Review of Princess Raccoon

It’s safe to say that most Japanese film enthusiasts are familiar with the cult director Seijun Suzuki’s work (thank you, Criterion!), especially his unconventional psychedelic yakuza films from his days at Nikkatsu. Suzuki was an important dissident from within the studio system, a spiritual brother of Nicholas Ray and Samuel Fuller who took subpar B-movie scripts from his producers and twisted them into surreal, inverted genre-busters infused with a unique auteur sensibility. While a cult audience followed his film even at the time, Nikkatsu’s higher-ups hated his unauthorized script changes and, inevitably, he was fired in 1968.

Somewhat ironically, the films that Suzuki made after his studio days are less well known despite his immensely increased degree of artistic freedom. I can understand why his studio work is more popular, given that Suzuki’s use of arty techniques and surprising aberrations hangs handsomely on the unpretentious genre frameworks that ground the stories. His later free-wheeling experiments are less accessible and harder to follow. The strangeness that initially popped out of the details came to take center stage. I confess to being somewhat disappointed with “Zigeunerweisen” (1980) and “Pistol Opera” (2001).

His most recent and probably last film, “Princess Raccoon” (2005), may be the key that has opened up my appreciation for his later career. It’s a musical starring Joe Odagiri as Prince Amechiyo and Zhang Ziyi as Princess Raccoon. Amechiyo’s father, a powerful demon, banishes his son to a lonely mountain out of pride (lest his son become more beautiful than the father). Before Amechiyo’s kidnapper reaches his destination, the princess of Raccoon Palace rescues him for her own mischievous purposes and soon falls in love.

“Princess Raccoon” is set in the world of ancient Japanese folklore and mythology, populated by gods, demons and shape-shifting raccoons (actually tanuki, but I refuse to enter into that debacle) who meddle in the affairs of humans. The time period is a bit nebulous, with renaissance era Europeans wandering around in the background and a giant classical Italian painting dominating one set. Equally so is the landscape, which includes soundstages in the heavens, earthly outdoor terrain and impossible CG environments.

The point, made clear from the very start of the film, is less the romance of the relatively uninteresting characters, than the spectacular design concepts that Suzuki engineers from this chaos. One suspects that he cast actors based on whether he liked their faces rather than on their emotive talents, and he tends to take more interest in their elaborate period costuming than their delivery. His rainbow palette is outright gaudy, but allows us to soak up a childlike love for color and contrast devoid of overly academic good-taste.

There’s a great deal of risk when a director becomes obssessed with orchestrating essentially undemanding eye-candy, and it’s doubtless that may viewers will find the film self-indulgent and shallow. However, Suzuki does his best to make us understand that the artifice is part of the point and that the visual presentation is worth our attention. Katie noted that the film reminded her of “Percival” (1978) in it’s intentional artificiality, but its lineage can be traced natively in the strong Japanese tradition of ritualized staging and detached abstraction (visible in films as diverse as 1963’s “An Actor’s Revenge” and 2001’s “The Happiness of the Katakuris”) that owes more to Kabuki than Brecht.

By foregrounding the methods behind the fantasy and illusion, “Princess Raccoon” makes us admire the process of creating as much as the experience of viewing. The intricate painted backdrops (sometimes with the wrong perspective), stuffed raccoon toys attached to strings and crude CG (I’d quibble that it goes too far) are never integrated systematically into a kind of realism, but are left isolated enough so that we can appreciate them as individual elements within a swirl of arts and crafts.

[Images: Some of the backgrounds are designed in the style of traditional Japanese ink and woodblock art.]

This makes for a film that isn’t particularly smooth and cohesive, but somehow Suzuki never lets it devolve into the type of postmodern pastiche where the humor comes from random non-sequiturs and anachronistic juxtapositions. He unwisely includes a weak subplot that breaks up the flow of the romance, music and adventure, but he makes the right decision to eschew manic editing. The craziness is contained, if just barely, and everything fits comfortably into Suzuki’s overarching vision, though his is a dreamlike vision divorced from ordinary reality.

