Delgo

I'll begin head-on with the frequent question: "why have I never heard of this movie?" Because of extraordinarily bad luck and timing. First, it got caught in a corporate reshuffle so it had a wide opening (planned before the reshuffle) but with no marketing publicity. Because of the wide opening it wasn't thought necessary to show it on the festival circuit or at conventions or in a limited release to specialty theaters, and when there was no advertising either the wide opening bombed. The second blow was its story didn't mesh with the zeitgeist, so it never garnered enough interest to build post-release buzz. It's best classified as an "action fairy tale", but when it came out, the fashion in animations was a more psychological and unusual story line (for example Ratatouille or Wall-E), and the "action" space was fully occupied by live action flicks (for example Star Trek). Then the third blow hit with Delgo being overshadowed by Avatar (which presented so many similarities that a lawsuit ensued).

The previous movies it brought to my mind are "Gandahar", "Battle for Terra", and "MirrorMask". The fully imagined, completely separate, alternate world with plants that look like animals and vice versa, the notably pacifistic society, the use of animals rather than machines for air transportation and for war, the psychic remote control of material objects, the conflation of mystical and political power, and the contrast of different technologies are all reminiscent of Rene Laloux's quarter century old "Gandahar" (unfortunately not readily available in North America). The very detailed alternate environment (especially the sky-whales), looming environmental collapse, and flying people are reminiscent of "Battle for Terra". And the incredibly detailed, imaginative, and overblown animations are reminiscent of "MirrorMask". (Delgo doesn't though use MirrorMask's green-screen technique to combine live actors with animation.) Similar to MirrorMask, Delgo does plenty of things right and has lots of flashes of brilliance, but in the end doesn't sufficiently "come together". It will be of interest to specialty audiences, and it will be a favorite of isolated groups of people, but it will probably never have as much mass market appeal as it hoped for. A couple things are common to the animation in all of "Delgo", "Gandahar", "Battle for Terra", and "MirrorMask": most of the animation was done with publicly available tools, and budget was the primary constraint on the animation.

As is common with most animated features, there's a lot of comic relief. Although it's pretty broad (very loud belches, eating flowers, holding the wrong door shut, a dog like creature piddling on the rug, fractured vocabulary that shames Mrs. Malaprop, and so forth) it mostly fits pretty well. The comic relief centering on the character Filo though is so over the top some will find it irritating.

As one would expect from a "fairy tale", morals are fairly obvious. There are a couple skewers directed at the Bush administration ("we must go to war to prevent a war" and "it's much easier to start a war than to stop one"), but they're sufficiently subtle many viewers won't even notice them. The "can't we all just get along" moral though is more pervasive (after all it's the central motif of the whole movie).

The animation is incredibly detailed and imaginative. Techniques like scores of light sources in a scene, moving "cameras", lots and lots of pieces moving simultaneously, clouds of dust, and shimmering foggy auras that produce their own light, are used often. The animators solve particular problems in resourceful and imaginative ways (for example a spider web modeled as a piece of cloth, or a belt that seems to ripple freely yet whose far end can be controlled). This is the first time I've seen a caustic light pattern reflected from an unseen pool of water throw its moving wavy patterns over another object. Yet the overall impression of the animation is "klunky". Why? I think because all the characters are clearly recognizable humanoids, even to the extent that characters are overlaid with the facial features of the corresponding voice actor. Even though the 3D representations are very good (one running scene is so realistic the common reaction is it couldn't have possibly been done just with regular animation tools), they're not good enough to satisfy us viewers who see humanoid forms all the time and so have extremely high standards for them. This isn't an "uncanny valley" problem; the characters aren't quite that realistic. One wishes Delgo had either gone even further (motion capture?) or had backed away a bit to more animalistic and less realistic forms (more like Spig, Spog, and the dog like creature, all of which are very successful).

In summary-- the story: closely adheres to the "action fairy tale" categorization, formulaic; but every so often will entrance someone - the animation: uneven, insufficiently restrained, and sometimes seemingly primitive when it really isn't; but worthy of close scrutiny by aficionados.

It's sad. There was so much hope in me that the little guy could stare down the Hollywood gods (in this case Pixar and DreamWorks) and come out a winner. I new going in that this film had problems; no advertising, no studio release backing, many production trials, a relatively expensive cast of voice actors for a venture of this type. Still I had hope.

What I was left with was, oh how glad I am that few will see this film and remember that it was Anne Bancroft's last work. Orson Wells didn't fare as well with his, but his last wasn't as bad. This film had a brief glimmer at the beginning then quickly sank into an abyss of unoriginality, cliché, confusion, too much narration rather than exposition, and too many irritations. The movie felt like a little pebble that gets into your shoe and just irritates the crap out of you until you take off your shoe and dump it out. I haven't had this bad of a time at a movie since "Blindness" and in fairness, "Blindness" was more of a masochistic experience to watch than this.

