Spark: A Space Tail (2016) Reviews

• It was kinda lame.

  subxerogravity2017-04-22

  Not the best animated feature I ever seen. I feel sorry for some of the stars in the movie like Jessica Biel, Susan Sarandon, Hilary Swank and Patrick Stewart who picked the wrong animated feature to voice. Possibly thought it was going to be a hit cause it was an animated feature. The animation is very mediocre. Feels like there they created a program for generic computer animation that can spit out animation films that all look the same and Spark decided to use this instead of animators. Most importantly, the story was lame. I've seen the story a million times. One could point out that if you look at this hard enough you can see the same story as the Lion King in Spark, but that's not the point. Spark's vision to add their own twist to this story fell very short of being decent. Wanted to like it but didn't happen. http://cinemagardens.com

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• A terrible and unoriginal space epic.

  Animated_Antic2017-09-11

  There have been many animated movies that have been set in space. Some are done well that they are remembered for years to come, others are done badly that they are quickly forgotten. "Spark", however, is a movie so bad that it belongs in a $5 DVD barrel, near the bottom in fact. If you've never heard of this movie before, good. I'm glad that you don't know about it, because it's horrible. Honestly, it's one of the worst animated movies I have ever seen in my entire life. I'll explain why right now why this movie is absolutely terrible. The evil General Zhong (Alan C. Peterson) has taken over the planet the planet of Bana and has sucked up the planets inhabitants into a mysterious black hole made by a creature called the Kracken who has also broken up the planet into several shards. Thirteen years have past since then and three of the survivors named Spark (Jace Norman), Vix (Jessica Biel) and Chunk (Rob deLeeuw) have been living on underground on a garbage shard in secret with the latter two of the survivors participating in secret missions trying to overthrow the evil general. Spark, however, is left alone on the shard and wants to leave it to find his parents. After intercepting an e-mail from the Queen of Bana (Hillary Swank) asking Vix to go on a mission, Spark decides to steal the space ship on the shards to participate in an "epic space mission". What follows is a film filled with many plot holes, clichéd story lines, and elements stolen from better movies resulting in an epic disaster. I haven't hated an animated movie so much since I saw last years abysmal "Norm of the North" and while it's slightly better than that film, it still really left me feeling very angry and disgusted. From what I found out, this movie apparently cost nearly forty million dollars to make which absolutely appalled me. I can easily tell that the movies budget went into getting the Oscar winning actors that appear in the movie including Susan Sarandon, Hillary Swank, and even Patrick Stuart. The reason I say this is because the animation of this movie is inexcusably bad. It looked like it was made by a student who is just starting to use computer animation as the whole film looked like some overly cartoony video game. The story was also pretty painful. The film rips off elements that have been done better in other movies including the evil uncle from "Lion King", the elements of the force and laser swords from "Star Wars", the robot designs from "Terminator" and also the slow motion elements from "The Matrix". It was pretty painful seeing these elements done terribly. As for the characters, they're pretty forgettable and  boring. They don't do anything interesting and have nothing standing out about them. I also really hated there names. Hearing these names made me think that they were create by a first grader. Then again, if you told me this movie was written by a first grader, I'd believe that. The only element that was slightly enjoyable was the voice acting. The actors at least tried with what they were given, but I am frustrated that they signed on to do this movie. "Spark" is one of the worst animated movies I've seen in a very long time. It was so unoriginal, confusing as well as being very boring that it really angered me. I don't know what else to say, just don't watch it.  Don't even show your kids this disaster. My only advice is to skip this movie entirely and never watch it whatsoever. You'll live a happier life if you don't watch it.

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• This movie straddles the fine line between being too childish for adults and too adult for children