[Images: One set is nominally reconfigured and relit as Prince Amechiyo walks in a circle around it. The shot changes from arctic to desert, either to symbolize the long passage of time on his journey or the variety of terrain he traverses. By recycling the same camera position and layout, we can’t help appreciating how the mild redressing of the few props changes the atmosphere completely. The taxidermied hawk adds a touch of humor.]

Suzuki preoccupation with beauty is also addressed thematically within the narrative. Beauty is shown to be a powerful force independent from morality; a force capable of both good and evil. The prince’s father, for instance, is fatally consumed by pride in his beauty, while vanity hampers the budding romance between Amechiyo and Princess Raccoon. But the film also shows how beauty is an inspiration, a cause for celebration and a foothold for love. The film is neither particularly original or deep in what it has to say on the topic, but it’s self-aware about its superficiality.

[Image: The princess is so beautiful that the firewood for her warm baths burns with jealousy.]

The eclecticism in the art design is shared by the music numbers. Suzuki bounces around the world and across history with everything from traditional poetic pieces and show tunes to rap, tap dance, ska, hymnals, hard rock, opera and children’s choir. Like Hollywood musicals of old, the songs are funny and buoyant and more about having a good time than about demonstrating raw musical talent.

[Image: (Bottom) A literal and Greek chorus of Japanese ladies-in-waiting.]

Suzuki’s biggest flaw in his musical numbers isn’t the questionable vocal training, but his limp choreography. He never quite manages either the graceful precision of geisha dancing or the effervescent energy of a Hollywood showstopper, though some of his concepts are intriguing, including dancing duets of women giving birth and sumo wrestlers who play drums on their massive bellies. Suzuki has always been better at composing static images than at capturing motion (it’s part of what makes his action movies so startlingly different), causing the dancing to feel poorly directed and less spectacular than the backdrops.

The films from both the highest of high culture and the lowest of pop culture are often accused of having poor plots and acting, but for very different reasons. Somehow “Princess Raccoon” manages to sample those flaws from both ends while also capturing their best attributes: inventive artistry and unabashed entertainment, respectively. It’s a combination that might be said of Suzuki’s 1960’s work, though it manifests quite differently. If this really is his final film, I think it makes a fine finish.

Walrus Rating: 7.5

[Image: One croak from the Frog of Paradise is all you need.]

Review of The Tale of Tsar Saltan (1966)

Here’s some of my mental diary entries from a couple of days ago:
00:00:00 I put my latest Netflix disc into my DVD player and take my seat.
00:00:18 The DVD menu appears (in Russian) and I become immediately aware that I have accidently requested the wrong movie.
00:00:40 After getting the menu to show up in English I decide I’ll give the movie a chance anyway. Otherwise, I will no longer have an excuse not to get some chores done around the apartment.
00:01:30 Movie begins. No subtitle options. I set the audio to English. Three women (sisters?) start speaking in terrible dubbed rhymes. I reconsider previous decision.
00:08:00 Strange little troll creatures appear and start attacking a medieval kingdom. I’m starting to kind of like the movie.
00:15:00 I’m totally drawn into the strange Soviet-era fairy-tale that is unfolding and quite honestly impressed by some of the special effects and visual design efforts. I’m learning to stomach the awful poetry translation.
00:82:00 Movie ends. Evening deemed a success.

So that’s how I came to see “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” (1966) by Russia’s cinematic wizard Aleksandr Ptushko. I didn’t recognize his name at first, but I’ve actually been looking for his groundbreaking puppet film “The New Gulliver” (1935) for quite some time (if anyone knows where I can buy a subtitled version, please let me know). I’d also seen one of his lesser films on MST3K, but don’t hold that against him. Despite my lack of real familiarity, I’m thinking Ptushko is definitely a director worth knowing.

“The Tale of Tsar Saltan” starts out in typical fairy-tale fashion with a humble maiden getting wed to the Tsar and her two jealous sisters plotting to make the marriage as brief as possible. While Tsar Saltan is out fighting armies of pygmy trolls, his wife gives birth to their son Gvidon. The villains do some creative editing on their correspondences and make it appear that Saltan wants his family sealed in a barrel and dropped to the bottom of the sea. Despondent, but blindly obedient, his vassals do the deed.

