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Atlantis:
The Lost Empire Review
by Harvey Karten (republished with permission)
Distributor:
Walt Disney Pictures
Director: Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise
Writer: Tab Murphy
Cast: Voices of Michael J. Fox, James Garner, CreeSummer,
Jim Varney, Corey Burton, Claudia Christian, Phil Morris,
Don Novello, Jacqueline Obradors, Florence Stanley, Leonard
Nimoy, John Mahoney, David Ogden Stiers
For
animated stories that can absorb the attention of both
adults and kids and provide substantial lessons as well,
you can't go wrong with Shrek (which pokes fun
at the concept that surface beauty is everything), Chicken
Run (a shrewd tale which among other things conveys
a note about animal rights), and The Iron Giant (which
parodies 1950s paranoia).
For
sheer spectacle, however, without Disney trademarks like
Broadway songs and snugly animals and without any real
Aesopian dimensions, look to Atlantis. Atlantis
provided me with my first experience with digital projection,
the wave of the future, and darned if the colors aren't
brighter, sharper and, well, more colorful than film stock
could afford. For the kids there's non-stop action and
loud noises which make this film a must for the big big
screen.
Directed
by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise (Beauty and the Beast,
The Hunchback of Notre Dame), Atlantis takes
us back to 1914 when a bright-eyed, idealistic young man,
the grandson of a great explorer who found a map of Atlantis,
succeeds in raising foundation money to search for the
lost continent.
After
a dazzling prologue featuring the big bang which caused
this fabled land to be lost near the coast of Iceland,
we watch Milo Thatch (voice of Michael J. Fox) emerge
behind his oversized glasses to join a group in search
of the buried land. They include a cook who is awfully
fond of bacon grease, Cookie (Jim Varney); an expert with
explosives who, as one character remarks, looks as though
he had just come out of a Turkish prison, Vinny (Don Novello);
a robust physician adept at chiropractic manipulations
of the neck, Sweet (Phil Morris); a mole (Corey Burton)
who is considered like a pet but is adept at digging;
and good-looking but cynical Helga (Claudia Christian)
together with the commander of the group, Rourke (James
Garner).
Zipping
along in a submarine-like object that could have come
out of Jules Verne's most celebrated sci-fi novel, they
engage soon enough in battles; first with the largest
lobster ever discovered east of Maine, ultimately with
a couple of members of their own team who break off into
a minor civil war with the crew. When they do discover
their objective, which could be a Shangri-La if the civilization
were not doomed to die out, they meet King Nedakh (Leonard
Nimroy) and his heir-apparent, the lovely Princess Kida
(Cree Summer). Kida is sharp-looking and playful, giving
the impression that Atlantis is not going to fall
into the Shrekian idea that beauty is unimportant in heroines.
Less
talk, more action, appears the credo of Disney's latest,
spectacular animated feature, while James Newton Howard's
music, which at some times appears ready to compete with
the score of Pearl Harbor, inflects the drama of
this heroic adventure. Atlantis features subtitles
whenever the local dialect is spoken (a language known
to the adventurers as gibberish), a concept which could
help habituate the small fry to the idea that English
is not spoken everywhere and that there just may be a
few foreign films in their future that could match Armageddon
in quality.
Rated
PG. Running time: 93 minutes.
Review (C) 2001, Harvey Karten (republished with permission)
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