Cinematic Double Act (Part Two)

I don’t want to do this! Please, don’t force me! Grant me mercy, I beg of you!

Ah well, I did promise, quite some time ago, actually, so I suppose I’d better make good on that promise. A few weeks ago (Saturday, October 16, to be precise), I went to the cinema to watch a couple of films; Buried, which I’ve already reviewed, and Alpha and Omega, which I said I would review in the near future. A month and a half later is still the near future, right?

Anyways, as most of you probably already know, Alpha and Omega is one of this year’s computer animated films that seem to have become the only kind of animated film people outside of Japan tend to make these days. Not that I object to computer animation, mind you; after all, it seems to have helped other, lesser known filmmakers break Disney’s decades-long monopoly over the animated film market. But it still seems as if Disney are the only people in the West who can still crank out a half-decent traditionally animated film. But I digress. Needless to say, I have no ill-will towards computer animation; it can look very good and has brought us such masterpieces as the Toy Story and Shrek series, as well as other excellent standalone films, like The Incredibles, and the first Ice Age movie (I only exclude the sequels because I haven’t seen them). Is Alpha and Omega another masterpiece? No, and nor is it one of the films I would describe as “excellent” either; in fact, I’d struggle to call this movie anything more than “mediocre” at best.

Alpha and Omega is the story of two wolves--Kate, an alpha, whose duty is to hunt and to protect the pack from harm, and Humphrey, an omega, whose job is to… mess around and entertain everyone, I guess…? I’m not sure that’s what an omega wolf’s role within the pack actually is in reality, to be fair, but neither do I think that, if wolves in the wilds of Canada had names, they’d be called “Kate” or “Humphrey”. At least when Disney does a film about animals, they show some semblance of creativity with the names. As a matter of fact, while I liked Ice Age, this is a problem I had with that film too; I just can’t take a smilodon (sabre-toothed cat) seriously when he answers to the name “Diego”, to say nothing of a mammoth by the name of “Manfred”. But I’m getting tangential here. The plot of the film is fairly straightforward, not that that’s a bad thing; after all, James Cameron did wonders with a simple plot in Avatar, but Alpha and Omega is not Avatar, by any stretch of the imagination.

Essentially, the plot revolves around Humphrey’s infatuation with his childhood sweetheart, Kate, but because of the social conventions of the pack, alphas and omegas don’t “howl together”. Furthermore, in order to settle a territorial dispute with a neighbouring pack, Kate’s father, Winston (urgh…) has arranged for her to be married to the son of the neighbouring pack’s alpha male, Tony, in order to prevent all out war between the packs over the valley and all the caribou living there, which would--Okay! No! Stop!

Tony? Really? Tony? That’s your best effort in naming the other pack’s alpha male? The character who comes the closest this film has to having a principle antagonist, and the best thing you can think of to call him is Tony? I’m sorry, but I don’t feel threatened by anyone with the name Tony. My father’s name is Tony! My girlfriend’s mother’s name is Kate! And one of my childhood friends has the surname Humphrey! When I hear the name Tony (or any of these names), I don’t think of a dangerous wolf, who, driven to desperation by hunger, is ready to start a territorial war with a neighbouring pack. If anything, I think of Tony the Tiger, who (despite being one of the world’s largest land predators) seems to be satisfied with a bowl of Frosties. Okay, so there’s always Tony Blair, who did help to start an illegal war of aggression with Iraq, but we all know he was only ever a junior partner to George W. Bush and, besides, that’s reality; people can’t help having the names they were given. But the name Tony just doesn’t suit an antagonist in a work of fiction, where you have complete freedom to come up with a perfectly fitting name, especially when that antagonist is a ravenous wolf. Crest Productions, you fail at naming! Take some pointers from Disney before you try to write a film about wild animals again. I haven’t seen The Lion King in years, and yet I can remember the name of every single character; Disney gave them interesting, memorable names!

Anyways, where was I? Ah, yes. Needless to say Kate (sigh…) is not remotely interested in marrying Tony’s (…) son, Garth (hey, that one’s not too bad, probably because it’s uncommon). However, to complicate matters, she is tranquilised and captured by some humans along with Humphrey, who was busy with some silly antics to try and impress her; the pair of them are locked in crates and taken far, far away to the mysterious land of Idaho… in an effort to repopulate the species there, I guess? Don’t you just love how, when they’re in the United States, the film is specific enough to say which state they’re in, but when they’re in Canada or trying to return there, they never actually specify which province or territory Jasper National Park is in? It’s typical America-centrism on the part of the creators of this film, honestly. Never mind the fact that Canada is a big place (it’s the second largest country in the world by land area); just saying Canada is as specific as you need to get with American audiences. Anyways, from Idaho, the pair of them make the long and dangerous journey back home; after all, if Kate isn’t there in time for the full moon and her arranged marriage to Garth (okay, that’s making me think of Garfield now…), Tony (…) and his pack will go to war! Kate and Humphrey are helped along the way by a French-Canadian stereotype dressed up as a goose and an English stereotype dressed up as a duck, whom I suppose are meant to provide a bit of comic relief, but don’t really live up to the task. Naturally, through their perilous journey together, the pair of mismatched lupines end up falling in love with each other, but, for Kate, duty comes first. However, at the last moment, she realises she can’t go through with her marriage to Garth, since her heart belongs to another now. So, she leaves Garth “at the altar” (such as it is) in order to be with Humphrey and everyone lives happily ever after…

Oh yeah, the war is averted because there’s an uninteresting subplot about Kate’s socially awkward sister, Lilly (another omega, another forgettable name) befriending Garth, teaching him how to howl without causing bluebirds to drop out of the sky in dazed confusion, and ultimately falling in love with him. The old alpha males, Winston (guh…) and Tony (…) are convinced to forego tradition and allow these unorthodox unions to go ahead, thereby marking the end of the Cybertronian wars as we march forward to a new age of peace and happiness!

‘til all are one!

Sorry, I think memories of a far better movie might have just popped up for a moment there. Anyways, that’s pretty much it.

What did I think of this movie? Honestly, I was bored throughout it. It was nothing special, nothing I hadn’t seen before. It was the first computer animated film of its kind that I’d seen in 3D (I exclude Beowulf, because that was computer animation meant to look real), but 3D added nothing to it, and it certainly couldn’t distract me enough from the overly-simplistic, lazy story. That said, the animation was very pretty, and the character designs were nice, but that just made the film all flash and no substance. There were jokes, there was slapstick humour, but it was nothing original, and nothing deserving of more than a mildly amused snort. There were no side-splitting, laugh-out-loud moments for me in Alpha and Omega, which there really ought to be in a film of this kind. To be honest, I shouldn’t have expected a masterpiece, but I was lured in by the fact that it was wolves and… I thought Kate looked kind of sexy. I’m a furry, guys. Deal with it. But I’m afraid you could throw all the sexy character designs you could think of at this movie and it wouldn’t save it from being a mediocre yawn-fest. It may be a good one for the kids, but the charm of films like Toy Story and Shrek is the fact that they have universal appeal; people of any age can enjoy and appreciate them. Honestly, I think Alpha and Omega is just another flash-in-the-pan, easy-money project that will be completely forgotten in a few years. It’s a shame it managed to be a commercial success, because as long as films like this do well at the box office, they’ll keep getting made, no matter how disappointing they are.