But wait! The Tsarina’s beseeches the sea to spare her and they wash up on an empty island with only a single tree. Her fast-growing son has already become a full-grown man, and he rescues a swan who helps make him king of a frozen city full of domes and spires. He lives in great wealth due to a singing squirrel who procures golden emerald-filled nuts, but he continues to feel that something is missing. It isn’t a private army of amphibious giants or a beautiful wife with a precious gem shining from her forehead. Those help, sure, but it’s a chance to meet his father that brings about the ballet finale.

This plot felt mighty odd to me, but it certainly beat watching another uninspired Cinderella adaptation and Ptushko makes it more exhilarating still through his knack for fantastic use of color and magical imagery. I’m wondering if Russian filmgoers would have been so familiar with the story that they wouldn’t have been as dumbfounded by it (can someone from Russia answer that?), but I really enjoyed being in the state of I-have-no-idea-what-crazy-twist-is-coming-next for pretty much the whole duration.

The story does have some flaws, particularly the use of fairy-tale repetition and cardboard characters. The acting is pretty theatrical, with only Larisa Golubkina (as the Tsarina) excelling, which is actually especially impressive since she is really only required to be modest and pretty. The writing can also be pretty painful, though I’m sure in Russian the original 1831 poem by Aleksandr Pushkin’s is considerably more respectable. Translating across languages while trying to maintain the rhyme scheme and match lip movements is doubtlessly a nigh-impossible task, but I think they could have outdone “I’m going to go walk over there / and see if I can hunt a hare” (he then kills a bird of prey) or “Why, O Prince, are you so sad / When on this day you should be glad?”

But I need to get on to the real point of “The Tale of Tsar Saltan,” which is the presentation. Everything is just so ambitious and clever and gorgeous. The costumes are bold and shiny, with the distinctive trolls making a fine contrast. I’m not quite sure how Ptushko made them so short (midgets? children? actors bent forward with their elbows on their knees?), but they’re so darn adorably evil. When he brings in the giants he mostly relies on forced perspective (much the same way Peter Jackson did to make his Hobbits appear so short), with many of the set pieces rivaling Karel Zeman for technical challenge. In one scene where the giants attack a ship, he cuts between two versions: one with a regular-size ship and forced-perspective giants and another with regular-size giants a smaller replica of the ship populated by children wearing the costumes (and conveniently not facing the camera).

The puppetry used for the singing and dancing squirrel is rather silly (expect a smidgeon of similarly head-shaking Soviet sight-gags throughout), but otherwise the island kingdoms are magnificent. The huge-looking cityscapes are accomplished by using sets that run seamlessly into impeccable murals. Gvidon’s tour of the silent city, complete with flash-frozen running children, spouting fountains and a dove flying from a tree of crystal apples, is an unforgettable sequence.

Even though it’s often easy to see through the special effects, I don’t consider their datedness to be a bad thing. One can easily sit back and suspend disbelief or admire the amount of craft that went into them. I’d suspect that modern viewers, especially kid weaned on CG, may find the innovative tricks quite charming and well fitted to the story.

I only wish I could show you some screenshots. The sketchy DVD wasn’t recognized by my computer, so you’ll have to use your imagination. You can also check out some of the artwork by Ivan Bilibin that inspired Pushko’s adaptation here.

Anyone with a taste for fantasy should give this a chance. Preferably, find a copy better than the one I watched. “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” isn’t likely to ever get as much attention as “The Thief of Bagdad,” “The Wizard of Oz” or “The Neverending Story,” but it does deserve more than its measly 59 votes. I only wish I’d watched it on purpose.

Walrus Rating: 7.5

Review of Hugo the Hippo

I’ve often wondered why “The Yellow Submarine” (1968) didn’t inspire more films, especially considering how refreshingly imaginative and surprisingly popular it was. One of the few places where it seems to have spawned any progeny is in Hungary, where the works of Marcell Jankovics further explored the surreal, psychedelic possibilities of animation.

