4:34 PM Tuesday, <July 17>, 2001>
While not at City North, I'll be heading to the movies anyway, this time to see Atlantis finally out at Webster. 7:05pm is the showing. So this is the first disney animated movie I've seen in the theatre since, well, since Hercules I believe, not counting Pixar movies. So it's been a while. So Atlantis doesn't have any songs or musical aspects. The animation, is, well, interesting. The characters seemed simply drawn, large lines, whereas the backgrounds and environments are richly detailed. The meeting with Whitmore and the aquarium for example: very nice work, but the character animation seemed a little out of place. But it all looked very good. Some great CGI stuff, nothing as bad as the Beauty and the Beast ballroom sequence, but still, you could tell when the Computers went to work: the big submarine's first dive, the climb to overlook the lost city. But I liked the look. And the action sequences were pretty good too. And what I keep telling people, lots of people actually died in the course of this Disney animated flick. Weird. But fairly standard story. Some humorous characters. The explosives guy had some good lines. Michael J. Fox has a very distinctive voice, as does John Mahoney. But overall, I liked it. And it had a preview for Monsters, Inc., which looks very good for thanksgiving.