As Mulan and Tarzan are
still relatively well-regarded, Fantasia 2000 and Dinosaur were set
apart by being strange experiments and The Emperor’s New Groove is one
people tend to be on the fence over, Atlantis tends to have the
unenviable place in the Disney canon of the one people can point at and go, There!
That’s where Disney’s ‘difficult’ period started! Usually then looking at Lilo & Stitich the year after and adding, Yeah, well, Lilo & Stitch
is a weird anomaly.
It’s true that Atlantis is
probably the point that Disney was most visibly slipping out of its ‘renaissance’
return to glory. Ironically Disney’s most dry film, it has no songs, very few
bright colours and comic relief only in an incredibly sarcastic switchboard
operator, a deadpan demolitions expert and a dirty, perverted and creepy
Frenchman. It aims for childlike wonder in the Jules Verne mould but by only
packing the well-trodden story of a single half-hour cartoon – young dreamer is
taken to magical city by mercenaries only for them to turn out to want to plunder
the place – it ends up rather dull. Very unusually, I didn’t even want to
finish it in a single sitting.
I didn’t catch Atlantis at
the time, and really felt very little attraction to it. In the years since it
came out, I’ve mostly heard about in the context of ‘You know how The Lion King ripped off Kimba? Yeah, well, Atlantis ripped off Nadia!
And Laputa too!’ Honestly, I don’t see it – the ideas that are in both
are pretty ubiquitous adventure story elements and staples of adaptations of
Verne works, so I can let Disney off the hook on this charge...not that I’ve
seen more than two episodes of Nadia, mind you. Yet!
There’s a lot about Atlantis
that appeals. Getting a left-field artist like Gerald Scarfe in to design
characters had worked nicely on Hercules, so having Hellboy creator
Mike Mignola work on this film seemed like a good bet – and there are some
great designs here. The cast is strong, with big names experienced in animation
putting in good work – Michael J. Fox is very much at home, and Leonard Nimoy’s
rumbling patriarch plays to his strengths rather more than Galvatron did. Cree
Summer also appears as the poster girl, the veteran putting in an excellent
performance – and though she’s one of the very first voice actresses I ever took
an interest in (through her work in Inspector Gadget and Rugrats),
she certainly isn’t always spot-on...I’ll never forget how irritating she was
in the dub of Final Fantasy X.
For all that these elements
appealed, however, the film falls down in far more respects. The animation is
functional but the heavy use of CG is badly dated now in a way that the
wildebeests in The Lion King never will be, having been too
foregrounded. The design is too haphazard, feeling at times like the
researchers just threw everything that suggested ‘ancient culture’ at the board
to see what stuck. The animation is bizarrely careless for Disney – just look
how the chalk that rubs off on Milo isn’t reversed as it
should be. That story just has far too little brain to move anyone, and we’ve
certainly seen the concept too many times already. The large cast don’t have
time to be adequately developed or distinguished. Whoever thought of the Ireland/Iceland
mistake doesn’t quite understand translation. And then there’s the fact that Milo ,
for all Michael J Fox tries hard, is deeply unlikeable. He’s too cocksure for
an underdog, his clutziness seems affected mostly thanks to his animation, and
there is zero chemistry between him and Kida.
The best Disney films have a
lot of heart, emotional turmoil that isn’t scared of crossing into cheesy
territory, believable romance and some point of identification for the kids.
The problem with Atlantis isn’t that anything is done drastically wrong,
just that...well, nothing manages to stand out as superb either.
Like you, I didn't watch Atlantis until after it came out when I rented it from the video store. I agree with you that it had some appealing things but couldn't make up for the bad elements. It's been many years since I watched it (and have little desire to see it again) but I remember finding some scenes good...but yeah, overall, not so great. The characters, especially the comical ones, just seemed like products of the time and they just didn't have that timeless, universally appealing humor that characters in other Disney films like Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast have. I remember renting Atlantis and Treasure Planet around the same time and felt the same about each, though I think I liked Treasure Planet a little better.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, my next couple of posts are going to be my top 20 favorite animated movies of all time. Thought you might be interested in that =) Though you'll probably disagree with a lot of them since you've seen way more animated films than I have (I've only seen Japanese and American ones pretty much).
That sounds great! I'll be sure to check it out.
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