Hungary is also the birthplace of a bizarre children’s movie named “Hugo the Hippo” (1973), which has been all but forgotten by popular culture. Admittedly, they never embraced it in the first place; it’s short-lived English-dubbed US trial release failed to generate profit. Languishing as a marginalized cult curio financially unworthy of DVD distribution, “Hugo the Hippo” now lurks in the recesses of the bootleg community.

“Hugo the Hippo” has a quintessentially 1970’s vibe with its “Schoolhouse Rock”-esque animation, its anti-authoritarian attitude and its soundtrack sung by the two youngest Osmonds. It’s full of charm and whimsy along with some positive underlying messages, but it’s far more troublesome than most kid’s movies in its depiction of race, class and violence, not to mention parental and political authority. Though it’s decried as too edgy for children and too tame for adults, I only likely it all the more for refusing to stay put, even on a safe middle ground.

From the opening of “Hugo the Hippo,” you might be tempted to think you were watching some type of edutainment special, complete with geographical information on Zanzibar, its sultan and the chief industry: cloves. (A later segment provides some important statistics concerning Mt. Kilimanjaro.) The information sets up a city in crisis, Dar es Salaam, whose shallow harbor is under siege by sharks, halting the lucrative spice commerce. Against the counsel of his sinister Financial Minister Aban-Khan (voiced by Robert Morley) and his European adviser, the sultan decides that the only solution is to employ a dozen hippopotami to clean up the cove. If only politicians today could problem-solve like that!

[Image: The color scheme, at least on the copy I obtained, is rather toned down, but quite unique in its choices. Juxtopositions of low-contrast shades, like in the storm clouds shown here, create rippled, mottled patterns that stand out against solid regions but can still sink into the background behind character cels.]

Hugo, the carefree prince of the Hippo kingdom, witnesses the kidnapping of his family and tribe by Aban-Khan and the sultan’s ludicrous court magician, whose every action is accompanied by random radio sound effects. Stowing away on the trip back to Dar es Salaam and defeating the sharks (who wear various iconic hats and smoke cigars underwater) is only the very beginning of Hugo’s adventures. The film’s second half sees Hugo adopted by the young Jorma in a nearby village and beleaguered by self-serving adults until a courtroom drama showdown with Aban-Kan.

The first twenty minutes or so of the film run the slowest, largely because the hippos have not yet been introduced. Once they arrive on screen, announced with the first memorable musical number, the film really sustains itself as both a musical and an adventure. Unlike traditional animal animations Hugo never speaks, instead preferring to frolic and swim. He rarely even displays any emotional expression beyond pleasure and fear. This has the central advantage that Hugo is almost always either smiling or eating, both states that could be described as adorable.

Aside from the narration, most of the story is told from the point of view of Jorma, a young African boy who prefers fishing and gardening to schoolwork. Even Jorma is not particularly talkative; the film’s action is usually presented through non-diegetic songs instead. While I’m not a fan of the Osmonds in general, the music in “Hugo” is surprisingly catchy and kitschy. It’s often marked by a rough naivety, with little regard for syllable counts, consistent rhyme schemes or minimum lengths.

The lyrics, however, are the lovable, laughable, bewildering core of the film. Katie compared them to essays by third graders, but somehow in a good way. The music video sequences include:

1) It’s Really True
This is the sentimental main song, which plays at the beginning and again, with a cute variation, at the halfway point. It’s relatively weak compare to the others, but sets up the overarching philosophy that “If you accept a strange story as true / a certain enlightenment comes to you.”

2) H-I-P-P-O-P-O-T-A-M-U-S
Which introduces us to Hugo and his family in their underwater amusement-park paradise and features descriptions like “He walks like an elephant / He swims like a whale / His head’s like a pail; it’s pathetic / Oh plainly, his tail’s unaesthetic / Though nature endowed him poorly, / I still love the hippo dearly” (those last two lines presumably rhyming…).

