Review of Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) by Linttaflamingo — 06 Aug 2018

I think when it comes to these big studio animated movies, even these "bad" or these more hated and mediocre ones are still fine movies as they are. It was the case with Sinbad, Road to El Dorado which I specifically wanted to see because of the metascores, and it is definitely the case with Atlantis too. I thought this was a perfectly enjoyable adventure film that doesn't exactly stand out with its story or characters, but absolutely does with its animation which was at times breathtaking. Especially early on in the movie there was an underwater shot that combined 2D and 3D animation and it was absolutely enchanting to watch. Although there are a few nitpicks, like the character Audrey's lips that at points looked retarded, and also Milo's cat early in the film. That wasn't a cat.

I did enjoy watching many of the characters, but there are way too many of them. There's like one scene of them actually having a conversation and telling some of their backstories, but a lot of it is just each of them telling their story on their turn which wasn't that convincing. And some of them didn't even do that. The main character, Milo, asks about this one character at one point whose name I can't even remember and another character just says "You don't wanna know." Why the f*ck is he in this movie then? He didn't do s*it for the whole film and never even got a backstory.

The story was decently enjoyable to follow. Although a lot of it is just Milo reading and figuring out something or talking with the character Kida, and it felt like the viewer was never really cued in to the thing. I somewhat knew what they were doing but there wasn't enough of visual storytelling so I was mostly just following exposition and the characters being excited about... something. There were points during the second act that were honestly pretty boring because of it.

The movie gets a lot more interesting during the last 20-25 minutes when we get a couple character twists and the villain becomes clear to the characters. I very much enjoyed the last action scene both as a character moment for Milo and the villain and also as a visual spectacle. The score was also pretty good.

In the end Atlantis is a fine movie that's not groundbreaking in any way despite the gorgeous visuals, and I can recommend watching it at least once if you haven't. You most likely have though. Also, the music during the end credits sounded like porn.