movies: valiant

Well it seems like its all "bird related CGI movies" at present... last week there was Chicken Little, and this week, World War II carrier pigeons in Valiant.

Of the two, I have to say, I enjoyed Valiant a lot more... partly because Valiant actually had a story that had a beginning, middle and end and actually went somewhere, and partly because it was a British production, from Vanguard Animation, and it was just nice to see someone new muscling in on Pixar and Dreamworks.

The story isn't anything brilliantly new... we have a main character who is (insert appropriate difference here), leaves home to (insert plot here) and meets some other oddball friends along the way, until finally his (insert appropriate difference here) means that he (saves the day/gets the girl/insert other appropriate plot ending here)... we've seen it all before, in about a billion different variations, but it's nicely done here.

It's also interesting that this is the second "kids movie" out at the moment that has a backdrop of World War II... The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe being the other one. I'm not especially sure how appropriate an animated "war movie" is for kids... but, hey, I'm not a parent, so what do I care...

As with a lot of these animated movies where there is a lot of well known voice talent, although this one does seem to have more than it's fair share.... I tend to spend the first couple of minutes pulled out of the moment because I recognise the voice before I can just let that go and enjoy the story. In this case, with this all British cast being full of voices I recognised, from Hugh Laurie to Tim Curry and all points in between, it did take me a little while to stop being distracted by working out the voices. Having said that, there were a bunch of the actors I didn't pick up on... most notably Rik Mayall as one of the German falcons, Cufflingk.

One other thing I did notice that I thought was a nice touch... every time you hear the pigeons fly, it had that unmistakable pigeon sound... the cooing noise overlaying the wingflaps, which made them sound very believable. On the downside, the animators seemed to have worked so hard at making the birds (and mice) look "realistic", that the handful of humans you see just look a little too fake, although I couldn't tell you why.

I'll be interested to see what Vanguard do with their next project, Phreex, which is due out in 2007.

yani's rating: 2 wing feathers out of 5