The Wild : 2 of 5

Yesterday, the purchase of Pixar by Disney was made official, and not a moment too soon! Thankfully, The Wild wasn't really produced in-house by Disney, but it's still a shame that such a disjointed movie has the Disney name on it. It's not all bad, though - my pal Melinda and I still had a great time watching it, but both of us were amazed at the last few scenes in the film. It looks like the crew said, "Whoops! We're about to run out of film, and we haven't put the cute pop dance number in yet!" I really enjoyed the fur animation - all of the characters have it, and the texture is really nice without ruining the design of the characters, which isn't the best, but definitely not bad (though sometimes the walk-cycles looked a little weird - they had a hovering effect that bugged me). My favorite interaction is between Benny the squirrel and his true-love, Bridget the giraffe - it's a funny idea, and it comes across pretty well. The plot begins exactly like Madagascar (but not quite as funny), and the scenes of New York City look really cool - but shouldn't there be some people in Times Square? Everything goes crazy from there, especially since the main villains in the film worship Nigel the koala because they found a talking stuffed animal of him! The Wild is definitely an OK film, but with so many better animated features out recently or on the way, unfortunately I think it's best that it's soon forgotten.