Zambezia

This is a story of a young and disobedient falcon who left his father and their nest in the isolated desert to challenge the mysterious bird-city Zambezia.

I watched this with two kids, 4 and 9, both liked it a lot and so am I. It's pretty dynamic and funny, colorful (beautiful nature, birds, animals) and has nice and lively soundtrack. Storyline is easy to follow, not too complicated for children and not too boring to fall asleep in the middle for grownups. Characters are OK, although no really memorable ones (don't remember the kids to discuss anyone on the way back from the cinema). As an extra plus I see the absence of hidden context or jokes for adults.

Overall, I think it's underrated and surely worth at least a single watch in the cinema or at home by all of your family.

I was not expecting to like this movie very much but thought I would give it a go. Turns out I throughly enjoyed this movie as it had a great storyline was beautifully colourful and had a good amount of heart.

I'm not sure when people starting basing a movie's likability on it's level of animation/CGI special effects but they are missing out when they pick every little technical flaw apart. I didn't notice any problems with the animation because I was too busy allowing myself to enjoy the movie. Silly me not documenting every flaw of every movie in a notebook.

I definitely recommend this movie if your looking for a fun way to fill your time. But please leave your jaded adult world views and expectations at the door and just enjoy.

(2012) Adventures In Zambezia COMPUTER ANIMATION FAMILY ADVENTURE

Co-written and directed by Wayne Thornley that has an ambitious young falcon Kai as well as other birds seeking for the ultimate bird's paradise called Zambezia, which is really a huge tree house located in the middle of some occurring water falls. And the egg eating lizards are the bad guys with Budzo being the most conniving trying to convince a hoard of marabous to work alongside with him. One of the major problems is that upon viewers first seeing the different varieties of birds, I am unable to tell which bird is what, since I thought the so-called falcons looked liked owls, while the marabous looked like vultures. This is one of those computer animations where one would have to read up on first before watching.

It is easy to spot a good animated kids movie: Kids will sit on the edge of their chairs, and parents will stay awake throughout and be reasonably engaged. This one ticked both boxes.

Leonard Nimoy, Samuel L & Jeff Godblum created believable characters, but the Ezee character came over as a bit of a cliché. The animation was done well and could easily rival a movie like Rio.

This is miles better than the previous animated attempts from South Africa, but unfortunately its very difficult to create an animated blockbuster if you don't have the budget of a Sony, Pixar, Dreamworks or Disney.

Pleasant hour and a bit overall.

8.2 of 10. The second awesome film of 2012 Samuel L. Jackson is in (as a key character voice), and it's very different from Django Unchained, although there's an underlying common bond in working together in each film.

Besides making you want to pet birds, maybe not the vulture-like marabous, the animation doesn't get nearly enough credit. The lizards are bordering on life-like and the waterfall and mist (not to mention sand and other colored dusts) simply has never been better outside of actual filming of waterfalls. Even the bird poo is as gross as in real life.

As for the character voices, I was concerned that Nemoy and Jackson would dominate the audio and distract from the story. Instead, they both give surprisingly understated performances where you need to listen closely to identify them. Even Goldblum deserves credit because I still don't know which character he voiced.

Dear Oscars/Academy, you failed us again. Do any of you actually watch animations/cartoons?