The Boxtrolls review

The Boxtrolls (PG, 97 mins)
Directors: Graham Annable, Anthony Stacchi
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Possibly the weakest summer on record for animated movies closes out with this likeable but problematic stop-motion effort that can’t quite make up in charm what it lacks in coherence.

Though an American production, The Boxtrolls is adapted from a British book by Alan Snow called Here Be Monsters, and retains a mostly British voice cast led by Ben Kingsley and Jared Harris. The titular creatures live under the streets of a quaint but rather odd town, coming up from the sewers at night to scavenge.

They’re much feared by the townspeople, to the extent an exterminator is hired to rid them of the problem. What they don’t know is that the Boxtrolls are in fact perfectly friendly, if a little disgusting. What’s more, a young boy lives with them, raised as one of them and named Eggs (because of his box) since he disappeared from the town as a baby.

It’s a bit of a shaky start that fills us in on all this, introducing us to a number of characters defined more by their oddness than anything more tangible. Chief among these is Kingsley as the exterminator, Archibald Snatcher, sounding like Michael Gambon doing an impression of Terry Jones’ Mr Creosote from The Meaning of Life. The result much of the time is as incomprehensible as that suggests.

Elsewhere the voices are just a little too clipped in their Englishness, with Isaac Hempstead Wright from Game of Thrones as Eggs and Elle Fanning as Winnie, the young girl helping him as they take on Snatcher. The best stuff comes from Richard Ayoade and Nick Frost, who are on sparkling form as Snatcher’s accomplices.

It’s Pythonesque in other ways too, with a real Gilliam flavour to its bizarre and grotesque look, which kids generally respond to. It’s also incredibly brown and, for all that it’s delightfully rendered, never exactly nice to look at. The animation is lively though, allowing the film to ooze a playful charm to go with its homemade, hand-cranked vibe.

And things do pick up somewhat when, after years of the Boxtrolls being picked off by Snatcher, Eggs goes to the surface to try to save them. It’s a world where the ruling classes are more concerned with cheese (no, really) than the welfare of the people.

This commentary on inequality is the main thematic thrust and, alongside a strong message of the merits of family, the film’s intentions are certainly good. But there’s an inefficiency to the story that holds it back, Snatcher’s scheme is never fully formed, and the climax is interminable. The characters are never appealing enough, the Boxtrolls are largely anonymous, and the overall feeling is that this is more guts and gruel than heart.

Thanks for nothing, you useless reptiles

How to Revisit Your Dragon

The first time I watched How to Train Your Dragon, on its cinema release in 2010, I found it an adequate, second-tier cartoon adventure with good visuals and voices.

The second time I saw it, a couple of weeks ago, I enjoyed and appreciated it quite a bit more, taking in more of the terrific score and embracing the central relationship between boy and dragon.

There are a couple of reasons I decided now was the time to revisit the film. Partly it’s because it was on the telly, and a lot has to do with the sequel coming out in a few weeks. But mostly it’s because my good friends Steven and Nathanael both adore it, and even though their opinions can occasionally be, shall we say, special, I needed to see what the fuss was about.

The third time I watched it, today, I fell in love with it.

I already knew it was a film about acceptance, but didn’t quite grasp how deeply it ran; between Hiccup and Toothless, obviously, but also Hiccup and the village, humans and dragons and especially between Hiccup and his father. More than that, it’s about learning to accept yourself and be true to who you are.

I knew it looked and sounded fantastic. On top of some of the most exquisite character design, facial expressions and body language you’ll see in an animated film, several jaw-dropping flight and fight sequences and John Powell’s majestic score are the grace notes that take it from great to wondrous.

But the element I really hadn’t appreciated enough was a tight screenplay where every little detail counts. A central section where Hiccup and Toothless bond intercuts with Hiccup learning how to fight dragons, and what I had dismissed as repetition was actually a smart link between the training and their burgeoning alliance. Developing, as friendships are wont to do, from initial reserve into growing trust and love, it’s one of cinema’s greats, up there with Andy and Red, Frodo and Sam, Woody and Buzz.

