Who’s In It: the voices of Freddie Prinze Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt, Val Kilmer, Chris Kattan, Kelly Ripa, Michael Clarke Duncan, Eric Idle, Malcolm McDowell, Anne Bancroft, Louis Gossett Jr., Burt Reynolds, Sally Kellerman
The Basics: Somewhere in somebody’s miserably animated video game, vaguely amphibious creatures are locked in an endless battle with a warring race of winged creatures. Enter two star-crossed lovers—one frog-like boy and one flying girl—whose innocent affair threatens the plans of an evil ruler in exile. The film itself, meanwhile, is a threat to the goodwill generally extended to animated features because parents will be bored out of their minds and kids won’t understand the complicated plot.
What’s The Deal: When the day comes that they make another Garfield movie—and you know they will—I won’t complain. And the reason I won’t complain is because I will have seen this movie. The characters move like jerky, expressionless robots and the dialogue seems spit out by a machine fed Star Wars and Shakespeare references (magic rocks are this cartoon’s “Force”) to barf back up. As for Romeo and his Juliet, I’d sooner watch the one from a couple years ago with cartoon seals. No, I’m not making that up. It exists.
What It Will Make You Appreciate: Straight-to-DVD sequels to classic Disney features. And speaking of those, Tinkerbell can talk now so just make sure you show your kids Peter Pan first or they’ll be confused by all the mercenary activity their little lives are soaking in.
Hints That A Different Movie Is Trying To Escape From Here: Every once in a while, in the corners of a frame of action, there’ll be these strange little creatures, some dancing, wiggling vegetation-like things, and you can’t help but stare at them. You can feel imagination wanting to rise to the surface and take over in odd moments. But then it disappears, as if someone in charge with the power or the money to get it finished bound this movie up in a straitjacket and wouldn’t let it grow into what it wanted to be.
Unfortunate Last Credit For: Anne Bancroft, whose 2005 death makes this her final film. Yeah, 2005. It took that long for this to get into theaters.