Techtite's DVD Reviews!

"Given that most current animated entertainment is filled with lame-o characters drawn in El Cheapo fashion, the artistry behind Treasure Planet is a welcome surprise."

--from the review

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So, Disney revamped a classic story, eh? What else is new! True, some critics abhor how Disney revamped a classic story. However, such people probably don't like Disney at all, do they...? Consider Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Few people realize that before Walt came on the scene, the dwarves were just seven little people. It was Walt's vision to give them individuality --Sleepy, Happy, Dopey, Grumpy, Sneezy, Bashful, and Doc-- and the result is children's story legend. The truth is, Treasure Island is a wonderful piece of literature in its original form, though what's wrong with retelling it with a modern spin? The idea of placing the story in a high-tech world of cyborgs and aliens and spaceships shaped like galleons was a brilliant one. Those who disagree...well, you must not like Disney, so you're probably not even reading this review...

More on that flawed screenplay... This review barely covers the film's flawed screenplay. There's no denying that this "rewrite" of the original classic pirate story lacks a certain life, or pixie dust magic, or charm. Consider: Lilo & Stitch was a cute, whimsical story, yet with el cheapo, "round-headed muppets" animation. This film has exceptional animation artistry, yet not the writing. I sense that when Disney Studios decided to have two animation departments to double their profit$, they gave one studio the best writers, the other the best animators. If we're to enjoy any more modern classics like The Little Mermaid or Beauty & the Beast, these two top-teams need to be reunited. Make it so.

More kudos for Keane... It is particularly clear why Glen Keane was put in charge to animate Silver. He is the perfect amalgam of everything this film stands for; a seamless blend of old-fashioned pirate lore and modern "cyborg" sci-fi. While his robotic appendages are CGI with his "human" portion drawn by hand, the two worlds are seamlessly integrated into one character. Similar seamless integration is seen throughout the film, particularly with the CGI ship, and its hand-drawn crew. Meanwhile, the hand-drawn animation is best exemplified with Morph, while the CGI tricks peak when the ship must escape an imploding star. Given that most current animated entertainment is filled with lame-o characters drawn in El Cheapo fashion, the artistry behind Treasure Planet is a welcome surprise.

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Treasure Planet

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A Techtite Review

As Always, a review of The Film and The DVD (extras)!

The Film: While there's no way of telling in advance what Disney animated tales will succeed or fail, there's one surefire way of knowing which will be the best animated. Just go to the Internet Movie Database, and check what projects Glen Keane has been assigned to lately. He is the lead animator of such modern classics as The Little Mermaid, Beauty & the Beast, and Tarzan, among others. Just in time for the holidays in 2002, he was assigned as supervising animator for "Silver," a sci-fi version of Long John Silver, in Disney's Treasure Planet. If only the writers for this film were as good as the animators, this would've been a sure winner. Yeah; if only...

Let's begin with the first of many hurdles this film faced; a modernization of a classic piece of literature. That's a daring undertaking, even when it is done right, let alone when the subject matter is a futuristic revamping of a classic Robert Louis Stevenson pirate tale. True, there's still a young hero named Jim Hawkins (voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who lives with his mother in a sort of an interstellar inn. As before, along comes a dying (space) pirate offering a strange globe, with a warning to "beware the cyborg." The globe turns out to be a map to the legendary Treasure Planet. With the help of Dr. Doppler (David Hyde-Pierce), a ship is commissioned to take them to where the map leads.

Personally, I like new concepts of old stories, so that was far from a problem for me. I liked the imaginative sci-fi characters in classic roles, particularly Captain Amelia (Emma Thompson), the alien feline in charge of the ship. I liked the cyborg version of Long John Silver, now just known as "Silver" (Brian Murray). Once just a typical pirate, he's now a "Six Million Doubloon Man," as it were, with cybernetic eye, arm, and leg instead of the typical patch/hook/pegleg of old. Then there's Silver's "parrot," which is now a Flubber-like blob named Morph, who can morph into any object. Lastly, there's the evil pirate, Skroopf (Michael Wincott); half-spider, half-scorpion, and a really cool villain. While not Treasure Island per se, it's an inspired revision, at least in the visuals.

