Konferenz der Tiere

First of all, children up to 11 years, especially girls, will love this movie.

It is very child-oriented, which means it is a bit infantile, especially in delivering its message. The message is, and here comes Al Gore in, who will love this movie also, that we humans are bad bad bad when it goes to matters of nature, animals, earth.

Parents will probably get bored sometimes, because the message is delivered with some long lasting sermons, which we hear all over the time, but in this case from the oldest and wisest animals on earth. And children learn that what their parents do for their living, is mostly bad and causes nature to suffer. But to be honest, that's true. Nature is raped by man, and we don't care. After there seems no other way in Germany to raise the funds for a Pixar-like animated movie, we have to live with it. Not too bad for us to be confronted with a bitter truth once more, although it's not brought to us very subtle.

Animation is good and doesn't stay behind current productions. 3d effects are also impressive and obviously not post-production.

The characters are nice and funny and believable, mostly cliché of course, the plot is executed adventurous enough to keep everybody in line, even if we know, how the movie will end.

What the movie lacks is independence, its a mixture of everything from Madagascar through Ice Age and Horton, a perfect example of target group oriented product placement. 'No experiments' was the prime directive during production, it's obviously. Personally, I thought they took that too serious.

But nevertheless we go into a theater to watch a movie that makes our kids happy. If this is what our children makes happy, so what shells ? I don't open my wallet (so wide) to have a censorious conversation afterward, but to ask 'How did you like it ?' and get the answer 'I loved it so much'. And I got it.

Despite trying with some cheap jokes, the overall tone of this movie is rather dark, but what really bothers me is the inconsistency of the story and the overabundance of factual errors and improbabilities, in this movie we have African buffaloes with fur, upper incisors and (in the German dub) a Spanish accent, saltwater fish in a large open-top tank in either Botswana, Namibia or Angola (evaporation apparently being a non-issue for these tanks), animals from all over the globe who arrive in these landlocked regions after leaving a bathtub they used to cross the oceans, a biplane with an ATGM launcher, etc.. The worst of all these factual errors, IMHO, are the vegetarian lion - the rest of the carnivorous protagonists don't seem to eat anything either - and the dam closing in all water (instead of letting through roughly the same amount as before since otherwise it would simply spill over), because these are obvious plot devices to indoctrinate children with the political messages of this movie (meat is bad, mankind is evil).

The recent years have spawned a great number of animated movies, as the animation studios are picking up pace and utilizing better graphics, dynamics and overall improvement. "Animals United" is actually a decent animated movie from 2010.

The story is about the animals of the savanna having no water, as man has build a massive dam at a hotel resort. And animals worldwide are also suffering from the effects of climate change and global warming. The animals band together to change this and make man see the error of his ways.

Initially the storyline is adequate, however, it is weighed down to a level where it becomes intolerable at times, because of the heaviness of the topics of which the story tries to incorporate; climate change and global warming. At times it just becomes too much of a propaganda against the mistakes people have made in the poaching and exploitation of Earth's resources. It really wasn't suitable for an animated movie, and worked against the movie as a whole.

As for the animation and graphics, well I enjoyed that. The images were nice to look at and the characters were well created and had lots of unique characteristics and personalities. Many of the animal characters were likable and nice, which would be a great appeal for the family movie aspect of "Animals United".

The English version of the movie had a good list of voice actors/actresses to its rank, and people did good jobs with bringing the voices out for each individual character.

Despite the upsides to the movie, I am going to give "Animals United" a 5 out of 10 rating only, because of the climatic and economical aspects that the movie tried to incorporate and painfully fleshing out that man is to blame. We already know that man is the culprit behind the sorry state of our Earth as it is today. And those heavy topics didn't have a home in an animated movie in my opinion, hence the mediocre rating, as it brought down the movie's overall enjoyment.

For a family movie, "Animals United" comes off as too heavy and too political. It is something that people from early teens and beyond could relate to and understand. But small kids and children? No, the movie's topic is too heavy for those. Sure, they could enjoy the animation itself and the characters, but not the story.

The phrase "there's an hour and a half that I ain't getting back" springs to mind. I saw this movie with an easily pleased four year old, a hard to please nine year old and a somewhat in middle five year old. All of us in agreement that this was the worst film we had ever seen. Not funny, is the German sense of humour a little different, terrible plot, so preachy and obvious as to be positively obnoxious. Ahh getting annoyed even writing this. Save your money. Not even remotely on par with the normal Pixar/Disney efforts. Cannot believe it is still running in my local cinema, someone somewhere with "a message" must be paying for that, it cannot be commercial!

Lazy, badly written, tripe. The plot is so insultingly stupid I wouldn't let children watch it in case it harmed their development. I took my 3 year old son to watch this and even he was bored after 15 minutes (nothing happens in this time)and we ended up leaving 60 minutes into the film, along with several other people that hadn't yet fallen asleep.

There is NO humour in this, completely witless drivel from the start and it amazes me this was ever made. Pointless musical moments, one dimensional 'characters', not even some basic slapstick to keep kids interested. A total waste of time that doesn't deserve to be watched by anyone. The British voice cast should be ashamed of themselves.