Tooning out

Technology shines, imagination falters

by Peter Keough

FANTASIA 2000, Written and directed by Pixote Hunt, Hendel Butoy, Eric Goldberg, James Algar, Francis Glebas, Gaëtan Brizzi, and Paul Brizzi. With Steve Martin, Bette Midler, James Levine, Itzhak Perlman, James Earl Jones, Angela Lansbury, Quincy Jones, and Penn & Teller. A Walt Disney Pictures release. At the Nickelodeon, the Kendall Square, and the West Newton and in the suburbs.

TITAN A.E., Directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman. Written by Ben Edlund, John August, and Joss Whedon. With Matt Damon, Bill Pullman, Drew Barrymore, Nathan Lane, John Leguizamo, and Janeane Garofalo. A Twentieth Century Fox release. At the Copley Place, the Fresh Pond, and the Chestnut Hill and in the suburbs.

Sixty years of technological innovations and countless millions in box-office grosses later, movie animation still hasn't come up with anything as appealing as the best parts of Fantasia, Disney's compilation of classical-music hits. Just take a look at Fantasia 2000, which features seven new segments but also includes Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice from the original. Big mistake: not even the lifelike CGI-morphed whales wallowing and taking flight to Ottorino Respighi's Pines of Rome can compare to Mickey's nightmare of multiplying broomsticks as directed by the late Disney veteran James Algar.

Perhaps over-earnestness is the problem. The animators' sense of play is self-conscious; they seem overcome by the "seriousness' of classical music (though in fact most of Disney's choices, now as then, could be Boston Pops selections) as they demonstrate their cutting-edge technology. Hence director Hendel Butoy's flying-whale interlude, a pointless exercise in anthropomorphic cuteness, Arctic ice and the color blue with nary a pine tree in sight. A more satisfying and whimsical fusion of music and animal imagery is Eric Goldberg's rendition of Camille Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals, which involves, as guest host James Earl Jones (yes, the unfortunate Fantasia tradition of pedantic real-life celebrity introductions continues) explains, a flock of flamingoes and a yo-yo.

Brevity may be the soul of wit in Carnival, but music is more about the development of themes, and most of the segments in Fantasia 2000 are of pop-tune length and limited to a single idea or gag. An exception is Francis Glebas's version of Edward Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance marches; a standard Noah's Ark recital that's a wan echo of the original Fantasia's pegasus-centaur-satyr-and-nymph Pastorale Symphony extravaganza, it nonetheless features lush graphics and a beguiling Daisy Duck (has anyone else noticed her resemblance to Michele Pfeiffer?). Most accomplished of the segments, however, is Gaëtan & Paul Brizzi's rhapsody on Igor Stravinsky's Firebird. With its conflict between a life-restoring nymph and the all-consuming firebird of the title, it matches the music's storm and pathos in its allegory of natural destruction and renewal. This one's the equal of the 1940 film's Night on Bald Mountain.

The motif of survival and extinction in those last two segments seems to be on the mind of a lot of animators lately. Don Bluth & Gary Goldman's Titan A.E. is a futuristic variation on the recent hit Dinosaur and Bluth's own 1988 The Land Before Time. Star Wars, though, is the most blatant influence in this tale of an unformed youth, a cynical veteran, a standoffishly regal beauty, and various comical non-humans on a quest to save mankind from an evil, alien empire.

The Drej are entities of pure energy and bad dialogue who wiped out Earth ("A.E." stands for "After Earth") in the year 3028, but not before an advanced starship called Titan escaped along with a diaspora of human refugees. One of the latter is Cale (a charming but shallow Matt Damon in the Luke Skywalker role), who is now a lowly grease monkey in a space junkyard. An unwilling hero, he's informed by Korso (Bill Pullman, a colorless Han Solo with shades of Darth Vader) that he alone is the key to finding Titan and unleashing its mysterious power. Rounding out the crew are starship pilot Akima (Drew Barrymore, a tart Princess Leia) and a motley trio of aliens: the reptilian Preed (Nathan Lane), the butch, kangarooish Stith (Janeane Garofalo), and the goggle-eyed Gune (the most amusing of the three, with John Leguizamo reminiscent of the Nowhere Man from Yellow Submarine).

So off they go, battling the Drej, squabbling among themselves, and visiting other planets. Using computer-generated 3-D imagery to create the planets, Titan serves up some awesome visuals; the home of a race of monk-like bats looks like Doré's engravings of Dante's Inferno come to life. Less impressive is an ersatz human colony called New Bangkok, a melting pot of old ship hulls and ethnic stereotypes. It might be too much to ask animators to supplement their new technology with new stories, but maybe they could start by distinguishing genuine archetypes from the same old clichés.