Phalynx

5 / 10

enjoying in concept, December 02, 2015

This tugs my heart strings mostly because not only is balto and aleu's father daughter relationship bittersweet but it explores balto's native wolf side a bit. The journey feels more like its balto's daughtes and he was just along for the ride. it does have musical numbers but at least (in my opinon) they sound pretty. The animation of course is lacking compared to the first, and its the worst of the 3 in that category undoubtably. there are jokes that come off more awkward than funny even little kids might think its trying too hard. The story and concept are there to which i do respect, even if it doesn't reach that full potential, most noticeably in its third act as it is so short you can plainly see they ran out of time. A big shame as thats when it really starts getting interesting.

Balto relates to his daughter the most,out of the litter of six. As he himself was always being ignored and shunned and bullied for what he looked like. His motives to make sure his 'baby' never blamed herself or felt alone while smothering her with love sounds sweet, but as every parent must learn, spoiling them or hiding the truth from them will eventially come back to bite them in the butt later in life. it teaches not only aleu to go and do what she wants or even has to do, but teaches balto and parents that you have to let your kids grow up. Not a bad lesson at all. the problem though is thanks to the movies time frame it feels so sudden, a quick good bye before we even knew them. We don't get to see a lot of their interactions. take for example when they start talking about following a raven. it cuts immediatly to the moronic trio rejects you've seen in ever kids b-movie. these add nothing but poor comedy relief and it would have sufficed if we got more family moments.

While we're on side characters this movie shows us muk, luk, boris and jenna as nothing more but wallpaper. well, maybe not boris to an extent as he foreshadows the events to come so he gets a pass. But muk & luk have no reason to be other than comic relief. Then you have jenna, whom along with the bears are literally told to stay put. Now for the bears, if they dont advance the plot then they shouldn't be there in the first place. Only excuse i can think of is that they were forced in due to contract reasons like the songs. It would have been nice if we had at least one jenna and aleu moment to see what they think of eachother.

The movie's "villain" niju, a black and blue recolor of red from all dogs go to heaven is more in the grey area in terms of characterization, he wants whats best for the wolf pack. While these intentions are good his means to doing so are, in another characters case "unbalanced" to put it bluntly. the lesson here is that the ends dont justify the means.

Niju turns out to be the mirror to balto's or even aleu's arc of "letting go", he couldn't let go of his home, while aleu could. niju couldn't progress and let whats ultimately best for the pack but balto could for his daughter. poetic.

The shamanisc viewpoint might be preachy to some, but it never really bothered me. if you're super religious and easily offended, then you might want to stay clear of this as it has 3 songs dedicated to spiritism.

The voice work is passible. balto is now voiced by maurice lamarche the same man who voiced brain from animaniacs skit sensation "the pinky and the brain", aleu voiced by lacey chabert aka non other than eliza thornberry, nava voiced by the late martial artist david carradine and niju voiced by the ever so talented mark hammil. not a bad cast, they get the job done. also a fun trivia; maurice, lacey and mark all have a reunion in the show "transfomers rescue bots" AND maruice and lacey play father and daughter again.

Again, i can respect this movie for its story and what it wanted to do but thanks to (probably) budget reasons it never reached its full potential. It would have been rewatchable had it done so. the awkward animation, dry jokes, side characters being pushed aside in favor of more whom we never get to know really isn't worth multiple views wont satisfy adult viewers. The pretty songs and heart warming family moments though maybe.