User reviews

I admit the animation was wonderful. The initial use of alien creatures was right on the mark -- special -- creative -- enticing... the voices were amazing throughout, but then there's the pesky need for a good story.

As an author of 11 scripts I noticed the scripted flaws immediately and continuously. The introduction narrative was completely unnecessary and should have been incorporated (if at all) into the movie as it unfolded.

The logic and progression of plot points were very flawed: so much so that I was annoyed that the film turned away from its initial strength 'originality' and fell on the sword of blandness. The reason so many people keep saying this film in plagiarism is simply because it follows such common event sequences you can't help but compare it to many other movies: Camelot (guards attacking the helpful hero), Star Wars (comic relief was the mirror image of a famous Gungan), Cinderella/Sleeping Beauty (hero finds a lost item, evil dragon lady,) and even the Lion King (when you see it you'll understand), etc.

The script was quite frankly pathetic in parts, but also (to be fair) had some moments of honesty. Those moments were presented but then lost when the script failed to follow-up on the logic thread.

So much of the movie is filled with clichés, and the comic relief was really annoying -- not funny -- that I was totally outside the movie and making remarks to myself (OMG, please not that, YGTBKM) instead of flowing along with the action. By the way, I was the only person in the theater. When I asked the ticket person if the movie was worth the price he said, "Opening day sold only 2 tickets." What this story has in beautiful animation and initial originality (the first few minutes) was completely lost to illogic. The amazing creatures were pushed to the background for the most part and the main characters were developed by narrative not action. We were usually told, not shown (or allowed) to feel with the characters. There was no character growth as such, just a jarring thump from one sequence to another as if the characters were puppets on a string.

How sad that what could have been a great adventure turned into trivialities. I would just like to say the burning bush had such possibilities.

I am a huge animation fan, and always have been, and most likely will always be. I always watch any movie to pass my own judgement, and although the trailer was not good at all, that didn't stop me from seeing Delgo online. And overall, while it is not the worst animated film ever or the worst movie ever, I was left unimpressed.

I thought Delgo did have a good concept, to me it sounded as though it was going to be epic and sweeping. Also the backgrounds are quite nice, with beautiful colours.

However, I was not impressed with the character designs which were not only forced and ugly but also bad video-game level. The music is also rather generic with few memorable themes. The dialogue is roundly poor, with the comedy particularly wretched, while the story is predictable, badly paced and very disjointed with some moments of inspiration but other moments of sheer clumsiness and the characters are clichéd, barely likable and I found myself indifferent to every single one of them.

The voice acting on the whole is rather bland, yes even the wonderful Anne Bancroft. Freddie Pinze Jnr especially sounds bored, and Chris Kattan like his character is very obnoxious. So all in all, rather unimpressive and disappointing. 3/10 Bethany Cox

It's sad. There was so much hope in me that the little guy could stare down the Hollywood gods (in this case Pixar and DreamWorks) and come out a winner. I new going in that this film had problems; no advertising, no studio release backing, many production trials, a relatively expensive cast of voice actors for a venture of this type. Still I had hope.

What I was left with was, oh how glad I am that few will see this film and remember that it was Anne Bancroft's last work. Orson Wells didn't fare as well with his, but his last wasn't as bad. This film had a brief glimmer at the beginning then quickly sank into an abyss of unoriginality, cliché, confusion, too much narration rather than exposition, and too many irritations. The movie felt like a little pebble that gets into your shoe and just irritates the crap out of you until you take off your shoe and dump it out. I haven't had this bad of a time at a movie since "Blindness" and in fairness, "Blindness" was more of a masochistic experience to watch than this.

It all started for me Monday when I was off work, bored and had nothing better to do, so I figured I'd give this underdog a shot. The worst I thought could happen would be that I'd be bored and watching a movie instead of just bored and staring at the walls at home. That's your options when all your friends are at work and you can't bare the drivel of daytime TV.

