Truly Dreadful Film

A lot of fun.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

"Back to Gaya" or "Zurück nach Gaya" is a co-production between Spain and Germany from 2004 that resulted in a German-language movie, even if there are also all kinds of versions out there in other languages. The English-language one is possibly right now even more known than the original because it includes voice work by big names like Patrick Stewart and Emily Watson. The most known name in the German version is probably Michael Bully Herbig. Now about the film itself, I think the voice acting is not the problem at all overall. But the story is. The core here is the heroes' challenge to get back a priceless stone and return to their world. This is an okay little reference in the center of it all. But all the side stories they created around it are either so generic and stuff we have seen a 100 times before in films (like the female character's emancipation) or just complete try-hard nonsense like when they met their creator. At least it needed to have been done a lot better to make half the impact only they were trying to make with this part for example. So yeah, the story here is probably the biggest weakness and I wished they could have kept it more essential, even if it had run for 75-80 minutes and not 100.The animation part is entirely subjective if you like it or nor. I must say the way the characters looked I was never really interested or cared for their well-being and successes. The bad guys were slightly better looking to be fair (also nice voice there from Book of Unwritten Tales), but also nothing really extraordinary. The sets and sceneries were a bit better, but still it all felt so mediocre really, pretty much all aspects from this film. It is already way older than a decade now,so it looks as if there will never be a sequel and I cannot be too mad about that really. It was never a watch where I would say yes this was on par with at least the weaker films Disney and Pixar offer us these days and honestly, there are more than just a few European animated films (also in the full feature category) that certainly managed to do so in the last 20 years. Finally, what is perhaps the most disappointing thing about it all is to see how many people wrote and directed this film and still how forgettable it turned out to be. Too many cooks spoiling the broth here for sure. Then again, looking at some other stuff by Holger Tappe, one of the two directors, it s not too surprising that "The Snurks" is a forgettable disappointment for the most part. I don't recommend checking it out.

Well, I went to see this movie at a 10 a.m. showing before it got canned, and I was the only one in the cinema. So much for the trouble I went through in order to see this flick.Well turns that the 5 stars it received are justified. It's a movie that isn't really bad, but makes you cringe when you think what could have been considering ist potential. The Visuals are very good at times and not so good at others. The main technical problem of this movie is the rather unrefined degree of animation (crappy would be to harsh a description to use) which is displayed during the characters movement and them talking (lip sync, facial animation/expression, eye movement, etc..). The character's movements are either motion captured and therefore very smooth or handanimated. This mixture can work quite well, but it only works when you do a good job animating and blending these two styles in with each other so that nobody notices. Walking and other (relatively) easily capturable movements are done well, yet when it comes to complicated action scenes, with characters being thrown through air, holding on to the hood of a car the animation is poor and wooden. There is no persistent, "believeable" movement going on. In Toy Story for example characters did'nt necessarily move according to reality but they behaved in a unique and in the toy setting consistent as well as beleivable manner. Some polishing would have been necessary yet it didn't happen.The next problem are facial expressions weren't anything spectacular either. They were acceptable, which unfortunately isn't enough for an animated flick whose main medium to convey the protagonists emotion is facial expression and therefore fails. On the other hand there weren't that many emotional scenes. Actually I can think of only one: the one where one guy tells the other and vice versa what they believe sucks about their friendship. that's it - no death, no loss, nothing to choke you up or get you involved.The worst of the technical flaws, though is the downright bad or rather the lack of lip sync.I read some comments here on IMDB before I went to watch this film and therefore my attention was raised on this matter, maybe it biased my perception - but only for the first minutes. After that I was convinced that the head animator must have been blind. In a german movie I expect the german voice overs to be lip synced correctly. I mean you can even have a programm interpreting speech as lip movements and they do a decent job(Deus Ex 1 & 2 for example), but this was so totally off that it must have been on purpose. As it turns out well 15 minutes into the movie or so, one of the main protagonists says something in english and is perfectly in lip sync. From then on its clear that the facial animation was entirely done for english. You then could even read from the lips what they said. Well that's an answer but no excuse, as others already stated, Shrek for example has the "handicap" but does an excellent job. Though some of the voice actors aren't first rate, which leads to some poor voice acting at times (the princess for example). This is really unforgivable and really degrades the exprience.By the way, was I the only one who thought that "Buu" was cross-eyed?The story wasn't that great either. Not only was it uninteresting and predicatable but it just wasn't convincing at all. I mean the villains motivation was right out hilarious. Poor character development alongside with a strange pacing of events managed to keep you from getting drawn in. In Pixar movies the stories are always well thought of, structured in a logical, interesting way and you kinda know what they're trying to get at. Also the story is interesting enough to keep you going even if the visuals would suck. Here we have few to no jokes which aren't even funny and worse, no themes like love, fear or friendship are explored beyond a superficial level. Not that I'm expecting a great depth in a children's movie, yet some, at least convincing, plausible depth would is something I expect and certainly most children see it the same way.So this movie that has a medicore story some more or less severe animational issues, nevertheless it did enjoy it,and so will the audience for which it is intended.But if you are expecting something like Monster, Inc. keep looking for Shrek 2 or wait till this hits the shelf at your local video store.The only sad part to this movie is that all the dedication as well as hardwork the creators put in it show a potential which can be seen in glimpses throughout the movie is destroyed by the shortcomings of this movie. With a better script , better dialogue and more time to fine tune the animation as well as a fixed lip sync this movie could have been real good.Hopefully, the next time, the team who put this together will overcome these flaws mentioned above and once they accomplish this we're in for a real treat!

