Director Richard Williams came up with the story in 1968 and developed it over the years. His lifework ended in 1995 when Miramax dumped this film on video without giving it a (proper) theatrical release.
There are a lot of things wrong with this film. The story is poor and can't hold the attention very long. It also has to do with the fact that in 1992 Disney came up with Aladdin, which scored big time at the box-office as we all know. The animation (especially the characters) sometimes look like they were drawn like an East-European animated TV-show (for anyone who hasn't seen these shows: they're very poorly drawn). The songs are... easy to forget. I'm not a fan of songs in animated films. Even in Disney films I don't like them, mostly unnecessary and holding up the story.
Now to the good parts of this film: The animation is brilliant at times, as it is poorly at other times. The brilliant stuff is especially the Escher-like surroundings throughout the story. The voice cast is very good. Vincent Price, Matthew Broderick, Jennifer Beals and eric Bogosian, Toni Collette and Jonathan Winters all do well. Finally, the jokes. There were as many good jokes as there were bad ones. Most of the jokes came from The Thief and referred to the 20th century pop-culture and half of them are good, the other half are not. Some jokes are good, but not for this film. Whatever they were thinking, I guess they needed a funny sidekick to make some wisecracks.
In all, an interesting film. The good animation at times can hardly make up for all the flaws throughout the film. Still I wonder why Williams couldn't come up with a better story for this one. He worked long enough on it. There are many good ideas in this film, but they are mostly poorly developed.
Despite its flaws I rate it 7/10.
There are a lot of things wrong with this film. The story is poor and can't hold the attention very long. It also has to do with the fact that in 1992 Disney came up with Aladdin, which scored big time at the box-office as we all know. The animation (especially the characters) sometimes look like they were drawn like an East-European animated TV-show (for anyone who hasn't seen these shows: they're very poorly drawn). The songs are... easy to forget. I'm not a fan of songs in animated films. Even in Disney films I don't like them, mostly unnecessary and holding up the story.
Now to the good parts of this film: The animation is brilliant at times, as it is poorly at other times. The brilliant stuff is especially the Escher-like surroundings throughout the story. The voice cast is very good. Vincent Price, Matthew Broderick, Jennifer Beals and eric Bogosian, Toni Collette and Jonathan Winters all do well. Finally, the jokes. There were as many good jokes as there were bad ones. Most of the jokes came from The Thief and referred to the 20th century pop-culture and half of them are good, the other half are not. Some jokes are good, but not for this film. Whatever they were thinking, I guess they needed a funny sidekick to make some wisecracks.
In all, an interesting film. The good animation at times can hardly make up for all the flaws throughout the film. Still I wonder why Williams couldn't come up with a better story for this one. He worked long enough on it. There are many good ideas in this film, but they are mostly poorly developed.
Despite its flaws I rate it 7/10.