Anyway, I was worse than bored and watching a movie, but I kept in there, hoping for the little guy to give me something to grab a hold of. Unfortunately it never came. I hoped that this movie could have been something triumphant in the face of adversity. Something that overcame the great odds against it and at least made back the money invested in it. I was looking for some unlikely cinematic surprise like "Facing the Giants" or its kin "Fireproof," but to no avail. Ultimately, I lost an hour and a half and $6.50.

I LOVE movies. I LOVE computer animation. I LOVE sci-fi / fantasy. That is why I hated this film. It gives them all a bad name. Hate is a strong word I suppose. More like overwhelmed to suicidal levels with disappointment. The sarcastic term "REALLY?" popped in my mind constantly as scenes artificially set up to predictably (and very poorly) spoof classic moments from various hit movies. At no time did I connect with the characters. When they went to war I just didn't care. In fact, the only thing I found myself hoping for is that someone would kill (slowly and painfully) Delgo's mentally retarded and epileptic sidekick. That would have gotten cheers from the entire audience (which comprised of just me.) As a hobby I have been making a movie for years. writing and editing a script, creating music, and I'll soon start the CGI work on my home PC. I was really worried that my hobby movie would be worthless because the graphics and animation won't be Pixar quality but DELGO has proved to me that graphics don't make a film. The music was also dismal. My first impression of the art was positive. It looked original and unique but soon decided that nothing was particularly attractive to look at and many of the creatures had extra eyes or appendages just because... like a Jr. High school kid on crack spent too many hours in the SPORE creature creator. Overall the biggest downfall was just direction and delivery. Imagine going to see a stand up comedy show where two comedians had to deliver the same material and one is hilarious while the other is awkward, flat and has no sense of dramatic effect and timing. Delgo is the latter. If anyone from Fathom studios reads this and says, "Hey Mr. Negative Insult Guy, think you could do better?" The answer is YES. I really do. and I would jump at the chance to try.

As a scriptwriter and producer of, and all-round lover of all types of animation, no matter where in the world it is from, I rushed to see this movie as soon as possible. The trailer looked okay and the art seemed original. So how disappointed was I when it turned out to be this bad. I spent an hour with the deepening niggle that I had seen this all before and in the end realised that, of course, I had. The character and set designs are taken from old (admittedly high quality) adventure games a la 1985, the animation movement is just a little out in many scenes, the script is an awful cobbled hash of better films, and even the voices don't really fit. It may be her last film, but sadly Anne Bancroft simply sounds old and tired. So what was Delgo about? The bad guy secretly pushing peaceful neighbours to go to war, the boy and girl from each side of the divide, the awful, bad leader/general, the overwhelming odds... yadda yadda yadda. You've seen it all before, and the fact that it is from a "new independent" studio makes no difference to its quality, which is cynically derivative, rushed to the screen and generally inferior. Do yourself a favour and play the old adventure games instead. They still have an air of naive originality.

I'll begin head-on with the frequent question: "why have I never heard of this movie?" Because of extraordinarily bad luck and timing. First, it got caught in a corporate reshuffle so it had a wide opening (planned before the reshuffle) but with no marketing publicity. Because of the wide opening it wasn't thought necessary to show it on the festival circuit or at conventions or in a limited release to specialty theaters, and when there was no advertising either the wide opening bombed. The second blow was its story didn't mesh with the zeitgeist, so it never garnered enough interest to build post-release buzz. It's best classified as an "action fairy tale", but when it came out, the fashion in animations was a more psychological and unusual story line (for example Ratatouille or Wall-E), and the "action" space was fully occupied by live action flicks (for example Star Trek). Then the third blow hit with Delgo being overshadowed by Avatar (which presented so many similarities that a lawsuit ensued).

