Animals United

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 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!

Lazy, badly written, tripe. The plot is so insultingly stupid I wouldn't let children watch it in case it harmed their development. I took my 3 year old son to watch this and even he was bored after 15 minutes (nothing happens in this time)and we ended up leaving 60 minutes into the film, along with several other people that hadn't yet fallen asleep.

There is NO humour in this, completely witless drivel from the start and it amazes me this was ever made. Pointless musical moments, one dimensional 'characters', not even some basic slapstick to keep kids interested. A total waste of time that doesn't deserve to be watched by anyone. The British voice cast should be ashamed of themselves.

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.

A film so bad it has forced me to spend time creating an IMDb account to warn others about it.

Animals United should not require a lengthy review or synopsis to achieve this aim. Despite being a feature clearly made for under 12s, the film has a brutal environmental and political agenda of breathtaking ambition. This is presented with so little nuance or charm that, despite all the perfectly good arguments for ecological action, you somehow despise the animals who star.

The plot is paper thin, chaotic and occasionally plain nonsense. For instance, the plot insists environmental conferences achieve nothing but a conference of animals which tails off into a juvenile eulogy for a fantasy world somehow inspires the action required. Not even my three year old niece fell for that level of reasoning.

Worst of all, I watched the entire film and, despite sharing the immediate area of the cinema with around twelve children of various ages, can honestly say they did not even smile once, let alone laugh. It is devoid of any entertainment value. I think you get the point.

I wonder how the makers of this film can live with the amount of energy being wasted to give it distribution...