3) You Said a Mouthful
This track capitalizes on a certain key hippo characteristic: their ravenous hunger. Features lyrics like “I’m so hungry I could eat all the P’s in a dictionary / I could eat the carats in a diamond mine” and “I would like to learn geometry just so I could eat the pi in pi R squaaaaaaaaared.” In between, a children’s choir chants “You’ve said a mouthful there.”

4) Mister M’Bow-Wow
One of the stranger songs, chronicling the systematic absentmindedness of local teacher Mr. M’Bow-Wow who “Looks at the world through a telescope turned the wrong way / Listens to words, but he never does hear what you actually say.” Features Mr. M’Bow-Wow riding on an ostrich and electrocuting himself by sticking a fork in a toaster.

5) Where You Go
The ending credits detach entirely from reality to present highlights embedded into strange split-screen configurations like bird outlines, tidal waves and paisley patterns. Yet another catchy tune, the words include “Wherever you go, Hu-go, we go, too / Wherever you go, Hu-go, we’re with you / If you go to jail, we’ll get parole for you / If you go down below, we’ll save your soul for you” and the inevitable cheer “Hip Hip, Hippotomas!”

Conversely, much of the dialogue belongs to the villains, who tend to be authority figures like the cruel Financial Minister Aban-Khan, the inattentive backwards teacher Mr. M’Bow-Wow and Jorma’s totalitarian parents. Unusual is just how nefarious and unsympathetic these characters are: Aban-Khan ruthlessly slaughters all the Hippos except Hugo, Mr. M’Bow-Wow finks on his pupils by claiming that Hugo is – gasp! – interfering with their education while the parents, perhaps most senselessly of all, burn down a magnificent hippo-Eden garden cultivated by the industrious children.

Much of the villainy in “Hugo the Hippo” ventures into outright horror, only enhanced by the strange aura and unconventional artwork. The murder of Hugo’s tribe, for instance, is theoretically cushioned by its metaphorical presentation wherein the minister fires lightning (accompanied by gunshot sounds) at hippo-shaped clouds. Instead of softening the blow, however, this only makes it seem more grandiose in scale and the final shot of Hugo crying (yes, underwater) amidst a pile of hippo corpses hardly shields kids from the truth. (It doesn’t help that a later 360 degree pan of Aban-Khan’s palace shows how the bodies were put to use.)

Nor is there any doubt of what’s going on when flames overtake the screen during the garden razing or afterwards, when the hypocritical townspeople call for the death penalty because the hungry Hugo now pillages their crops.

The scenes where you’re not quite sure what’s going on are arguably even creepier. An especially notable example is brought on by the magician, whose demeanor is like a wacky clown, but whose creations are menacing abominations. He booby-traps Hugo with succulent-smelling magical garden that transports him and Jorma through a nightmare gauntlet. Giant corncob artilleries chase the pair towards pea pod machine guns while other vitamin-rich monsters like an apple samurai and a banana octopus go in for the kill.

[Images: An apple samurai, before and after being split and forming fresh features from the seeds.]

Eventually tricked onto a planet made of cauliflower, Hugo and Jorma are cornered by squash UFOs and hypnotized by many-eyed potato totems.

The magician’s (adult world) garden with its technological and war-mongering aberrations contrasts sharply with the children’s peaceful vegetable patch. Earlier the magician had summoned a robot horse that slurps up all the water in Hugo’s home, while it’s gun-toting cyborg-cowboy rider lassos Hippos with mechanical efficiency. Whether these creations are a commentary on the dangerous encroachment of Western civilization, modern industrialization or just callous adulthood is a bit hazy under all the weirdness. I think it’s probably a combination of all three, plus little too much weed (in this case, as in Yellow Submarine, the drug habits of the creators are well documented).

Woven elsewhere in the film are other digs at modern society and “civilized” behavior in general, especially the failure of humanity to coexist equitably with the environment, animals and each other. Though this sounds potentially heavy and didactic, “Hugo the Hippo” is largely a psychedelic playhouse that has too much fun to preach excessively. It’s moments of terror are quickly overtaken by song and its lesson-teaching tragedies are defeated by simple youthful optimism and good governance.