The previous movies it brought to my mind are "Gandahar", "Battle for Terra", and "MirrorMask". The fully imagined, completely separate, alternate world with plants that look like animals and vice versa, the notably pacifistic society, the use of animals rather than machines for air transportation and for war, the psychic remote control of material objects, the conflation of mystical and political power, and the contrast of different technologies are all reminiscent of Rene Laloux's quarter century old "Gandahar" (unfortunately not readily available in North America). The very detailed alternate environment (especially the sky-whales), looming environmental collapse, and flying people are reminiscent of "Battle for Terra". And the incredibly detailed, imaginative, and overblown animations are reminiscent of "MirrorMask". (Delgo doesn't though use MirrorMask's green-screen technique to combine live actors with animation.) Similar to MirrorMask, Delgo does plenty of things right and has lots of flashes of brilliance, but in the end doesn't sufficiently "come together". It will be of interest to specialty audiences, and it will be a favorite of isolated groups of people, but it will probably never have as much mass market appeal as it hoped for. A couple things are common to the animation in all of "Delgo", "Gandahar", "Battle for Terra", and "MirrorMask": most of the animation was done with publicly available tools, and budget was the primary constraint on the animation.

As is common with most animated features, there's a lot of comic relief. Although it's pretty broad (very loud belches, eating flowers, holding the wrong door shut, a dog like creature piddling on the rug, fractured vocabulary that shames Mrs. Malaprop, and so forth) it mostly fits pretty well. The comic relief centering on the character Filo though is so over the top some will find it irritating.

As one would expect from a "fairy tale", morals are fairly obvious. There are a couple skewers directed at the Bush administration ("we must go to war to prevent a war" and "it's much easier to start a war than to stop one"), but they're sufficiently subtle many viewers won't even notice them. The "can't we all just get along" moral though is more pervasive (after all it's the central motif of the whole movie).

The animation is incredibly detailed and imaginative. Techniques like scores of light sources in a scene, moving "cameras", lots and lots of pieces moving simultaneously, clouds of dust, and shimmering foggy auras that produce their own light, are used often. The animators solve particular problems in resourceful and imaginative ways (for example a spider web modeled as a piece of cloth, or a belt that seems to ripple freely yet whose far end can be controlled). This is the first time I've seen a caustic light pattern reflected from an unseen pool of water throw its moving wavy patterns over another object. Yet the overall impression of the animation is "klunky". Why? I think because all the characters are clearly recognizable humanoids, even to the extent that characters are overlaid with the facial features of the corresponding voice actor. Even though the 3D representations are very good (one running scene is so realistic the common reaction is it couldn't have possibly been done just with regular animation tools), they're not good enough to satisfy us viewers who see humanoid forms all the time and so have extremely high standards for them. This isn't an "uncanny valley" problem; the characters aren't quite that realistic. One wishes Delgo had either gone even further (motion capture?) or had backed away a bit to more animalistic and less realistic forms (more like Spig, Spog, and the dog like creature, all of which are very successful).

In summary-- the story: closely adheres to the "action fairy tale" categorization, formulaic; but every so often will entrance someone - the animation: uneven, insufficiently restrained, and sometimes seemingly primitive when it really isn't; but worthy of close scrutiny by aficionados.

This movie was an enjoyable archetypal hero story that used a wholly creative new style of animation that I have not seen before creating a very strong feel to the film. The visuals were absolutely vivid. Fast paced, sometimes to its own detriment, this movie does a great job of keeping the story moving but often short changes some details that could lead to stronger character development. However if this movie in fact is a part of a trilogy as has been proposed, then this is a strong start setting the stage for more complex character development and even greater involvement in this fantasy world that clearly had a lot of thought and depth to it. I liked it. The characters each grew and evolved throughout the film. Even if only slightly, the changes were noticeable. The all-star cast lends charisma and charm to the characters. I felt immersed in their alien world. I felt that the characters were both real and grounded. They didn't consist of airy nothingness like the characters in so many created worlds. It was an interesting story based on political mistrust, fear, diversity, misunderstanding, and love. It was a movie that we can relate to and that can inspire. Go see it. More than anything this movie suffered from a total lack of an advertising campaign. With no advertisement it is no surprise that this movie had such a poor start.

