Movie Review - Battle for Terra (2009)

Featuring the voice talents of Evan Rachel Wood, Brian Cox, James Garner, Danny Glover, Amanda Peet, David Cross, Dennis Quaid, and Luke Wilson
Directed and Story by Aristomenis Tsirbas
Written by Evan Spiliotopolous

Well...if this is the start of the summer movie season, it can only go up from here.

Created to be seen in 3D, Battle for Terra was screened (in my case) in regular 35mm format. Most theaters across the country chose to show it in this "regular" way since there was zero buzz on this animated flick (deservedly so).

Pixar (and to a moderately lesser extent, Disney, and, to even lesser an extent, Dreamworks) realize that in order to have a successful animated film, you need to appeal to a broad spectrum of people -- kids, teenagers, their parents, their grandparents. Lesser studios (including the company MeniThings which produced this flick) can't seem to pick up on that...or, if they do, they can't quite grasp what needs to be done in order to achieve broad-spectrum appeal. Battle for Terra has no idea who it wants to appeal to -- the story is much too complicated and boring for kids and ridiculously heavy-handed for grown-ups.

Essentially, Earth has been destroyed in some type of power struggle between humans (we destroyed Venus and Mars, as well, both of which we were inhabiting). Desperate for some place to live, we come across Terra whose inhabitants are sperm-like, completely emotionless creatures (at least I felt no emotion towards them) that float around in their world with little airplanes made of leaves and stuff. These Terra things are "peaceful"...us humans love war. Because we love war so much, we utilize it to take whatever we want...at least the humans in the military do. Who will win in the end? The peaceful people of Terra or the awful, awful humans?

The film is an incredibly thinly veiled attempt at pointing out that war is bad, the military is awful, and peace needs to reign supreme. In an ideal world, the latter would happen, but we don't live that way. Instead, in this movie, it is painfully obvious that the white, Anglo-Saxon male is evil (for, you see, us white men are the military fighters). All we want to do is go kill things. Females and African Americans in this film (who partly make up what is essentially a futuristic Congress) are thoroughly opposed to this. In this Obama Age, I would expect nothing less. The movie was essentially "Down with Republicans! Up with Democrats! Go hug each other and throw away your guns!"

Anyone who knows me knows I fall on the conservative side of most issues, but I'm always willing to listen to jokes and poke fun at the party with which I align myself (I'm no Sean Hannity "Republicans Can Do No Wrong" kind of guy). But this movie was so blatantly in my face about its agenda, it was annoying.

Let alone the awful story, the animation was poorly done, and the voice acting was painfully boring. When the best thing about the movie is trying to figure out whose voice you're hearing, you know you're in trouble. On another note about the voicing...granted, there aren't "huge stars" in this, but that list of actors above is full of highly recognizable names. How the heck did this nobody podunk little animation studio sign up all these big names for this ridiculousness that I watched? Oh...I know...Liberal Hollywood must've fallen head over heels for this one...

The RyMickey Rating: F