Movie Review - Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (2010)

Featuring the voices of Jim Sturgess, Helen Mirren, Sam Neill, Geoffrey Rush, Hugo Weaving, and Anthony LaPaglia

Directed by Zack Snyder

An ungainly title leads to a rather ungainly movie in The Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole.  While the film looks quite lush and is beautifully animated, I was insanely bored while watching it.

First, the story seems oddly simple and convoluted at the same time.  The basis of the tale is one parliament of good owls fighting against one parliament of bad owls. [Yes, a group of owls is called a "parliament."]  However, things get much more complicated.  Soren and his brother Kludd are two owls learning how to fly.  One evening, they're essentially kidnapped by a group headed by Metalbeak who desires to create a race of "Pure Ones" by eradicating all owls that would not fit into this category -- very WWII Germany.  While Soren manages to escape, Kludd immediately begins to side with Metalbeak's gang, setting up the brother against brother storyline that's only one part of this mishmash of tales.  Once Soren flees, he meets up with some other owls who play no significant role except to be either helpful or careless depending on what the story calls for at that time.  Together, this group of owls travels to the land of Ga'Hoole where the good owls live -- the ones who will do whatever it takes to rid the world of Metalbeak and his followers.

Egads...way too much story there.  Still, despite the abundance of plot, the movie goes nowhere.  It's an oddly simple "journey tale" where the good guy meets other good guys along the way who help him defeat the bad guy.  

Adding to the ennui are characters that, while well animated, have no significant individual development.  There are scads of owls that are introduced that seriously serve no purpose whatsoever.  And when the owls themselves all look alike, adding more to the mix doesn't help matters.  

Additionally, and I'm not trying to sound overly nationalistic here, but the Australian and British accents had a way of lulling me into a sense of sleep.  I understand that owls themselves are rather regal, stoic creatures and the foreign accents may have fit the bill, but they also added an aire of pretentiousness that this movie didn't need in the slightest.

All my qualms are rather unfortunate because the film looks quite lovely.  The animation is great and, being somewhat of an animation geek, I was quite impressed with the mouth movements and facial expressions of the characters.  There was a very natural feel to the whole proceeding, so it's a real shame that the story falls tremendously flat.

The RyMickey Rating:  D+