The Wild

Although the creators of “The Wild,” released in 2006, might say that because this movie was in production for so long, it didn’t copy ideas from “Madagascar,” since they started it before “Madagascar” was released, that doesn’t matter. You can’t help but notice that the two films are so similar in their story and compare them. Even though “Madagascar” was not a great cartoon, looking side-by-side with “The Wild,” it was fantastic.

The story is about Samson, voiced by Kiefer Sutherland, a lion at the Central Park Zoo. His son, Ryan, voiced by Greg Cipes, doesn’t like living in his father’s shadow and can’t wait until he can roar. Throughout his childhood, he’s been told his father’s life in the wild and Ryan becomes convinced that if he grew up in the wild, he’d have a roar like his father’s.

After Ryan sneaks on one of the metal containers at the zoon he is taken onto a cargo ship that is heading for Africa. Samson goes after his son along with a misfit crew of animals from the zoo (James Belushi, Eddie Izzard, Janeane Garofalo, Richard Kind). After a drive through Manhattan, the group steals a boat that they are somehow able to drive to Africa without running out of gas or being famished. When they arrive, they go into “The Wild” to rescue Ryan.

Ever since Pixar released “Toy Story” there have been countless CGI films. They all want to copy Pixar’s success, but no one has and you can see why. Not only does Pixar make great-looking cartoons, but they are also well-written cartoons. For example, “The Wild” looks pretty good, but the script is really bad and the jokes are ear-bleedingly awful.

Scott said in his review, “With a running time of an hour and a half, the story should fly by, but instead, dragged down by lame jokes and a plot we've seen before, seems nearly twice that. At a recent screening of Ice Age 2, the children packing the audience were laughing uproariously, here the laughter was sporadic and half-hearted. When even the target audience for a movie can't get into it, you know something's wrong.”

The only enjoyable character in the film is Nigel the Koala, voiced by Izzard. Izzard manages to be the only one who seems to be having fun with his character and brings some needed humor to the film. His moment of insanity on the tugboat and his mimicking of the Statute of Liberty are two of the movie’s highlights.

Scott admitted, “Since I'm not sure if my brother Eric will see this movie, I'll just mention for him that once again Disney has created a cartoon that features a single parent.” Ryan’s mother is never mentioned and since it has absolutely no meaning on the story whether she’s there or not, the omission seems pointless other than to copy from Disney.

Since Disney owns Pixar, we left well enough alone and let Pixar keep making animated movies after the preview of “Cars” that year ran before “The Wild” had more laughs than this movie did.

I can’t help but notice the similarities this movie had with other animated movies, like “Madagascar,” “Finding Nemo,” and “The Lion King.” Nothing about this movie was original but felt like they were ripping off other movies. That is why I say don’t watch this movie because you will not like it at all. There is nothing good in this movie. Not to say it is one of the worst, but it is just a bad one.

Stay tuned later today when I do my yearly Christmas movie review.