 |
The poorly animated “Alpha and Omega” features the voice talents of Hayden Panettiere and Justin Long as the lupine title characters. |
Early this summer when I was a guest on the now-defunct, local CBS morning news show “Monsters and Money,” I was asked about the future of 3-D movies.
I said that the biggest danger to the current 3-D boom will come when the market gets flooded with cheaply made, poor-quality 3-D films and the term “3-D” will quickly become associated with mediocrity, or worse.
Here comes the beginning of that flood.
“Alpha and Omega” traffics in the sort of sophomoric storytelling and shortchanged animation we’d expect to see on a Saturday morning cartoon rush-job.
This isn’t to say that “Alpha and Omega” is a terrible motion picture with no redeeming values. (The 2008 3-D “Fly Me to the Moon” was far dumber with flatter, more lackluster animation.)
For a feature theatrical release, though, “Alpha and Omega” just can’t compete with the polish of a Pixar picture, or other more sophisticated animated productions from DreamWorks SKG.
This movie comes from Crest Animation Productions, an India-based company with a satellite office in Los Angeles.
The press notes brag that while most big-budget animated movies take an average of three years to create, Crest managed to make “Alpha and Omega” in half the time.
Uh, did Crest ever think there might be a good reason those other animated movies took three years to make? (Read more…)