This was one of those "the store is out of Movie X, so I'll pick up this and hope it's not too bad" movies.
I was honestly expecting some "Ferngully"/"Dinotopia - Quest for the Ruby Sunstone" level abomination. The things we go through for our kids, blah blah.
But it wasn't. Mind you, I'm not saying it's great - just better than a title like "The Snurks" would lead you to believe. "Return to Gaya" would have conveyed the quality better, but sounds like a sequel.
The thing I liked best about it was that it did not unswervingly obey genre conventions. The idea of fictional, fantasy characters winding up in the Real World (tm) is by no means new, but it was treated with some intelligence. The Big Dumb Hero who, we discover, KNOWS that he's dumb, and doesn't seem entirely happy about it, the ostensible villain who displays a streak of heroism, the coward who, released from the narrative imperative, proves capable of bravery - and a real villain whose motivation for villainy is - get this - rage over having had his television show canceled in favor of less intellectually demanding fare - all these are surprising details, and display more originality than you'll find in a half-dozen similar movies.
I was honestly expecting some "Ferngully"/"Dinotopia - Quest for the Ruby Sunstone" level abomination. The things we go through for our kids, blah blah.
But it wasn't. Mind you, I'm not saying it's great - just better than a title like "The Snurks" would lead you to believe. "Return to Gaya" would have conveyed the quality better, but sounds like a sequel.
The thing I liked best about it was that it did not unswervingly obey genre conventions. The idea of fictional, fantasy characters winding up in the Real World (tm) is by no means new, but it was treated with some intelligence. The Big Dumb Hero who, we discover, KNOWS that he's dumb, and doesn't seem entirely happy about it, the ostensible villain who displays a streak of heroism, the coward who, released from the narrative imperative, proves capable of bravery - and a real villain whose motivation for villainy is - get this - rage over having had his television show canceled in favor of less intellectually demanding fare - all these are surprising details, and display more originality than you'll find in a half-dozen similar movies.