The Wild (2006) Reviews

• After A Great 50 Minutes, film Flounders In Final Half-Hour

  ccthemovieman-12007-02-08

  At first, this appears to be a rip-off of "Madagascar," with New York City zoo animals leaving the comforts of "home" for the wilds of Africa. However, it is a totally different story and feel to it, more serious and sentimental than "Madagascar." Personally, I like "serious and sentimental" but not in animated movie, at least not to the degree it was in here. I preferred the other "NYC zoo" film to this one because "The Wild" lost almost all of its great humor in the last 20-30 minutes. The first 50 minutes of this film was spectacular. I was thinking, "Wow, another great animated film. How many is that in the past year or so?" The jokes were excellent, the characters mostly funny and the animation superb. The dark, rich colors in here are magnificent. This is a beautiful movie! The minor characters are the best in here: the snake, koala bear and squirrel. Eddie Izzard, Richard Kind and Jim Belushi, in particular, are great in their voices of these characters. The two crocodiles that the wandering zoo animals meet in the sewers are hilarious. They produced the biggest laughs, at least with me. The major characters: the lion (Keifer Sutherland), his cub (Greg Cipes) and the giraffe (Janeane Garafolo) were all a little too much on the serious side. Speaking of serious: the last third of this film totally switched gears. I wonder how this went over with very young kids and their parents? It got too serious, frightening in spots (for little ones) and then the usual corny Disney ending. It's too bad: this could have been super if they had just continued doing what was working the first 50 minutes.

  More

• You're kidding...right?

  jenn1212982007-02-23

  If the case on the DVD didn't say Disney, I wouldn't have believed it. Disney has been synonymous with quality in everything...but not in this case. This was so bad, my little girl asked if she could go to bed before it was half over. Go to bed! She hates going to bed, but she'd rather go to bed than be subjected to this piece of...trash. And a 'G' rating? Really? The adult humor and innuendos? All that violence and scenes of fright? A 'G'? Please. Whoever was in charge was trying to rip off other Disney movies with every new scene. In case you haven't gotten it yet, it stinks. There, I said it. And Disney, please don't even think about sequel here, it couldn't get much worse. Rent Madagascar instead. The Wild makes Madagascar look like an Oscar contender.

  More

• Its really all about Nigel

  dbborroughs2006-04-19

  Similar to Madagascar but not the same this is the story of a zoo lion and his friends who race off to save the lion's son who has been shipped back to the wild. The movie is the race to find the son before he gets to the wild and what happens once they get there. I have to start by saying the voice cast is top notch here. Everyone does an excellent job. However I must single out Jim Belushi and Eddie Izzard as turning in classic animated performances. Belushi plays a street smart squirrel who is in love with a giraffe and he is a ball of fun. Its clear why he is the best friend of Keifer Sutherland's lion. He is a joy to behold. Even better is Eddie Izzard as Nigel, a koala who is totally crazed. Izzard is in constant motion and is constantly chattering about everyone and everything and he effectively turns a movie about a lion and his cub into a movie about a deluded koala with a tenuous grasp on reality. Izzard's Nigel will probably go down in history as one of the great cartoon characters of all time. This is a movie with fantastic animation. It all looks great. The director and some of his crew are from the effects team that made Terminator 2 and other big budget special effects movie look so great. The problem with this movie is that it was made by guys who until this film made their living making soulless special effects for soulless action films. The net effect is a soulless film. There is no pacing, there is little sense of danger. Worse the characters inhabit a world that isn't real. In this world, especially in the New York scenes, no one exists except the characters. They drive all through the city and encounter no one. There are no other cars on the street. To be frank there is no sign of life anywhere. Its terrible. It kills the film. Its sad but as alive the actors are their animated characters, while looking good, come across as dead constructs. Still the movie is worth seeing. Eddie Izzard, with an assist by Jim Belushi make it worth seeing. Clearly abandoned by Disney in theaters, you should make a run by this on home video or cable, where its less than the sum of its parts construction will be less annoying.

  More

• Hey--I liked it! (No spoilers here!)

  LPCDwoman2007-03-26

  The biggest hurdle for THE WILD is that MADAGASCAR beat it out of the gate, so MADAGASCAR got all the notice. This happens in Hollywierd all the time: remember when two asteroid movies (DEEP IMPACT and Armageddon), two volcano movies (DANTE'S PEAK and VOLCANO) or two bug movies (ANTZ and A BUG'S LIFE) hit the movie screens close together? With so many films always in production, you are inevitably going to have overlap. So quit griping about THE WILD! It's a lotta fun if you give it half a chance. I liked the LION KING and MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY references, and I found the humor more of the chuckle and smile variety than the guffaw type. The animation is beautifully rendered in a more realistic than overly stylized manner, which, unfortunately means the characters, for the most part, don't have big facial reactions. For myself, I would have liked the bigger, more cartoony expressions, but what they did worked just fine. The story of THE WILD actually has only a few plot points in common with MADAGASCAR, and when you see it you'll understand what I mean (no spoilers here!) And the voice talent was excellent: Kiefer Sutherland, Jim Belushi, Eddie Izzard, Janeane Garofalo, William Shatner (yes, Bill Shatner!), Richard Kind and the always welcome Patrick Warburton head up the characters and add their inimitable contributions to the comedy. So, don't go in to THE WILD with preconceptions: just enjoy. I did!

  More

• I think it was wonderful

  lilferret2006-12-30

  I would have to say I personally thought this movie was wonderful. The animation was superb, the characters were amusing, and the dialog and banter was fabulous. I laughed throughout the movie, sometimes so hard I thought I might hurt myself. My husband also enjoyed it. And I have to say, I disliked Madagascar immensely. I never laughed once during that entire film. The humor in The Wild was much more believable. And I thought that the plot in Madagascar was much more predictable than that of The Wild. Overall I would have to give The Wild a 9 out of 10. The only thing that could have made it better would have been if it was longer. But you know, you really can't go wrong with an all star cast.

  More