Says here there's
a great film called Shrek
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Half term is
here and this is the film most kids will go and see. But
is it any good?
Nigel
Bell
After years
in the doldrums Disney finally got back on track with films like
the Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and the Lion
King.
At that time
they had no competition (the Don Bluth factory was hardly making
an impact).
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| Any resemblance
to Pocahontas is purely coincidental |
Maybe because
of this the quality threshold began to suffer. Lately, while not
being bad, the Disney output has failed to reach the peaks of Simba
and co.
The
Emperor's New Groove and Dinosaur
were appealing but hardly ground breaking.
Now Disney have
a serious problem. This year they've been blown out of the water
by Shrek, the computer
generated feature which has cleaned up at the box office.
While Monsters
Inc. might redress the balance, in the short term Atlantis,
while good, is not a Shrek.
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| All aboard
the Nautilus. Oops, wrong film |
It does, however,
deviate from the Disney norm in that there are no happy songs for
the cast to join in on. This is a darker son of Walt.
It involves
Milo Thatch (Fox) and his dream of fulfilling his grandfather's
wishes and discovering the lost city of Atlantis.
The means are
found, a team is recruited and the city is discovered.
There's a princess
to add a touch of romance and a baddie plus some sea monsters.
It all ends
in a climactic dogfight involving flying fish machines and World
War One biplanes.
This is a boys
adventure. Without being sexist I'm not sure how much girls will
get out of it. It certainly doesn't have the catch all aspects of
Shrek.
But it moves
along at a solid pace and should give the offspring something to
talk/ play about during half-term.
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