FT Asia Intelligence Wire BusinessWorld (Philippines). BUSINESSWORLD (PHILIPPINES) June 23, 2000 LENGTH: 1013 words HEADLINE: WEEKENDER: Anime lite BODY: CINEMA Titan A.E. Don Bluth & Gary Goldman In Titan A.E., aliens called The Drej destroy the Earth, but not before a ship called the Titan (the last hope of humanity, of course) escapes into deep space, the ship's head scientist having left his son Cale behind to escape on a different ship. Years later, Cale (voice of Matt Damon), a scavenger, discovers a map giving the location of the Titan literally in the palm of his hand. He sets out with a ragtag band of friends (are there any other, in this kind of sci-fi adventure?) to find both the Titan and his father, with the same nasty Drej not far behind. Aliens destroying Earth? Humanity reduced to the dregs of the universe? Sounds a lot like John Varley's The Opiuchi Hotline, among other things, which is what piqued my interest in the first place (not that I find Varley so hot, but anything that looks like it was based on something even halfway intelligent ... ). Ah, little did I know that this was really the work of Don Bluth, renegade animator from the Rat Factory (a.k.a. Disney). Bluth showed promise way back when he did The Secret of Nimh-the colors were gorgeous, there was an attention to animation and detail that was lacking in Rat Factory movies at the time, and there was genuine passion: Bluth was out to prove he could make a film without Disney. But for all its color and detail (or perhaps because there's so much color and detail), the film lacks coherence-the climax, for one, is a light-and-show muddle. Bluth suffers from the simultaneous vice and virtue of falling too much in love with his visuals-it makes for lovely imagery, but also gets in the way of the storytelling. Then something went horribly wrong. His An American Tail was sentimental slop (that painfully screeched theme song doesn't help), so was his The Land Before Time (both, if I recall correctly, were hits). Thumbelina and Anastasia looked and sounded and felt indistinguishable from Disney musicals, complete with fairy-tale or historical figures, cute sidekicks and Broadway-type songs. Bluth was showing signs of not having anywhere else to go but down. He's arrested his career tailspin-somewhat. Titan A.E. has some of the passion for color and full animation that I saw long ago in Secret of Nimh-but he still can't tell a story well, or create convincing characters. You can see how much he loves his animation-more time is spent on running away from the Drej than on speculating WHY the Drej (awful name by the way-like scraping out a barrel's bottom) are after them in the first place. Why are they after the Titan? And why this big chip on their shoulder about humans in the first place? (Actually, the big chip is explained away in the film's climax-not the best time to finally understand what your film's villains are all so worried about, is it?) It's not just the aliens we don't understand-after all, you can always say they're too alien to understand-the humans are pretty much incomprehensible, too. It's suggested that Cale misses or hates his father, but when he learns that Daddy is dead (told almost as an aside to him), the information falls off of him like rain from an umbrella; he might have been informed that he was about to undergo a tax audit. Come to think of it, the father's actions are equally mysterious-why did he think his son would be safer separated from him? Why this elaborate device of implanting the map in Cale's hand without telling him, then hoping against hope that he'll make his way to the Titan somehow? There are too many unanswered questions, and the film goes on its merry way without even acknowledging them (which would have helped a little), much less answering them (which would have helped a lot). Matt Damon sounds flat as Cale, so does Drew Barrymore as Cale's female prop, the vaguely Asian Akima; they make a good match, in that neither of them have a strong enough personality to blow the other away onscreen. Bill Pulman as the ambiguous Korso is a terrible mistake-you can't imagine the affable doofus from While You Were Sleeping, or the idiot from Ruthless People playing a rough-and-ready Han Solo pirate-it's like a parody of a character, an unfunny sick joke straight out of Saturday Night Live. Oh, there are some good things in the film-Nathan Lane, John Leguizamo and Jeaneane Garofalo do some good (if not really memorable) work. Here's a sequence among space-borne icebergs that's middling inventive (it's almost like a takeoff on Orson Welles's The Lady from Shanghai). I've already mentioned the colors, and the full-motion animation (which, despite being full motion-24 frames a second-still seems irritatingly off, as if the characters where asked to overgesticulate-okay, overact-a little). But overall, it's yet another fantasy flick stretched over what should have been an interesting science fiction framework. The spaceships still go "shoom!" or "swish!" the blasters still go "k-chang!" and the icebergs are polished as if they undergo 24-hour maintenance. The characters still spout inane dialogue, and make dumb moves-my favorite is when Cale finally boards the Titan then wastes what seems like hours gawking around. I would have liked a discussion-even a short one-on the specifics of the Titan's reactor-how does it suck up energy, create a new planet, etc.? Science fiction is involved with concepts and ideas; some of the best SF will give you the human reaction to some of these ideas. Titan A.E. isn't really science fiction-it's yet another Star Wars ripoff (not that I liked that movie any better), targeted towards the adolescent set. The ad campaign for the film has implied that this is an "anime." That's insulting; I've known anime that was more intellectually rigorous (Ghost in the Shell and Wings of Honneamise come to mind), featuring far more kickass action (Spriggan and Akira) and human drama (Grave of the Fireflies) than this film. Titan A.E is to anime what nonalcoholic beer is to a pint of Guinness-it lacks the kick and flavor of the real thing.