Disney Marathon: ‘The Wild’

Disney Marathon: 'The Wild'

The last time we looked at Sleeping Beauty, one of the best known and most recognisable movies in the Disney canon. Now it's time for one of the most forgotten and buried Disney animated movies. This is the one that you're most likely to have never heard off, let alone seen.

For those just joining us, this is a movie marathon with a twist. Myself (cranky 40 year old blogger), my son Josh (stoic 10 year old Nintendo obsessive) and my daughter Amelia (drama llama 8 year old princess) are watching Disney movies in a random order and ranking them. We hope to see interesting differences in how we organise our lists.

Released: 2006

Director: Steve 'Spaz' Williams

Cast: Kiefer Sutherland, Jim Belushi, Eddie Izzard, Janeane Garofalo, Richard Kind, Greg Cipes, William Shatner, Patrick Warburton

Plot: A lion escapes from New York Zoo to retrieve another animal who escaped, only for him and a group of friends to be accidentally shipped to Africa where they experience culture shock from being in their native habitat.

Review: Yeah, I know. But that's the plot. I didn't accidentally write the plot for Madagascar. The two are suspiciously similar from the setting, basic plot and characters. Even the small details are have uncomfortable similarities, such as a group of small whacky animals who think they're secret agents and the egotistical lion being known for roaring at visitors at the zoo. These common elements are all the more glaring considering The Wild released into cinemas months after Madagascar.

When looking into what happened here we found official information on very thin ground. There had been a pattern of Dreamworks, who have a well-reputed beef with Disney, releasing similar movies at around the same time. A Bugs Life became Antz, Finding Nemo became Shark Tale, Ratatouille and Flushed Away, Emperor's New Groove and Road to El Dorado...this has clearly been an attempt to undermine Disney's box office. It would appear that The Wild was in production before Madagascar, but similarities are much, much more blatant. We're left wondering if Dreamworks got hold of a script and changed it just enough to get away without a lawsuit. They're helped along by reaching our screens a few months earlier. And being better.

This is the one, and only one, instance of the Dreamworks movie being the clearcut better product ( New Groove and El Dorado are debatable). There's more ambition in The Wild, with a bigger cast, more refined animation and less reliance on pop music and the public personas of the actors. It's just that it falls down on almost every front. The story is convoluted, the design is ugly and the jokes are flat.

Rather than looking for a missing friend, our hero Samson (Sutherland) is trying to rescue his son Ryan (Cipes - later the voice of Beast Boy!). Ryan is driven away by Samson's disappointment in his son's inability to roar. Along for the journey is pompous koala Nigel (perplexingly voiced by British comedian Eddie Izzard, who plays him has British), dumb anaconda Larry (Kind) and girl giraffe Bridget (Garofalo). Wikipedia tells me she's 'insecure', but her only character trait is being a token girl. She's constantly hit on a squirrel voiced by Jim Belushi and the only good thing about this character is when it looks like he gets left behind.

The animals hit the streets of New York during what I assume is 2020 because it is deserted. They have some run-ins with feral dogs and alligators in the sewers, but this sequence adds little to the overall movie. Except the large advertisements for Disney Radio and The Lion King on Broadway. Which means Disney exists in this Disney movie. Eventually they find the shipping container Ryan got trapped in is being shipped to an unnamed Africa, so they steal a boat and pilot it themselves. To Africa.

Once here they run afoul of a group of jungle-dwelling wildebeest herd lead by Kazar (Shatner). Kazar founded a cargo cult based on a piece of Nigel merchandise that was dropped from a plane, and spends his time choreographing elaborate dance numbers. His plan is to eat Ryan to achieve the top of the food chain, which is a noticeably dark turn. Samson is forced to come clean about his bad-ass stories battling wildebeest in Africa, revealing he was raised in a circus, and learn to be a lion.

The cargo cult plot is funny, but the writers felt that the whacky dancing was much more deserving of screen time. Eddie Izzard is always worth the ticket price, but again everyone seemed to think Jim Belushi should get the punchlines. They've assembled a good cast but they are not put to good use. We don't care about the characters, the story struggles to come up with reasons for the movie to happen and even the kids were bored.

Worst of all is the animation. They've gone for a much more realistic look for the animals than the cubist style of Madagascar. Unfortunately computer generated graphics in the early to mid 2000s was not up to challenge. When we get close to the creatures the texture of the skin and fur looks pretty good, but the overall approach gives them ugly facial expressions. At times it gave me flashbacks of Food Fight, which is something you never, ever want to be compared to. Director 'Spaz' sticks the characters faces right up close to the camera, and often smack bang in the centre of frame, so we're constantly forced to dwell on the ugly faces.

This is a bad movie. Don't watch it.

Best Song: I don't remember any.

Coolest Easter Egg: I didn't spot any, apart from the blatant cross-promotions. I tried to look some up but only got results from 'Breath of the Wild'.

Weirdest Trivia: This was a massive production with more than 400 animators working to bring it to life. Sorry, folks.

Rating: TWO out of TEN

THE RANKING ME

The only reason it isn't on the bottom of the list is because Chicken Little is so bloody obnoxious. At least I can tune this one out.

Click those titles if you want to see what we said about the other movies.

AMELIA

"Why is the koala English?!!! It didn't even look like a koala! Was this made just after Australia was discovered and they drew the animals wrong? Why does the kangaroo have yellow hair on its head?!"

My kids are both Australian. This was a major point of contention.

1. Frozen
2. Moana
3. Tangled
4. The Little Mermaid
5. Emperor's New Groove
6. Zootopia
7. Atlantis: The Lost Empire
8. The Great Mouse Detective
9. Home on the Range
10. The Nightmare Before Christmas
11. Mulan
12. Hercules
13. Alice in Wonderland
14. Cinderella
15. Wreck-It Ralph
16. Bolt
17. Pocahontas
18. Dinosaur
19. The Aristocats
20. The Princess and the Frog
21. Robin Hood
22. The Jungle Book
23. Fantasia 2000
24. The Lion King
25. Beauty and the Beast
26. The Three Caballeros
27. The Fox and the Hound
28. The Sword in the Stone
29. Saludos Amigos
30. Oliver & Company
31. Aladdin
32. Treasure Planet
33. Big Hero 6
34. Fun and Fancy Free
35. Sleeping Beauty
36. A Goofy Movie
37. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
38. Chicken Little
39. The Wild
40. Fantasia

JOSHUA

"Quite boring. The characters didn't look good." Josh found the facial animation more off-putting than I did.

1. Zootopia
2. Big Hero 6
3. Aladdin
4. Emperor's New Groove
5. Treasure Planet
6. Moana
7. Ralph Breaks the Internet
8. The Three Caballeros
9. Saludos Amigos
10. Wreck-It Ralph
11. Frozen
12. Mulan
13. The Princess and the Frog
14. The Lion King
15. The Jungle Book
16. Robin Hood
17. Bolt
18. The Sword in the Stone
19. Beauty and the Beast
20. Oliver & Company
21. Sleeping Beauty
22. Tangled
23. The Great Mouse Detective
24. Cinderella
25. The Little Mermaid
26. Home on the Range
27. Pocahontas
28. A Goofy Movie
29. The Aristocats
30. Fantasia
31. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
32. Atlantis: The Lost Empire
33. Fun and Fancy Free
34. The Fox and the Hound
35. Fantasia 2000
36. The Nightmare Before Christmas
37. Dinosaur
38. Hercules
39. Alice in Wonderland
40. The Wild
41. Chicken Little