If nothing else, this review will be unique from any of the others you’ll probably read. It won’t be comparing The Wild to last year’s Madagascar from Dreamworks Animation. But only because I never got around to seeing it.
The Wild is not a movie made by Disney, but rather by other companies and distributed by Disney. When the relationship between Pixar and Disney was on the rocks, Disney began casting about for a “new Pixar” and out of this came last year’s Valiant from Vanguard in London and now The Wild animated by C.O.R.E. Feature Animation in Toronto (interestingly, one of its founders is William Shatner). The remarriage of Pixar and Disney must have been a big blow to these companies.
© Disney.
Unfortunately for C.O.R.E., The Wild is a wildly unsuccessful film. It is hard to pick any one thing that goes horribly awry but it all ends up being a mishmash. Perhaps the four credited writers were each given a different part of the movie and never really talked to each other.
There are moments of wit (more in the underlying ideas than the actual execution) and it is hard to complain about the quality of animation. Here’s the key test: in the first couple minutes of the movie, a squirrel (Benny, voiced by James Belushi) will get his head stuck in a lion’s nostril. If you find that funny then you’ll probably be good for the entire movie. Later you’ll meet a creature that farts every time it moves. If you find the thought of that funny then you have a very good chance with this one.
Writer A was apparently responsible for the opening segment of the movie that introduces the characters. Sampson (Kiefer Sutherland) is the zoo’s star attraction. For the humans he roars and poses, for the other animals he tells great stories of having lived in “the wild” and captains the champion curling team. He is keeping a dark secret known only to his best friend Benny the squirrel. Unfortunately, Samson’s son Ryan (Greg Cipes) is a late bloomer and is embarrassed by his inability to produce an authoritative roar. He also feels overshadowed knowing he’ll never have the opportunities for adventure his dad had in the wild. So he decides to escape and head to the wild himself.
© Disney.
We then get our first apparent switch in writers as a new tone sets in the next part, with Sampson and his fellow curling teammates going off in pursuit of Ryan. His compadres include Benny, Larry the dimwitted boa constrictor (Richard Kind), Nigel the sarcastic koala, voiced by comedian Eddie Izzard, and Benny’s one true love, Bridget (Janeane Garofalo). It should probably be mentioned that Bridget is a giraffe. So off they go through the streets and sewers of New York City (does New York really have sewers that can accommodate a giraffe?), until they find themselves bound for Africa.
Queue writer C. In Africa, life lessons will be learned and dark secrets revealed. An unlikely cult of wildebeest will also be encountered, finally providing a villain for the movie. Considering the naturalistic look of most of the animals in the movie, the more stylized form of the wildebeest sitck out quite a bit. It is here that Disney fixture Patrick Warburton makes his appearance as one of the wildebeest and William Shatner works his co-founder connections to get a voice as one of the others.
Finally, the fourth writer was thrown a bone and allowed to handle a regrettable closing song-and-dance number. Apparently with the success of Shrek and Shrek 2 is it now mandatory that all computer-animated movies must include getting the principal characters to dance to some pop tune. For this, Shrek will have to be punished.
As I said, there are moments of wit. The role that the wildebeest play is actually very clever in conception. Eddie Izzard also gets some good lines out of Nigel. What is good, however, is overwhelmed by the need to keep things moving constantly. The movie never slows down and frequently goes so hyperactive that you just want to close your eyes for a few minutes and wait for it to pass. Add to this the mediocre use of a pop soundtrack (including Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Coldplay, and Eric Idle) and you might want to cover your ears as well.
© Disney.
Visually the only real complaints are that the artists were frequently so striving for a realistic representation, and thus watching the animals perform anthropomorphic tasks is just as unrealistic as if they had used real-life animals and special effects. The level of naturalism is spotty as well, with the most attention being given to Samson and Ryan while other animals see varying levels of alteration.
My final complaint is one that would sail completely over the head of most children in the audience but bothered me nonetheless. It is the kind of thing that will get me e-mail telling me I need to check my brain at the door and just go along for the ride. That said, my problem is in the attitude of the animals towards their captivity at the zoo. Essentially they seem to find it preferable to freedom. I don’t have a problem with that in “simple” animals, but once the movie has given them anthropomorphic features and human emotional motivations it is just hard to accept. Yes, I know, just go along for the ride.
Ultmiately, it is hard for me to predict whether younger kids will like the movie. There are definitely parts that are right up their maturity level (no gastric function goes unexplored and no head goes unbonked) but there isn’t a lot tying it together and a lot of the jokes are targetted for adults. They won’t be funny to many of the adults but that doesn’t make them any more explicable for the children. I’d recommend you just wait and rent it on DVD if you want to give it a shot. Based on Disney’s failure of heavy promotion for this one they probably won’t mind.
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The Wild is a Walt Disney Pictures release.
Wide theatrical release: April 14.
Directed by Steve ‘Spaz’ Williams
Screenplay by Ed Decter, Mark Gibson, Philip Halprin, John J. Strauss
Starring: Kiefer Sutherland, Greg Cipes, James Belushi, Janeane Garofalo, Eddie Izzard, Richard Kind
Running time: 94 minutes
Rated G
Alex’s rating: 4 out of 10.
