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WRITER: |
Ed Decter (Santa Clause 2, There’s Something About Mary), Mark Gibson (Snow Dogs), Philip Halprin (Snow Dogs), John J. Strauss (Santa Clause 2, There’s Something About Mary) |
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The good news about The Wild is that it only feels like a long, long movie; in actuality, you’re really only wasting about ninety minutes of your life.
If you’ve seen Madagascar , you’ve already seen a better version of this movie. The Wild is an animated movie about animals in the New York zoo that break out and take a boat to Africa and spend some time in the wild. In this movie, a young lion is upset because he can’t roar. He decides the only way he can learn to roar is to escape the zoo and go to the wild. His father (Kiefer Sutherland) and friends follow along so they can protect him from danger and bring him home. They encounter all sorts of wild animals and have to face their fears to survive. Unfortunately, the way this story is told is not entertaining. There are times when the characters could be funny, but the dialogue is just hopelessly boring. Even though the animation makes the characters somewhat fun to watch and of course, the young lion finally learns to roar in the end, the dull story makes this one unbearable.
We definitely liked the movie better when it was called Madagascar . In addition to bad story and disappointing dialogue, Kiefer Sutherland (liked him better as Donald) is miscast as the cub’s father . . . his voice is about as far from nurturing and endearing as you can get. But, despite the film’s many flaws, Jim Belushi’s voice (liked him better as John) served well as the hyperactive sidekick, the animation was state-of-the-art, and the soundtrack featured several good tunes – including a hit from Cold Play (liked them better as U2). Though there are a few loud and violent scenes that the youngest youngsters might find bothersome, your kids might actually enjoy The Wild - simply because most kids aren’t too picky when it comes to the big screen. However, relative to most big budget animated movies, this one falls short.
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