Strong and Moving!

Excellent but underrated film

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

When I first saw the posters for this, I thought WTF, they remade El Arca (2007) in CGI? But while that movie was funny and (due to being South American) somewhat raunchy, this one is just mediocre and boring. Our heroes are two "nestrians" (what an original name), small furry elephantlike creatures that look like rejected Pokemon/Invizimals - basically, the kind of design you see little kids draw. The flood is here, and a (never shown, guess human CGI was not in the budget?) Noah built his Ark, and the bored King lion assembles the animals for the Ark. Problem is for our nestrian father and his son, they are not on the list. So they pretend to be grymps (foxes with fur resembling some anime's mascot) to get on board, angering the mother grymp and her daughter a lot. See the similarities here already? El Arca also had two humans disguising themselves as nonexisting animals to get on board, as well as the whole "no meat eating on the Ark" thing that was the crux of that movie. They even ripped off effeminate chimpanzee butler. Here however, the plot falls already apart. WHY are a father and his son and a mother and her daughter selected for the Ark??? Did the writers forget that the point of selecting two animals each was so they can reproduce later? Enter our villains, the weird flying fox-like Mr and Mrs Griffin, who A: don't even remotely resemble mythical griffins but bats, and B: despite being flyers who could easily sneak onboard the Ark, they never even try. They just try to eat the two kids who miss the Ark and have to work together to survive. From here on, it's where the movie turns into a boring by the numbers trope-fest... The kids have to work together and of course the grumpy "I can do everything myself, I don't need anyone" grymp girl becomes friends with the clingy friendly nestrian kid. At the same time, on the boat their parents also work together to turn the boat around and learn to like each other. The kids pick up friends, the weird moss-covered giant blob with a mouth and his parasite, and learn to appreciate teamwork, yadda-yadda... All this culminates in a final scene where the movie pulls a 180 and made me slap my forehead so hard it hurt. When the grymps fall into water and the nestrians jump after them to save them, it suddenly turns out they can breathe and swim underwater... What's more, the giant blob was actually a whale! Umm, writers, really? That's NOT how evolution works. A creature won't develop organs and abilities to be used in an environment it never even visited. Or if it was already developed for this, it would KNOW which environment it needs to live in. Even if the writers are creationists, would God create an aquatic creature and place it in the middle of the dry rocky mountains? Overall, a boring Noah Ark's animal story, with a lot of chases and hijinks that lead nowhere, and characters you will forget immediately with the most unoriginal designs I have seen. The CGI was on the level of console game cutscenes. El Arca was no masterpiece either, but it tried to be innovative. This was just boring.

After seeing some of the negative reviews for this movie I just had to submit a positive one because this is a good movie. If you are in the mood for a fun animated film, it is definitely worth a watch. This is far from "Your Standard Religious Ark Story" Anyone that believes this 100% did not watch the film. There is 1 mention of Noah, and then its just animal antics on a boat. Some of the jokes are predictable and the writing does feel standard, but there are more genuinely funny moments and surprisingly heart felt ones as well. You might watch the trailer and think this is a low-tier animated attempt, but if you sit down and watch it you will be surprised

This is your standard Noah's ark story as the title may elude to (albeit the title varies depending on which country you find yourself watching the film). The king of the animals, a lion, announces to the other animals that a biblical flood is on it's way to wipe out all the life from the planet. There is a plan to save the animals as an ark has been built to carry them for forty days and forty nights until the flood has gone. The animals each have to meet with the acceptance committee to see if they warrant a place on the ark - it seems only certain animals will be saved and unfortunately for the main characters of this film "Nestrian's" (fluffy neon animals with big snouts that walk on two legs and excrete a cloud of smoke when they are scared) haven't been selected for safety. Rather than face the flood and sure death head on, the Nestrian father and son combination trick their way onto the ark with some Grymps (wolf like solitary creatures, walk on 4 legs and likes to get angry). The child Nestrian and Grymp wander off exploring only to realise that they have left the ark and have been left behind to face the flood. At this point of the film it turns into a journey story, the children try to find a way to avoid the flood water while following the ark and the single parents on the ark try their best to get the ark turned around to rescue the kids. The overall moral is teamwork because alone respectively the two groups, kids and adults, wont be able to succeed by working as a team they should be able to survive.The story isn't epic by any stretch of the imagination as it's based on a story from the bible we've seen many times before, it mirrors other animated films like "Ice Age" and "Finding Nemo" but all the same its harmless fun. Fortunately the film doesn't try and force religion onto it's audiences it simply takes inspiration from a biblical story and goes off on it's own tangent using the inspiration as platform only. The animation was cute and colourful and while the story wasn't the most original the dialogue was amusing at times and there was a mix of gags that both adult and child could find amusing. The clever thing about the film was that as a cynical adult I knew that random animals with names I'd never heard of wouldn't be saved by the end of the film but there was a great twist which showed what happened to the animals God and Noah didn't save. Ultimately the ending is happy and my cynicism was slightly surprised. This is a European film which has been released in various countries (as mentioned by the title variances) however there is nothing lost and the unknown actors doing their turn for the voices carry off the film with charm. There are occasional problems with the animation but let's face it, this was made with a lot less budget than your next Pixar film is likely to get and for what was invested this is a good way to spend a quiet weekend day with audiences of different ages. I have no problem awarding this 6 out of 10, not entirely my cup of tea but not an awful waste of time by any stretch of the imagination.

In the rush to get on the ark, Leah (a Grymp, an aggressive foxy-type thing) and Finny (a Nestrian, a gentle, dopey, fluorescent coloured plush toy elephant-type thing) are left behind. While their parents Hazel and Dave try to take over the ark and return for them, they do their best to survive, accompanied by an enormous slug-type thing (called, hilariously, Obesey) and his parasitic, er, parasite.This kids' CGI film is, I imagine, good fun for smallish children: as you get older there is less and less in it for you (there is one tolerable Tetris gag). The visuals have several good moments, but are mostly unexceptional and there are some obvious areas where no-one has bothered (the vast ocean is well animated, but there is no surface after-effect following splashes, for instance). The characters are adequately realised, but generic. The story is acceptable but not classic. The voice talent is satisfactory but not dazzling (and comprised of unknowns in the English language version, not that that is necessarily a condemnation).In short, this is a fairly cut-price offering which your little 'uns are likely to enjoy, but you may find it somewhat lacking.