Animaux & Cie

A film so bad it has forced me to spend time creating an IMDb account to warn others about it.

Animals United should not require a lengthy review or synopsis to achieve this aim. Despite being a feature clearly made for under 12s, the film has a brutal environmental and political agenda of breathtaking ambition. This is presented with so little nuance or charm that, despite all the perfectly good arguments for ecological action, you somehow despise the animals who star.

The plot is paper thin, chaotic and occasionally plain nonsense. For instance, the plot insists environmental conferences achieve nothing but a conference of animals which tails off into a juvenile eulogy for a fantasy world somehow inspires the action required. Not even my three year old niece fell for that level of reasoning.

Worst of all, I watched the entire film and, despite sharing the immediate area of the cinema with around twelve children of various ages, can honestly say they did not even smile once, let alone laugh. It is devoid of any entertainment value. I think you get the point.

I wonder how the makers of this film can live with the amount of energy being wasted to give it distribution...

First of all, children up to 11 years, especially girls, will love this movie.

It is very child-oriented, which means it is a bit infantile, especially in delivering its message. The message is, and here comes Al Gore in, who will love this movie also, that we humans are bad bad bad when it goes to matters of nature, animals, earth.

Parents will probably get bored sometimes, because the message is delivered with some long lasting sermons, which we hear all over the time, but in this case from the oldest and wisest animals on earth. And children learn that what their parents do for their living, is mostly bad and causes nature to suffer. But to be honest, that's true. Nature is raped by man, and we don't care. After there seems no other way in Germany to raise the funds for a Pixar-like animated movie, we have to live with it. Not too bad for us to be confronted with a bitter truth once more, although it's not brought to us very subtle.

Animation is good and doesn't stay behind current productions. 3d effects are also impressive and obviously not post-production.

The characters are nice and funny and believable, mostly cliché of course, the plot is executed adventurous enough to keep everybody in line, even if we know, how the movie will end.

What the movie lacks is independence, its a mixture of everything from Madagascar through Ice Age and Horton, a perfect example of target group oriented product placement. 'No experiments' was the prime directive during production, it's obviously. Personally, I thought they took that too serious.

But nevertheless we go into a theater to watch a movie that makes our kids happy. If this is what our children makes happy, so what shells ? I don't open my wallet (so wide) to have a censorious conversation afterward, but to ask 'How did you like it ?' and get the answer 'I loved it so much'. And I got it.

This was truly the worst film I have ever paid money to watch. It was so terrible that my 9 year old sister and I left halfway through(she asked to leave!) This is a German-produced film with British voices edited in, and therefore the animation was off for the speaking. We went because of the amount of well-known stars in it, and yet all of them sounded dreadfully bored, with only James Corden trying, but trying way too hard. There was no plot at all and too many story lines to follow, each one receiving about 5 minutes before moving somewhere else and then suddenly all the characters are together with a minutes explanation of how. It was just so boring, so unless it is amazing for the last 20 minutes steer well clear of this film! There is a small scene showing fire, although you could clearly see the animation straight lines supporting the fire, it seemed more like a first draft. My only thought was that this must be politically based as there wasn't a single joke worthy of a laugh while we were there, but it was definitely not worth the £10 I paid to watch it, extremely disappointed as I was really excited before it.

This is the first time in about three or so months that I found myself this disappointed and angry with an animated film. I'm 19, and I adore animation and have done since I was about 2. But Animals United is a serious contender for the worst animated film I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot of animated films, good and bad.

As bad as Titanic:The Animated Movie, Spiders Web:A Pig's Tale, Doogal and Secret of NIMH 2 are, and that word is being kind to them(the first one especially is an insult to the intelligence), Animals United for me surpasses them on levels of how painful and dull it is.

I have so many beefs with Animals United, but I have to say what angered me most was the voice cast. On paper, this is an amazing voice cast. James Corden? Jim Broadbent? Stephen Fry? However, this film wastes their talents completely, at the end of the day Corden is the only one who tries. Everybody else are either annoying(Dawn French, not helped that her character is annoying too) or are dreadfully uninterested(Broadbent in a very rare occurrence).

But a number of things do not help when it comes to the waste of these talented actors. The worst offender was the script, which was really deplorable. The writing in Animals United aims to be funny and poignant. Maybe its main target audience(essentially a family movie but in all honesty watching this I can only see under 12s getting any, if any, value from this film) will find it so, but I for one found it unfunny(the humour was just embarrassing!), saccharine and heavy-handed.

And there is also the lip-synching. I have seen some sloppy lip-synching in my time not just in animated films but in opera films/productions and films in general(though unlike here this in any of those only happened once or twice), but to say the lip-synching is sloppy here is being kind. It was all over the place, I don't remember a single time when it was in sync with the voices or lip-movements. Then again I may have been distracted by how bad the writing and characterisation was.

Animals United is devoid of a single likable or sympathetic character. I couldn't connect to a single character throughout here, and I imagine it was the same with the vocal cast as well. All the characters in Animals United are either annoying or underdeveloped, and that is including the titular character.

The lack of a good story doesn't help either. This is a story that is thin-too thin and uninteresting for an over-90-minute film- and predictable complete with themes that are presented in a superficial, chaotic and preachy manner. Pace-wise as well, excepting scenes such as the ending-and various transitions between plot points that are given less than 5 minutes to develop-that felt rushed, the film is a drag. And there are parts, particularly in the latter section, that feel as though they belong in another movie when it comes to talking about tone, also don't get me started on some of the truly dumb parts of Animals United. For example seeing a polar bear in the Savannah made me lose more than a couple of brain cells. Just for the record, I understand the message the film was trying to convey but the way it was put across was not done at all well.

I was hoping that some good animation might elevate things to a slightly better level. Sadly, even the animation wasn't done well...at all. The colours seem rather flat, the backgrounds are blocky, but the real abomination animation-wise was the character designs. I have seen some animated films and shows where "ugly" character designs are deliberate, but I doubt that was really the case here. Regardless of that, in my opinions they were just hideous, often over-sized and jerky and the mouth movements and lip-synching did little to help either.

I would also say the same for the soundtrack. As an aspiring singer and keen musician, I always look for a good soundtrack. Animals United is not an example of a good soundtrack, in fact it is the exact opposite of a good soundtrack. Not only are some of the musical numbers pointless, but almost every single one of them are misplaced. I didn't think much either of the melodies, which were forgettable, or the lyrics, which often took me out of the mood of the scene.

Overall, a dreadful animated film and one to be avoided. 0/10 Bethany Cox

The phrase "there's an hour and a half that I ain't getting back" springs to mind. I saw this movie with an easily pleased four year old, a hard to please nine year old and a somewhat in middle five year old. All of us in agreement that this was the worst film we had ever seen. Not funny, is the German sense of humour a little different, terrible plot, so preachy and obvious as to be positively obnoxious. Ahh getting annoyed even writing this. Save your money. Not even remotely on par with the normal Pixar/Disney efforts. Cannot believe it is still running in my local cinema, someone somewhere with "a message" must be paying for that, it cannot be commercial!