Okay, stop me if you've heard this plot before. A group of animals are living the good life in a New York zoo, until one of them tires of captivity, and wishes to explore the wild. Said animal manages to escape the security of his environment, and his fellow friends set out into the city to try to find him. Through a series of misadventures, the group eventually find themselves on a boat headed toward a wild and untamed wilderness island. Having lived in captivity all their life, the creatures are ill-prepared for the challenges of living on their own, and must find their basic survival skills if they want to survive. You may think that I'm describing the plot to last year's animated hit, Madagascar, but I am also describing the just-released Disney production, The Wild. This is not the first time Disney and Dreamworks have released a similar-themed movie within a span of a year, but this time, Disney shoots a little too close to comfort. While not a terrible film, The Wild is highly derivative of other animated films. Not that it will matter to kids of course, but adult animation fans may find this all too familiar.

Our group of animal friends in this story include the head lion Samson (voice by Kiefer Sutherland), his young cub Ryan (Greg Cipes), scheming squirrel Benny (James Belushi), no-nonsense giraffe Bridget (Janeane Garofalo), goofy snake Larry (Richard Kind), and quick-witted koala Nigel (Eddie Izzard). Samson is the star attraction at the zoo, and his son has longed to follow in his footsteps. But Ryan also has other dreams, namely exploring the wild that his father always talks about in stories before he came to the zoo. After an argument between the two, the cub sneaks aboard a giant crate and winds up being transported to a boat headed for an uncharted island. The other animals decide to follow him out into the terrors of New York City where vicious poodles prowl the streets and alligators lurk in the sewers. Determined to track down his son, Samson and the others hijack a small boat and sail after the vessel transporting young Ryan to the wild.

Once on the island, the friends find themselves in a world they are not prepared for. The territory is ruled by a cult-like society of wildebeests led by their crazed leader, Kazar (William Shatner). Kazar has grown tired of being at the mercy of predators, and is trying to stage an uprising amongst all of his kind so that the lions and other meat-eaters will fear them instead of hunt them. With young Ryan's life, as well as their own, in danger, Samson and the others must find a way to call upon their natural instincts that they have long forgotten during their years in captivity if they want to survive. Not only that, but Samson will also have to face a part of his past he'd like to forget.

All similarities to Madagascar aside, The Wild is a passable, yet unmemorable animated film that will likely appeal to nondiscriminating children the most. They won't care if they've seen a lot of this movie before in other films, they'll be too busy concentrating on the funny animals and the impressive animation. Director Steve "Spaz" Williams (a special effects animator making his filmmaking debut) has certainly given us a lovely film to look at. The characters are designed in a semi-realistic style with only their eyes exaggerated in order to give them more human-like emotion. Their movements are eerily lifelike, giving the characters much more life than your standard CG cartoon. At times, if it weren't for the fact that their mouths were moving, you'd almost think you were watching nature footage. As much as I admire the look of the film, I must admit it does backfire during the rare moments when the animals start to show off human-like abilities. It's kind of cool to see a cartoon lion look and act like an actual lion, but when that realistic cartoon lion starts learning how to steer a boat or gets on his hind legs and starts dancing to music, it looks very odd and unnatural. They should have decided on some kind of compromise between realism and fantasy, because when the two are combined in this film, they just don't mesh.

While the artwork is bound to at least keep adults interested, the screenplay and plotting seems to be targeted more toward the younger crowd. Nothing wrong with that in particular, but they could have gone even further in trying to make this movie more appealing. My big knock against The Wild is that the film makes the mistaken notion that people yelling at each other is funny. There are so many sequences where the characters are either screaming back and forth at each other, or screaming while running away from something that it starts to get a little annoying. The film's screenplay (credited to four different writers) seems to mistake frantic and chaotic action for laughs. The film leaps from one dangerous situation to the next with very little time for us to really stop and get to know the characters, so we never quite grow attached. Samson and Ryan spend very little time together on screen before they go their separate ways, and although a love subplot is hinted at between Benny the squirrel and Bridget the giraffe, nothing is really made of it. (Although it does leave the more dirty-minded viewer some interesting questions as to what would happen if a squirrel and a giraffe mated.) Aside from Madagascar, the film also seems to lift heavily from other animated blockbusters such as Finding Nemo and The Lion King. You almost get the sense that Steve Williams and his staff threw darts at old storyboards of other animated films, added a couple new scenes in-between, and called it a story writing session.

The Wild may not be exactly original, but it does have its charms if you look past the frantic pace. The voice cast is generally strong, including a surprisingly well performed villain role from William Shatner who gets to be threatening and goofy all at once, without going into his usual self-parody style of acting that he's known for these days. Richard Kind got on my nerves as the dim-witted snake, especially since the group already has a comic relief in James Belushi's character, so there really was no reason for him to be there other than the writers felt the movie needed a "stupid" character. And the always reliable composer, Alan Silvestri, delivers a pleasant music score to carry the action along. Most important of all perhaps is that the kids at my screening seemed to be loving it. If that's all that matters, you'll most likely be satisfied with The Wild. (At least until it comes out on DVD, and you're forced to listen to your kids watch it over and over again.)

I said it once in my review of Hoodwinked, and I'll say it again. With so many animated films coming out in 2006 (at least one literally every month), you really have to deliver something special in order to stand out. The Wild has a good look and strong production values, but there's just not really anything behind that high gloss and technology, and certainly nothing that we haven't seen before. Audiences are no longer wowed by computer imagery alone, there has to be a heart to the story as well. I find it strange that Pixar is the only studio that seems to understand this. But, as long as these films make money (and as long as they have expensive marketing campaigns targeting impressionable children, they will), the studios will keep on churning them out. The Wild is passable by all accounts, but as the market becomes more crowded, passable may not be enough in the near future.

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