Treasure Planet (2002)

Directed by Ron Clements & John Musker. Starring (voices) Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brian Murray, David Hyde Pierce, Emma Thompson, Martin Short, Roscoe Lee Brown, Michael Wincott, Laurie Metcalf, Patrick McGoohan. [PG]

Here’s a fun idea: transplant Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic adventure novel of pirates and buried treasure to a space opera setting (apparently done a time or two before, but unbeknownst to yours truly). Unfortunately, this earnest yet thoroughly uninspired effort gets off on the wrong (generic) foot with the rebellious-teen characterization of Jim Hawkins, and never quite gets shipshape in the eighty minutes or so to follow. The premise promises interplanetary adventure and discoveries, but the contraption is on autopilot; gimmicks and childish distractions—a shape-shifting little blob called Morph and a high-strung, screw-loose robot voiced by Martin Short, more irritating than humorous—are used to try and offset the cluttered adventuring, retro-futuristic hardware, and unresolved themes, but it doesn’t work. Voice cast is up to the task, at least, especially Pierce as a fastidious “dog-man” astronomer and Thompson as a veddy-British “cat-woman” space-schooner captain (they mate by the end, and figuring that one out interests me more than any of the superficial alterations and constrictions to Stevenson’s original story). A few instances of sleek, flashy visuals, but it’s too much of a hollow, redundant experience overall to care. Narrated by Tony Jay, the voice of sinister Judge Frollo and asylum warden D’Arque in Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Beauty and the Beast, respectively.

47/100