La Vie sauvage

Saw a preview screening last night, and it was really fun. First, the movie is visually gorgeous. The texture (hair especially!) work alone is enough to recommend the film to animation enthusiasts. To all the comparisons with Madagascar I will add that The Wild is much funnier. And judging by the 10-year-olds sitting with me, kids will love it. As the movie was made by C.O.R.E. in Toronto, was directed by a Canadian, and stars a lot of Canadians -- there are a few Canadian jokes (and sports) in the movie that international viewers might miss. It also has a fun self-referential attitude in the humor that's enjoyable without becoming gimmicky. To build on the previous poster, it is not Citizen Kane -- but has much funnier animals. It's a movie that does what it sets out to do -- entertain you. And it does that very well.

For some reason, the various Hollywood studios occasionally display almost telepathic communication. Simultaneously, seemingly independently, they release two films which are very similar. We saw it with Dante's Peak and Volcano in 1997 (Two films in which a volcano erupts in a populated area of America), Deep Impact and Armageddon in 1998 (Two films where a giant meteor is going to destroy all life on Earth) and this year saw two studios revisiting the "capsizing cruise liner" genre with the Poseidon remake and the made-for-TV The Poseidon Adventure. Why do they do this? Surely it cannot be a coincidence. And films take years to produce, so it's not like one company can see an advert for a film and rush out their own version. Maybe it's because Hollywood is not a very secretive place. Ideas and scripts are touted round all the studios before they are bought, so it's not surprising that sometimes a company will set off down similar paths.

So, after last year's Madagascar was a reasonable hit for Dreamworks, arch-rivals Disney have "independently" come up with this, The Wild. A coincidence? Let's review the evidence.

Madagascar features a group of animals who are residents of a New York zoo. And so does The Wild.

In Madagascar, the group's leader is a lion, and it also includes a giraffe. And it's the same in The Wild.

In Madagascar, the group break out of the zoo to set off on a cargo ship for a remote jungle location. And it's the same in The Wild.

In Madagascar, the Lion comes to terms with the contrast between his pampered existence in captivity and life in the wild. And it's the same in The Wild.

And even the humorous sidekicks are similar. In Madagascar, the group are aided by a team of military penguins, who operate with hilarious efficiency and speak in short, sharp sentences. In The Wild, they're chameleons.

So if you have seen Madagascar, you've basically already seen the Wild, right? Not exactly. Because if you ignore those suspicious connections, The Wild is actually a different kind of film, with clear signs of its heritage. Madagascar is more about the comedy, while The Wild follows the classic Disney themes of family values and adventure against adversity. If Masdagascar is Shrek, The Wild is Finding Nemo.

Except that is too much of a compliment. The Wild is still a second-rate animated movie, clearly from the Disney half of the Disney-Pixar partnership. Kiefer Sutherland plays Samson the lion straight down the line. His motivation is just to save his son from volcanic fiery death, so he saves the jokes and pratfalls for his entourage, most notably the scene-stealing koala played by Eddie Izzard. In fact, Sutherland might as well be reprising his role from 24, where he was invariably trying to save his annoying daughter. Only this time he's a lion, of course.

The film dallies too much with tired old psychobabble father-son nonsense, much in the same way that spoiled Chicken Little earlier this year. The quality of the animation is another step forward in the ability of artists to render animals, and it takes a more natural approach to Madagascar that is really very impressive indeed.

But Madagascar stole the march, leaving The Wild look a little bit preachy and rather old-school.

At first, this appears to be a rip-off of "Madagascar," with New York City zoo animals leaving the comforts of "home" for the wilds of Africa. However, it is a totally different story and feel to it, more serious and sentimental than "Madagascar." Personally, I like "serious and sentimental" but not in animated movie, at least not to the degree it was in here. I preferred the other "NYC zoo" film to this one because "The Wild" lost almost all of its great humor in the last 20-30 minutes.

The first 50 minutes of this film was spectacular. I was thinking, "Wow, another great animated film. How many is that in the past year or so?" The jokes were excellent, the characters mostly funny and the animation superb. The dark, rich colors in here are magnificent. This is a beautiful movie! The minor characters are the best in here: the snake, koala bear and squirrel. Eddie Izzard, Richard Kind and Jim Belushi, in particular, are great in their voices of these characters. The two crocodiles that the wandering zoo animals meet in the sewers are hilarious. They produced the biggest laughs, at least with me. The major characters: the lion (Keifer Sutherland), his cub (Greg Cipes) and the giraffe (Janeane Garafolo) were all a little too much on the serious side.

