Of course, Balto 2 is nothing like the original like most animated DTV sequels, it has been made with a low budget, so don't expect it to be as good as the original was. However, I think it's still a good sequel : the story is fine (if not compared to the first), the backgrounds are beautiful, and the musics are excellent in several scenes. Usually I hate the songs from those DTV sequels, but here they aren't annoying and even worth listening. The only bad point I would give is the animation itself, which is really bad in a few scenes and looks more like a TV show (ie the bear scene...), but as I said it is often the case with DTV sequels. Also, the characters look and act a bit differently from the first. But from a general point of view, it's still an enjoyable quest, and I think it could have been much worse...So, a good direct-to-video, perhaps one of the best, but not at the level of the original. If you liked the first Balto, then you should at least rent B2. And if you don't like this sequel, then wait for the third Balto, which (from everything I heard, like the return of the original writers) will be a lot better, and will stick more to the original!

Unlike the other Balto fans, I didn't even know Universal was planning a sequel until it was on Cartoon Network. I then bought both the VHS and the DVD, so you can tell I liked it--somewhat.
Anywho, the first thing that struck me was how terrible the animation was of the characters. (I wish they had spent less of their effort on the backround and effects and instead had focused their attentions on the characters).
For me, the story crawled along until the wolves appeared onscreen then it got interesting. Of course, then the movie ended soon after.
Maybe I'm just easy to entertain, but I thought the voice actors did a good job. The characters, however.... I thought Balto was a wimp, Aleu and the Trio of Wolves were annoying, and Muru was just plain terrible. I did like Niju, Nava, Aniu, and the whole Raven idea, if not the whole spiritual journey idea.
Terrible when compared to the original Balto, but compared to other DTVs, it's pretty good- an enjoyable romp.
One last comment: why didn't they continue the REAL story of Balto? That would have had the spirit of the original and an interesting plot.

Edit, 2007: The rating for this movie has been changed, according to my new rules for DTVs, which boil down to - I expect it to be a DTV, not 'Bambi'.

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The dust has had time to settle now after the release of Wolf Quest, and what has emerged is a DTV sequel which, without ever approaching the magnificence of its 1995 parent film, is considerably better than you've probably been led to believe.

Certainly there are faults, and not all of them are attributable to the low budget. In fact those are the areas in which the movie is surprisingly strong. The new non-megastar voice cast is really very good. Balto sounds like Balto to me. The exceptions are Jodi Benson, whose voicing of Jenna is a major disaster (note to Benson for Balto 3: Jenna is NOT Lady, or Barbie, or The Little bloody Mermaid), and to a very slight extent, Charles 'Roger Rabbit' Fleischer, who for some reason has Russian Boris the Goose spouting Yiddish (considering Fleischer's eccentricities, we're probably lucky he restrained himself to something as minor as this)

The animation is also better than it probably has any right to be in a DTV. The backgrounds in particular are gorgeous. There is some clunky intermixing of CGI with classical animation, but it's really not that offputting (especially when you consider that since Wolf Quest was made, some much bigger budget films have thrown 2D and 3D together as if the object of the exercise was to see how glaring they could possibly make it. In Dreamworks' 'Sinbad' I wondered why they didn't throw in some claymation for good measure)

Where Balto II lets itself down a bit is in the writing department. It seems to be confused about whose story it actually wants to tell - Balto's or Aleu's (his daughter) - and it casts Balto as an outcast again, despite his being joyfully accepted into the community, which was the entire point of the resolution of the first movie.

There was also, to my mind, rather an over-emphasis on magic and spirituality. Whereas it wasn't handled badly, the original Balto managed to be more emotional and heartfelt without ever resorting to this sort of thing. In Wolf Quest, illusionary enemies vanishing in a puff of smoke robs the film of some of its tension.

Still there is a lot to like about Wolf Quest. It's easy to look at, Aleu is a very solid and likeable character, whose spunk makes up for Jenna's inexplicable docility, and if it doesn't reach the dizzying heights of the original... well who expected it to? It could have been a darn sight worse.

Wolf Quest isn't great in the way Balto was, but it was a very long way from being a train wreck. With Balto 3 a few months away, and some of the original writers back, perhaps this franchise still has some steam left in it.