Time and again I was struck by the combination of the animation, the music, the emotion and the thematic resonance, and several times I had to brush away a manly tear. How to Train Your Dragon is a wonderful film, and Steven and Nat were right about it.

To paraphrase the aforementioned Red from The Greatest Movie Ever Made ™, I hope I'm with them to see the sequel. I hope to see my friends and shake their hands. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.

Mr. Peabody and Sherman review

Mr. Peabody and Sherman (U, 92 mins)
Director: Rob Minkoff
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Animated characters Mr. Peabody and Sherman were part of Rocky and Bullwinkle’s cartoon show in the early 60s.

Mr. Peabody is a super-intelligent dog and Sherman is his seven year old adopted son, and together they go on educational adventures through time using Mr. Peabody’s time machine, the WABAC.

On the one hand it’s surprising that it’s taken 50 years for these characters to come to the big screen. But clearly the makers of Family Guy took from the concept their inspiration for the many time travel adventures Brian and Stewie have, so it’s likely that the ongoing success of that made someone deem it worthwhile to dust down the original property and turn it into a feature length animated movie. They needn’t have bothered.

This is demonstrated in a pointless introductory sequence in which Mr. Peabody and Sherman (voiced by Modern Family’s Ty Burrell and Max Charles) encounter Marie Antoinette and the French Revolution for no discernible story reason whatsoever. It’s the first sign that this is a film less interested in its characters than in being a history lesson, and that’s surely the last thing kids want when they visit the cinema.

Once that’s out of the way the story continues with Sherman starting school, where a bullying problem with a classmate gets out of hand and the question is raised of how a dog can possibly be a fit parent. It’s a fairly flimsy framework on which to hang a film, and after some thoroughly unengaging stuff involving this, the main plot kicks off when Sherman is forced to spend time with the girl who is bullying him.

Showing her the WABAC to prove he’s not a liar, they end up in ancient Egypt, forcing Mr. Peabody to go back and rescue them. The story doesn’t so much flow organically from there as ping randomly from one point in time to another, pushing on to Renaissance Italy and ancient Greece for no reason other than these are historical times, events and characters that people are aware of.

If you're going to dabble in these sorts of shenanigans, at least have the imagination to do something clever or original with it. But this is a story that seems thrown together with the bare minimum of care and attention, that never even attempts to do something out of the ordinary with the time travel element. So haphazard is it, that it could simply be a selection of episodes thrown together, each with a different historical setting, and loosely tied up with a stuck-in-time bow.

The jokes are largely science puns, and whose benefit these are supposed to be for is a mystery. Kids won’t get them (“I don’t get it” being pretty much Sherman’s catchphrase) and adults will groan at how weak they are.

There’s nothing like actual wit and Peabody and Sherman themselves are hardly the most endearing of characters. You’ll get more entertainment with Family Guy and your children will get more education with Horrible Histories.

Sir Billi review

Sir Billi (U, 76 mins)
Director: Sascha Hartmann 
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

What have audiences done to deserve animated movies of the standard of this and Justin and the Knights of Valour in the same week? The first full length computer animation made entirely in Scotland, and with a voice cast lead by Sean Connery, Sir Billi has been in production for several years and finally makes it to a tiny handful of cinemas. What’s surprising is that it will be seeing the inside of a cinema at all, because this is stunningly misguided and woefully executed in every conceivable way. Even leaving aside the ugly, actually rather freaky animation that wouldn’t pass muster on CBeebies, there’s not a moment of storytelling competence, with what plot there is involving Connery’s highland hero Sir Billi trying to rescue Scotland’s last beaver. Characters appear at random to take part in jaw-droppingly daft and arbitrary events, and an embarrassing script consists largely of Bond references and inappropriate innuendo. It would be great if Scotland could produce decent animated movies, but Sir Billi is an insult to animation, and it’s an insult to Scottish film.

