Félix & Cie

Well colour me disappointed. It seems hard to not make a good animated film these days but this film definitely fails to impress on just about every front. The story itself is simplistic and poorly conveyed. I really wanted to like this movie but could not. I wanted to just shut it off and go to bed at about the half-way mark, which I never do. I stuck it out just to be able to voice my honest opinion of it.

Given the calibre of animated film available for over 10 years, any child will have seen far better movies than this so even a child would probably be bored to frustration with this movie. The fact of the matter is simple - the movie is dull and there isn't even sufficient eye-candy via the animation to compensate for that.

On the animation front - the scenery and backgrounds were well modelled and interesting but the character modelling and animation were definitely not up to today's standards.

Overall - I would have a hard time recommending this even for rental. A five year old just might be able to find something redeeming about it but I cannot.

The Missing Lynx is a fantastic film about a group of animals who have to outwit an eccentric millionaire and a vicious hunter he hires to capture them. It was originally released theatrically in Spain in December 2008 and finally released on Region 1 (U.S. and Canada) DVD/Blu-ray in July 2010. This movie has great characters, and a lot of action, humor, and heart. Even though it's produced by a small, independent studio, it's right on par with films from major Hollywood CGI studios like Pixar, Blue Sky, and DreamWorks. Hopefully they'll make a sequel and a TV series. If you buy this movie, you will not regret it!

I tried a few of the animated films and I just wasn't feeling any of them.

They were boring with stiff animation.

As has been said by me many times, am a huge fan of animation. Always have been, always will be, so naturally will see any animated film regardless of age, how high budget or not it is and the studio/director it comes from.

There are far better animated films than 'The Missing Lynx', naming them however would be unfair but many are likely to put forward the best of Disney and Pixar. There are also infinitely worse, at least with 'The Missing Lynx' some effort was put into it which is more than can be said with far more amateurish efforts from Video Brinquedo and Spark Plug Entertainment. It's not a great film but there are far worse ways to waste one's time.

It does have some nice detailed backgrounds and some vibrancy in the colours. It has a peppy soundtrack that gives the film energy. While the characters hardly have depth, the protagonists have likable charm and there are a few amusing side characters.

Children and adults will find things to enjoy in 'The Missing Lynx', more so children because while adults shouldn't find it a struggle the flaws will be more apparent. Children will like the innocent humour and the lively action as well as the protagonists and side characters, while the adults may admire the good intentions of the environmental message, that thankfully isn't as preachy as one would think and that it does try to have an emotional connection.

However, not all the animation is great. Some of the colours are flat but it's the blocky character designs and their stiff movements that fare weakest. The story is too simple and too much of a patchwork of derivative elements except executed in an inferior way.

Some of the writing similarly misfires, especially in its tendency to inexplicably over-explain. There is nothing to be confused by here for younger audiences and they will have no problem keeping up, so the over-explaining really wasn't necessary. While the protagonists and side characters fare decently, the villains are too much like stock caricatures and could have been more threatening. A lot of the voice acting is wooden and some of it is also mismatched.

In summary, 'The Missing Lynx' is alright but nothing special. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Although I'm not sure if this will have any international distribution, I think it's a quite decent production considering the low budget, specially compared with Pixar and Disney releases.

The story is about a bunch of animals from Doñana National Park in Spain, trying to save other animals kidnapped by the bad guys. There is nothing innovative in the story but it works. The only thing that I don't like is that some situations happen too fast for kids to catch them.

There some winks to nature protection and also to scape movies that I liked.

I hope that next time, under Antonio Banderas protection, this team will be able to compete American movies. We'll see...