Perhaps the genius of “Hugo the Hippo” is that, despite violating any number of rules about how to make an acceptable movie for kids, its surreal delivery is perfectly caters to them. Most young viewers will have little trouble deciphering the plot or understanding, intuitively, the themes. Parents expecting straightforward formulas, not to mention film critics, just won’t “get it.” Like Apple Jacks.

Films like “Hugo” take questionable risks to offer up different ideas, new images and fresh feelings and require our imagination to meet them halfway. With “Hugo the Hippo,” it could be very easy to reject the unpolished narrative and unhip songs and miss out on a novel experience that few films, least of all family films, offer. For ultimately this film is less about celebrating the 1970’s (that’s just when most nostalgic fans first saw it) than harkening back to an age when we knew our homegrown illogical fantasy worlds were better than the sane, mature, normal realities where grown-ups live.

Walrus Rating: 9.0

Review of Legend of the Sky Kingdom

Africa’s first animated feature, the Zimbabwean stop-motion adventure “The Legend of the Sky Kingdom” (2003), may not have stirred up much mainstream buzz, but it’s left me itching for discussion and debate. It deserves to be acknowledged as an astounding technical achievement and a testament to artistic resourcefulness, but also got me thinking about the role of religion in cinema and the way values are transmitted to children through entertainment.

[Image: Coastal reel canisters near a cliff of VHS tapes.]

“The Legend of the Sky Kingdom” was shot on a home-built camera and features a cast and setting constructed almost entirely from discarded junk (director Roger Hawkin’s called his methodology “junkmation”). Far from achieving a grimy, dirty feel with an industrial or post-apocalyptic vibe, Hawkin’s has converted trash into a resplendent world of homely robot characters, ingeniously intricate creatures and meticulous magical locations. Dogs with crocodile clip jaws, trees with melted straw branches, waves of undulating plastic bags and many other tiny inspirations bring our imaginations to life.

All this laborious design work would stagnate relatively rapidly if the movements weren’t convincing, but here the crew remains as polished as any Aardman animation. Motions are smooth, expressive and clear. Most characters move and talk in distinct ways, with each mechanical device choreographed in keeping with its unique components .(Katie, owing to her mechincal engineering training, identified dozens of cleverly appropriated devices that I couldn’t even name!)

The film was shot in English, so I was even able to admire the way the mouth movements match the syllables. The voice-acting is sometimes a little too precious (I was nostalgically reminded of Gumby), but it’s chock full of personality. Italiano, the inevitable Italian stereotype, should have been a source of groans and cringes, but emerged as my favorite “performance.” You can really sense the cast having a lot of fun and giggling between takes while giving a benevolent monkey troupe a ridiculous French accent or voicing a sleazy lizard with a wheedling lisp.

Outside of Italiano and his partner Badza, the main characters are Blockhead, Lucky and Squidge. They begin the film as oppressed slaves in the dingy underground city of the Evil Emperor. The band of would-be heroes gets thrown in jail trying to escape, but there they discover Telly, a book-sized robot which gives them key guidance. After making a leap of faith onto an invisible bridge (a scene too reminiscent of “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”) they emerge onto the surface world.

Once in the open air, the story becomes a great deal more loose and episodic. The overarching goal is to reach the Sky Kingdom, a legendary paradise that can be reached only by trusting in Ariel, the incorporeal son of the Sky Kingdom’s ruler. However, if their meandering path seen on a top-down map is any indication, their journey is less about crossing geography than overcoming a sequence of obstacles and challenges. It doesn’t take long before the story gives way to a rather pushy peachiness and falls into a dull formula: an obstruction is encountered, the team consults Telly or prays to Ariel who then provide a deus ex machina solution and everyone shouts the films’s endlessly repeated tagline “Believing is seeing!”

