Oups! J'ai raté l'arche...

I got this movie for free on Google so I didn't lose any money. I figured worse comes to worse it's boring and I can delete it and lose nothing. I was pleasantly surprised by how cute it was and it actually had a few jokes that made me laugh. Nothing new or spectacular about the whole "opposites have to work together" premises but it's tried and true so if it ain't broke don't fix it. I don't know what the deal is with people calling it Christian brainwashing or indoctrination, it literally never mentioned God or showed Noah (or any human for that matter) on screen. It's a movie about weird animals that find out how to deal with a crisis and have a happy ending. Nothing religious involved at all besides the setting. You could take Noah and the ark out of the movie entirely and achieve the same outcome. So don't let the rabid anti religious review (you know who you are) and the confusing evolution vs. creationism (you too) thing that cropped scare you away from this movie. Your kids will probably like it, it's face paced and the jokes and slapstick comedy are pretty rapid fire. It's a turn your brain off movie for children, not an art house flick.

This is your standard Noah's ark story as the title may elude to (albeit the title varies depending on which country you find yourself watching the film). The king of the animals, a lion, announces to the other animals that a biblical flood is on it's way to wipe out all the life from the planet. There is a plan to save the animals as an ark has been built to carry them for forty days and forty nights until the flood has gone. The animals each have to meet with the acceptance committee to see if they warrant a place on the ark - it seems only certain animals will be saved and unfortunately for the main characters of this film "Nestrian's" (fluffy neon animals with big snouts that walk on two legs and excrete a cloud of smoke when they are scared) haven't been selected for safety. Rather than face the flood and sure death head on, the Nestrian father and son combination trick their way onto the ark with some Grymps (wolf like solitary creatures, walk on 4 legs and likes to get angry). The child Nestrian and Grymp wander off exploring only to realise that they have left the ark and have been left behind to face the flood. At this point of the film it turns into a journey story, the children try to find a way to avoid the flood water while following the ark and the single parents on the ark try their best to get the ark turned around to rescue the kids. The overall moral is teamwork because alone respectively the two groups, kids and adults, wont be able to succeed by working as a team they should be able to survive.

The story isn't epic by any stretch of the imagination as it's based on a story from the bible we've seen many times before, it mirrors other animated films like "Ice Age" and "Finding Nemo" but all the same its harmless fun. Fortunately the film doesn't try and force religion onto it's audiences it simply takes inspiration from a biblical story and goes off on it's own tangent using the inspiration as platform only. The animation was cute and colourful and while the story wasn't the most original the dialogue was amusing at times and there was a mix of gags that both adult and child could find amusing. The clever thing about the film was that as a cynical adult I knew that random animals with names I'd never heard of wouldn't be saved by the end of the film but there was a great twist which showed what happened to the animals God and Noah didn't save. Ultimately the ending is happy and my cynicism was slightly surprised.

This is a European film which has been released in various countries (as mentioned by the title variances) however there is nothing lost and the unknown actors doing their turn for the voices carry off the film with charm. There are occasional problems with the animation but let's face it, this was made with a lot less budget than your next Pixar film is likely to get and for what was invested this is a good way to spend a quiet weekend day with audiences of different ages. I have no problem awarding this 6 out of 10, not entirely my cup of tea but not an awful waste of time by any stretch of the imagination.

Commencing the movie defense in 3... 2... 1!

I, like probably many others, thought this was a generic animated motion picture "for the entire family". I was so wrong. So very wrong. Not only was it not generic; it was way better than expected. After all, it was so good, I am giving it a 9!

Okay, let's start with the premise. It is very simple. A single mother and a single father are separated from their daughter and son (respectively), and need to get back together. The daughter is a hunter-type animal who works alone, and the son is a timid-type animal with a natural gift for building things, and a love for warm hugs. It is one of THOSE movies, with the moral being "we need to work together!" It is, as I said, simple, and not terribly original.

Now, the reason I give this movie a 9 out of 10. Despite the simple old-as-dirt moral, the way it is HANDLED is great. Morals take a backseat, while the front seat gets firmly occupied by the action, the gags, and the dialogue. It is like the movie team were given complete creative freedom to come up with as many interesting scenes as possible, and they done all of them. The timing of the action is great, the lines are great, the voice acting is great, and not a single "funny" moment felt forced (to me anyway, some people are much more picky). Actually, this movie reminds me a lot of Penguins of Madagascar, in the way it's structured (simple moral, but runs on non-stop gags).

