Has anybody seen The Wild yet?

[Karushifa]

Meet the Robinsons is up against Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Enchanted is up against another Dreamworks movie - I think it's called Bee Movie or something like that.

I hope that the upcoming "bee movie" isn't yet ANOTHER movie about spelling bees...I think we have enough of those by now to last a while

Is the Ninja Turtles movie an animated one? Or is it another one of those wonderful rubber-suit epics from the late '80s/early '90s Classic Turtles Years? Those were hilarious in many unintended ways

[kbehm29]

TMNT is going to be all CGI.

And 'Bee Movie' is actually a Dreamworks animated movie about bumblebees. According to IMDB:

Barry B. Benson (Seinfeld), a bee who has just graduated from college, is disillusioned at his lone career choice: making honey. On a special trip outside the hive, Barry's life is saved by Vanessa (Zellweger), a florist in New York City. As their relationship blossoms, he discovers humans actually eat honey, and subsequently decides to sue us.

It's supposed to be voiced by Jerry Seinfeld and Renee Zellweger.

[humphreybear]

about madascar and the wild, just imho.

I think they are both sort of "based off" the old animated short "the social lion."

I think that when kratzenburg left Disney and became the "K" in Dreamworks SKG, he took some ideas from the story boards with him.

I mean, Ants and A Bug's Life. Two cgi films loosely based on the ant and the grasshopper, where the dorky but brave ant wins the lovely aunt princess.

The idea for "kingdom of the sun" - a traveling buddy film set in historical south america. And we see both "Emporer's New Groove" and "Road to El Dorado." Both traveling buddy films.

The idea of "sweating bullets." Years later we see both "Spirit, staillion of the cimmeron" and "Home on the Range."

Are there others, I don't know. "The fish movie" = Nemo and Shark Tale were sort of in the same time ball park. Lemurs were big in both Dinosaur and Madagascar. But that is probably reaching too far. And basically the shrek films are kratzenburg taking it on disney.

But, again, both the wild and madagascar seem to owe some due to the social lion.

[kbehm29]

I've just spent considerable time searching for and reading user reviews about The Wild on the internet.

An overwhelming percentage of people say that they really enjoyed this movie, that the animation is incredible, and they want to see it again. It really is a shame that this movie isn't getting the box office recognition it deserves. I hope some of you reading this who have doubts about going to the theater to see this movie change your mind and give it a chance.

[Karushifa]

And 'Bee Movie' is actually a Dreamworks animated movie about bumblebees. According to IMDB:

Barry B. Benson (Seinfeld), a bee who has just graduated from college, is disillusioned at his lone career choice: making honey. On a special trip outside the hive, Barry's life is saved by Vanessa (Zellweger), a florist in New York City. As their relationship blossoms, he discovers humans actually eat honey, and subsequently decides to sue us.

It's supposed to be voiced by Jerry Seinfeld and Renee Zellweger.

Hmmm...that sounds like a neat concept, albeit in the same vein as Antz: lead character is disillusioned with hive life, and subsequently has adventures on the outside. AND it takes place in New York! Of course! How much does anyone want to bet that Barry goes to see a shrink/counselor at some point in the movie?

The interaction with humans angle is interesting, though.

[gardener14]

I saw The Wild this weekend, and although it was good, it was far from great. I am bewildered by all the people saying that it was better than Chicken Little. I loved Chicken Little, and what I liked best was that it had a character I could feel for, root for, and get behind. That's what The Wild lacked in my opinion. A strong character to whom I could relate and for whom I wanted to realize a change. The father/son aspect of The Wild was not fully explored, and I wanted to know them better and be able to feel more for them. Chicken Little did a much better job of making me empathize with the relationship issues between father and son.

A lesser problem with The Wild was the pacing of the film. Parts were emotionally moving like when Ryan was being taken away from the zoo, parts were funny and adventurous, and there was an attempt to incorporate appropriate popular music, but the pacing felt off. It seemed to try to include all the good aspects of an animated movie, but the quantities and placement of those aspects were not quite right. At times the movie tried too hard to do too much at once, and it became a stressful experience to watch. At other times it was just right and I thought "why can't the whole movie be like this?" Chicken Little packed in a lot of action, comedy, and music as well, but the placement was much more even. Finding Nemo did an even better job at evenly pacing these events.

One more 'nit pick' about The Wild was that the comedy was mostly build on one-liners. I had wished it contained more scenes and characters that were funny in a situational way like in Finding Nemo rather than rely one-liners.