By now you’re probably noticing what most people in the audience are noticing: the rising pitch of religious sermonizing. It’s quickly impossible to ignore. The allegory, almost subtle at first, gets shoved down our throat: underground city = material world, sky kingdom = heaven, Ariel = Jesus, Telly = Bible, Evil Emperor = Devil, etc, etc. By the end of the film our heroes must even pass through the valley of death to reach the sky kingdom.

Now I’m usually a fan of cinema dealing with moral quandaries, messiah figures and religious themes, but there’s a line between parable and propaganda. I have three major problems with how “The Legend of the Sky Kingdom” conducts its missionary work.

Firstly, there’s the issue of being honest and forthright. The Russian stop-motion Jesus bio “The Miracle Maker” (2000) and the popular “VeggieTale” Christianity animations are two examples of excellent productions that are quite explicit about their religious agendas and benefit from that openness. “The Legend of the Sky Kingdom” doesn’t mention religion, Christianity, Jesus or anything like that in the marketing or DVD packaging, not even in the downplayed form of “spiritual quest” or “metaphorical journey” or whatever. The film even exerts a conspicuous effort not to tip its hand until we’ve become emotionally attached to the heroes.

The hint of subterfuge angers me more since the film is geared towards children. It’s arguably no worse than indoctrinating our youth with a lust for unconstrained consumption (commercials), the idea that all women are helpless princesses in need of rescue or ugly evil witches to be slain (fairy tales) or that explosions, blunt force trauma and murderous grudges are cool (cartoons). Still, non-Christian parents will have every right to be angry at the film.

But surely most family films have some underlying moral code beneath the surface, right? Yes, and I think that’s fine and dandy. However, this is not the generic commonly-accepted morality (CAM) of society at large. Except for the blandness it can sometimes take on in inept hands, I rarely complain about the “cruelty = bad, community = good, diversity = tolerable, work hard, believe in yourself and never give up” message that constitutes 95% of family-friendly entertainment. My issue with “Sky Kingdom,” and my second complaint, is that the message is not particularly universal.

The literal refrain of the film, “Believing is seeing,” is not something I personally agree with. However, I don’t see any great harm in advocating faith up to a point. It’s the notion of unthinking, uncompromising, uncritical faith in a mystical force that bothers me. I finally put my foot down when the five travelers arrived at the Jungle of Confusion, or the “Jungle of Intelligence” as its gatekeeper, Prof, calls it. It’s a labyrinth that can’t be navigated using any system of logic or reasoning, but calling upon Ariel gets them led directly to the exit.

[Image: “Prof,” an evil professor bird who tries to trick our heroes by advising them to use intellect and believe in themselves.]

I don’t trust anything that tells me not to think for myself and I became increasingly disturbed by the film’s advocacy of outsourcing decisions to Telly and Ariel. I’m not saying it’s necessarily wrong to consult holy scriptures or use prayer when confronted with tough decisions, but you can’t blindly yield responsibility for your actions and expect it turn out as idyllically as it does in “Sky Kingdom.”

As for the CAM idea of religious co-existence, forget about it. Sky Kingdom makes it abundantly clear: there is only ONE WAY into paradise and it is through ONE PERSON and that person is the son of the ONE HEAVENLY FATHER. Anyone who says otherwise is a monster or a minion of the Evil Emperor.

But despite the prickly issue of religion, I should mention that the film is still otherwise reasonably acceptable for children. The two complaints I’ve aired above can be easily overcome by going into the film with your eyes open (preferably with a sympathetic religious background) and, if watched with children, discussing the film afterwards (something I would almost always recommend).

My third complaint, however, is more fundamentally damaging. It is simply that the increasingly aggressive proselytizing gets in the way of the story. Eventually the secondary meanings become more prominent than the literal events and so the literal events begin to make less sense. The eventual loss of a real story in exchange for metaphoric lessons saps the film’s ability to sustain disbelief, tension and emotional depth.

I would still say this film is absolutely worth it for its technical prowess and kid-friendly characters (both visually and vocally), but I can’t help thinking it’s seriously wounded by its agenda. What could have been a 9/10 for me if it had retained the story-driven creativity of the opening third, just doesn’t live up to its full potential.

Walrus Rating: 6.5