Titan A.E

RATING: ****
Cast (Voices of)
Cale: Matt Damon
Korso: Bill Pullman
Gune: John Leguizamo
Akima: Drew Barrymore
Directed by: Don Bluth and Gary Goldman

Titan A.E is probably the best cartoon action movie I've seen since Heavy Metal. In fact, in many ways the two movies are very similar, save that there is more gratiutous sex and violence in Heavy Metal and Titan A.E had more to its plot. Just looking at the richness of the colours and the fluidity of the graphics in this movie, I can't help but ask myself: "How much did this movie cost to make?" Looks like I may have a new project with which to occupy myself in the next few days. Anyways, there is much to like about this movie, and for once NO TRUMPED UP AMERICANISM!!! YEAH!!! Now that that's out of my system, I can move on to the review.

The Plotline: The movie opens with a comment about how human potential has threatened the 'dredge' being of pure energy, and the very opening scenes have the dredge on their way to destroy earth. In all of this comes Cale and his father. Cale's father puts him on an escape ship and gives him his ring, before he is killed by the dredge. The scenes soon shifts to the destruction of the earth by the dredge, and then the movie fades out. We tune back in 15 years later, when Cale is now all grown up, and humans live on the edge of destruction. Cale is now self-employed as a junk pirate in space, and the view is deluged with a plethora of Star Wars-esque space aliens. Someone is looking for Cale though - a man by the name of Korso. Korso knew his father, and is to take him to find the mythical 'Titan A.E,' which will save the human race. With Korso are Akima (who will obviously have a love affair with Cale), Gune (the best character in the film!) and some other aliens whom I don't remember their names. They journey across the galaxy searching for clues to find the Titan. However, they are not the only ones looking for the Titan... The dredge are too, because they want to wipe out the human race forever...Anyways, I hope this synopsis is enough. I don't want to give away too much of the film, it really is good.

As I said earlier, I think this is clearly one of the best cartoon action flicks I've ever seen. Everything looked so good and so real. Computer animation sure has advanced a long way. At times I felt I was right in the movie, and I got really tense whenever something exciting happened. I was clearly impressed. The characters cartoons so I can't really comment on the acting of the characters. The voices were good though, if that counts for anything. Some of the characters, especially Gune (who I nicknamed Geek, just because) were pretty funny, and so I had a good laugh at their awkwardness.

The movie was not all roses and rainbows though, which is why I didn't give it 5 stars. The movie was a little predictable at some points. I knew the good guys would win in the end, but I didn't quite know how, which is what threw me for a loop. The characters were rather typical as well... Little originality here. There were the stock comic characters (Gune, that alien that looked like a kangaroo), the evil villains (I'm not going to reveal that) and of course, the brave intrepid hero who overcomes all obstacles, wins love, and saves the day. Sometimes melodrama makes me very ill.

Anyways, I don't mean to sour the impression of the movie. It is really well done. Just don't be like me and look really hard at the plot. I should have watched the beautiful graphics instead of over-analyzing this wonderful movie. K.R