It all started for me Monday when I was off work, bored and had nothing better to do, so I figured I'd give this underdog a shot. The worst I thought could happen would be that I'd be bored and watching a movie instead of just bored and staring at the walls at home. That's your options when all your friends are at work and you can't bare the drivel of daytime TV.

Anyway, I was worse than bored and watching a movie, but I kept in there, hoping for the little guy to give me something to grab a hold of. Unfortunately it never came. I hoped that this movie could have been something triumphant in the face of adversity. Something that overcame the great odds against it and at least made back the money invested in it. I was looking for some unlikely cinematic surprise like "Facing the Giants" or its kin "Fireproof," but to no avail. Ultimately, I lost an hour and a half and $6.50.

As a scriptwriter and producer of, and all-round lover of all types of animation, no matter where in the world it is from, I rushed to see this movie as soon as possible. The trailer looked okay and the art seemed original. So how disappointed was I when it turned out to be this bad. I spent an hour with the deepening niggle that I had seen this all before and in the end realised that, of course, I had. The character and set designs are taken from old (admittedly high quality) adventure games a la 1985, the animation movement is just a little out in many scenes, the script is an awful cobbled hash of better films, and even the voices don't really fit. It may be her last film, but sadly Anne Bancroft simply sounds old and tired. So what was Delgo about? The bad guy secretly pushing peaceful neighbours to go to war, the boy and girl from each side of the divide, the awful, bad leader/general, the overwhelming odds... yadda yadda yadda. You've seen it all before, and the fact that it is from a "new independent" studio makes no difference to its quality, which is cynically derivative, rushed to the screen and generally inferior. Do yourself a favour and play the old adventure games instead. They still have an air of naive originality.

Wow. It's like Lord of the Rings never happened at the start of the decade.

Even the opening credits sequence with those bloated flying things just made me cringe.

It appears to have been written and animated by middle-schoolers, and yes they were probably high too. They had to bring in all that big-name talent to do the voices, or the handful of people who did go see this film wouldn't have even gone.

However, I do credit the animators with at least making a handful of nice images in the film. But really, a film like this should be beautiful to look at from start to finish, not just a few brief instants.

There are not-so-subtly racist overtones, and the use of the slur "pansies" renders it even unfit for viewing by children, although infants are probably the only age group likely to be able to enjoy it.

Watching this, I feel insulted as a viewer. It's geared towards infants, as far as I can tell. Of course, so was Toy Story, but the difference is that Toy Story is a masterpiece, and this is ... not.

And the thing was about 30 minutes too long.

If I had been associated with this project, I would have wanted it to disappear quickly and be permanently "lost". I would not be alleging that a more competent team "stole" it. But, these days, it seems the courts are the refuge of the incompetent, when it comes to content creation. Avatar is such a superior work that obviously required far more effort, that there is just no way that the Delgo team could ever hope to claim to have contributed to it. Rather, it seems more likely to me as a viewer that Delgo was ripped off from Avatar, and rushed out the door to beat it to market. An inside job.

I LOVE movies. I LOVE computer animation. I LOVE sci-fi / fantasy. That is why I hated this film. It gives them all a bad name. Hate is a strong word I suppose. More like overwhelmed to suicidal levels with disappointment. The sarcastic term "REALLY?" popped in my mind constantly as scenes artificially set up to predictably (and very poorly) spoof classic moments from various hit movies. At no time did I connect with the characters. When they went to war I just didn't care. In fact, the only thing I found myself hoping for is that someone would kill (slowly and painfully) Delgo's mentally retarded and epileptic sidekick. That would have gotten cheers from the entire audience (which comprised of just me.) As a hobby I have been making a movie for years. writing and editing a script, creating music, and I'll soon start the CGI work on my home PC. I was really worried that my hobby movie would be worthless because the graphics and animation won't be Pixar quality but DELGO has proved to me that graphics don't make a film. The music was also dismal. My first impression of the art was positive. It looked original and unique but soon decided that nothing was particularly attractive to look at and many of the creatures had extra eyes or appendages just because... like a Jr. High school kid on crack spent too many hours in the SPORE creature creator. Overall the biggest downfall was just direction and delivery. Imagine going to see a stand up comedy show where two comedians had to deliver the same material and one is hilarious while the other is awkward, flat and has no sense of dramatic effect and timing. Delgo is the latter. If anyone from Fathom studios reads this and says, "Hey Mr. Negative Insult Guy, think you could do better?" The answer is YES. I really do. and I would jump at the chance to try.