I did especially liked how the scenes that took place in flashback or in someone's imagination used a different look and feel to the animation. The opening scene was especially well presented with a look and feel that reminded me of classic Disney animation of the 40's-60's when unique artistic styles were used in such films as The Three Caballeros, Paul Bunyan, and Toot, Whistle, Plunk, and Boom.

The quality of the animation was technically superb and at times spectacular...it was the way the story unfolded that needed tweaking to make it a great film. For what it was, I enjoyed it while wishing some of the kinks could have been worked out better.

[maxeythecat]

Sorry to say I was sorely disappointed. Despite occasional flurries of amusement, I did'nt find it all that funny and the overall character design was mediocre at best.

[RyougaLolakie]

about madascar and the wild, just imho.

I think they are both sort of "based off" the old animated short "the social lion."

That's was I was thinking!

The Social Lion short was set place in New York, but the plot begins to set place in Africa and how the hunters caught the lion, then sent him to New York. Suddenly, the lion wanders off in the streets. At the end, the lion founds a new home, a Central Park Zoo.

On the other hand, both Madagascar and The Wild reflexes to the animated short, but the plot starts off from the end to the beginning. Not only that the lion is the only character, but it has other animals to join him!

Sadly, I haven't seen "The Wild" but I'm planning to see it when I get the chance.

[kbehm29]

Ebert and Roeper both ranked The Wild as the same as (or better than in Ebert's case) Ice Age: The Meltdown. Both praised the movie for the great animation. Overall - a fairly decent review (for once).

http://tvplex.go.com/buenavista/ebertan ... P=AFC-ERTV

[slyslayer3000]

I haven't seen The Wild yet, but I have no plans of watching it.

[Princessmarlo]

My husband and I saw it opening weekend. I thought it was pretty good, quite a few good laughs, he didn't like it that much. I think I was expecting more humor but hey what can you do.... I thought the animation was the best, they did a greaaaatttt job! I also think that a lot of people think the The Wild and Madagascar are similar and they are in the fact that they go in search for someone and they are all animals other then that I don't think they have much in common, I also think that Disney's graphics were a lot better then dreamworks!

[humphreybear]

I have kind of mixed emotions about it. This may be on the spoiler side, so I'll give that warning here.

At first, in the opening couple of minutes, I had this feeling that this was going to be a good movie with a lot of heart. I thought, the wild is going to be to madagascar what a bug's life was to antz. More of a disney movie, with more soul and heart to it. I thought that it was really going to benefit from the father-son connection. And it tried, but I don't really think that it delievered on that promise. It was a little touching to see the Samson's memories of his own experience and his own father, and in that way there was a sweetness to it. The character took some depth, and the strain between the Samson and Ryan was more clear, and Samson's need to be a braggart. So there was a bit of the exploration of the father-son relationship that gave the movie some depth.

And there were some funny parts. I think I liked the Janeane Garofalo (sic) giraffe better than the David Schwimmer (Sic) giraffe. Some of the lines were good. I liked the music OK. I thought the koala was pretty funny.

But even though the first act - to me - had a lot of promise, the third act was just, well, I thought it had problems. The whole wildebeast thing was just bizarre, and on the scary side for the youngest children in the theater. I wish they could have came up with a different plot device there. I thought that really took away from this movie.

In all, it was an OK little movie. I thought the animation was pretty good, and I preferred it over the more cartoony style of madagascar. I sort of feel like the movie didn't deliver where it could have - the father-son story - it wasn't in the ball park of finding nemo, and in many ways it had the raw material there to have been a deeper and better exploration of that relationship than nemo was. But it didn't pan out in the third act (To me at least). I liked the music of the wildebeasts, but the whole wildebeast thing was just too, well, over the top I guess. I understand how it was supposed to relate to Samson's "coming out" experience as a cub in the circus, and then to his stories he tells Ryan and others, but it just didn't come across as well as I would have liked. And the pacing got really rough in there to me.

And as I said, it was scary for the younger kids, and I was surprised by the amount of violence (usually slap stick). This was a G-rated movie with the Disney name on it, but I had a hard time thinking about who the audience was for it - it didn't have the "whole family" feel that is typical of Disney's best films; it seemed too old for the youngest and too young for the older kids.

[BonusMage]

Some early news on the dvd,

A glimpse of it in the UK Chicken Little dvd