I don't know where "tbqfh" (very brave use of your real name there guy) got his information from, but as one of the creators of the original plot I can tell you that the idea for this movie, though hardly unique, was not stolen from anyone. I know a lot (and I mean A LOT) of time, effort, and money went into this production, and while I think the fruits of the labor it bore are rather weak I do applaud the team of artists and production staff who have finally brought their work to the big screen. The amount of time this production took is forgivable considering the small production staff, which was less than a quarter of what goes into a larger studio's work force. Congratulations to everyone involved-glad it's over.

The movie had a very good animation, but the character design look really awful, and it fell to uncanny valley but at least they have effort like the old character have texture, and the two of voice actor die, and probably everybody knew . In my opinion, the movie could have been better if the story was more creative with some micro level of explanation and the character development was more focus and done right and to avoid the uncanny visual just make use of new computer of the late 2000s or turn it to 2d instead

Wow. It's like Lord of the Rings never happened at the start of the decade.

Even the opening credits sequence with those bloated flying things just made me cringe.

It appears to have been written and animated by middle-schoolers, and yes they were probably high too. They had to bring in all that big-name talent to do the voices, or the handful of people who did go see this film wouldn't have even gone.

However, I do credit the animators with at least making a handful of nice images in the film. But really, a film like this should be beautiful to look at from start to finish, not just a few brief instants.

There are not-so-subtly racist overtones, and the use of the slur "pansies" renders it even unfit for viewing by children, although infants are probably the only age group likely to be able to enjoy it.

Watching this, I feel insulted as a viewer. It's geared towards infants, as far as I can tell. Of course, so was Toy Story, but the difference is that Toy Story is a masterpiece, and this is ... not.

And the thing was about 30 minutes too long.

If I had been associated with this project, I would have wanted it to disappear quickly and be permanently "lost". I would not be alleging that a more competent team "stole" it. But, these days, it seems the courts are the refuge of the incompetent, when it comes to content creation. Avatar is such a superior work that obviously required far more effort, that there is just no way that the Delgo team could ever hope to claim to have contributed to it. Rather, it seems more likely to me as a viewer that Delgo was ripped off from Avatar, and rushed out the door to beat it to market. An inside job.

I have never seen an animated film this bad.

The narration is like nails on a chalkboard.

The direction is like a 3 year old throwing darts at random ideas and actually missing the entire board often! The characters are sooooooo cliché that the word cliché doesn't keep up.

The plot is very simple and yet totally confusing at the same time- something that is very difficult to do.

I watched with my 5 year old son thinking it would go over his head and he could just enjoy the animation- WRONG! He told me 'Dad I want to like the movie, and its a cartoon and everything but my brain is telling me I don't like this movie even a little bit. Can we just turn it off? I did. The night improved as soon as I hit the off switch.

I'm all for following your dreams. I'm all for thinking outside the box. And I'm all for trying something new that really speaks to you. But there comes a time that you need to take a step back and wonder what went on during the making of a movie.

Delgo is now known for being one of the biggest flops out there. But when it was being announced this was supposed to represent a movie made outside of the Hollywood system. It was a labor of love by the producer who always wanted to make a movie. The problem is in trying to make a movie they didn't try to make a good movie. At it's heart it's a love story, kinda like Romeo and Juliet. That is if Romeo and Juliet were poorly animated abominations.

The animation in this honestly looks like something you'd find in some 90's TV show with a decent budget. It's not fluid, it's rather choppy and the walk cycles that these creatures have doesn't look good. So already that's a big strike against it. But a lot of that could be forgiven if the story and the actors are good.

Like other animated failures they dove deep into the B-list of Hollywood to get the wrong actors to portray these characters. Sure maybe at one point the actors were considered on the cusp of the A-list and had a couple of movies under their belt but there's simply no excuse for casting Chris Kattan as anything. His character of Filo is beyond annoying, but then I guess you could say that's what he built his career on so mission accomplished?

