Reviews

The story in Alpha and Omega was rather traditional but it still retained enough originality to be entertaining. Most of the originality comes into play with the script which I found had plenty of laughs for both children and adults. The subtle and frequent sexual innuendos caught me by surprise and made me laughing out loud several times throughout the film. It appears as if, judging by other reviews om IMDb, most people overlooked this humor. Even the jokes aimed at children were fairly tolerable most of the time. I actually enjoyed the voice acting and dialog in Alpha and Omega more than Toy Story 3.

The Achilles heel of Alpha and Omega comes into play with the animation which would be better suited for a slap stick weekly Nickelodeon cartoon show. This, combined with the questionable art direction of the wolves overly human stature, added a very child-like feel that distracted me from the well written dialog. The poor animation quality is particularly evident in the "howling" scene which left a lot more to be desired design wise.

I enjoyed the film enough to watch "The Making of" featurette which indirectly explained why the animation was so horrible... it turns out that all of the animation was outsourced to India. I was extremely disappointed when I found out. Art is the last thing that needs to be outsourced when there are so many ready and willing production facilities in America to take the business. American companies outsource far too many products already, lets not let them outsource our films.

All-in-all I liked the movie but the fact that the creators completely ignored the quality of the CG is unforgivable. I'm being a little optimistic with my rating of a 7, it was that distracting.

Over the past decade The Asylum has firmly established themselves as the provider of the worst pieces of cinema the world has ever seen. With that said I, ironically, enjoy most of the films they create because they cross into the realm of "so bad it's funny". I eagerly took "2010: Moby Dick" off the self at Blockbuster with a soft chuckle hoping the film would be as hysterical as Mega Piranha. To my surprise, the film wasn't funny (for the most part), it actually had some production value. The acting was a little mediocre at times and the computer animation department obviously had a low budget but the storyline and directing was believable and extremely well done for an Asylum film. If you like over the top monster flicks and don't mind suspending reality for a couple of hours then I suggest giving the movie a try.

I wasn't looking forward to watching the most recent addition to the Free Willy franchise. My choice to rent the movie was a last resort decision but fortunately I do not regret my choice. While the movie was far from a master piece and wasn't nearly as good as the first Free Willy it is still very entertaining. Once I became accustomed to the cliché family film feel of the movie I was able to enjoy the story for what it was. My biggest complaint is that the movie was very different from the other previous Free Willy films to the point where it should have been called something else. This Free Willy movie is obviously made for the younger audience, the acting is overly comedic, the bad situations are always humorously harmful and the entire movie is very predictable. The movie overall just seems much more family oriented then the first film. That is not necessarily negative, I just wasn't expecting the family style to be pushed as hard as it was. In addition to that, the protagonist Kirra took a while to warm up to. I thought Bindi Irwin was simply a poor actor at first but I eventually realized that the acting flaws seemed more like they were caused by the director constantly looking for the overly fun family film style. While the acting seemed flawed, in the end I rather liked the character.

If you enjoy family films then I believe you'll find the movie entertaining, however, if you're not accustomed to family films I suggest you avoid watching the movie, especially if your looking for a movie similar to the original Free Willy.