Movie Title: Treasure Planet
Official Website (it might still work): Treasure Planet
Rating (out of 10): 2
Reviewed By: Michael Stevens
Buy the: Video/DVD | Soundtrack
The Review:

Make up your mind Disney. Do you want a space adventure or a pirate story? Cause the two just don’t mix, since it is stupid to have sails on a rocket powered space vessel. Not to mention that Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel has already been the basis for several other movies (e.g. use some new material).

In the movie we are told of the tale of the infamous Captain Flint, who would plunder ships before sailing off into space, with Treasure Planet being his legendary base of operations. This tale excites young James Hawkins (voice by Austin Majors) each time he reads about it in his holographic book. Later James grows up and we learn that his father has left him and his mom Sarah (Laurie Metcalf, Toy Story 2). So now Sarah must run the family inn all by herself, plus the trauma has turned the teenaged James (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, A River Runs Through It) into Jim, a misguided youth that keeps getting into trouble with the local authorities. Then along comes this alien turtle-like creature named Billy Bones (Patrick McGoohan) that crash lands near the inn, and whom Jim helps out of his burning spacecraft. Jim then helps the guy into the inn where Sarah and her friend Dr. Doppler (David Hyde Pierce, A Bug’s Life) try to help, but to no avail as he soon dies. However, before buying the farm, Billy gives Jim a little metal orb and a warning to beware of the cyborg. Then another spaceship comes, this time with a cyborg onboard, and the three living folks make a run for it as pirates destroy the inn. Jim, his mom, and Dr. Doppler all escape back to the good doctor’s observatory where Jim quickly unlocks the secret of the orb, which turns out to be a map to the famed Treasure Planet where the treasure of a thousand worlds is hidden. This gets Jim and the doctor excited, but mom worried. Soon the doctor concocts a plan where he will finance an expedition to the planet and bring Jim along to hopefully straighten him out. So they hire the RLS Legacy spacecraft to take them to the planet with the straight-shooting Mr. Arrow (Roscoe Lee Browne) as first mate and the attractive (for a cartoon) Amelia (Emma Thompson, Primary Colors) as the captain. Also onboard is an ominous looking crew that includes John Silver (Brian Murray), a cyborg. That ladies and gentleman sets the stage for what is to come as good battles evil, and good is uncovered in bad people.

A few others to mention in the film are Tony Jay, Martin Short, Michael Wincott, Corey Burton, and Mona Marshall (Monsters, Inc.). The film is directed by the tag team duo of Ron Clements and John Musker, who were also responsible for writing much of the story. The team also wrote and directed The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, which were actually good.

There are so many things wrong with this film. First as I mentioned above, space sailing looks stupid. Second, the animation looked like a synthesis of the good computer generated animation of films like Ice Age and the traditional animation of films like Lilo & Stitch (which did well at the box office because they were comedies). Which leads into my last point, kids films need to be funny in order to be good. Treasure Planet had a few laughs, but none did more than put a brief smile on your face. The one good thing about the film (other than the soundtrack) is that it was based on a classic tale, which means I will give it two whole couches out of ten for the About-Movies.com rating.

Last updated: Thursday, March 20, 2008 02:48:17 AM

Click Here to get back into frames.