United Kingdom, 2005Cast (or rather, voice-actors): Ewan McGregor, Ricky Gervais, Tim Curry, Jim Broadbent
Director: Gary Chapman
My Rating: * / ****
My comment on this movie could be (and would be) summarized up to a simple sentence: "Thank god, that it took only 72 minutes".
Valiant is about birds, well, maybe it was actually made for birds, if they could understand English, that is.. wait, British-accented English. Yeah, i really confused at times to see where this movie headed, or who does (what kind of audience, that is) this movie was aimed for. It's set on a World War II, a theme that would eliminate most of the interest from a young boys (and girls), and it's about a talking pigeons who actually took place in a WWII as an aerial messenger, complete with, i quote from the movie, "mother-nature has the audacity to create a little something called 'The Falcon'", which would be a turn-off to a much more adult audiences. So, that leaves a big question mark behind my mind. "Where do i put myself?". Hence, in the minutes that follows, i positioned myself as one of those flurry beaked animals that fly through the sky, which much popular as 'birds'. And by that, i came to the simple sentence that represented this whole CG adventure called "Valiant": "Thank god, that it took only 72 minutes".
Probably the only thing that stood out from this movie is the voice-actings. Man, they were superb.. and not that i'm a sucker for a british-accented speech thingy.. no! what? oh, you doubted me? ah, well, yeah, got to admit, that was also the factor, but trust me, it was really that great, even though one could argue that it WAS great since any other elements in this movie were either mediocre at times, or mostly horrible. The CG quality was what i'd say, if i was a CG expert, which i'm not, a large step-back from what CG we previously saw on Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. I really would like to compare the CG quality to Disney's Chicken Little but, i haven't had the chance to see it yet. Well, it's not as bad as it sounds, but it was still a large step-back. And the story? let's see... uninteresting, predictable, and nothing fresh. Understandable, though, i mean, did you really expect to give some 'deep' material, or unpredictable twist, to a bunch of birds?
My say, it's not even enough for a family material, maybe, if you had a three-year old sons or daughters, but older than that? i doubt that they'd enjoy it, and you'd had a great possibility to lose your children when the movie is over since you'd be fallen asleep during the movie, and your children would think that it was better to wander around, than to sit through on a cold movie theater. Ah, they'd know the ending anyway, right from the very first minute. Unless, if you (or your children) are a bird, which i'm sure you (or they) are not.