The Smurfs 2 review

The Smurfs 2 (U, 105 mins)
Director: Raja Gosnell
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Having hauled in over half a billion dollars worldwide with their first adventure, the return of the tiny blue Smurfs was inevitable. This agreeable sequel finds Smurfette (voiced by Katy Perry) worrying about her place among the Smurfs, since she was a creation of evil wizard Gargamel (Hank Azaria) until Papa Smurf turned her blue and made her one of their own. Gargamel meanwhile, defeated in the first film, is now a famed magician in Paris and has a plan to harness the Smurfs’ essence and take over the world. There’s also Neil Patrick Harris and his family returning from the first film and pitching in to help the Smurfs, though this does mean the film can get rather too bogged down in human subplots that will make tots itchy. But if they liked the first Smurfs movie they’ll like this, and the computer graphics used to realise the Smurfs is tip-top, while Azaria doesn’t short change with a full-blown zany performance.

Despicable Me 2 review

Despicable Me 2 (U, 98 mins)
Directors: Pierre Coffin,Chris Renaud
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Reformed super-villain Gru (Steve Carell) is now a family man in this sequel to an animated comedy that was built almost exclusively around the perceived charms of Gru’s little yellow Minions. This second go-round decides to take their presence up several notches, and if tots find their reaction shots, slapstick and farting funny then so be it. The plot involves Gru getting recruited by the Anti-Villain League, who get him out of retirement to track down a bad guy with a serum that turns people (and Minions, lots and lots of Minions) into monsters. It’s the most perfunctory of storylines, with a subplot that sees Gru’s daughters trying to find him a girlfriend, and grasps for laughs are desperate. There’s lots of physical hijinks and the animation is expertly timed, but there’s no soul, and it quickly becomes evident this is every bit as pointless and forgettable as the first film. It’s candy-bright and Carell gives an energetic and committed vocal performance, but it’s not enough to raise Despicable Me 2 from the ordinary.

Epic review

Epic (U, 102 mins)
Director: Chris Wedge
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

With an output over the last decade or so that includes Robots, Rio and the Ice Age movies, animation studio Blue Sky has a track record that could probably be best described as spotty.

That mediocre run continues with their latest big budget animated adventure, another in which you can see the money up on the screen, but which is tonally all over the place and sorely lacking when it comes to memorable story or characters.

The title would suggest something sweeping and grand, and while that’s what aimed for, it’s really not what we get. Instead we’re served up a rather po-faced mythology about noble forest-dwelling Leaf Men who need their queen to choose her heir, something that can only happen once every hundred years. If she can’t find someone the forest will be desiccated by the baddies, rat-like creatures called Boggans.

The Leaf Men are responsible for the balance of the forest, and this slapping around the head with its eco-message is the first of Epic’s missteps. The battle with the Boggans is represented by fairly impressive if frantic action, mostly consisting of bow-and-arrow fights and chases on the backs of saddled birds, ripped from Avatar but also providing the most enjoyable moments of the movie, impressively choreographed and pleasingly executed.

Meanwhile, in the real world, which is populated by plastic-looking people, late-teen Mary Katherine (Amanda Seyfried) goes to stay her nutty professor father following the death of her mother. She wants a normal dad, one who isn’t obsessed with trying to find the tiny people at the bottom of the garden, but throwing in the dead mother is a desperate grasp at gravitas that never really gives us anything to invest in.

When the queen (voiced by Beyoncé no less) is attacked by the Boggans while MK (as she likes to be called) is passing by, before you can say Honey I Shrunk the Avatars she has been zapped down to the size of the Leaf Men. She comes into possession of the Life of the Forest, a magical pod she’s charged with keeping safe until some gobbledegook about it blooming in the moonlight can come to pass.

Aiding her in this is a pair of comedy molluscs in the shape of Chris O’Dowd and Aziz Ansari, and though some humour is important, does it really need to be provided by a talking slug and snail? Also inhabiting this forest world of good versus evil is a young guy called Nod (Josh Hutcherson), who is yet to earn his stripes among his Leaf Men soldier community. He’s a crashing bore, saddled with that glossy-haired animated hero look that hasn’t changed since Aladdin and was most recently repeated in the equally lacklustre The Croods.

