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.

This is the first time in about three or so months that I found myself this disappointed and angry with an animated film. I'm 19, and I adore animation and have done since I was about 2. But Animals United is a serious contender for the worst animated film I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot of animated films, good and bad.

As bad as Titanic:The Animated Movie, Spiders Web:A Pig's Tale, Doogal and Secret of NIMH 2 are, and that word is being kind to them(the first one especially is an insult to the intelligence), Animals United for me surpasses them on levels of how painful and dull it is.

I have so many beefs with Animals United, but I have to say what angered me most was the voice cast. On paper, this is an amazing voice cast. James Corden? Jim Broadbent? Stephen Fry? However, this film wastes their talents completely, at the end of the day Corden is the only one who tries. Everybody else are either annoying(Dawn French, not helped that her character is annoying too) or are dreadfully uninterested(Broadbent in a very rare occurrence).

But a number of things do not help when it comes to the waste of these talented actors. The worst offender was the script, which was really deplorable. The writing in Animals United aims to be funny and poignant. Maybe its main target audience(essentially a family movie but in all honesty watching this I can only see under 12s getting any, if any, value from this film) will find it so, but I for one found it unfunny(the humour was just embarrassing!), saccharine and heavy-handed.

And there is also the lip-synching. I have seen some sloppy lip-synching in my time not just in animated films but in opera films/productions and films in general(though unlike here this in any of those only happened once or twice), but to say the lip-synching is sloppy here is being kind. It was all over the place, I don't remember a single time when it was in sync with the voices or lip-movements. Then again I may have been distracted by how bad the writing and characterisation was.

Animals United is devoid of a single likable or sympathetic character. I couldn't connect to a single character throughout here, and I imagine it was the same with the vocal cast as well. All the characters in Animals United are either annoying or underdeveloped, and that is including the titular character.

The lack of a good story doesn't help either. This is a story that is thin-too thin and uninteresting for an over-90-minute film- and predictable complete with themes that are presented in a superficial, chaotic and preachy manner. Pace-wise as well, excepting scenes such as the ending-and various transitions between plot points that are given less than 5 minutes to develop-that felt rushed, the film is a drag. And there are parts, particularly in the latter section, that feel as though they belong in another movie when it comes to talking about tone, also don't get me started on some of the truly dumb parts of Animals United. For example seeing a polar bear in the Savannah made me lose more than a couple of brain cells. Just for the record, I understand the message the film was trying to convey but the way it was put across was not done at all well.

I was hoping that some good animation might elevate things to a slightly better level. Sadly, even the animation wasn't done well...at all. The colours seem rather flat, the backgrounds are blocky, but the real abomination animation-wise was the character designs. I have seen some animated films and shows where "ugly" character designs are deliberate, but I doubt that was really the case here. Regardless of that, in my opinions they were just hideous, often over-sized and jerky and the mouth movements and lip-synching did little to help either.

I would also say the same for the soundtrack. As an aspiring singer and keen musician, I always look for a good soundtrack. Animals United is not an example of a good soundtrack, in fact it is the exact opposite of a good soundtrack. Not only are some of the musical numbers pointless, but almost every single one of them are misplaced. I didn't think much either of the melodies, which were forgettable, or the lyrics, which often took me out of the mood of the scene.

Overall, a dreadful animated film and one to be avoided. 0/10 Bethany Cox

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!