to them. The story is very fragmented and a case of a lot of noise and throwing in as much as possible and no charm, spark or heart. The pace never fires on all cylinders (children and adults alike may find themselves looking at their watches), instead being very routine, and coherence is not a strong suit either, aside from the very heavy borrowing of better films (notably 'The Lion King') the story is unfathomable.

Dialogue is substandard and like the writers didn't bother to proof read what they wrote before having the script approved, some of the sentences don't even make sense and there is no substance to any of it.

Altogether, not a complete waste of time but tries too hard and suffers from feeling very bland, rushed-looking, muddled, routine, over-stuffed and with things (like a lot of the voices, music and particularly the references and genre tropes) not fitting. 3/10 Bethany Cox

This review of Spark: A Space Tail is spoiler free

** (2/5)

IF CURIOUS GEORGE and Space Chimps left you feeling frustrated at their fun ideas yet dodgy final execution, which was perhaps left unfinished. Then writer-director Aaron Woodley's Spark: A Space Tail will leave you furious, an uncharismatic CG animation with a lot of ideas but left with a dodgy final execution.

Opening with Spark (Jace Norman) a high-spirited teenage chimpanzee who believes he can save his lost planet Bana - which was sucked up by a space kraken. He and his two best friends - a chubby Walrus Chunk (Rob deLeeuw), perhaps as a remake on the titular chubby Goonies character and a tough-hearted skinny fox named Vix (Jessica Biel). Together they go on a quest to save their homeland from evil overlord Zhong (A.C. Peterson). Plot-wise it's WALL-E and Star Wars, Spark lives on a distant planetary shard used as a junk yard, among his friends he has a green cockroach and a clunky old robot - Bananny (Susan Sarandon) for company. Quickly changing formula to another sci-fi epic namely Spark wielding a double-sided light sword perhaps as a reference to Darth Maul, yet a far less memorable one.

The ideas pile on from other references to sci-fi to pop culture, a lot goes on at any given moment but even the most fluid moments fail to finish or at least spark inspiration. At its best the animation is mediocrely primitive looking like it came out in 2005 - given that it shines the brightest light other ideas are left in the shadows. The third act shines the brightest, here the ideas come to a halt and it looks the most original, shining in the full glory of creativity. Here Spark learns of his true heritage, he learns that he is more than he thinks he is - armed with this knowledge he turns out to be a stronger leader.

Along with the piling ideas coming to an end there are a couple of gags namely Patrick Stewart's The Captain pulls the most laughs - hilariously getting struck by lighting and losing all memory of he is "Outstanding" he says when he learns pinnacle information about his body. He shines the brightest light; he proves to be the most charming and brings smiles to this bland animation. Spark: A Space Tail is a bland, uncharismatic and unmemorable animated comedy which has the space for creativity but lacks the spark of inspiration that it desperately needs to liftoff.

VERDICT: A mishmash of space romp combined with half-ish references, unfunny one-liners and an unremittingly charmless all-star cast which fails to achieve liftoff.

I really like the characters and creature design in the this movie, but the story was a mess and a lot of really stupid jokes. The main character Spark is like any teenager hero they create out there, but he is not unlikable. His biggest flaw is that they don't give him enough flaws, they try to make him this always right guy and it had been much better seeing him fail. As I said, the story is a mess and it really overshadows the characters. Had love to see them again actually, but with the box office it got it's unlikely.

Rating chart Voice acting 4 Animation 5 Characters 3 Moral 3 World/setting 2 Humor 3 Story 2 Acting 4 Songs/soundtrack 5 Overall: 31/100