I love this fanciful version of "outer space" as well. Not unlike old-school sci-fi, people travel the galaxy in magnificent, three-mast galleons without rhyme nor reason to explain how this can be so, in the vacuum of space. Consider, however: even Peter Pan went "second star to the right and straight on 'till morning," without explaining how he could fly through outer space. If you do need an explanation to these galleon "spaceships"; maybe oxygen is held on deck with an invisible force field. Better yet; who cares. It's a children's tale; just have fun with it!

As I've been saying for four paragraphs by now, this is a visually stunning film. Too bad the writing was so impaired. Seriously: with the work of Robert Louis Stevenson as its cornerstone, how could such a script have gone so horribly wrong? Yeah; that's probably what Disney thought, too. The end result is a batch of shoddy dialog and a mother lode of jokes that miss their mark completely. Ben Gunn, for example, is now a whiney robot named B.E.N. (Martin Short), whose screechy voice takes some getting used to. Likewise for a totally stupid crewmate which speaks in "flatula," i.e., flatulence.  Sure, you can have fun with the classic Treasure Island novel by adding a space motif to the tale; but adding an alien who only speaks in flatulence is going too far. 

There's also the lack of musical numbers to consider. Yes, this is another modern Disney tale woven from the cloth of those against such numbers, and again, the film is far less entertaining, because of this choice. There was no such musical numbers in Atlantis, merely a few Elvis remixes in Lilo & Stitch, and in this film, a single song, played during a flashback sequence about the father Jim barely knew. None of these three films did as well as they could have. This should tell you something. Namely: bring back musicals, Disney! People want them!

However, any animated Disney spectacle is worth a look (or in this case, a rental), if just for the visuals. If Michael Eisner was to come up to me and say this was meant to replace Treasure Island, I'd feel way different. Clearly, this is not the intention. The animators were only having fun with the concept of a high-tech pirate story. Viewers should have fun as well.

---Techtite

The DVD: Once again, far more respect is given to the latest Disney animated film on DVD, than it would seem to deserve. If the folks behind marketing these DVDs were put in charge of the films, maybe they'd be Oscar-winning smash hits. However, I digress; the point is, even with a single DVD to work with, the list of extras go on and on.

Take the "visual commentary," for example. Ever since otherwise obscure DVDs like The Goonies upped their value with "video commentary" interspersed with the audio commentary, many DVDs have followed suit...and been far more entertaining because of it. In this case, audio commentary plays as usual, though when at a scene with an amusing anecdote, the film cuts to a video clip, of the animators, cast and crew's work on that particular scene. What's even better about this is; no part of the film is "lost" as these videos are played. You jump back into the film right where the movie left off.

What's nice about the visual commentary is that the deleted scenes are re-inserted into the film, right where they were intended. However, if you wish to see the deleted scenes separately, you can. There are three such scenes, starting with an alternate prologue, where the opening is not of a young Jim Hawkins, though rather an adult Jim narrating about his experiences with pirates as a boy. The second deletion is also from the start of the film, when a young alien kid is interested in Jim's flying whatever-it-is, only to quickly lose interest again when the kid's own father arrives to help him with his scooter. This scene was supposed to further showcase Jim's laments about his lack of a decent father figure, which in my opinion would've been a good factor to enhance making this deletion a mistake, if you ask me. The final deletion was of an alternate ending, where Jim Hawkins rebuilds the Benbow which, it was appear, he will now be the captain of. Oddly, these aren't the only deleted scenes offered, nor the best, though the fourth (best) deleted scene they make you work a little harder for...

The next big menu option is titled "Intergalactic Space Adventures," with mostly stuff for the kids. Parents and kids alike will be most amused at the Tour of the RLS Legacy, which offers a treasure hunt through the CGI ship (sort of like a poor man's MYST) to find all 8 pieces of the map globe. Find them all, and you're treated to an additional deleted scene, where David Hyde Pierce offers what could have been the one genuine laugh of the film. In addition, the Space Adventures menu offers a narrated slide-show about pirates, a nice Treasure-Planet savvy retrospective of Disney animation hosted by Roy Disney himself, and a music video of the film's sole song, "I'm Still Here," performed by The Goo Goo Dolls' John Rzeznik.

Top it all off with a categorized Behind the Scenes documentary (that is, you can jump to whatever subject matter you're interested in), and you have a really nicely made DVD. Granted, some may say that the film itself wasn't even worth such attention to the DVD, though there's no denying the animation department deserves its share of kudos, and this disc compliments their work excellently. Again: if only the script itself was as good as the animation. Sadly, that wouldn't be the case.

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