When I first saw this I looked at it as a rip off of Titan A.E., since it came out fairly close behind the release of it and was sci-fi/action. Now having re-watched it several years later I find that both films have little to nothing in common, other than they're both rated PG, the character is on a quest to find something hidden, and neither have songs that the characters sing. This movie was ok, and fairly entertaining. It lacks something that makes it feel like a Disney movie though, and I think that's one of the reasons it did so poorly in the box office.

The story was fairly interesting until the character reach Atlantis. Then the story deteriorates a bit from there, and seems kind of rushed near the end. The characters are interesting. There are a couple I wish they had built up more, but at least the main characters had some depth. The voice acting was done very well, all the voices fit their character.

The animation was ok. I actually think it was just a bit on the weak side for a Disney film, but by no means was it bad. Some scenes seemed better than others in this area. The style was also a bit different from other films. The score was great. I really enjoyed it and it was quite a bit different from most other Disney films to that point in time.

Overall this film is worth a couple watches I think. Maybe check it out as a Friday night rental sometime.

"Atlantis the Lost Empire" is a good movie. What I liked most about it is that it was a different content than other previus movies (some characters actually die, for instance). Pity it didn't do well at the box office. If you like adventure movies you should give this one a shot.

The kindest thing you could say about 'Atlantis' from a commercial standpoint is that it didn't lose _much_ money - which is a shame, because it's a pretty good film.

A big break in direction for Disney in several ways, Atlantis does away with songs altogether, and pitches its Jules-Vernian era SF yarn at an older teenage audience than is usual for Disney features. Pretty clearly influenced by anime, 'Atlantis' comes across as Disney's first attempt to appeal to a different demographic. Unfortunately I don't think it's a demographic that Disney understood, and its second attempt at the same thing (Treasure Planet) would be a financial disaster.

There is a lot to like about 'Atlantis'. For most of the time it looks great (though not as great, I would argue, as the earlier 'Tarzan'), the story is appealing and so are the central characters. Milo is a chisel-jawed academic nerd who just happens to have a wild theory about the location of Atlantis. Financed by a mysterious patron and teamed up with a crew of odd characters who I'll discuss later, he sets off in an improbably advanced submarine (the film is set in 1914) to discover the sunken metropolis.

Milo is a likeable character, and so is the Atlantean Princess, but most of the crew of the ship are less endearing. Whereas it might be true that there is no standard comic sidekick in this film, I'd say that what you have is effectively a half dozen of them. I also completely agree with Inkwolf's complaint about tokenism in the choice of characters here. The black guy, if I recall, even has a native American parent, and he is a brilliant Yale graduate or something in 1914? Well it's not the only thing about the film which bends credibility I suppose.

If you can get over that tokenism, the characters themselves aren't too bad, though the only one I personally found straight out likeable was the droll French explosives expert. I don't know what they were thinking with the 'Mole' character, or what his obviously disgusting secret is ("Believe me, you don't want to know") but it worked kind of well.

Like I said, there is a lot to like about the film: a nifty action-adventure with an epic feel, no stupid songs, visually impressive, and at least a couple of solid central characters. So where does the film fall down?

Firstly I think that, beyond being influenced by anime in general, 'Atlantis' definately tries to take a leaf out of Miyazaki's book. There's nothing specific you can say which it borrowed from 'Laputa/Castle in the Sky', or 'Nausicaa', but it's obviously trying for the same FEEL. The backgrounds in the opening sequence in particular look very Ghibli-esque, and there's something about the Princess-warrior character who recalls to mind Nausicaa (though to be fair, it also recalls to mind various other things as obscure as 'Spartakus', the 80's French TV series).

There are two problems here. Firstly the makers of this movie simply don't have Miyazaki's sense of vision, inventiveness, spirituality or directorial genius, and in fact, as good as some of the backgrounds are, they pale beside Ghibli work from ten years earlier.

The second problem is that the super-imposition of Disney's formula onto a Ghibli-influenced story just doesn't sit very comfortably. If this were a Miyazaki movie, there would have been funny moments, but overall it would have conducted itself with a lot more dignity. Disney's approach, on the other hand, seemed to be that there had to be something funny happen every 20 seconds - literally, in some sequences. I just found the brigade of comic relief characters rather tiring after a while, and felt they detracted from what might have been a much more compeling story otherwise.

All the same, 'Atlantis' is certainly worth seeing, and if it can't mix it with Ghibli's best adventure epics, it's still a commendable stab in a new direction for Disney, which deserved to do a little better.

I don't care what people say about this movie. They can trash it, trounce it, call it the worst Disney movie ever until they're blue in the face. It still won't change my mind about it. I like this movie a lot. Yes it's a flawed movie, but it still has a lot more going for it than people let on. It is one of the coolest, most visually intoxicating Disney movies ever.

I love the characters of this movie. They all have their own unique and interesting personalities. There are no sidekicks in this movie, which is a wonderful change from the previous movies. The characters are all funny without resorting to slapstick, except for this one really unnecessary gag. In fact, most of the humor in this movie is very wry and adult, which is refreshing. I'm not sure what the point of making the character Cookie was, but he's a minor quibble. Helga is a deliciously wonderful character and Kida is probably one of the strongest Disney princesses I've ever seen. Finally, backing up these characters is some of the most incredible and evocative voice acting ever in a Disney movie.

