Titan A.E. Review
by Rose 'Bams' Cooper (bams AT 3blackchicks DOT com)July 2nd, 2000
'3BlackChicks Review...'
TITAN A.E. (2000)
Rated PG; running time 95 minutes
Genre: Animated/SciFi
IMDB site: http://us.imdb.com/Details?0120913
Official site: http://www.afterearth.com/
Written by: Ben Edlund, Randall McCormick
Directed by: Don Bluth, Gary Goldman
Cast: Voices of: Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore, Bill Pullman, Nathan Lane, Janeane Garofalo, John Leguizamo, Tone Loc, Ron Perlman
Review Copyright Rose Cooper, 2000
Review URL: http://www.3blackchicks.com/bamstitan.html
Of all the Chicks in 3BC, I'm the one voted Most Likely To Review A Cartoon. It should come as no surprise, then, that I chose to review TITAN A.E. this week--as opposed to The Diva, whose words on the subject sounded something like "I sure didn't wanna review that mess". Mebbe I shoulda oughta listened to her words of wisdom.
The Story (WARNING: **spoilers contained below**):
In the year 3028, a Bad, Bad bunch of aliens known as the Drej [Bad aliens! Bad, Bad aliens!] inexplicably blast the planet Earth, and its inhabitants, away like so many buzzing flies. That would be that--except for the fact that a group of secret...uh, whatever they were...knew the Drej were coming and evacuated a bunch of Earthlings just before the Drej arrived.
One of the secret...whatever they were's, Tucker (Ron Perlman), asks his good buddy Tek (Tone Loc) to take Tucker's young son, Cale (Matt Damon) with him in one of the evacuating ships so that Tucker could go do some Secret Stuff with the Secret Spaceship known as the Titan--knowing he may never see Cale again. Feeling abandoned, Cale grows up with a chip on his shoulder about dear old dad and humans--the few that are left, anyway--in general. Jaded, he feels all the more cynical when another human, Joe Korso (Bill Pullman) shows up with alien shipmates Preed (Nathan Lane), Stith (Janeane Garofalo), Jar-Ja...uh, Gune (John Leguizamo), and the human female slash potential love interest (slash [Luke]Warm Place To Put It), Akima (Drew Barrymore)--with the message that Cale may hold the future of humanity in his hand.
The Upshot:
I found this flick pretty hard to wrap my reviewing braincells around, mostly because it never found its legs enough for me to invest any care in what was going on on the screen. It was clearly derivative of many movies, both animated and traditional; in various places, I was reminded of STAR WARS, HEAVY METAL (though HM had a much better musical backbeat; "Titan's" music seemed much more cheesy by comparison), the "Star Trek" movies, and even a Bruce Lee flick or two. But in its lack of developed backstory (in spite of the storyline presented, the viewer is left wondering why much of the action takes place), it put me in mind of the most disasterous collection of moving images of the century: none other than SUPERNOVA [OW! Uh, Sorry about that. I had told my fingers to never type that dreaded name again...]
That's not a very fair comparison, to be sure. Even in its worst moments, "Titan" was nowhere near as galling as "Stupornova". But as with that piece of sh...um, detritus, "Titan" certainly bit off way more than it could chew, story-wise. With this movie's enormous leaps of logic [Uh, how did Cale so easily pilot every spacecraft he encountered? *How long* does it take to rebuild an old, dilapidated ship, again? And why bother putting the Drej speech in subtitles, when obviously Cale Magically understood every word as if Big Poppa Drej spoke perfect English, huh, why? WHY?], I felt my eyes rolling faster than a bowling ball down the gutter lane.
[ooh, that was an ugly analogy.]
Like their voice counterparts in DINOSAUR, the actors don't add much character to their characters--and unlike DINOSAUR, the actor's voices aren't readily distinguishable (though Nathan Lane, bless his sarcastic lil' heart, gave it ye olde college try). This, I think, was to "Titan's" deficit. After all, Matt Damon and company had to have been paid a pretty penny for their, in essence, voice-overs; if one couldn't tell these highly-paid actors from Joe Schmoe From Kokomo, one would think the producers didn't get their money's worth, eh?
All those things could be forgiven, had the animation been top-notch. With a name like Don Bluth (THE SECRET OF NIMH, AN AMERICAN TAIL, ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN) behind it, good animation should've been a given, right? It should've. It wasn't. Worse, it seemed schizophrenic, with the human and alien characters drawn by Bluth in traditional (for him) cartoon style, but the ships, planets, and various backgrounds, obviously computer animated. This gave the movie a disjointed feeling, with the computer animated sections overpowering the traditional drawings (note, for example, how stiff the characters look in the windows of the computer animated spaceships, as if they were stills of dolls sitting in their seats). Anytime the viewer is taken-out-of-the-moment by such jarring revelations, that's most def A Bad Thing.
In spite of everything I've written above, I don't want you, gentle reader, to go away thinking that TITAN A.E. was bad. Spirit-less, lacking in humor, and poorly-thought-out, sure. But not bad. Anything that (ObQuickieBlackFactor) includes even a brief movie moment confirming that Minorities Are Part Of The Future, can't be *that* bad, can it?
Bammer's Bottom Line:
It's just too bad TITAN A.E. couldn't make up its mind and go either full-out as traditional animation, or hi-tech CGI sci-fi. Not that it'd make much difference either way, I reckon; it never impressed me as being much more than a half-hearted attempt at wrapping a movie around a soundtrack that'll no doubt sell millions.
TITAN A.E. (rating: yellowlight):
On a "Star Trek" comparison scale, this one felt more like the STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE dud than the much-better STAR TREK 2: THE WRATH OF KHAN.
Rose "Bams" Cooper /~\
Webchick and Editor, /','\ 3BlackChicks Review /','`'\
Movie Reviews With Flava! /',',','/`, Copyright Rose Cooper, 2000 `~-._'c /
EMAIL: [email protected] `\ ( http://www.3blackchicks.com/ /====\
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
