Subject: Review: Titan A.E. (2000)

From: Rose 'Bams' Cooper <[email-masked]>
Date: 2 Jul 2000 17:20:29 GMT

'3BlackChicks Review...'

TITAN A.E. (2000)
Rated PG; running time 95 minutes
Genre: Animated/SciFi
IMDB site: http://us.imdb.com/Details?0120913
Official site: http://www.afterearth.com/
Written by: Ben Edlund, Randall McCormick
Directed by: Don Bluth, Gary Goldman
Cast: Voices of: Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore, Bill Pullman, Nathan Lane,
Janeane Garofalo, John Leguizamo, Tone Loc, Ron Perlman

Review Copyright Rose Cooper, 2000
Review URL: http://www.3blackchicks.com/bamstitan.html

Of all the Chicks in 3BC, I'm the one voted Most Likely To Review A
Cartoon.  It should come as no surprise, then, that I chose to review
TITAN A.E. this week--as opposed to The Diva, whose words on the subject
sounded something like "I sure didn't wanna review that mess".  Mebbe I
shoulda oughta listened to her words of wisdom.

The Story (WARNING: **spoilers contained below**):
In the year 3028, a Bad, Bad bunch of aliens known as the Drej [Bad
aliens! Bad, Bad aliens!] inexplicably blast the planet Earth, and its
inhabitants, away like so many buzzing flies.  That would be
that--except for the fact that a group of secret...uh, whatever they
were...knew the Drej were coming and evacuated a bunch of Earthlings
just before the Drej arrived.

One of the secret...whatever they were's, Tucker (Ron Perlman), asks his
good buddy Tek (Tone Loc) to take Tucker's young son, Cale (Matt Damon)
with him in one of the evacuating ships so that Tucker could go do some
Secret Stuff with the Secret Spaceship known as the Titan--knowing he
may never see Cale again.  Feeling abandoned, Cale grows up with a chip
on his shoulder about dear old dad and humans--the few that are left,
anyway--in general.  Jaded, he feels all the more cynical when another
human, Joe Korso (Bill Pullman) shows up with alien shipmates Preed
(Nathan Lane), Stith (Janeane Garofalo), Jar-Ja...uh, Gune (John
Leguizamo), and the human female slash potential love interest (slash
[Luke]Warm Place To Put It), Akima (Drew Barrymore)--with the message
that Cale may hold the future of humanity in his hand.

The Upshot:
I found this flick pretty hard to wrap my reviewing braincells around,
mostly because it never found its legs enough for me to invest any care
in what was going on on the screen.  It was clearly derivative of many
movies, both animated and traditional; in various places, I was reminded
of STAR WARS, HEAVY METAL (though HM had a much better musical backbeat;
"Titan's" music seemed much more cheesy by comparison), the "Star Trek"
movies, and even a Bruce Lee flick or two.  But in its lack of developed
backstory (in spite of the storyline presented, the viewer is left
wondering why much of the action takes place), it put me in mind of the
most disasterous collection of moving images of the century: none other
than SUPERNOVA  [OW!  Uh, Sorry about that.  I had told my fingers to
never type that dreaded name again...]

That's not a very fair comparison, to be sure.  Even in its worst
moments, "Titan" was nowhere near as galling as "Stupornova".  But as
with that piece of sh...um, detritus, "Titan" certainly bit off way more
than it could chew, story-wise.  With this movie's enormous leaps of
logic [Uh, how did Cale so easily pilot every spacecraft he encountered?
*How long* does it take to rebuild an old, dilapidated ship, again?  And
why bother putting the Drej speech in subtitles, when obviously Cale
Magically understood every word as if Big Poppa Drej spoke perfect
English, huh, why? WHY?], I felt my eyes rolling faster than a bowling
ball down the gutter lane.

[ooh, that was an ugly analogy.]

Like their voice counterparts in DINOSAUR, the actors don't add much
character to their characters--and unlike DINOSAUR, the actor's voices
aren't readily distinguishable (though Nathan Lane, bless his sarcastic
lil' heart, gave it ye olde college try).  This, I think, was to
"Titan's" deficit.  After all, Matt Damon and company had to have been
paid a pretty penny for their, in essence, voice-overs; if one couldn't
tell these highly-paid actors from Joe Schmoe From Kokomo, one would
think the producers didn't get their money's worth, eh?

All those things could be forgiven, had the animation been top-notch.
With a name like Don Bluth (THE SECRET OF NIMH, AN AMERICAN TAIL, ALL
DOGS GO TO HEAVEN) behind it, good animation should've been a given,
right?  It should've.  It wasn't.  Worse, it seemed schizophrenic, with
the human and alien characters drawn by Bluth in traditional (for him)
cartoon style, but the ships, planets, and various backgrounds,
obviously computer animated.  This gave the movie a disjointed feeling,
with the computer animated sections overpowering the traditional
drawings (note, for example, how stiff the characters look in the
windows of the computer animated spaceships, as if they were stills of
dolls sitting in their seats).  Anytime the viewer is
taken-out-of-the-moment by such jarring revelations, that's most def A
Bad Thing.

In spite of everything I've written above, I don't want you, gentle
reader, to go away thinking that TITAN A.E. was bad.  Spirit-less,
lacking in humor, and poorly-thought-out, sure.  But not bad.  Anything
that (ObQuickieBlackFactor) includes even a brief movie moment
confirming that Minorities Are Part Of The Future, can't be *that* bad,
can it?

Bammer's Bottom Line:
It's just too bad TITAN A.E. couldn't make up its mind and go either
full-out as traditional animation, or hi-tech CGI sci-fi.  Not that it'd
make much difference either way, I reckon; it never impressed me as
being much more than a half-hearted attempt at wrapping a movie around a
soundtrack that'll no doubt sell millions.

TITAN A.E. (rating: yellowlight):
On a "Star Trek" comparison scale, this one felt more like the STAR
TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE dud than the much-better STAR TREK 2: THE WRATH
OF KHAN.

Rose "Bams" Cooper                            /~\
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Copyright Rose Cooper, 2000                `~-._'c    /
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