The story never develops to a level beyond your bog-standard eco-toon like FernGully, and last year’s Tinker Bell and the Secret of the Wings covered much the same ground with better results. It’s not as dull or unengaging as some recent efforts, but still pretty flat and thematically there’s more than a hint of The Wizard of Oz in the young woman who is discontent with her own existence.

Look to the source material as blame for that. Epic is based on an illustrated children’s book called The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs by William Joyce, who also wrote the stories on which last year’s Rise of the Guardians was based. It’s a title that, while a clumsy mouthful that couldn’t possibly be used for a movie, at least gives a much clearer picture of what’s at play here.

It’s a fine swarming spectacle bursting with colour, majoring in bucolic grandeur to offset the tedious and goofy world. But though very pretty indeed, green and lush and detailed, all it really achieves is to prove once again that animation needs to be much more than just a series of good looking pictures.

Along with the nice visuals, an accomplished voice cast manages to keep it tolerable. A restrained and solemn Colin Farrell is Ronin, the leader of the Leaf Men, while Christoph Waltz wheels out another of his fast-talking villains.

But if ever a title makes promises the film can’t cash, this is it. Pedestrian, ordinary, derivative and bland are all words that could be used to describe Epic, but if there’s one thing it most assuredly isn’t, it’s epic.

The Croods review

The Croods (PG, 99 mins)
Directors: Kirk DeMicco,Chris Sanders
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Far from skulking in Pixar’s shadow like they did for most of the Noughties, Dreamworks Animation has upped their game considerably in recent years thanks to the likes of Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon.

But while Pixar have had to face one or two recent blips, Dreamworks have also taken a backwards step with their latest, The Croods, as flat and unengaging an animated comedy as a major production company has made in years.

The Croods of the title are a cave-dwelling prehistoric family in a harsh and unforgiving world, where every day is a struggle to eat and not be eaten. Dad Grug (Nicolas Cage) hammers home the message of danger and how no good can come of anything new, and is obsessed with keeping them all safe in their cave.

Daughter Eep (Emma Stone) is going through a teen rebel stage and longs for some fun, which happens along when she meets Guy (Ryan Reynolds), who claims the world is ending and that they need to get to high ground.

Outwith the setup of a story that’s both strained and lacking in any real hook, many elements seem added at random. When their cave is destroyed the Croods end up in a strange and colourful new world that owes a lot to Avatar, but makes little sense in most other regards.

The voices are lively, which is something, but most decent animations should have the voices as icing rather than the best thing about it. And the animation is stunning, no two ways about it. But there’s never any sense of wonder, despite all the colour and scale and pyrotechnics.

And the largely charmless story is a road to nowhere. Thematically it’s thin, its main concern about parents letting go and kids growing up anything but new. Chaotic, and lacking any immediate appeal from either characters or plot, The Croods is little more than an awful lot of running and bouncing and falling for no real reward.

Brave review

Brave (PG, 100 mins)
Director: Mark Andrews
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Pixar’s 13th feature, a magical Scotland-set adventure that represents their first fairytale, is a triumphant return to form for the animation studio following the uncharacteristically poor Cars 2.

Though it’s the first Pixar film with a female lead, Brave develops along the lines that many a Disney princess fable does, where an independently minded character who yearns for something more in their life gets more than they bargained for in a be-careful-what-you-wish-for sort of way.

That lead is Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald), a flame-haired princess who is a bit fed up with the expectations placed upon her by her parents; the king (Billy Connolly), who years before lost his leg to a savage bear that still supposedly roams the land, and queen (Emma Thompson), who wants Merida to comport herself in a more princess-ly way.

She’d much rather be a warrior but instead finds herself betrothed, with a clan gathering organised to find her a suitable husband, the clan chiefs presenting their buffoons of sons to win Merida’s hand, much to her annoyance.

