Sinbad: Legend Of The Seven Se

That said, the script isn't very thrilling, concerning a voyage to retrieve a valued book and restore Sinbad's credibility, as well as save his friend from execution.

Brad Pitt, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Michelle Pfieffer do as best to be expected with the lines that they must deliver. And poor Dennis Haysbert gets to voice the stereotypical "bulging muscled black" crewman.

When I saw that character, I could only think of how often he appears in film from Michael Clarke Duncan in "Armageddon" to the "doctor" in Disney's animated "Atlantis, the Lost Continent" to Isaac Singleton in last year's hit "Pirates of the Caribbean".

Maybe this is more than a younger audience can detect, but, to an experienced filmgoer like myself, it's getting rather old.


Outta Sight!   July 9, 2004
This is not only one of the best recent animated films I've seen, but is actually an epic piece of cinema. The visuals are stunning, spectacular, highly imaginative, whatever adjectives one can drum up!

It's the singlemost imaginative creative endeavor onscreen that I've seen in the past five years. If you're a fan of THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN or TIME BANDITS, you're going to love this movie. It's in the same spirit, but also employs all the state of the art CGI effects and pixel animation innovations that have brought new standards to the industry.

The story is actually involving, and the voice overs are masterfully done. The animation is full '60s Trip level. Do yourself and your family a favor and make this one a part of your permanent collection! This is truly artful animation of the highest order.

BEK


Visually stunning - a rare treat!   May 11, 2004
I loved this movie. I'm going to go through some of the points raised in other reviews, in the hopes of shedding light on the polarized opinions. First of all, I don't have kids, I just like animated films. There were some weaknesses in this movie - Brad Pitt's voicing was somewhat lackluster, but since he played the character of a rough-and-ready pirate, that lack didn't particularly intrude. Zeta-Jones is a wonderful voice actress - who knew? And Pfieffer as Eris is lush fun.

I read a few complaints from animation geeks who complained about the melding of the two different kinds of animation in this movie. It's true, sometimes I could see the difference between the two, but I didn't have a problem with that. In fact, it gave the film a weird sense of dimension, like watching a three-D movie with glasses on.

The story is solid and emotionally satisfying. There are some adult one-liners that will make you bark with surpised laughter. But I'll tell you what makes the film great - The ART. The thing that sets Sinbad apart from pretty much any animated film I've seen is that these artists imagined things that were visually stunning and original. Watching this movie is like seeing a Cirque d'Soleil show for the first time. Never have I seen animation exploited so beautifully. Dreamworks used it not only to do things that you couldn't ever do in real life, they used it to portray things that most of us couldn't even imagine. And they did it so convincingly that at times I forgot I was watching an animated film and thought, "How did they DO that? Oh, yeah...it isn't real." Combine that with taut, action-based storytelling and you have a film worth buying.