Animaux & Cie

Lazy, badly written, tripe. The plot is so insultingly stupid I wouldn't let children watch it in case it harmed their development. I took my 3 year old son to watch this and even he was bored after 15 minutes (nothing happens in this time)and we ended up leaving 60 minutes into the film, along with several other people that hadn't yet fallen asleep.

There is NO humour in this, completely witless drivel from the start and it amazes me this was ever made. Pointless musical moments, one dimensional 'characters', not even some basic slapstick to keep kids interested. A total waste of time that doesn't deserve to be watched by anyone. The British voice cast should be ashamed of themselves.

HOLEY UNDERWEAR! If you thought Captain Planet was preachy, just sit down in front of this crap-fest for a full dose.

From moment one, it's an attempt to blame HUMANS for climate, suggesting that polar bears don't know how to swim, that politicians go to the arctic for photo opportunities, that somehow, riding a motorbike automatically makes you a slothenly character who, even when there are plainly marked trash bins, would rather throw trash everywhere.

I'd like to sit down with the director and say, HEY MORON! WE AREN'T ALL LIKE THAT! Come down off your high horse and clean up YOUR OWN feces first.

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.

The recent years have spawned a great number of animated movies, as the animation studios are picking up pace and utilizing better graphics, dynamics and overall improvement. "Animals United" is actually a decent animated movie from 2010.

The story is about the animals of the savanna having no water, as man has build a massive dam at a hotel resort. And animals worldwide are also suffering from the effects of climate change and global warming. The animals band together to change this and make man see the error of his ways.

Initially the storyline is adequate, however, it is weighed down to a level where it becomes intolerable at times, because of the heaviness of the topics of which the story tries to incorporate; climate change and global warming. At times it just becomes too much of a propaganda against the mistakes people have made in the poaching and exploitation of Earth's resources. It really wasn't suitable for an animated movie, and worked against the movie as a whole.

As for the animation and graphics, well I enjoyed that. The images were nice to look at and the characters were well created and had lots of unique characteristics and personalities. Many of the animal characters were likable and nice, which would be a great appeal for the family movie aspect of "Animals United".

The English version of the movie had a good list of voice actors/actresses to its rank, and people did good jobs with bringing the voices out for each individual character.

Despite the upsides to the movie, I am going to give "Animals United" a 5 out of 10 rating only, because of the climatic and economical aspects that the movie tried to incorporate and painfully fleshing out that man is to blame. We already know that man is the culprit behind the sorry state of our Earth as it is today. And those heavy topics didn't have a home in an animated movie in my opinion, hence the mediocre rating, as it brought down the movie's overall enjoyment.

For a family movie, "Animals United" comes off as too heavy and too political. It is something that people from early teens and beyond could relate to and understand. But small kids and children? No, the movie's topic is too heavy for those. Sure, they could enjoy the animation itself and the characters, but not the story.

Despite trying with some cheap jokes, the overall tone of this movie is rather dark, but what really bothers me is the inconsistency of the story and the overabundance of factual errors and improbabilities, in this movie we have African buffaloes with fur, upper incisors and (in the German dub) a Spanish accent, saltwater fish in a large open-top tank in either Botswana, Namibia or Angola (evaporation apparently being a non-issue for these tanks), animals from all over the globe who arrive in these landlocked regions after leaving a bathtub they used to cross the oceans, a biplane with an ATGM launcher, etc.. The worst of all these factual errors, IMHO, are the vegetarian lion - the rest of the carnivorous protagonists don't seem to eat anything either - and the dam closing in all water (instead of letting through roughly the same amount as before since otherwise it would simply spill over), because these are obvious plot devices to indoctrinate children with the political messages of this movie (meat is bad, mankind is evil).