Distancing herself from the goings-on, Merida stumbles across a witch from whom she gets a potion designed to change her fate. This leads to a major plot point around the halfway mark that is better left unspoiled, but let’s just say that fates are indeed changed.

What follows is a film about communication between parents and children, and listening to each other’s point of view, even as it deepens into a stirring mythology. Visually it’s an indisputable masterpiece, with every facial nuance and blade of grass and patch of heather alive with the shimmer that $200m worth of computer animation provides. A glorious Patrick Doyle score and a couple of splendid songs are just gravy.

The decision to use predominantly Scottish actors for the voices is an endlessly sensible one, and we can only imagine the kind of horrors the original choice for Merida, Reece Witherspoon, may have inflicted on our ears. Luckily we don’t have to, since the perfectly cast Macdonald combines spirit and warmth to create one of Pixar’s most memorable human characters.

Connolly is a delight, as are the trio of clan chiefs, voiced by Robbie Coltrane, Craig Ferguson and the especially good Kevin McKidd, who also gets to add his Doric tones to his chieftan’s near unintelligible son. Even the non-Scots like Thompson and Julie Walters as the witch with a big part to play in the plot get it just right.

In particular, it’s the sense of Scottish-ness that Pixar absolutely nails, from the visual majesty to the smallest vocal intonations. You couldn’t call it realistic exactly, since it’s a medieval fantasy, but still it’s one of the most authentic Hollywood portrayals of Scotland you’re likely to see, deftly sidestepping the pitfalls of going all Brigadoon on us.

If a criticism is to be levelled, it’s that perhaps it’s a bit thin and one-note when it comes to the plot, that perhaps it resolves a bit easily, neglecting the depth of theme and character that graces the very best of Pixar.

But the flipside of that is that it chugs along at a lick, with little to no flab and a single mindedness of purpose that suitably reflects Merida’s character, with Pixar once again showing that when it comes to animation, even though they're not perfect, they're still the best in the business.

Ice Age 4 - Continental Drift review

Ice Age 4 - Continental Drift (PG, 92 mins)
Directors: Steve Martino, Mike Thurmeier
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Massive returns at the international box office are the driving force behind this agreeable but completely unnecessary fourth trip with animated prehistoric pals Manny the mammoth (Ray Romano), sabre tooth tiger Diego (Denis Leary) and dopey sloth Sid (John Leguizamo). In a terrific setup, nut fanatic Scrat, who remains the undoubted star of the show, unwittingly causes the break-up of Pangea, leaving Manny’s wife and daughter, with whom he’s been squabbling, trapped on the landmass and Manny and pals stranded on an iceberg. The addition of a gang of pirates doesn’t add much except to give the plot some semblance of danger, but the iciness of the world is gleefully utilised, with most of the action involving slipping around like it’s a giant water park. The voice work is fine, a couple of jokes hit the spot and everyone learns the lessons they need to learn, about friendship and family and letting go. It's not the freshest animated franchise in the world, but its heart is in the right place and there's definitely a whole lot worse out there. That means you, The Lorax.

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists review

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists (U, 88 mins)
Director: Peter Lord
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Aardman Animation has been a great British success story for over two decades, hoovering up Oscars left right and centre in the 90s with their brilliant Wallace & Gromit shorts.

Their feature output has been a bit of a mixed bag though, beginning with the successful Chicken Run and peaking with another Oscar win for Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. But they hit something of a bump with their move to computer generated animation with the lacklustre Flushed Away and last year’s decent but unmemorable Arthur Christmas.

The clumsily titled The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists marks a return to the charming plasticine adventures that made Aardman’s reputation, and while it’s not up there with the best of their stuff, it’s still a very pleasant diversion in the run up to the Easter holidays.

Hugh Grant, who rarely appears on screen these days, provides a voice for an animated film for the first time, and does a terrific job, playing a pirate captain who goes by the name of, erm, Pirate Captain. He yearns to be Pirate of the Year, but must always watch in disappointment as other more illustrious pirates walk off with the title.