Well, I was so exicted when I found out Balto had a sequel. This movie was truly not worth the money I paid. The animation is worse than the first one, which was animated wonderfully. The story line was weird, choppy, and the voice cast was poorly made up. I dont recommend this to true Balto fans.

I was really disappointed in this movie, but I wasn't expecting much from it anyways.

My first gripe is that none of the original cast is back and some of the replacement voices just sound awful. Boris, for one, doesn't sound Russian in the least bit, and the two polar bears sound like they are from Australia.

The movie focused mainly on Aleu, Balto's daughter, and Balto was really the only character from the original that made it into the movie for any length of time. Jenna was dumbed down and left out of the movie except for the begining when she had the pups. Boris and the polar bears were just plain annoying in this one, whereas in the first movie they actually provided a little comic relief. I really couldn't like Alue either. To me she was like a bad clone of Kiara, and her voice and actions were really childish. Even if she was only a year old in this, that would make her an adult in dog years. Muru, the mouse spirit guide, was really just a stupid idea. I think he was mainly in there as a time filler. Niju, the bad guy, was the weakest villian I think I've ever seen in a movie. Instead of standing up for what he wants, as he did when he first met Balto and Aleu, he turns chickens near the end.

I really didn't like the "mystical" spirit stuff they threw in. It was really bizarre at times. They could have kept, somewhat, to a theme that followed the original movie, and still kept the main theme of the WQ.

The songs aren't so great either. The only one I really enjoyed was in the begining when the puppies are being adopted out. That song was nicely done and fit well with the movie. The others, however, seemed to be time fillers and just out of place. The score is just about as good as the songs were too. Many of the lines in the movie were very cheesy too.

The animation in this movie was awful. The CG water and backgrounds clashed with the 2D animation badly in most places. The coloring on Balto was off a lot and at times the design of the characters would change. Everything had a very boxy feel to it, but with the original things ran more smoothly. Many of the shortcuts in the animation were visible to where they reused frames instead of making new ones. A lot coloring bloopers were visible for more than a few seconds. i.e. whole parts of the dog/wolf would turn a different color, like an eye, ear, or foot. Although it is just a tad better than a few of the other dtvs I've seen put out by MGM.

This movie could have worked, but it just didn't. The writers could have done a better job on both the story and the script. If they had stuck to a less bizarre theme and made it more like the original I think it would have gone over better. Overall it may be good for one rent, maybe, but I wouldn't buy it.

We have learned to expect very little from direct-to-video sequels and steer clear of them at all costs... but for this one I'd make an exception. It does not perhaps capture the same epic scope and animation quality of the original Balto but it represents a very worthy successor.

The first thing you'll notice is that Balto actually manages to sound like Balto--something which is very rare when a voice is re-cast by another voice actor and Maurice LaMarche should be given full marks for his performance. The other characters, Boris, Jenna, Muk and Luk, are also back but their familiar natures are not constantly thrown in our faces--like "Do you remember us? Do you remember?! If you owned the original movie you'd know who we are and would get all these jokes! Ahahaa..." No, they are merely present as part of the family of characters that the story returns us to. I liked Balto's daughter, Aleu, who is both spunky and sympathetic and has enough personality to her to carry her part of the story. I was not so keen on the trio of wolves who were definitely a poor copy of Nikki, Star and Kaltag from the original movie without any charm in their antics. I was prepared to give this film a much higher rating until they came on the scene.

Where Balto II transcends it's sequel status though is through the music and the native american imagery. In my review of Pocahantas I said that one of the things I really did not like about that film was that the native american spirituality felt cheap--like it had been transported out of the earthy forests and into a sparkly Vegas nightclub. Where Pocahontas failed though, Balto II succeeds... the imagery has a consistent feel of native design and the music--which is really impressive in some places--adds another layer magic to the picture. It's not perfect... the animation is stretched to its limits in places and it's obvious where the very computer-generated totem designs are contrasted against the flat characters, but design of the film is still far above and beyond the call of DTV duty. I particularly liked the song the field mouse, Muru, sings to Aleu which has a sense of magic to it that has been missing from a great deal of animation of late. Pity there will be no soundtrack release for this film.

Balto fans, do not fear. Our favourite wolf-dog remains tall, proud and undisgraced in his video heritage.