Delgo (2008)

I have never seen an animated film this bad.The narration is like nails on a chalkboard.The direction is like a 3 year old throwing darts at random ideas and actually missing the entire board often! The characters are sooooooo cliché that the word cliché doesn't keep up.The plot is very simple and yet totally confusing at the same time- something that is very difficult to do.I watched with my 5 year old son thinking it would go over his head and he could just enjoy the animation- WRONG! He told me 'Dad I want to like the movie, and its a cartoon and everything but my brain is telling me I don't like this movie even a little bit. Can we just turn it off? I did. The night improved as soon as I hit the off switch.

This animation has a terrific if familiar storyline (rescue a princess), great characters (good and evil) with unique powers, etc. Unique animals (some fly, some don't) are used in a variety ways from day to day utility and even combat.Unfortunately the makers of this flick apparently were in love with Jar Jar Binks and decided to create a similar super idiotic annoying side kick for the hero. You remember Jar Jar from Star Wars I the Phantom Menace. Fortunately apparently someone with a brain realized what a mistake the character was and it is not seen much except for the first several scenes. All in all and excellent animation and I'm hoping for a sequel.

As a scriptwriter and producer of, and all-round lover of all types of animation, no matter where in the world it is from, I rushed to see this movie as soon as possible. The trailer looked okay and the art seemed original. So how disappointed was I when it turned out to be this bad. I spent an hour with the deepening niggle that I had seen this all before and in the end realised that, of course, I had. The character and set designs are taken from old (admittedly high quality) adventure games a la 1985, the animation movement is just a little out in many scenes, the script is an awful cobbled hash of better films, and even the voices don't really fit. It may be her last film, but sadly Anne Bancroft simply sounds old and tired. So what was Delgo about? The bad guy secretly pushing peaceful neighbours to go to war, the boy and girl from each side of the divide, the awful, bad leader/general, the overwhelming odds... yadda yadda yadda. You've seen it all before, and the fact that it is from a "new independent" studio makes no difference to its quality, which is cynically derivative, rushed to the screen and generally inferior. Do yourself a favour and play the old adventure games instead. They still have an air of naive originality.

I'm not exactly an animation buff. Last year I did watch 50 feature-length toons (13 in movie theaters), but so far in 2008 I've cut back to only 17 (including 14 in theaters). Since most of the previous comments seem to have an ax to grind on the extreme ends of the scale, I'll just try to stick to some comparative impartial facts to help others decide if this is their cup of tea (like so many others, I was the only one in the theater during my screening, so I obtained no benefit from the reactions of fellow audience members).If you enjoyed AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE COLON MOVIE FILM FOR THEATERS, absolutely do NOT see DELGO (it has no fake fast food to feed your warped tastes). This story is more original and less revisionist than HAPPILY N'VER AFTER, and the comic relief characters of Filo and Spig are no lamer than their counterparts in TMNT (2007). The sense of peril in DELGO is not as great as kids would experience during ARTHUR & THE INVISIBLES, but children can better identify with the actual humans in the similarly sci-fi MEET THE ROBINSONS. Though Michael Clark Duncan as Jedi-like/Jedi-lite Marley and the late Anne Bancroft as the evil self-styled Empress Sedessa provide DELGO's most distinctive voice work, they really can't compete with SHREK III's Eddie Murphy and Carmeron Diaz. I would say, however, the faux history of DELGO is just as understandable and even richer than that of SURF'S UP. Furthermore, the violence is not as gory as anime offerings such as PAPRIKA or VEXILLE. Make no mistake; this movie is not a gem like RATATOUILLE, WALL-E, PERSEPOLIS, or even KUNG FU PANDA. But at least with DELGO you don't have to worry about a favorite story from childhood being butchered, as you might with HORTON HEARS A WHO. Though FLY ME TO THE MOON topped SPACE CHIMPS, it does not add as much to the cartoon universe as DELGO. Sure, it's not topical like the SIMPSON'S MOVIE or the BEE MOVIE, but it did a better job of keeping me awake than either the abysmal DOOGAL or THE PIRATES WHO DON'T DO ANYTHING: A VEGGIE TALES MOVIE. And regardless of whether DELGO rips off the George Lucas empire, it's still more worthwhile than STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS (talk about beating a dead horse!).