He just doesn’t have what it takes in terms of dastardliness, and is really rather hopeless when it actually comes to plundering and pirating. But when he and his shipmates run into a young scientist named Charles Darwin, an opportunity comes their way when Darwin recognises that the ship’s parrot is in fact a dodo, long thought extinct.

It could be the scientific discovery of the age, and might net Pirate Captain the gold and booty he needs to win the pirate trophy. But to get the scientific acclaim means a trip to London, where Queen Victoria has a real beef against pirates.

Though there’s plenty scope to make fun of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, the urge to go all oo-arr is very much resisted here. Instead it’s all very British, typified by Grant’s unexpected yet ingenious casting, and he delivers his most engaged and committed performance in years.

It’s packed with plenty of throwaway gags and visual jokes, though only once or twice does it manage to replicate the sort of manic action that defined Wallace & Gromit. Anachronisms and modern references abound, and there’s a surprisingly large dash of innuendo, but it provides warm chuckles rather than big laughs, and the whole is just not quite at a level necessary to turn it into something of lasting value.

It’s lifted a notch by a tremendous voice cast which, as well as Grant, also include nice turns from Martin Freeman, David Tennant as Darwin and Imelda Staunton as a very un-Queen like Queen Victoria. Ashley Jensen stole the show as an elf in Arthur Christmas, and she gets a number of good moments here as the Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate.

The result is hardly vintage Aardman then but, much like Arthur Christmas, this is endearing and amusing enough to get the job done.

Arthur Christmas review

Arthur Christmas (U, 97 mins)
Director: Sarah Smith
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Arthur Christmas (voiced by James McAvoy) lives at the North Pole with his family, and mostly spends his time reading letters that have been sent to Santa. His dad Malcolm (Jim Broadbent) is the current Father Christmas, but big brother Steve (Hugh Laurie) yearns to take over, and orchestrates the present delivery like a military operation, shown in an ingenious sequence that reveals how the elves manage to deliver to every child in the world in a single night. But when one child is missed out and Steve doesn’t seem to care, it’s up to Arthur and his Grandsanta (Bill Nighy) to get that little girl her bike no matter what. This breezy computer animation from Aardman can only dip after such a fantastic start, and for a while the plot starts to wander as much as Arthur does, as his world tour to deliver the errant present takes him from Mexico to Africa, though with enough wit and imagination to make the journey a pleasant one, and only a bit of steam lost. It remains engaging throughout thanks to cheery voices, the show stolen by Ashley Jensen as Bryony, an elf with very impressive present-wrapping skills, and it’s certainly heartwarming enough to get by.

The Adventures of Tintin review

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (PG, 107 mins)
Director: Steven Spielberg
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Steven Spielberg’s first film since the much lamented Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull arrives as a huge, multi-million dollar gamble for many reasons.

First off, it’s an adaptation of what is a fairly niche property, Hergé’s 80 year old Belgian comic book. And, unknown for a film of this scale from the world’s most famous and successful filmmaker, it’s out in Europe now but won’t hit cinemas in the States until Christmas, the reason given that its Euro-ancestry makes it only right that it should play here first.

More to the point, the financiers will be praying it already has some hundreds of millions in the bank from its worldwide run before it arrives Stateside. That’s because the other massive gamble is that this is a motion capture animation, much like that notorious disaster from earlier this year, Mars Needs Moms, which was one of, if not the, biggest flops in box office history.

But it will sell on Spielberg’s name, and hopefully it will sell based on the fact that it’s really very good indeed, a rollicking adventure that contains several moments of unrivalled cinematic exhilaration from a director whom we’d thought had forgotten how to have fun.

We meet our hero, young reporter Tintin (voiced and performance captured by Jamie Bell) as he buys a model ship in a market, one which a lot of people seem keen to get their hands on, including the devious Sakharine (Daniel Craig).

