Written by Kirk Wise And Gary Trousdale And Joss Whedon And Bryce Zabel And Jackie Zabel And Tab Murphy
Directed by Gary Trousdale And Kirk Wise
Milo (to himself): "Okay, Milo, don't take no for an answer. "Look, I have some questions for you, and I'm not leaving this city until they're answered!" Yeah, th-that's it. That's good. That's good."
Would you believe there are some Disney movies I have never seen? Well this was one of them until last night. I thought I'd correct that by actually sitting down to watch this one. I do like an underwater adventure and this one had it's moments.
Focusing on a linguist and cartographer named Milo James Thatch (Michael J. Fox), this movie had our main character with a mission in mind. Milo was determined to find the lost empire of Atlantis. The only problem was that no one wanted to indulge Milo's flight of fancy.
That was until Milo encountered an eccentric millionaire named Preston B. Whitmore (John Mahoney). He was a friend of Milo's grandfather and not only gave Milo the means to go underwater to find Atlantis but he also gave Milo a crew with the relevant skill set to aid Milo's quest.
The crew in question included demolition expert Vincenzo "Vinny" Santorini (Don Novello), Dr. Joshua Strongbear Sweet (Phil Morris), Commander Lyle Tiberius Rourke (James Garner), mechanic Audrey Rocio Ramirez (Jacqueline Obradors), radio operator/photographer Wilhelmina Bertha Packard (Florence Stanley), chef Jebidiah Allardyce "Cookie" Farnsworth (Jim Carney), geologist Gaetan "Mole" Molière (Corey Burton) and Lieutenant Helga Katrina Sinclair (Claudia Christian). Yup, that's a lot of characters to keep up with.
On top of that, there's also Atlantis being real itself and Milo and the crew making themselves known to it's King Kashekim Nedakh (Leonard Nimoy) and his daughter, Kida (Cree Summer). There's a bubbling romance between Milo and Kida but there's also treachery afoot when it turned out that the crew only wanted to discover Atlantis for selfish reasons and posed an actual threat to the underwater empire.
From a visual perspective, Atlantis looked great onscreen but it's definitely lacking on two fronts. One the romance between Milo and Kida was by far one of the least convincing and poorly set up and two, the villains of the piece were poorly handled. Both things don't ruin the movie but they are disappointing nonetheless.
- David Ogden Stiers had a brief role as Fenton Q. Harcourt. He didn't support Milo's endeavours. There's a sequel named Atlantis: Milo's Return (2003).
- The Atlantean language developed in the movie was by Marc Okrand. He also developed the Klingon language for Star Trek.
- Standout music: Mya's Where The Dream Takes You.
- Chronology: 1914 Washington, D.C. and Atlantis.
For the most part, I did like Atlantis: The Lost Empire. It's just the unconvincing romance and poor villains somewhat let it down as a movie. It's not bad, just average to be honest.
Rating: 6 out of 10
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