Then there's the story itself. It's just boring. I know what a lot of people are saying that it's a kids movie. And that's all well and good but too often I find this is the excuse given for bad movies. It's like you expect a kids movie to be bad but why should we subject our kids to mindless entertainment? Is it asking too much to give them something of substance which the adults can also enjoy?

And of course the elephant in the room when people say it rips off Avatar. Sure there are similarities here and there but a similarity doesn't mean one was ripped from the other. After all Avatar was conceived of back in the 90's. To say that James Cameron saw this and said, "that's what I want in my movie" is just being silly.

In the end this is a forgettable movie and a bit of a wake up call to future filmmakers. Before trying to shoot for the moon, try aiming a little lower first. It won't hurt as much if you fail and fall to the ground.

There once was some writers and animators. None of them knew the basics of writing or art or animation. Then their project that was ten years in the making went downhill. The end.

I recall very, very well when this film was released, and its immediate, astonishing failure. I remember just as well all the talk surrounding it, and to read more about the production in hindsight is very revealing. 'Delgo' was incredibly ambitious: an enormous cast of many big-name stars, an ensemble so great that the very list of credits threatened to distract from the content; a more serious, adult-oriented story, developed over a period when its intended medium was still finding its legs; a medium that still now, and even more so in 2008, was seen as belonging squarely in the realm of family-friendly fare - and all this, outside the major studio system of Hollywood that as of yet still held overwhelming sway in the industry. The filmmakers, writers and directors alike, had very lofty goals, matched only by the passion and sincerity with which they pursued the project. With all this in mind: even recognizing the staggeringly poor reception and reputation, how can one not be curious, and want to check out the feature for themselves? The skill and care of all involved is plain as day, and I admire the effort. I can honestly say, too, that I actually do like this. However, I also see why, even setting aside problems of marketing, the title was a memorable misfire.

The animation sits somewhere between the level of 'Toy Story' or 'Shrek,' on par with the best of what digital artists could generally whip up in the 2000s, and still earlier attempts at computer animation - the sort we may have seen in the mid-90s with forward-thinking kids' TV shows. The designs of the world of the movie, and all within it, are mostly fantastic: the wardrobe, weapons and armor, creatures, landscapes and dwellings, and so on. I'm a little bit divided on the appearance of the Lokni and Nohrin, simply on account of the "uncanny valley" effect, but even these two predominant races I appreciate more than not. Some environments and materials are very noticeably rendered with more detail or texture than others, but so it goes. One way or another, no matter how cynical one wishes to be, the animators did good work, certainly including action sequences. In much the same way, I think 'Delgo' is very well made from the standpoint of any technical considerations, or conventional "behind the scenes" work: direction, cinematography, editing, sound design, and so on. I like the sound effects, and the fundamental quality of the audiovisual presentation is swell. Geoff Zanelli's score is pretty fun.

Beyond the bedazzlement that follows from observing the actors assembled for the voice cast, I think each makes fine contributions, with some standing out more than others. Chris Kattan's shrill timbre and wild exclamations as spirited supporting character Filo are surely some of the top highlights of the film; much the same is true of Eric Idle as henchman Spig, though he's less prominent. For the time that she has, Anne Bancroft clearly was living up the opportunity to voice wicked villain Sedessa. All this is well and good - there's much to enjoy in 'Delgo.'

