When Dougal tries to steal a cartload of sweets, he accidentally crashes into the roundabout, releasing the evil ZeBadDee and scattering three diamonds across the land. Free after thousands of years, ZeBadDee plans to not only free the area but capture the diamonds and use them to freeze the sun. With Florence and her friends trapped in the frozen roundabout, Dougal, Brian, Ermintrude and Dylan set out to uncover the diamonds first and return things to normal.
First of all let me get rid of the "what have they done to the original" argument because, in my mind, this film bares so little in common with the original 5 minute TV show that it is unfair to really make this complaint. The characters may be the same in name and in visual presence but the film is totally different to the original series in terms of plot structure, intelligence, humour, animation and tone. So to me it is like a whole new film without any baggage and I tried to view it as such. As a colourful computer animated children's film it just about works and it did please the children that were in the audience who were mostly younger than seven. The plot is nothing more than a series of colourful adventures but they are noisy enough and funny enough to please this target audience even if it is hardly that good.
Adults who do manage to get over the fact that this is trampling on their memories will find little to keep them amused. The adult jokes are spread pretty thin and really aren't that clever drug references are lazy, poorly delivered and just smack of a script trying to push the easy buttons worse is that they are not funny. The film references include The Matrix Revolutions, Lord Of The Rings, Pulp Fiction and a few others but they are only amusing, not funny. A few lines here and there did make me laugh but they were the exception not the norm. The animation was of course going to be different from the original but I had hoped it would avoid the soulless sort of stuff that is kicked out for the Saturday morning schedules and in fairness it does look quite good but I would have preferred a bit more personality behind those computer-generated eyes than I could see. The voice talent is mixed and is sadly better in the smaller roles than in the main ones.
Robbie Williams is so different from the character of Dougal that I expected that I was sorely disappointed. He is just a cheeky chappy voice and he had no emotional range at all. Minogue is the same but luckily is in a very small role. Nighy is OK but I couldn't be sure if he sounded lazy because he had chose to be or if it was just because he wasn't putting much effort into it. Broadbent is better and suits Brian the snail and Lumley is pretty good as Ermintrude. Minor roles are must better (maybe for that very reason); Ray Winstone is expressive as Sam, Baker is great fun (and has plenty of good lines) as ZeBadDee, Lee Evans is funnier than he has been for a few years and McKellen was always going to be good with his voice.
Overall this is an OK film for kids under seven because it is noisy, a bit creepy, funny and colourful. However the jokes for adults mostly fall flat and I only laughed a couple of times. Those looking to compare it with the original series should just avoid it totally because there is no connection other than the name and vague appearance of the characters; as a version of the original it is a terrible travesty, but what did you expect? As a film in itself it is still not that good but will do for young children.