Speaking of serious: the last third of this film totally switched gears. I wonder how this went over with very young kids and their parents? It got too serious, frightening in spots (for little ones) and then the usual corny Disney ending. It's too bad: this could have been super if they had just continued doing what was working the first 50 minutes.

Similar to Madagascar but not the same this is the story of a zoo lion and his friends who race off to save the lion's son who has been shipped back to the wild. The movie is the race to find the son before he gets to the wild and what happens once they get there.

I have to start by saying the voice cast is top notch here. Everyone does an excellent job. However I must single out Jim Belushi and Eddie Izzard as turning in classic animated performances. Belushi plays a street smart squirrel who is in love with a giraffe and he is a ball of fun. Its clear why he is the best friend of Keifer Sutherland's lion. He is a joy to behold.

Even better is Eddie Izzard as Nigel, a koala who is totally crazed. Izzard is in constant motion and is constantly chattering about everyone and everything and he effectively turns a movie about a lion and his cub into a movie about a deluded koala with a tenuous grasp on reality. Izzard's Nigel will probably go down in history as one of the great cartoon characters of all time.

This is a movie with fantastic animation. It all looks great. The director and some of his crew are from the effects team that made Terminator 2 and other big budget special effects movie look so great.

The problem with this movie is that it was made by guys who until this film made their living making soulless special effects for soulless action films. The net effect is a soulless film. There is no pacing, there is little sense of danger. Worse the characters inhabit a world that isn't real. In this world, especially in the New York scenes, no one exists except the characters. They drive all through the city and encounter no one. There are no other cars on the street. To be frank there is no sign of life anywhere. Its terrible. It kills the film. Its sad but as alive the actors are their animated characters, while looking good, come across as dead constructs.

Still the movie is worth seeing. Eddie Izzard, with an assist by Jim Belushi make it worth seeing. Clearly abandoned by Disney in theaters, you should make a run by this on home video or cable, where its less than the sum of its parts construction will be less annoying.

2006 is the year of the animal animation. Earlier in the year, we had the local stinker Zodiac Race, and over the next few months, there are offerings like Over the Hedge, Barnyard, Happy Feet (no doubt inspired by March of the Penguins) and Open Season. It's an animal world out there in the world of animation.

I'm not too sure why this was made. Sure, the graphics were photo-realistic and crisp, and it had the usual elements of modern day animated flicks. But I guess it's time for filmmakers in this genre to realize that the substance of the story is of paramount importance too. Then again, it's meant strictly for kids.

However, even a 3-year old kid who attended the same screening as me, sensed a deja-vu, and didn't take too long to realize that it's so "Madagascar" (2005's offering from Dreamworks). The premise, if you strip it all down, is also about a group of animals from New York Zoo who made their way (so the motivations might differ slightly) to Africa, where they meet nasty native animals, and engage in plenty of mindless song and dance.

The Wild also adapted a few more plot elements from its own library like The Lion King, and incorporated the father-son seeking acceptance relationship from last year's died-in-its- own-hype Chicken Little, and borrowed the "I am God, worship me" plot from Ice Age 2. What gives folks? I'm aware of some rumours that the filmmakers between the Wild and Madagascar split, and those who jumped shipped to Dreamworks managed to get their product out in the market first. Still, having two movies battling each other, doesn't work well for the one released later.

The first half of the movie was bogged down by its melodrama in the fore-mentioned dad- son plot, while the second half dealt out more madcap humour. It's build up to the finale with the bulls wanting to top the food chain, sounded familiar too. There are funny characters abound, but they all lacked somewhat, especially the snake and the giraffe. The joke on the Koala, while fun initially, was repetitive and you'll really want to kick and rip any Koala soft toy out there by the time you're true.

The voice talents did a commendable job with the flimsy story, with the likes of Kiefer Sutherland, James Belushi, Janeane Garofalo, and even William Shatner grunting like animals. But the lineup is quite forgettable, especially with rival Dreamworks' offering in the horizon (also about animals!) Over The Hedge (Hey, got William Shatner too!)

As mentioned, the graphics were great though, but the storyline just stinks. I like the way the Lions were done, could have been a showcase of what The Lion King could have looked like if it was conceived some 10 years later. But you probably want to walk out of the theatre as soon as the animals start dancing to the music in the finale.

Bad rip-off!