Ever since Toy Story I've been keeping an eye on computer-animated film. With every new one, the boundaries are pushed further and further. Of course, none of the animation studios hold a candle to what Pixar has achieved on a visual front, but it's fun to see new studios putting out movies I enjoy. A great example to me personally was Weinstein Company's "Hoodwinked". Even though the animation was pretty basic, the story itself was utterly entertaining and the characters were pretty damned original.
Exodus Film Group did an excellent job with their "Igor", and I even liked Columbia Pictures's "Monster House".
Unfortunately, it doesn't always work out that way. C.O.R.E. Feature Animation's "The Wild" is one of those that didn't make it in my book.
The story is a contraction of Madagascar and the Lion King. A young lion cub Ryan (Greg Cipes, mostly a voice actor, did the voice for Beast Boy in Teen Titans amongst other things) doesn't have a proper roar, which makes him the laughing stock for the rest of the N.Y. Zoo, save for his father Samson (Kiefer Sutherland, 24's Jack Bauer) and his father's friends.
Thanks to his father's stories, Ryan believes that he would be able to learn how to roar if he were out in the wild, and after an argument with his father he hides away in a big green container that has been known to take animals to the wild, which of course happens, even though that wasn't the plan.
This results in a wild goose chase in which Samson and his entourage (Consisting of a squirrel, a giraffe, a koala and a snake) try to keep up with Ryan in order to save him from 'the wild' and all it's dangers.
The Wild is a text-book example showing that big names don't make the dialogue any better. Even though the characters are voiced by such names as Jim Belushi, Patrick Warburton (Who, in my opinion, has the best voice ever), Eddie Izzard and even William Shatner, the story itself is shoddy at best. The dialogue is continuously forced and the jokes are so cliché it hurts.
In fact, the only laughs I had were because of the extras that appear sporadically and way too short. There's the Scottish flamingos, New York alligators, an Indian pigeon, and some German beetles, but they all appear for about two minutes, only to be forgotten again. Sure, the dialogue isn't all that in these cases as well, but those characters are a whole lot funnier than the leads, who are stereotypes in every way of the word.
Samson the lion is the overly concerned father who wants nothing more than for his son to become a man and will stop at nothing to protect him. His right hand Benny (Belushi) is the standard self-assured talkin'-big kind of guy. Then there's Nigel the Koala (Izzard) who takes the role of cocky big-shot celebrity who's easily corrupted, we have Bridget the giraffe; the ever so independent woman of the group, and finally there's Larry, the retarded snake (Richard Kind, Spin City's Paul Lassiter), who apparently can't say anything useful unless it's critical to the plot.
There is a bit of light at the end of the tunnel though, saving The Wild from a lower rating, which is the animation itself. The animals actually look pretty good, and as far as animated beasts go, they're pretty convincing. Sure, they sometimes move as if they're running through a tub of invisible jell-o, but the character design is top notch. So there is that.
In the end, if you like to keep an eye on animation like I do, you could take the time to check it out, since it does look decent. And the extras are pretty damned funny. But if you're looking for a nice story about lions, you're better of watching the Lion King.