Where the feature is an especially mixed bag is in the writing. Some dialogue is too simple, communicating ideas in the language of a younger audience, while at large it could have just benefited from more development, and maybe another set of eyes (or ears) or two for perspective. Characters are okay I suppose, though nothing remarkable, and no few simply inhabit archetypal roles for an epic saga. The scene writing is perhaps one of the more definitively solid aspects here, filled with variety: lighthearted humor, adventure of lighter or darker tones, action, outright war, and more pointedly dramatic facets, all within a tale of grandiose fantasy. In turn, scenes successfully inculcate feelings of awe, majesty, excitement, and even inspire some small laughter. And that brings us to the narrative. It's not that there's anything specifically wrong with the story. It's compelling, if familiar, and a firm foundation for genre fare. Moreover, it plays with lots of Big Ideas as themes and beats that have served many a similar saga well. War, prejudice (and overcoming it), thirst for blood and power, corruption, ambition, finding courage, manipulation, distrust, histories of disagreement and conflict, making peace with the past and resolving long-standing enmities: all this, and more. It's a lot to weave into a very concise length of film, in addition to character moments, comedy, major action, and sufficient establishment of the realities of a fictional world no one has ever seen before. I think the filmmakers mostly do just fine in bringing it all together. Only - it feels, in this case, as though everything 'Delgo' tries to say, do, and be fits together inelegantly, squeezed into a ninety-minute runtime so as to become overfull. The treatment each notion should get is thereby reduced, subsequently diminishing the impact that it all could ideally have - and, ultimately, viewer engagement. As if to emphasize the point, the ending feels unexpectedly abrupt, and not at all satisfying as a result.

It's very noteworthy that those who wrote and directed this have not apparently made anything else since. I can't help but be sad at that - they poured so much heart and energy into this title, and heartfelt earnestness, and what they got in return was, well, a HUGE loss. What strikes me is that in addition to not very successfully advertising to its audience, the movie wasn't altogether clear on who it wanted its audience to be. It's a kids' movie more than not, but it even with humor peppered throughout it couldn't be called a comedy in the same way that 'Finding Nemo' or most any other animated picture. Its Big Ideas aren't so adult-oriented as to exclude younger viewers, but even with somewhat gawky dialogue I'm unsure if the material is simple enough to hold appeal or interest for children. Add in the difficulties of the storytelling in truly giving form to everything that it desired, and it's not particularly any wonder why 'Delgo' was released to deafening silence. To repeat: I do actually kind of like this. I don't think it's bad; above all, it's nowhere near as bad as its infamy portends. The hard work that went into it is clear, and appreciable. It's just so very unfortunate that the whole couldn't quite find its voice in any capacity, as for such lack all that labor was for nothing. I wish nothing but the best for Marc Adler, Jason Maurer, Scott Biear, Patrick Cowan, Carl Dream, Jennifer Jones, and everyone else who had a hand in the feature's creation. I hope they all have found success and happiness elsewhere. It's regrettable that the the chips fell in such a way that they couldn't find it with 'Delgo.'

I watched the trailer for this; it certainly doesn't look *that* bad, and might even be good. But I'm a big animation fan and have never heard of it at all. How can a film make money if no one's ever heard of it? Maybe this film isn't all it could be--I couldn't say--but it certainly could have been helped by *some* kind of ad campaign. (I can't believe I'm saying that.) You don't want your first customers to hear about you from a story designating your film "a bomb."

Perhaps one of the creators or commenters has some information on why this film was released with so little advanced warning? Was it advance-screened for any critics at all? What's the scoop on the stealth-release?

the references are the basic support for transform Delgo in an acceptable animation. the fight between good and bad, the bitter memories from past, the characters who seems be from The Dark Crystal. all ordinaries ingredients are present. all the glamour from fairy tales, love story, the good king against cruel relative, different people with so common links, the revenge, the ordinary guy who becomes hero, the goodness in all the nuances and the drops of humor. and that does the film acceptable, predictable and almost boring. because the same story, with better adaptations, is not exactly a virtue. but, like many simple animations , the references, the nice scenes, maybe Filo more than Delgo are reasonable solutions for entertain. but a film saved only by memories of the public about another films with the same subject is far to be the most inspired option.

We went and saw this opening weekend for the last show of the evening. We were the only ones in the theater. This disappointed me, since Delgo was really a fun film to watch. There were no surprises and there were a few moments that had me rolling my eyes. But over all we had a great time. My two year kept getting the alien races confused with real animals as they made the same sounds (ribbits and moos). This film was well animated, well voiced, and well scripted. I would have enjoyed this movie without having a child with me. Go see this film. It deserves to at least earn back the cost of making this film. Delgo was very promising. I'd like to see more from this production company.