Pop Goes the Culture!

Let me start out by saying that the movie is breathtakingly beautiful in places. I'm a sucker for space scenes in the first place (I'm still hoping to someday have my ceilings painted in some sort of motif with spiral galaxies and various constellations, and, well, let's just say it's a lot of black and glow-in-the-dark paint, glitter, and maybe some electrical-know-how.)

Alright, I'll admit it.

I can't get over the ships. Well, OK, not that the ships were, well, ship-shaped. (hee hee) But the fact that they stood on the decks while cruising through space bothered me. (I've heard the "etherium" explanation, that it's not Outer Space, exactly. I didn't buy the LintKing's suggestion that it was SpellJammer, either.) The complete disregard to the laws of physics, oh yeah, that bothered me.

(deep breath) It was a cartoon.

I mean, I expected that. After all, the entire thing is animated. I guess I had just grown to expect...I don't know. Something different.

That's even after the movie steals blatantly from other science-fiction cinema. I think I grew tired after counting the "Aliens", "Lost In Space", and other references. (Not like, say, "The Mummy," where that's half the fun.) There's even a few halfway clever bits, like "Alponian" meals for the canine type.

Where this movie succeeds most is where, say, "Muppet Treasure Island" failed. Not merely in the lack of singing, which is not an inconsiderable blessing (OK, I liked "Cabin Fever"), but in the bringing of the story to a children's level. Treasure Planet is a nice thing to look at for adults, but ultimately disappointing.

Even if you fantasize about cat girls with large vocabularies and English accents.