Reviews by Matt

The Wild

Some quick background before I get into this one. It was Easter weekend at Buffalo State College. Almost all of my roommates had left for the weekend and my parents had decided to ditch me for Easter (no hard feelings mom and dad) I called a friend, also named Matt, and he came over. He said he wanted to go see a movie. We decided on The Wild. So Matt, Shaun (the only other one left in the suite) and I went to the Regal and soon discovered we were the oldest people not there supervising children.

The movie had a familiar plot line, father and son that don’t understand each other come to form a strong relationship through some hard ship. The father in this case is Samson, a lion, voiced by Kiefer Southerland, is the star attraction at the Bronx Zoo. He wants his son, Ryan, voiced by Greg Cipes, to have a roar like him and be a strong lion. After the zoo closes, all the animals gather for the turtle curling championship. Samson and his team, Benny the squirrel (voiced by Jim Belushi,) Nigel the koala (voiced by Eddie Izzard,) Bridget the giraffe (voiced by Jeneane Garofalo) and Lenny, the snake (voiced by Richard Kind) take on the penguins in the championship. Ryan and his friends ditch the game and go scare some gazelles, causing a stampede. The gazelles, spooked by the group, run through the game and cost Samson’s team the championship. Shamed and embarrassed, Ryan runs away. Samson and his friends go to find him. They search the streets of New York City and end up following him to the docks where they follow the boat he is on to Africa.

I’m not going to dwell on the performances because there is nothing note worthy.

The movie has it comedic moments and children will find in funnier then adults. There are all the things there that make it a kids movie. What they needed to do was make it more enjoyable for the parents, who go for their children not necessarily because they want to. Unless you happen to be 3 bored college students left alone on Easter weekend.

I have never seen Madagascar, but it did seem a lot like it. This is the one thing that people keep dwelling on. Yes, it is a re-telling of another story, but then again most movies these days are. There are very few movies that come out these days that are turely original.

The one thing that blew me away was the animation. It was the absolute best animation I have ever seen. If it were any better, it would have been real animals. I heard some critics say how the quality on the animation was almost too real and took away from the film. I whole heartedly disagree. It is a tribute to how far we have come with computer animation. The animation alone was worth the 6.50 I shelled out for the movie.

5 out of 10

Rated G