Pico et Columbus: Le voyage magique

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 **********

From IMBD Trivia: "During the film's release in German theaters, director Michael Schoemann stated that the reason this film doesn't tell the real story about the discovery of the New World is because he wanted to create a film from a more satirical view in order to differentiate ourselves clearly from the lofty views of history, so we can present Columbus as a lovable, charming, and befuddled scholar, rather than having him portrayed as a greedy explorer as depicted in history books."

Christopher Columbus is a very controversial figure these days and instead of dealing with the controversy the filmmakers of "The Magic Voyage" decided to skirt this controversy by simply making up everything about Columbus. They also decided to include some common myths about Columbus. For example, the film says he traveled west to prove the Earth was round instead of flat...though folks in the 15th century knew the Earth was round. I'm a history teacher...trust me about this! So, from the outset you must understand that the film is NOT a history lesson...and I cannot see why parents would show a movie to their kids which is filled with myths and lies. Despite being nearly complete fiction, is the film entertaining? After all, kids won't care if the story is true...but they will care if it's boring or awful.

The story is, naturally, about Christopher Columbus. But in this version he is given ample help by his new friend, Pico...a worm...or is he a grub...or an alien...or a talking piece of cheese? Well, it's hard to tell, as the 'thing' has two arms and two legs! Whatever it is....it's a most unusual friendship...even by cartoon standards.

The quality of the animation in this film certainly won't be mistaken for Disney. It's not terrible...but it certainly is second-rate...or perhaps third. The songs are okay...and one of them is pretty catchy. As for the script and dialog...it's simply not good and often brings in fairies and other things which seem REALLY out of place. Combined with the historical errors, it's a film I'd be loathe to show to anyone...especially kids. And, considering everything, I don't thinks would mind skipping this one.

This is a movie that is supposedly the story of how Columbus discovered America with his famous voyage across the Atlantic Ocean.

We all know the story of how Columbus discovered that the earth is round, but not many of us are stupid enough to think that a wood worm told Columbus this revolutionary idea. There's even a scene in which Columbus says to a ship crew man, "this isn't an ordinary wood worm, this is the word worm that told me the world was a'round! Did you know the world was round, amigo!"

Not only that, but there's a lot of other historically accurate characters, such as a giant swarm of bugs called "The Swarm Lord" and a fairy named Marilyn from a fairy land called "Moon Twilight".

It shouldn't surprise anyone that this movie was made by German film makers. It's unbelievable how little the makers gave a crap about history. The movie is directed by Michael Schoemann, who more then likely read the introduction on a history book about Columbus, closed the book, rolled it up into a giant cigar and smoked his brains out with marijuana and said "Hey, you know what this story needs? Swarm Lords, a talking wood worm and fairies!!!"

Like many people on IMDb, I saw this movie while I was a child and loved it. By the time Columbus and his crew get on the ocean sailing, the movie goes sugar high insane with Columbus going crazy in his dreams, singing a song and a strange climax after the arrival in America and bugs attacking. There's apparently more to fear then just the edge of the world.

I found the movie to have some pretty hilarious moments in it's idiotic premise, such as the horrible dubbing which most of the time goes along lips that aren't even moving, a few lines from crazy Columbus and an argument concerning the ship running over a fish.

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.

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