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    The Wild

    Reviewed by
    adamwatchesmovies@

    WARNING: This review is hidden because it reveals the content of the film.
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    Remember in 2005 when Dreamworks released “Madagascar”? Sure you do, that movie got two sequels! Remember in 2006, when Disney released “The Wild”, a movie that seems awfully similar? No? Well that’s because it’s an awful animated film that everyone wants to forget. In New York Zoo, Samson the lion (voiced by Kiefer Sutherland) tells his son Ryan (Greg Cipes) about how awesome life in the wild is and how one day, he won’t have to be embarrassed about his kitten-like roar because he’ll grow up to be just like his father. After an argument, Ryan accidentally gets himself shipped out of the zoo and into THE WILD. Desperate to rescue his son, Samson teams up with his best buddies: Benny (Jim Belushi) a street-smart squirrel, Bridget (Janeane Garofalo) a giraffe for whom Benny has the hots for, Nigel (Eddie Izzard) a British koala who despises the attention given to him by tourists and a dim-witted anaconda named Larry (Richard Kind) They go off on a wild adventure that culminates in a showdown between our heroes and a cult of wildebeests that want to move up the food chain by becoming carnivores.

    The plot to “The Wild” drifts aimlessly for a long time and is packed with dozens of useless characters each the more annoying than the last. If you think the team of penguins introduced right at the beginning of the movie as rivals to Samson and his gang are irritating (and they are), you haven’t seen anything yet. As the plot forces the characters to move from one location to another, they constantly meet new characters and they’re all terrible. Worse than the penguins are the group of inexplicably Indian pigeons, who don’t serve any purpose besides pointing the zoo gang towards the Statue of Liberty where Ryan is being sent to via truck. On their way there, they meet a duo of argumentative alligators, who again serve no purpose except to help our characters escape the sewers, which they enter for no good reason. After the gators they meet some Canadian geese that offer them maple syrup and hockey pucks (well maybe not but they might as well have the stereotypes are that blatant) We then get in order: an annoying rodent on the toilet that wants to be eaten, dung beetles that speak in a Swedish accent and whose shells are decorated to make them resemble yodellers, bumbling secret agent chameleons and dancing wildebeests. There are maybe 4 or 5 characters in this whole film that don’t feel like they’re one-joke plot devices or cheap gags. Can someone explain to me, for example, how a couple of chameleons crawling over a lion can manage to make him change from a perfectly invisible, to a striped, to a polka dotted design?

    The bad writing isn’t limited to the characters either; the story is downright terrible too. At several points during the film things just happen for no good reason. Despite the fact that Bridget is a giraffe, the tallest animal alive, she is able to sneak up behind Samson and hide inside the same garbage truck as he is without him noticing anything. Benny, who gets separated from the rest of the group appears out of nowhere after his friends have high-jacked a boat so he can steer them in the right direction even though there is no way he could know where they would be. Characters’ motivations, particularly the wildebeests just change on a dime so the movie can wrap itself up quickly and once again, it’s one of those movies where all the animals can talk and the carnivorous nature of some creatures are never addressed. I don’t know about you, but if I was about to bite into a carrot and it suddenly started squirming and begging me not to be eaten I’d have second thoughts. I’d have some serious internal conflicts about taking a bite out of something that could shed tears and recite poetry in an effort to get itself not eaten. In this movie though, it’s no big deal. Benny and Bridget gleefully encourage Samson to devour a random animal they find in the wild just to see what it will be like.

    The fact that there just doesn’t seem to be that much logic applied to this world is also irritating. Take the official game of curling played between the animals at the zoo for example. Apparently anyone can jump on the ice and do whatever they want at any time and it’s not against the rules. Or look at the tropical island, complete with a volcano where all sorts of African animals live, despite the facts that for the majority of them, their natural habitat is the savannah, not the jungle. It all adds up to a big L-A-Z-Y movie to me.

    I wish I could say that at least the animation was good, but I can’t really surrender to that either. When the zoo crew are exploring New York, the streets are completely devoid of any life whatsoever. Does that ever happen in New York? It makes the backgrounds look hollow and cheap. The character renderings are ok, but it’s staggering to see that in a mere 8 years, the quality of animation has advanced so much that several of the animals here look significantly dated and even have that uncanny valley look to them. I hate to be so hard on the movie, but it’s not funny, not well written and not particularly imaginative. The one exception is towards the end where the movie introduces a villain and quickly goes away before he can gt some real impactful scenes. Many plot points are predictable, the character relationships feel phoney and the film hasn’t aged well. It will feel like a chore for all but the most forgiving adults (mostly parents who are just happy to not have their children screaming for an hour and a half) It’s probably a good contender for the worst computer animated Disney film the company has released. I mean it’s got a scene where a hippo tries to attack a squirrel... by smashing it with its butt…. Do I need to say anything else?

    Alright I do have some good things to say about the movie. Despite some of my earlier comments. I have to admit that some of the animals, mostly the lions, look dated most of the other animals look pretty good. All of the reptiles in the film look terrific and the giraffes and rodents are also well rendered, mostly because they’re that right mix of realistic and cartoony. The film also knows its limits. You can tell that the animators could not manage human faces because despite several scenes where humans are present and despite a good portion of the film being set in one of the biggest cities in the world, we never see more than the back of a human head. That could have been awkward but the artists pulled it off so good job avoiding that. I also found some of the ideas in the movie to be good. The thought of a pack of wildebeests or other plant-eaters wanting to move up the food chain and a cult dedicated to this idea being the villains, that’s a great idea.

    There’s a reason no one has been talking about “The Wild” since it was released 8 years ago. It’s just not that memorable or good. Once again, seeing this film reminds me of a free piece of advice I feel compelled to all of you animators out there: no computer generated animated film made after 2001 has ever been improved by having a dance sequence at the end of the movie. If you are interested in seeing it however, stick to the end of the credits because there’s one final gag after they finish rolling. I can’t recommend that anyone, particularly any adults check out “The Wild”. (On Dvd, June 24, 2014)

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    adamwatchesmovies@  3.8.2015 age: 26-35 2,867 reviews

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