CrapShoot 2011: Alpha and Omega

Ah, the animated classics of 2010. Toy Story 3, How to train your Dragon, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole, Alpha and Omega, all excellent… hang on a minute, one of these does not belong but which is it? Imaginative tale of living toys coming to term with the success of their life mission and what to do with it accomplished, touching fantasy about a boy and his pet that is shunned by society, the hero’s journey of a young owl with some of the best animation ever seen, or bland and generic star studded road trip comedy about 2 wolves that fall in love over the epically long course of 2 days? So help me god if any of you single out the owl movie I will track you down and show no mercy.

All joking aside, there are many of you that apparently have not heard of or seen “Alpha and Omega” as the film just barely made back its low $20 million budget in its theatrical run. Although I can easily understand why the marketing played a big role in sinking this movie, its actual quality didn’t exactly help matters either. “Alpha and Omega” plays on the road trip and rom-com clichés of every film, animated and live action that has come before it. Kate (voiced by Hayden Panettiere) is a hardworking duty bound alpha wolf forced to work together with Humphrey (Justin Long), a lighthearted wisecracking omega from the same pack, in order to return home to after being captured by wildlife preservers for a national park. Does that synopsis sound rather soulless to you? I assure you that it had more heart than this movie.

It may seem like I’m dodging the question of how bad “Alpha and Omega” really is. And in all honesty, I am, because this movie is ultimately the worst kind of bad a film can possibly be; dry, mediocre, and just flat out boring. This movie does not miss a beat, painfully performing every possible trope of animated films to a T, from dance numbers, to excruciating music numbers, all coupled with a plot that is lacks any true drama or danger to it. The voice cast does the best with what they have to work with but that is unfortunately not much as there is not a single stand out performance of the film. Okay maybe that’s not true; there is one performance that stands out for disappointing reasons. The voice of rival wolf pack alpha male Tony, voiced by the late Dennis Hopper. Poor Hopper, I can only imagine that he must be spinning in his grave right now having died knowing this is the final performance that he left us with. A major player in such classics as “Easy Rider” and “Apocalypse Now” leaves the world of the living with a phoned in performance in bad kids flick. Unfortunate.

The humor is weak, the plot is entirely predicatble, and the animation shifts back and forth between unique stylization and cheap motions over a static background. I can not by any means say that “Alpha and Omega” is a good movie but I do appreciate one aspect of it. It’s stupid, bland, it’s pointless, and many other things. It is not however, awful. Despite all of my previous criticisms, the film is somewhat saved from my wrath by the bittersweet fact that its filmakers clearly aimed low with their goals. As grating as it may be to see such a bland piece of work, it lacks some rather annoying tropes of modern day animated films such as popculture refferences and gratuitous soundtrack placement. It makes no pretentions of being for an audience older than 10 and I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt that that was the intention. Even so however, with the last 3-4 years being so stellar for animated movies, from the major blockbusters of “Bolt” and “How to Train Your Dragon”, to the ambitious storytellers such as “WALL-E” and “Up” to the incredibly underrated “Legend of The Guardians” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox”, I can’t help but wonder why this one couldn’t have tried at least a tad bit harder so that I could at least give it points for trying.

“Alpha and Omega” may work best as a weekend rental if your young one is looking for something interesting to watch but if they have not yet seen any of the movies that I’ve mentioned above, I’d highly recommend those before even browsing this. Still, it was far from the worst family film that I’ve seen of 2010’s releases, as the rest of the week will soon reveal.

5/10