Treasure Planet,
the new animated feature from the Disney Studios, is apparently set
in the same alternate universe as the Japanese manga and anime,
Space Cruiser Yamato, where interplanetary vessels travel
back and forth at full sail and with no apparent requirements for
oxygen.
Jim Hawkins is a young teenage lad
who zooms around, like a skateboarder, on his "solar
surfer", while his mother sings the single-parent blues about
how she just can't handle what her son's getting up to ("Jim, I
have had it!"). In other words, the characters are
disappointingly contempo-sounding in a picture where you were
expecting, if not counting on, a little more imagination. Jim comes
into possession of a treasure map -- a sphere which, when unlocked,
projects a huge, 360-degree holographic navigation chart -- which
promises to solve all of his and his mother's problems; he engages a
ship from a space harbor which is built on the edge of a crescent
moon-shaped body, but the ship's cook (we will skip over the one
crew member who speaks in various emissions of air that are revealed
to be a language called "Flatula") turns out to be John
Silver, who has a mechanical leg, hand, eye, and a gear that visibly
chugs away on the side of his head.
One recalls how Robert Newton --
the screen's one, and only, Long John Silver -- combined an
ever-present element of menace into his fascinatingly colorful
depiction of the character from Robert Louis Stevenson's novel --
you were always a little afraid of him, which was just as well,
since it made him wholly convincing as a pirate. Here, the movie's
John Silver (the "Long" is gone) is gradually turned into
a father figure who takes the place of the one that abandoned Jim
and his mother long ago, and who molds and shapes Jim's moral
character and fiber during the events that follow. His character,
though, goes all soft (even his tummy, which looks like a
marshmallow).
The movie also keeps changing comic
foils. First, it's the
canine-esque Dr. Doppler (voiced by David Hyde Pierce, who did some
wonderful work during the animated segments of Osmosis Jones);
then, it's Morph, a little floating jelly-like creature who
shape-shifts, has big eyes, and coos (since it's jelly-like, I
wonder how they're going to market that character as an
action figure!); finally, it's the film's version of the hermit-like
Old Ben -- here, an articulated waffle iron who has, literally, lost
part of its mind (there's a hole in the back) and jabbers madly, at
one point saying something like, "Was I have died up an admiral
named Lupe?" (That's what my notes say.)
It's too bad the filmmakers couldn't have glued together something more solid, here, as the picture is visually quite beautiful, with settings and backgrounds that have the burnished, lustrous look of N.C. Wyeth illustrations. But the film seriously lacks the grace and humor that distinguished The Little Mermaid (and, later, Aladdin), the animated feature John Musker and Ron Clemens previously worked on. Much of the joy from that picture was in the thrill of watching how it went out and staked its own territory; here, the picture feels like it's photocopying itself from other sources almost from the start, and, by the end, there's a weirdly unsatisfying feel to it, where you find yourself indifferent as to how the story's going to resolve itself and to what's going to happen to the characters on the screen, let alone how they're going to, putatively, live happily ever after. Probably the only thing that could've shaken things up was if the film suddenly mutated into Urotsukidoji territory during its last five minutes, scaring the pants off of everybody.
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Directed
by: Starring
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Written by: Rated: Review by Gregory Avery · Nitrate Online 
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