The animation has to be mentioned somewhere, so might as well mention it here. It is really good. The only parts where I thought things looked "imperfect", was every time tree branches were used. This animated movie does not have the best looking branches out there. Wood aside, all the textures and atmospheric effects are perfectly fine. And in my books "perfectly fine" equates to "nothing being wrong". The animation itself deserves a 9 as well.

You are probably asking at this point: "But what about the Ark? What about Noah? How are those elements used?" Well, I did not mark this review as containing spoilers, and I am not delivering any. Let's just say, the way the "Ark" part of the story is handled, is the most creative way I ever it seen it handled in any movie. And I'll leave it at that.

I won't spoil the ending either, but I will tell you that I did not see it coming. That was some truly great cartoon writing, and I was pleasantly surprised. Now, to reassure you somewhat, I wasn't born yesterday, and seen and read hundreds of stories. I have frames of reference, and I have developed that thing called "taste". The ending of this movie was GOOD. Trust me on that.

Last, but not least, the movie's title. It was changed for every country it was released in, if I am not mistaken. And it is funny, albeit in a sad way. It can instill the wrong impression upon the potential audience (aka, you), that the people who made this movie did not have any idea what they did. I assure you, the naming problem in no way reflects the actual content, because the movie is great. After all, if it wasn't, I wouldn't give it a 9 out of 10.

Watch it. Now. Don't be afraid. It's really good.

I got this movie for free on Google so I didn't lose any money. I figured worse comes to worse it's boring and I can delete it and lose nothing. I was pleasantly surprised by how cute it was and it actually had a few jokes that made me laugh. Nothing new or spectacular about the whole "opposites have to work together" premises but it's tried and true so if it ain't broke don't fix it. I don't know what the deal is with people calling it Christian brainwashing or indoctrination, it literally never mentioned God or showed Noah (or any human for that matter) on screen. It's a movie about weird animals that find out how to deal with a crisis and have a happy ending. Nothing religious involved at all besides the setting. You could take Noah and the ark out of the movie entirely and achieve the same outcome. So don't let the rabid anti religious review (you know who you are) and the confusing evolution vs. creationism (you too) thing that cropped scare you away from this movie. Your kids will probably like it, it's face paced and the jokes and slapstick comedy are pretty rapid fire. It's a turn your brain off movie for children, not an art house flick.

This animated film was originally produced in Europe and released in Germany and the Low Countries. There it was titled, in the respective tongues, "Ooops! Noah is Gone." It goes by "Two by Two" in the U. K. and by "All Creatures Big and Small in the U. S. The DVD I purchased has the cover with the title in large letters as "GOD'S Little Creatures." The apparent inability of the producers to come up with one title may be due to the confusion within the film itself.

On the DVD cover, it has a quote from the Dove Foundation that calls it "a charming story of forgiveness." By a real stretch of the imagination, one might come up with forgiveness as a part of a mixed bag of themes. But I doubt any youngsters, for whom this film must clearly have been the target audience, would grasp that. Other promotions and reviews have referred to this film as a comic tale about the animals that didn't make it onto Noah's Ark, an animal adventure, and who knows what all else.

The big problem with this film is it's connection at all with the story of Noah and the ark from the Bible. Any kids in the audience who know anything about that story at all would immediately be confused. Either the writers and producers didn't know the Bible story themselves, or they didn't care if the story made sense. In which case, all kids who know the story would find this confusing to the point of distraction, and dislike for the movie. One doesn't like to think that there might have been another purpose or design of the film - that is, intentional distortion of a Bible story. Then one might wonder and question for what end or purpose.

As an adult, I found the mixture of fable, with the Bible story, and cute animation with fictitious animals to be dumb and dull. But, in some ways it does tell even young children that these are the "dumb" animals. Finny and Leah think Obesey is a slug. Finny and Dave don't even know their real habitat. Nor do Leah and Hazel. Apparently, the film didn't do too well anywhere - with the possible exception of China. I have no idea how much the Chinese box office was in American dollars or British pounds or Euros. But when a movie source such as IMDb only lists the box office take from China and nowhere else, I take that as a sure sign of a flop.

My three stars are solely for the cartoon work of the artists. I watched this to the end just out of curiosity to see if it had a couple of species of animals make it onto the ark that didn't have partners with which to copulate and preserve their species. That's the kind of question that would naturally come to mind for an adult - and even most children above age seven who watch this mixed bag of Biblical story, science, extinction, fantasy creatures, and cartoon adventure. And at the end, it's obvious that Hazel and Leah will be the last of the Grymps.

This definitely is not in the league of "Ice Age" and the number of similar and sequel interesting and entertaining animated films. Best not to waste one's money on this film, even from the dollar bin of dvds.