Le ruban de Moebius

With names like Mark Hamill of Star Wars and Michael Dorn of Star Trek, and the unique images of the French cartoonist, Moebius, I was really looking forward to seeing this animation. But alas, it was my one greatest disappointment during my film hopping at Cannes 2004. Once you can get past the over the top acting, and line deliveries that made ones skin crawl, there was still the pathetic comedy moments that in itself was comical to witness how really really really badly it was executed. For budding animators/film makers, this is one to study as an academic would study Ed Wood films from the 50s. I'll give credit to the sets, which were quite spectacular in some instances - I usually don't notice these sort of things in movies, but seeing how bored I was I guess my eyes wondered to the least displeasing thing, the background. If you hate someone enough, tell them to watch this one. Or, perfect as a drive-in movie with a hot date!

This is a CG film that makes Final Fantasy seem like a brilliant epic by comparison. The direction is sub-par, the story run-of-the-mill, the designs unappealing, and the "animation" (if you could call it "animation") just revolting. Just because things move doesn't mean they're animated. It doesn't appear that anyone involved with this production has any concept of communicating an idea to an audience. But to do that, of course, you'd have to have an idea, which this film has not one.

This film has no audience, nor will it find one. A previous comment comparing it to Ed Wood films is being kind. At least Mr. Wood gave us some laughs, albeit unintentional. This film is just dead on arrival.

In some ways this is a combination between Epic, itself a 3D animation movie about entering a feudal fantasy world that is of a different size than our own, and Star Wars, from where a lot of the ideas were blatantly appropriated. I could criticize a lot of things about the film, but I won't. The bottom line is that I actually enjoyed most of it. What does it harm is actually the animation.

You may have seen other comments of mine where I dismiss the importance of animation style if the artistic vision is good enough. But with such a cliché plot and with a designer such a Moebius, anyone would expect a lot more from this film. As such, it becomes a barely average family movie, an attempt to copy the success of American animation films. You may think "why not? Americans remake everything they see making money in other countries.", but it works for them. Europeans want substance, are used to interesting stories and have no idea what PG-13 means. And you know the story of the copy of the copy of the copy, after all.

Conclusion: for a story about a teen from the future going through a portal to an alien planet to look for his father and falling into a feudal intrigue between two factions of giants, the film was ridiculously mild. I half expected them to burst into song at the end of the film. The 3D animation is caught between interesting world design and really shoddy technical implementation, but it's mostly bad and uninspiring. The result is average at most and truly not a 7, but just a bit more than 6, which for me is a failure.

Not the most memorable thing that I have ever watched but the first twenty minutes had some powerful accidental jokes that powered me through the rest and makes it hard for me to rate it any lower.

I caught this movie at a test screening and was surprised by the awesome animation. "Thru the Moebius Strip" has some of the best animation I have ever seen- even better than Finding Nemo and Final Fantasy. I found the whole movie a really enjoyable experience with some killer action sequences. There are some really cool aliens and battles scenes which has great graphics. As a fan of CGI movies like Toy Story and Finding Nemo, I found Thru the Moebius Strip to be really ambitious and fun and with even better animation. Overall I really loved this movie and can't wait to catch it again when it comes out to all cinemas. 9/10