Titan A.E. (Widescreen)

Not certain what it wanted to be, TITAN A.E. is one-part HEAVY METAL, one-part cheap scifi visionary, and one-part Disney ... but, alas, the parts do not add up. The vocal performances of Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore, and Bill Pullman (could you find three more uninteresting voices?) sound as if they were phoned in on a Sunday morning after a very late, very drunken Saturday night party. The best elements of the film were literally ideas lifted from far better flicks, leaving TITAN A.E. perhaps the most unoriginal and uninteresting animated science fiction outing I've ever seen.

Avoid this one, unless you're in need of a sedative.

Titan AE begins with the destruction of Earth by a weird race of beings who seemingly are afraid that human beings have become too technologically advanced. A space commander gets his young son safely aboard one of the evacuation craft, and then he races to escape with a ship called Titan, the one that contains the secret the attackers are so fearful of. The story then jumps forward fifteen years. The commander never returned for his son as promised. The boy is bitter. He is a maintenance worker one of the spacecraft. Apparently the human race has found no place else to live and has been floating around the galaxy all these years. One day he is approached by a man and a beautiful young woman who say they need his help. As it turns out, the ring his father gave him all those years ago is a really a map that shows the location of the Titan. They stress to him that it is imperative that the ship be found. After much coercion, he reluctantly agrees to accompany them. The enemy is hot on their heels. The race has begun.

One critic described Titan AE as the movie Star Wars fans have been waiting for. I thought they were waiting for the fifth installment of the series, due out early next summer. Haven't we sat through enough imitations of these movies? Did we really need a cartoon version? This is not a remake, but it is obvious that Star Wars inspired much of the plot, as well as the visuals. Also confusing to me is why someone would chose a space epic as source for an animated movie. I realize that many of the most famous and popular comic book series are based either in outer space or on characters from beyond. Yet, since we obviously can't film anywhere else but here on Earth, much of what we see in a sci-fi movie is animated and computer generated anyway. To me, what the producers did was to spend a whole lot of money putting together a sci-fi movie that is all drawn by hand or otherwise. In front of these 'sets' they then drew in cartoon figures. It doesn't seem to me that that counts as much of a breakthrough for animated art...

Don Bluth hit his peak with Dragon's Lair and The Secret of Nimh.