Review of Sinbad: Legend Of The Seven Seas

Introduction

Dreamworks` past record as pretenders to the Disney animation crown has been chequered. Certainly their computer animation division is on a par with Pixar (without whom Disney would be up a certain creek).

Their conventional animation has not been quite so dazzling. "Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas" redresses that as a rip-roaring, swashbuckling, breath-taking adventure that surpasses recent Disney style-successes as "Aladdin" and "Hercules".

Benefitting from a complete lack of cheesy songs, syrupy sentimentality and ill-conceived cute stuff, the movie belts along with a script by John Logan (with Shrek scribes Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio as creative consultants).

With A-list voice talents including Brad Pitt, Catherine Zeta Jones, Michelle Pfeiffer, Joseph Fiennes and Timothy West; and combining state-of-the-art CG rendered backgrounds with traditional full animation executed with Termite Terrace timing, "Sinbad" leaves recent Disney disaster "Treasure Planet" standing.

The UK cut of the movie has been trimmed by 12 seconds, if that sort of thing bothers you, for the usual precious BBFC reasons - headbutts and imitable techniques.

Video

"Sinbad" boasts a spotless 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that is rich in colour and detail. The computer rendered backgrounds are frequently stunningly beautiful and have a degree of (pardon the phrase) animation that would have been unknown in the golden age of animation. The whole enterprise shows breathtaking imagination in depicting Sinbad`s world. A particular delight in the movie comes at the edge of the world (told you it was flat) when Sinbad has to take his ship to Tartarus.

Audio

The soundtrack comes in two flavours - Dolby Digital 5.1 and wall-shaking DTS. Both are highly active soundstages with plenty of grunt (and I don`t mean the noises Spike the Bulldog makes). Underscoring all of the action is a magnificent full orchestral score by Harry Gregson-Williams, another Shrek alumnus.

Features

Animated menus lead to a slew of movie-buff extras, while semi-hidden auxiliary menus lead to a "kid-oriented" set of menus which access the set-top-box and DVD-ROM games options on the disc. Via the kids` menu there is a condescending little fun item about voice-casting Spike. Rather than having weird-noise maestro Frank Welker (who usually post-synchs anything that woofs, neighs or gurgles in Hollywood), the producers hired a real bulldog called Harvey to make the appropriate noises.

Available from all menus is a micro-adventure called "Cyclops Island" that lands Sinbad, Marina and the rest of the crew on Krakatoa for a spot of shore leave. Running only a few minutes, the sequences offers (theoretically) seamless branching. Every so often an alternate choice of character pops up on screen and by clicking enter, the storyline follows their point of view of the adventure. This gives a small number of alternative versions of the same short vignette. Not earth shattering but an idea of what DVD technology could offer besides what we`re familiar with. All the animation is of the same quality as the main feature and all the voices are by the original artists AFAIK.

There is a production team yak track for the movie, a short "making of" featurette, a very nice art gallery that shows a good deal of the design work and model sheets drawn for the characters and layout of the movie, and there is also a teaser trailer for "The Cat In The Hat", although this doesn`t feature any movie footage.

There are full subtitles for the movie and for the audio commentary. Nice.

Conclusion

Easily the best conventional animation film released this year (as opposed to anime or CG animation). Exciting, witty and distinctly tongue in cheek. Delightful.