The ship is the Unicorn, a replica of a real boat lost since the 17th century, and thought to have gone down with its secret treasure. Kidnapped by Sakharine, Tintin meets Captain Haddock, whose ancestor was captain of the Unicorn, and is played as a drunken Scotsman with a mostly agreeable but occasionally fishy accent by Andy Serkis.

It’s a blend of intrigue and action that spends much of the first half introducing plenty of engaging supporting characters, like Tintin’s dog Snowy, who frequently appears to be smarter than he is, and the useless detectives Thomson and Thompson (Nick Frost and Simon Pegg).

But it hits its stride during a marvellously inventive biplane sequence which takes Tintin and Haddock to Africa and the meat of the adventure, and an equally impressive flashback featuring the original Unicorn captain and his pirate encounter.

It’s at this point the action barely pauses for breath and when it most begins to resemble an Indy flick. The centrepiece, a chase through a Moroccan town, is truly breathtaking, although this does make it seem like the film peaks early.

A pertinent question might have been why it’s been filmed as an animation at all, and not simply live action. The answer to that lies in an astonishingly detailed level of richness and opulence in the design that would have been hard to achieve on any budget, and action sequences so fluid and imaginative that they would have been impossible as live action without the need for so much CGI that it would look like a cartoon anyway.

The issue of dead eyes and waxy features that has blighted so many mo-cap efforts also seems to have been addressed, with faces full of life and expression, although every once in a while the characters do move like they're on strings.

But that’s a tiny flaw, and let’s hope the gamble pays off, so that in a couple of years from now we’ll be enjoying the proposed Peter Jackson sequel, followed by many more Tintin adventures to come.

Winnie the Pooh review

Winnie the Pooh (U/G, 73 mins)
Directors: Stephen Anderson, Don Hall
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Kids unimpressed with the shiny emptiness of most of today’s animated output should find plenty to please them with this slender but charming big screen return of A.A. Milne’s bear of little brain. Mind you, his animal pals aren’t exactly geniuses in comparison, with know-it-all Owl’s misinterpreting of a note from Christopher Robin forming the bulk of their lightweight adventures that don’t deviate too radically from Milne’s stories - Eeyore’s missing tail being a key subplot, with the morose donkey as usual stealing the show. Regular pit-stops for a mixed bag of songs add little, but the hand drawn animation recreates Hundred Acre Wood in a way that would do E.H. Shepard proud, though the debate over the Disneyfication of Pooh will rumble on and you may want to disregard the fact that he’s voiced like Truman Capote. And though he spends the bulk of the movie thinking about his insatiable tummy and chasing the hunny dragon like some ursine crack-head, he ultimately learns that friendship comes first. He’s that sort of bear.

Rio review

Rio (U, 96 mins)
Director: Carlos Saldanha

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Parrot Blu (voiced by Jesse Eisenberg) is taken from his home in the rainforest and ends up by accident in snowy Minnesota where he’s raised domesticated and flightless. But he’s the last blue macaw of his type, and so an ornithologist takes him to Brazil to mate with the last remaining female, Jewel (Anne Hathaway), only for the pair to be kidnapped by poachers. The only reason Rio would appear to exist (aside from the obvious financial incentives) is to showcase its bright and colourful, samba-infused exoticism. Did its makers just see Up and think South America looked like a good place to stage a cartoon? Because underneath its surface polish, it’s thematically empty, with nothing to distinguish it from every other run-of-the-mill animated effort that’s more about noise and spectacle than a story worth telling. The search round Rio de Janeiro to get Blu and Jewel back comes complete with stale one-liners and frantic action, but is light on laughs and excitement. Voicing Blu, Eisenberg is good value, nicely parlaying his Zombieland nebbishness, and Jemaine Clement shines as the cockatoo baddie, even getting to do a Conchords-style number, sadly the only highlight among a small collection of forgettable and superfluous songs.

