Spark: A Space Tail

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

This is a kid's movie, we adults want it to make sense to us! Of course from the astrophysics point of view this movie doesn't do a good job, but then Star Wars wouldn't make sense either. Kids enjoy watching this movie and if they are glued to the screen with their mouths half open, then they are enjoying it. Spark: A Space Tail has humor and action.

Adults, stop giving this movie a low point only because it doesn't entertain you.

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

It's hard to believe that so many people made this film and yet nobody asked the question "Why cares about this story?".

I don't like having to work too hard trying to figure out the plot or what motivates the characters into action, but after ten minutes I was still asking myself "what's the point of this movie?".

For me the animation was fine. Had the story been a good one then I wouldn't care about how realistic the characters are portrayed - it's a kid's animation so I don't expect it to look lifelike.

But I did wonder about the language. I don't think my 4, 7 and 9 year old kids know what "flailing" means, together with a script and story that seemed a little beyond their reach. Having said that, they all sat and watched the film, happily eating their popcorn and apples and said they enjoyed it. So what do parents know?

The movie follows the story of a teenage monkey named Spark, whose planet is partially destroyed when an evil monkey named Zhong summons the space kraken. 13 years later, Spark seeks to fight back and free his world and the universe from the evil rule of Zhong.

The story is cliché, but has the potential to be engaging for children and adults alike. We have an inexperienced young protagonist learning about himself and overcoming the odds. We have a slightly comedic antagonist. We have a voice talent of Patrick Stewart, who has already shown what he can do in a kids animated movie with such gems as Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. Unfortunately, even the voice talent of Patrick could not save this mess

For a start, the movie can't decide what it wants to be. Many of the jokes are likely to go over the heads of children. And most adults who get the jokes will not think they are funny. It tries to appeal to adults and kids, and ends up failing to appeal to either. When children in the theater are more interested in scooting down the stairs in the aisle, you know something is wrong.

We also never get to see the characters grow or develop. At the end of the movie, I couldn't care less about Spark or his journey. His companions are forgettable. The problem is that the story is shallow and lets the movie down. We can't sympathise with the hero because we don't get to share any emotions with him. Spark really has little to overcome and doesn't grow much as a character. The space roaches are comedic foils, similar to Scrat from Ice Age. Scrat's trials with his acorn provide a short interlude that breaks up the main plot into smaller pieces. Moreover, we end up feeling for him as we share his failures and his successes. That is probably why he is such an engaging character and has developed a fan base all his own. The space roaches do not share the same success. They are underdeveloped and irritating, instead distracting from the main story with pointless sight gags and mimicry jokes.

Finally, expect to see a lot of references to better movies. Star Wars in particular is sprinkled throughout, but also expect a little Lion King imagery just for fun. Unfortunately, here the movie fails again. The Star Wars references are cringe-worthy because they are so blatant, completely out of character, and unexplained. And as for the Lion King reference, when Mufasa appeared to Simba, I felt Simba's fear that he wouldn't match up to his father, and his growing resolve that he had to fight Scar for the sake of the Pridelands. When Spark's father appeared to him, I only thought 'Where is his mouth and what am I looking at?' Beyond that, I just didn't care.

In summary, this movie is left trying to find an audience. The stories and characters were underdeveloped, and the jokes fail to appeal to any age group.