The animation in this movie is a little weird in parts, but on the whole it's a visual feast. This is the first movie presented in Disney's 70 mm format since The Black Cauldron, giving the movie a very epic feel. Combine the visuals of this movie with an equally incredible sound experience, and you've got quite a ride. I was also amazed at how well Disney integrated the computer graphics with the animation in this movie, considering how in most animated movies the CGI sticks out because they're very hard to merge with hand drawn animation. The opening sequence utterly blew my mind, as did the fight sequence with the Leviathan. The movie has its fair share of wonderful scenes using some of the most incredible effects in a Disney movie to date. Many scenes have a beautiful mystical and tribal feel to them and I adore the scene towards the end where the stone giants come to life and create a force field to block the lava from destroying the city. This is an awe-inspiring and almost emotional scene. And don't ask me why, but I also love the scene where Milo wakes up from unconciousness to see a curious Kida and her bodyguards gazing at him and trying to figure him out. It's one of the few moments in the film that's toned down, yet the atmosphere runs a range of emotions as it's an up close and personal look at both of these main characters. It's a far more effective "meeting of people from two different worlds" scene than anything from Pocahontas or Tarzan. And it's wonderfully animated to boot.

But how is the story of this movie? Okay here is where the movie falters a LITTLE, but I don't think this movie is as flawed or riddled with plot holes as people say it is. In fact many of the things that people say don't make sense can be explained with a little thought. One has to also realize that this is one of Disney's first true adventure movies in quite a while, done in a way that's a throwback to the classic Disney's adventure movies, with their "go get em" attitudes. This movie does it very well. Unfortunately this doesn't fly with many Disney movie-goers. Who can argue with the fun most people have with the movies that do have song and dance and quirky characters that fall in love? This movie is fun, but not for the reasons the core Disney audience is looking for. Also, Atlantis: The Lost Empire is a journey movie. And the parts where it's just the characters moving along are dull. Yes the characters have to get to where they're going and that's the point of the movie, but Disney should've had the characters DO something while they were travelling. Fortunately this is a short sequence and it doesn't take long before the movie gets up to speed again. I also felt the villain and having the characters go from good to bad to good again were shoehorned in, yet this surprisingly didn't ruin the movie for me because I felt there was some motivation for all this and it was only just rushed. The many wonderful scenes and the interesting characters with their wonderful voice acting save this movie and elevate it from being merely mediocre to actually quite good. And the scenes that are just all eye candy actually work because they're executed with style and grace and consideration to adult sensibilities. This is where Atlantis: The Lost Empire succeeds where other action movies, especially animated ones, with superior graphics fail.

Not everybody will like Atlantis: The Lost Empire. That's a given. It's way too different. Yet with its Star Wars-ish execution, epic scope, breathtaking backgrounds and scenes, adrenaline charged action, gorgeous animation and effects, wonderful and mythical atmosphere, and well thought out characters, it's just too much for me not to love. It's probably Disney's first and only successful attempt at crafting a modern movie with a nod back towards the classic era, where character and scenery meant more than dated pop culture references and hipness. Or at the very least you have to give Disney props for making a movie that kids might love and that won't make adults die of cuteness overdose. And oh yeah, I don't buy into that whole "stolen from Nadia/Castle In The Sky" thing one bit.

Atlantis is a highly enjoyable film, with very likeable, nerdy hero, and some beautiful animation. The Victorian-technological-fantasy-adventure ala Jules Verne has always been a favorite genre of mine.

The story is believable, and the air of mystery is well sustained throughout the movie. The graphic-novel look of the movie is a departure from Disney's usual style, and I found it very appealing. There are no child characters in the film, and a complete and refreshing lack of fuzzy, Bambi-eyed sidekicks. The humor is targetted at a more mature audience as well.

What might have been a revolutionary film for Disney has a few flaws, though. Possibly the most blatant was that Disney could not resist putting in a completely obvious villain. (The moment he turns up, the jist of the rest of the plot is clear.)

And the oh-so-self-conscious bid for the politically-correct seal of approval led to a team of adventurers who made it clear from their first appearances that they were in the film primarily to be non-stereotypical. "Look, everybody, the obligatory muscle-bound, shaved-head black guy is an intellectual doctor! Wow, the little teen Hispanic girl is a brilliant mechanic! We even have an old lady along! Aren't we being brilliantly non-stereotypical?" It just feels...phony. Contrived.

The third weakness I didn't percieve for some time...because, frankly, I hadn't seen the Miyazaki film, 'Castle in the Sky,' before Atlantis. While nothing is blatantly copied from the film (and maybe the similarities were purely coincidental) I must say that I spent a lot of my recent viewing of 'Castle in the Sky' feeling a strange and disappointing sense of déja vu.

I would still advise seeing Atlantis. Some good humor, scenes of strangeness and wonder, the Jules Verne-ish victorian-adventurer atmosphere...all it needed to make it one of the truly greats was a touch more honesty and originality.