Horst in Translation ([email protected])
"Die Konferenz der Tiere" or "Animals United" is an animated film directed by Reinhard Klooss and Holger Tappe. They are joined by writer Oliver Huzly and these three also worked on new version of Urmel movies (Augsburg Puppenkiste) before this film. It is about a group of wild animals including meerkats, turtles, rhinos, monkeys, giraffes, a cock and many more who struggle due to lack of water. This is the central plot, but I felt the film succeeded much more with its sub-plots. I thought the two old turtles were the highlight of the film. The scenes with their deaths and the comets was just amazingly sad. And the voices fit them nicely too. I also liked the monkey who sort-of was with the humans initially. I did not really like the cock, even if I love Christoph Maria Herbst and I could have done without this character. In general, occasionally, it felt as if the movie could have been better if they had simply included less animal characters and maybe elaborated a bit more on these. The small background stories did not work so well for everybody as they did with the turtles. For example, the whole rhino-buffalo fight did nothing really for me.I did not know too many from the voice cast, really only Kalkofe and Herbst (Wixxxer reunion) and I think I heard about Fritsch too in the past. The English dub has the great Stephen Fry which should be reason enough for you to watch it if you're American or British. The father-son relationship between the meerkats was a great idea and I wish they elaborated a bit more on it, maybe by telling us about the two and how they lived together in the past. When the young meerkat is happy in the end that daddy saved the day it felt a bit out of place. Such a shame they did not develop this idea further. It could have lifted the film up a lot. The insect plague at some point almost had something biblical just like the whole animal gathering scenes and how they stayed in peace with each other for a while to find a solution to their thirst problem. The march to the UN building was okay as well.I think as a whole this film may be more suitable for younger audiences, but I believe thanks to its morale it can also make a good watch for adults who like animated movies. I don't think it is half as bad as some people say it is. Some animals were more interesting than others sure, but there were no extremely negative standouts and same goes for the animation. German singer Xavier Naidoo does a good song for the closing credits, but I am a bit biased here I guess as I like his voice in general. I thought the song fit the film nicely. On a completely random note, the final scene at the closing credits with the mole reminded me a bit of the same from "Monsters University". Anyway, solid movie. Recommended.
ivasquez-3
When there is a clear leader in the field, all reviews and comparisons tend to compare to that standard. In this case, I will compare this to Disney Pixar movies. The animation in this film, at first glance is pretty good. Almost Pixar quality. However, most characters lack the intangible quality that draws the audience to them. Most of the characters lacked real character the way pixar films do, and particularly the human characters had robotic features. The worst part are the extremely cliché references to human destruction and greed - although I agree with the message, the sappy moral rhetoric had me rolling my eyes most of the time. It gets over-done and really old halfway through the movie, but then they amazingly pour it on in even more annoying quantities towards the end. *** SPOILER ALERT *** Then in the end, it all falls apart in an illogical incoherent mess. Especially when the music comes in and the animals start dancing. To, of all things - the Beach Boys song where they sing "fun fun fun, til daddy takes the T-bird away" which has NO context to the film whatsoever. Then the animals are flooded in a massive damn break, but they all miraculously float away. Then they end up in New York city by riding inside several whale's mouths, to attend a global conference on environmental matters, which is great. But you know they are going to die, because A - animals can't talk, and therefore cannot dispute their views at the conference, and would likely be shot. And B - even if they survive getting shot, they are in New York city, where there are no natural resources or food for their survival. The saving grace is that my daughter is 8, and didn't know any better, and still managed to like this movie.Which brings to mind another comparison to Disney-Pixar. In DP movies, adults enjoy them as much as children do. This movie was excruciating for anyone over the age of 10.Overall, if Disney-pixar fired its writers and hired low wage teenage summer students to write plots, and the animators hated their jobs and stopped caring how the movie turned out, their films would probably look a lot like Animals United.
alberto-dutto
My kid loves it, I watched 1k times already, so I decided to write a review.from an animation point of view, it is really well done, the music is perfect and the dialogs are really funny!My kid of course still doesn't understand everything and it focus on the animations.I really suggest it to every parents with kids below 5 years, it is really a good one.My kid likes the bufalos and all the other animals, so it entertain himself for a while watching this nice cartoon.
