Zambezia

I was not expecting to like this movie very much but thought I would give it a go. Turns out I throughly enjoyed this movie as it had a great storyline was beautifully colourful and had a good amount of heart.

I'm not sure when people starting basing a movie's likability on it's level of animation/CGI special effects but they are missing out when they pick every little technical flaw apart. I didn't notice any problems with the animation because I was too busy allowing myself to enjoy the movie. Silly me not documenting every flaw of every movie in a notebook.

I definitely recommend this movie if your looking for a fun way to fill your time. But please leave your jaded adult world views and expectations at the door and just enjoy.

'Zambezia', the new south African animated film is an obvious low budget animated feature, you wont see any ads on TV, and the animation looks 10 years old, but that's no reason to straight away hate on Zambezia, it's not one of those dubbed foreign trashy animated movies which have no single thing put into them apart from making money. Zambezia has a story, a plot, good characters. When it wants you to take it seriously you will take it seriously. When it wants you to laugh you will not be sitting there rolling your eyes.

The movie is another one of those typical 'parent letting go of child' kind of animated movies, which is possibly the most cliché type of character development seen in any kids movie. But I guess there's good reason for the situation, it just doesn't have it thrown in to make a plot (hint hint Ice Age 4). But I thought the characters were good, not really that deep, but good, nothing to really complain about.

The movie has a nice soundtrack, and I thought the visuals of the landscape were absolutely brilliant. The humour isn't bad, with a lot of jokes that hit. Nothing laugh out loud funny of course, but still much better than the humour in 'Ice Age 4'.

There are some obvious similaries to 'Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole' and possibly the movie was made with the intention to 'duel' Rio, but it still has originality, the bad guy for one, is new, and intimidating enough to be a good villain.

Zambezia is a perfectly good movie for kids and adults, there's nothing wrong with it at all really, and it actually kind of surprised me. I think this movie takes much more risks than 'Ice Age 4', 'Rio', and many other current animated films.

Go and see it, have a good time.

(2012) Adventures In Zambezia COMPUTER ANIMATION FAMILY ADVENTURE

Co-written and directed by Wayne Thornley that has an ambitious young falcon Kai as well as other birds seeking for the ultimate bird's paradise called Zambezia, which is really a huge tree house located in the middle of some occurring water falls. And the egg eating lizards are the bad guys with Budzo being the most conniving trying to convince a hoard of marabous to work alongside with him. One of the major problems is that upon viewers first seeing the different varieties of birds, I am unable to tell which bird is what, since I thought the so-called falcons looked liked owls, while the marabous looked like vultures. This is one of those computer animations where one would have to read up on first before watching.

It is easy to spot a good animated kids movie: Kids will sit on the edge of their chairs, and parents will stay awake throughout and be reasonably engaged. This one ticked both boxes.

Leonard Nimoy, Samuel L & Jeff Godblum created believable characters, but the Ezee character came over as a bit of a cliché. The animation was done well and could easily rival a movie like Rio.

This is miles better than the previous animated attempts from South Africa, but unfortunately its very difficult to create an animated blockbuster if you don't have the budget of a Sony, Pixar, Dreamworks or Disney.

Pleasant hour and a bit overall.

8.2 of 10. The second awesome film of 2012 Samuel L. Jackson is in (as a key character voice), and it's very different from Django Unchained, although there's an underlying common bond in working together in each film.

Besides making you want to pet birds, maybe not the vulture-like marabous, the animation doesn't get nearly enough credit. The lizards are bordering on life-like and the waterfall and mist (not to mention sand and other colored dusts) simply has never been better outside of actual filming of waterfalls. Even the bird poo is as gross as in real life.

As for the character voices, I was concerned that Nemoy and Jackson would dominate the audio and distract from the story. Instead, they both give surprisingly understated performances where you need to listen closely to identify them. Even Goldblum deserves credit because I still don't know which character he voiced.

Dear Oscars/Academy, you failed us again. Do any of you actually watch animations/cartoons?