Hop review

Hop (U, 95 mins)
Director: Tim Hill
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Blending live action with computer generated wildlife, this clunky but undeniably harmless family comedy sees the Easter Bunny (voiced by Hugh Laurie) running a Willy Wonka-style operation on Easter Island (naturally) where they make chocolate and candy for the whole world. His son E.B. (Russell Brand) is due to take over the family business, but wants to be a musician instead and so runs away to the US where he meets James Marsden’s unemployed loser, with underwritten adventure ensuing. Though loosely plotted to the extent that it’s coming apart at the seams (which extends to the visible join in the ropey special effects), Hop is somehow surprisingly agreeable, occasionally even amusing, mainly thanks to the vocal affability of Brand. You couldn't quite make the leap and call the film good or even memorable, but when you consider how skull-piercing the likes of Alvin and his chipmunk pals were, Brand's ability to render E.B. palatable is nothing short of a miracle.

A Turtle’s Tale: Sammy’s Adventures review

A Turtle’s Tale: Sammy’s Adventures (U, 85 mins)
Director: Ben Stassen
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Made in Belgium, this third rate Finding Nemo knock-off comes to our shores re-dubbed with atrocious British voices to complement the tatty animation. Calling it an adventure is a tad optimistic, as young turtle Sammy tries to make his way in the big bad world, floating around the Pacific in search of anything resembling a story. Labouring under the sorely mistaken belief that simply anthropomorphising any old critter is a solid foundation for an animated film, this is low on fun and thrills and high on dodgy internal logic, while the sledgehammer eco-message and insipid songs are unlikely to impress kids weaned on more sophisticated fare.

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole review

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole (PG, 96 mins)
Director: Zack Snyder

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Idiotic title notwithstanding, this is a handsome animation that aims for richness and depth rather than light family fun. Taking place in an owl world, it’s a visually and thematically dark adventure that follows two impetuous brothers who are taken prisoner by evil owls intent on domination and who must find the legendary Guardians of Ga’Hoole if they're to save the day. There may never have been a more visually ravishing animated movie, but it often seems to be enraptured by its own beauty and story-wise it’s only so-so. Many of the individual flying sequences are staggering but that’s really the only time it comes to life, though it builds well to an all out war between blade-wielding owls, with director Zack Snyder skilfully bringing the same sort of slo-mo carnage that he did to his live action movies, Watchmen and 300.

Alpha and Omega review

Alpha and Omega (U, 88 mins)
Directors: Anthony Bell, Ben Gluck

★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Kiddie-friendly animated antics are the order of the day here, with wolf pals Kate and Humphrey unable to mix since she is an Alpha hunter and he is a lowly Omega. With their hunting sources getting scarce, Kate’s father enters her into an arranged marriage with an Alpha from a rival pack to prevent war, but this is jeopardised when Kate and Humphrey are caught by humans and taken from the wilds of Canada to a national park in the US. Little of note or wit happens in this deeply unappealing adventure that’s lacklustre in every department. From a perfunctory script that offers no fun and not very appealing characters to distinctly unremarkable animation, this is a near total bust.

The Illusionist review

The Illusionist (PG, 80 mins)
Director: Sylvain Chomet

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Based on an unproduced script by the inexplicably popular French comedian Jacques Tati, this near-silent animation is set in a lovingly rendered Edinburgh in the 1950s. A struggling magician leaves Paris and heads to Britain looking for work, steadily making his way north until he ends up in a village in the Highlands. There he befriends a young girl and they make their way to Edinburgh where he tries to find work while she attempts to put him in the poor house with her constant demands and expensive tastes in shoes and clothes. Looking like a forlorn watercolour, there’s no doubt that Edinburgh has probably never looked lovelier on film. But there’s a good deal more entertainment value to be had trying to recognise city landmarks than there is in the wafer thin story itself. It’s intended as paean to the dying of music hall tradition and a gentler way of life, but there’s a very good reason why such variety acts are a thing of the past. It’s little more than an extended sketch, with side characters and subplots that threaten to be interesting but are then discarded as quickly as they're introduced, while the girl’s indeterminate age makes the nature of their relationship questionable. It could have made for a charming short but as a feature, it’s stretched almost beyond endurance.