  negablade2017-05-29

  The movie follows the story of a teenage monkey named Spark, whose planet is partially destroyed when an evil monkey named Zhong summons the space kraken. 13 years later, Spark seeks to fight back and free his world and the universe from the evil rule of Zhong. The story is cliché, but has the potential to be engaging for children and adults alike. We have an inexperienced young protagonist learning about himself and overcoming the odds. We have a slightly comedic antagonist. We have a voice talent of Patrick Stewart, who has already shown what he can do in a kids animated movie with such gems as Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. Unfortunately, even the voice talent of Patrick could not save this mess For a start, the movie can't decide what it wants to be. Many of the jokes are likely to go over the heads of children. And most adults who get the jokes will not think they are funny. It tries to appeal to adults and kids, and ends up failing to appeal to either. When children in the theater are more interested in scooting down the stairs in the aisle, you know something is wrong. We also never get to see the characters grow or develop. At the end of the movie, I couldn't care less about Spark or his journey. His companions are forgettable. The problem is that the story is shallow and lets the movie down. We can't sympathise with the hero because we don't get to share any emotions with him. Spark really has little to overcome and doesn't grow much as a character. The space roaches are comedic foils, similar to Scrat from Ice Age. Scrat's trials with his acorn provide a short interlude that breaks up the main plot into smaller pieces. Moreover, we end up feeling for him as we share his failures and his successes. That is probably why he is such an engaging character and has developed a fan base all his own. The space roaches do not share the same success. They are underdeveloped and irritating, instead distracting from the main story with pointless sight gags and mimicry jokes. Finally, expect to see a lot of references to better movies. Star Wars in particular is sprinkled throughout, but also expect a little Lion King imagery just for fun. Unfortunately, here the movie fails again. The Star Wars references are cringe-worthy because they are so blatant, completely out of character, and unexplained. And as for the Lion King reference, when Mufasa appeared to Simba, I felt Simba's fear that he wouldn't match up to his father, and his growing resolve that he had to fight Scar for the sake of the Pridelands. When Spark's father appeared to him, I only thought 'Where is his mouth and what am I looking at?' Beyond that, I just didn't care. In summary, this movie is left trying to find an audience. The stories and characters were underdeveloped, and the jokes fail to appeal to any age group.

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• No Spark of Inspiration

  coreyjdenford2017-05-24

  This review of Spark: A Space Tail is spoiler free ** (2/5) IF CURIOUS GEORGE and Space Chimps left you feeling frustrated at their fun ideas yet dodgy final execution, which was perhaps left unfinished. Then writer-director Aaron Woodley's Spark: A Space Tail will leave you furious, an uncharismatic CG animation with a lot of ideas but left with a dodgy final execution. Opening with Spark (Jace Norman) a high-spirited teenage chimpanzee who believes he can save his lost planet Bana - which was sucked up by a space kraken. He and his two best friends - a chubby Walrus Chunk (Rob deLeeuw), perhaps as a remake on the titular chubby Goonies character and a tough-hearted skinny fox named Vix (Jessica Biel). Together they go on a quest to save their homeland from evil overlord Zhong (A.C. Peterson). Plot-wise it's WALL-E and Star Wars, Spark lives on a distant planetary shard used as a junk yard, among his friends he has a green cockroach and a clunky old robot - Bananny (Susan Sarandon) for company. Quickly changing formula to another sci-fi epic namely Spark wielding a double-sided light sword perhaps as a reference to Darth Maul, yet a far less memorable one. The ideas pile on from other references to sci-fi to pop culture, a lot goes on at any given moment but even the most fluid moments fail to finish or at least spark inspiration. At its best the animation is mediocrely primitive looking like it came out in 2005 - given that it shines the brightest light other ideas are left in the shadows. The third act shines the brightest, here the ideas come to a halt and it looks the most original, shining in the full glory of creativity. Here Spark learns of his true heritage, he learns that he is more than he thinks he is - armed with this knowledge he turns out to be a stronger leader. Along with the piling ideas coming to an end there are a couple of gags namely Patrick Stewart's The Captain pulls the most laughs - hilariously getting struck by lighting and losing all memory of he is "Outstanding" he says when he learns pinnacle information about his body. He shines the brightest light; he proves to be the most charming and brings smiles to this bland animation. Spark: A Space Tail is a bland, uncharismatic and unmemorable animated comedy which has the space for creativity but lacks the spark of inspiration that it desperately needs to liftoff. VERDICT: A mishmash of space romp combined with half-ish references, unfunny one-liners and an unremittingly charmless all-star cast which fails to achieve liftoff.

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• Why should I care?

  edward-grabczewski2017-06-03

  It's hard to believe that so many people made this film and yet nobody asked the question "Why cares about this story?". I don't like having to work too hard trying to figure out the plot or what motivates the characters into action, but after ten minutes I was still asking myself "what's the point of this movie?". For me the animation was fine. Had the story been a good one then I wouldn't care about how realistic the characters are portrayed - it's a kid's animation so I don't expect it to look lifelike. But I did wonder about the language. I don't think my 4, 7 and 9 year old kids know what "flailing" means, together with a script and story that seemed a little beyond their reach. Having said that, they all sat and watched the film, happily eating their popcorn and apples and said they enjoyed it. So what do parents know?

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