The movie does have significant weaknesses, as the other comments point out, but there are a few strengths worthy of note.I was positively impressed by the global level of detail of scene backgrounds. Where in other CGI movies you get to see, say, a row of buildings with carefully modelled details near the camera, then a lot of empty space behind those, and finally a matte painting of the 'horizon', Back to Gaya shows you whole blocks of buildings, with the next streets showing through the gaps, all in credibly full detail, but without any obvious repetition of similar structures. To me these shots had a sense of realism that I had not seen before in CGI movies.Along the same vein, when there are open air views, the distant landscape is never a simple background painting, but a detailed model. As far as I can tell, even the clouds in the sky were actual 3D entities instead of the usual flat background painting. This gives the camera a lot more freedom to move large distances and freely look around the scenery. The filmmakers probably overused this freedom somewhat, though, making some scenes hard to follow.The outstanding level of detail extends to things like vegetation interacting with buildings, like plants growing inbetween and around fenceposts, for example. What I also liked was the general worn and aged look of things, a refreshing change from the polished featureless surfaces that are all too common on CGI movies' background objects.The character animation in comparison is two classes below that, as the other comments mention. One thing I like about the characters, though, is the courage of the designers to go for the outright bizarre with the 'human' roles. It was interesting to see character design exploring a different direction than the usual either hyperrealistic or more classical comic style.So, despite its weaknesses, Back to Gaya actually manages to advance the state of the CGI art on a few fronts. I do hope that it will be commercially successful enough that the makers get another chance to apply their talents to a better story.

Well, today I've finally watched "Back To Gaya" which I was eagerly waiting for. My anticipation was damped because of the bad trailer which had a bad synchronisation and did not help to make one curious about the movie. Fortunately the movie was much better than what I had expected. Actually it is quite good but it has three major timing problems:1. technically: the animation is not very good (not a single run cycle seems correct in this movie) 2. the pace: the movie seems to last longer than it is because of bad pacing 3. the jokes: first of all there are too few and second they have a bad timing. Either you know the joke seconds before it is spoken or you miss it because you don't have time to laugh about itOn the other hand BTG is technically very well done (except the animation) has tons of places and objects, is beautiful colored and has a nice music. Everyone that likes CG-movies should see it, it's worth the money... all the other should give Brother Bear a chance - since it is much better than most people think =) Well, give it a try - both of them.