OVP: Treasure Planet (2002)

Film: Treasure Planet (2002)
Stars: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brian Murray, David Hyde Pierce, Emma Thompson, Martin Short
Director: Ron Clements & John Musker
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Animated Feature Film)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

On a total whim this weekend, I decided to start plugging away at not only some upcoming OVP years, but also with a bit of a lens on the Animated Feature Film race.  I saw three of the movies (one more review coming out later this week, the other one you've hopefully already seen but here's a link if you didn't).  With this viewing, I can now count on one hand the number of Animated Feature films I've seen (and still have a finger or two to spare), and weirdly, I am now officially done with every Disney-Pixar film that has ever been nominated in the category.  I don't have a great excuse for why I didn't see Treasure Planet when it came out (I was still living with my parents as I was just a teenager, and we made something of a point of seeing every Disney film, though like most families around this era we'd kind of moved on to Pixar).  Regardless, this movie, which I always thought looked fantastic in posters, has finally been watched, and today you're going to join me on my weird sojourn into animated films past.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is a loose retelling of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel Treasure Island, though set in space.  We have Jim Hawkins (Gordon-Levitt), a young man obsessed with pirates as a child who as an adult is always getting into trouble, to the point where toward the end of Act I, he destroys his mother's inn.  When he does this, a dying pilot gives Jim a golden sphere which turns out to be a map that will lead him to buried treasure, a whole planet of it.  Along with one of his mother's nerdy customers Dr. Doppler (Pierce), Jim sets off on a voyage to this planet.  The ship is captained by the disciplined (but morally sound) Captain Amelia (Thompson), but her crew is a group of pirates in disguise, led by John Silver (Murray), who takes a shine to Jim, but is still intent on winning the treasure.  Once they get to the island, they discover the planet is in fact real, but a mutiny stakes Jim, Amelia, and Doppler against the pirates & their crew, including John Silver who doesn't want to hurt them, but take the gold for himself.  However, the planet is booby-trapped, and as a result the treasure disappears, with John Silver forced to choose between getting the treasure and saving Jim, and being that this is a Disney movie, he saves Jim.  He thus avoids prison time, and Jim uses some of the treasure to fix his mother's inn...with his eyes still focused on the stars & adventures he might have in the future.

The film on original release didn't do well.  While box office numbers are always rough to get at (studio's pad their grosses and under-report their expenditures), the film is generally considered to be a flop, one of a string of movies at the time from the Mouse House that made everyone think that Disney's reign was being superseded by Pixar.  However, nearly twenty years after-the-fact, I both understand why it didn't do well and am perplexed, since the formula for a good Disney movie is there, even if it doesn't always gel.

The film's best attribute is the animation.  The movie uses a winning combination of 2-dimensional drawing atop 3-dimensional computer animation, and it's gorgeous.  There's very few shots in the film that aren't frame-worthy, and some (like the one I picked for this article), stand out as some of the most beautifully-drawn scenes of this era of animation, where the transition was happening into entirely computer-animated animation.  If you're an animation enthusiast, this is worth checking out simply because it's so pretty, and honestly was enough for me to give the thumbs up regardless of the plot.

The plot is mixed.  I liked Murray's interpretation of John Silver, and his adorable sidekick Morph is super cute and would be a bigger deal if this movie had been a hit (I could see the animated shorts from here).  That said, Jim isn't as well-defined of a main character as I'd usually hope given Disney had just gotten off riveting front-line characters like Belle, Pocahontas, and Mulan, and that Joseph Gordon-Levitt was about to become a very seriously-considered actor.  He's better than some of the side characters, though.  David Hyde Pierce & Emma Thompson had been doing this schtick for years at the time, and honestly are still doing some version of it, and Martin Short's BEN (a robot that they find on Treasure Planet) stands apart as one of the most annoying, unnecessary sidekicks in Disney's annals (and I love Marty Short).  These keep me at about a three, but don't confuse that with a bad movie or one where you'll just enjoy the scenery-it's a fun film.  It's just never going to be Beauty and the Beast, and there's a reason this was a disappointment so soon after the Disney Renaissance.