With a little polishing, this could have been a really good film.
At first glance, Gen 13 seems to have all the right ingredients: Quality voice talent from Alicia Witt (Twin Peaks), John de Lancie (Q from "Star Trek: Next Generation"), Mark Hamill (duh!) and even Cloris Leachman. It also has a good plot, taken almost verbatim from the pages of Jim Lee and J. Scott Campbell's "Gen 13" comic book mini-series.
Kevin Altieri's past experience with the "Batman" animated series is obvious, mostly keeping the story moving at a good clip.
But this movie views as though the money behind it suddenly lost interest during the final stages. Although there are several good lines, "We're like... the 'Justice League,' man", the voices are not well mixed and, at times, need additional coaching. Background noises mix in and out at random. The "Grunge" character is poorly scripted as the well-meaning dope and Flea fails to give him any personality.
The music weighs everything down. It sounds more like the soundtrack for a Saturday morning cartoon than an 82-minute feature film.
Despite all that, the visuals are really pretty good. Fairchild is still the busty titan and Freefall the good-hearted bad girl. And they are still fun to look at.
Like I said, it seems unfinished.
At first glance, Gen 13 seems to have all the right ingredients: Quality voice talent from Alicia Witt (Twin Peaks), John de Lancie (Q from "Star Trek: Next Generation"), Mark Hamill (duh!) and even Cloris Leachman. It also has a good plot, taken almost verbatim from the pages of Jim Lee and J. Scott Campbell's "Gen 13" comic book mini-series.
Kevin Altieri's past experience with the "Batman" animated series is obvious, mostly keeping the story moving at a good clip.
But this movie views as though the money behind it suddenly lost interest during the final stages. Although there are several good lines, "We're like... the 'Justice League,' man", the voices are not well mixed and, at times, need additional coaching. Background noises mix in and out at random. The "Grunge" character is poorly scripted as the well-meaning dope and Flea fails to give him any personality.
The music weighs everything down. It sounds more like the soundtrack for a Saturday morning cartoon than an 82-minute feature film.
Despite all that, the visuals are really pretty good. Fairchild is still the busty titan and Freefall the good-hearted bad girl. And they are still fun to look at.
Like I said, it seems unfinished.