Atlantis: The Lost Empire Buy Atlantis: The Lost Empire from my web shop

(- 2001 -)

Original Title Atlantis: The Lost Empire Director Gary Trousdale Genre Animation, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Adventure, Action Released 2001-06-3 MPAA Rating Rated PG for action violence. Rated 6.4

Plot Summary

1914: Milo Thatch, grandson of the great Thaddeus Thatch works in the boiler room of a museum. He knows that Atlantis was real, and he can get there if he has the mysterious Shephards journal, which can guide him to Atlantis. But he needs someone to fund a voyage. His employer thinks he's dotty, and refuses to fund any crazy idea. He returns home to his apartment and finds a woman there. She takes him to Preston B. Whitmore, an old friend of his Grandfathers. He gives him the shepherds journal, a submarine and a 5 star crew. They travel through the Atlantic ocean, face a large lobster called the Leviathan, and finally get to Atlantis. But does the Atlantis crew have a lust for discovery, or something else?

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Actors / Character

Michael J. Fox as Milo James Thatch (voice) , Corey Burton as Gaetan 'The Mole' Moliere (voice) , Claudia Christian as Helga Katrina Sinclair (voice) , James Garner as Commander Lyle Tiberius Rourke (voice) , John Mahoney as Preston B. Whitmore (voice) , Phil Morris as Dr. Joshua Strongbear Sweet (voice) , Leonard Nimoy as King Kashekim Nedakh (voice) , Don Novello as Vincenzo 'Vinny' Santorini (voice) , Jacqueline Obradors as Audrey Rocio Ramirez (voice) , Florence Stanley as Wilhelmina Bertha Packard (voice) , David Ogden Stiers as Fenton Q. Harcourt (voice) , Natalie Strom as Young Kida (voice) , Cree Summer as Princess 'Kida' Kidagakash (voice) , Jim Varney as Jebidiah Allardyce 'Cookie' Farnsworth (voice) , Jim Cummings as Additional Voices (voice)

IMDB User Comments

The Worst Disney Animated Flick in Years--But Still an 8 Rating: 8 out of 10; What the rating means in my system: "All genre fans should see this film. Others should consider giving it a chance, as they will probably like it or find it interesting. More casual film fans might be indifferent towards it." The bad news is that Atlantis, Disney's animated feature offering for the Summer of 2001, is the first `regular' (which allows me to exclude Fantasia 2000) animated Disney film in at least ten years that I'm rating less than a 10. The good news is that I'm rating it an 8, which is still a more than respectable score. Although Atlantis remains characteristically Disney, it is a departure in many ways from what has become stereotyped as the Disney formula. There are no songs sung by characters here--this is decidedly _not_ a musical. The animation and storytelling style often have more in common with Japanese Anime and Anime-influenced comic books than anything Disney has done before. There is no obvious villain for most of the film. And there's a whole host of other differences. However, these factors don't affect my score. That's because I neither subtract points for stylistic similarities--such as a director or studio formulas--nor add points for uniqueness alone. What matters to me is if something works as a viewer. I don't mind seeing a formula if it works, and if something highly original doesn't work, it doesn't matter much to me--I didn't enjoy the film. And although I thought these factors, unique for Disney at this point in time, were interesting, I'm not sure they worked. Let me say first that I enjoyed Atlantis about as much as I enjoy most 8's. Some scenes had me on the edge of my seat. Some scenes made me cry. I cared a lot about the two principle characters, at least. Occasionally, the writing was funny. However, an 8 scares me in light of such a long string of 10's. So in the hope that someone who has even a bit of power to make decisions at Disney might read this, wondering what went wrong in the public's eye, let me talk about what I think the problems were. After what amounts to a prologue, Atlantis gets off to a grand start. We meet a young Milo Thatch in a hilarious and informative scene. Milo, spurred on by his adventurous if a bit eccentric late grandfather, is obsessed with uncovering everything he can about the fabled land of Atlantis. When an equally eccentric rich older man, Mr. Whitmore, suddenly enters Milo's life, he learns that his grandfather, a friend of Whitmore's, had discovered a mythic journal, reputed to contain information vital to finding Atlantis. As luck has it, Whitmore made a bet with Milo's grandfather, the end result of which meant that Whitmore agreed to fund an expedition to look for Atlantis once Milo was old enough. And so a good deal of Atlantis concerns the rag-tag group of explorers and the mission they undertake with Milo. One problem with the film is that whether Atlantis actually exists or not is no surprise to the viewer. This saps the film of a lot of dramatic tension it could otherwise have. Worse, despite the naysayer characters and the apparent uncertainty that Atlantis isn't just a myth, the discoveries the motley crew makes don't seem to surprise or particularly thrill any of them, either. Even when they finally make their way through a deep underwater crevasse and begin traveling along bizarre ruins in a huge air pocket, they act like it's so much uninteresting chaff to be plowed through. In retrospect, this makes sense for a portion of the crew, but not for all of them, and none of them get excited. That makes us not get excited, or have much of any other kind of emotional reaction, as well. Further removing dramatic tension that should have been present are a series of terrible cuts. Scenes seem to end abruptly, sometimes moving to what seems to be the middle of the next scene, in a manner that resembled a film badly chopped up for television to make room for commercials. Much that should have been interesting to the viewer is never explained. There are too many logical leaps in the plot. The pacing is just bad. Atlantis is also filled with bizarre incongruities and anachronisms of the kind that most filmgoers hate in most films. I don't dislike them wholesale, in fact I can love them if they work towards a logically quirky film, but once the incongruities for political correctness (Yikes!) reared their heads, I hated them here. But maybe the biggest sin that Atlantis is guilty of is a mishmash of styles. Instead of the film enrapturing me and taking me away to its world, I unwillingly spent a good portion of the film noting where scenes were stolen from--"Geez, this opening scene is just Star Wars . . . the sub is straight from 20,000 Leagues . . . ah, the Atlantean princess is just like Pocahontas to Thatch's John Smith . . . Wow, this underwater chase is a lift from Star Wars Episode 1 . . . This journey through archaeological ruins is pure Indiana Jones . . . now it's like every World War I flick ever made, now it's a western, now it's a mystical anime' etc. This is a serious problem. You shouldn't feel that scene after scene is a direct cop of another film or genre. The styles and scenes don't cohere. In spite of these problems, I still enjoyed Atlantis overall, but I had to do it while almost fighting back rage because Disney kept trying to really screw up this film. Here's hoping that they don't continue to panic in light of their recent, relative box office failures, and calmly keep their focus in the future.

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