Deb 2 Me 2
Whatever the Secret of Kells is remains a secret. The movie starts with a whispering voice that may have explained what the movie was about, but it was totally unintelligible. Then the cells unfurl that seemed to be based on Rocky and Bullwinkle artwork. Eventually a Willie Nelson looking character appears along with a ringer for Mr. Magoo. Matt Stroud, who had seen an interesting panel discussion featuring the makers of the Academy Award nominated animated features, touted us onto the movie. The guy that did this flick, Tomm Moore, was particularly animated himself and the clips shown were interesting. And there were some very interesting clips within the movie. There were some cool multi-plane camera effects, some scenes appeared to be backlit with a net mask, and lots of attractive tricks were employed. Their version of fire was really cool. I liked the sponge effect on most of the backgrounds. It was pretty. Scene transitions were often entertaining. I liked the music, not the songs, but the music was good.
But like many fantasy films the story wasn’t cohesive. I always think of Walt, who focused so much energy on the story, I mean why draw a single cell if it isn’t going to support a solid story? These days there is just too much razzle-dazzle that doesn’t support much of a tale. Deb was able to come up with some possible morals to the story. The only moral I could find was: don’t go to all this work until you know what you’re going to say with it. As always, we stayed for the complete credits, and as they flashed by came a voiceover, again, totally unitelligible. This time I could tell it seemed to be a different language, like old Gaelic or something, and wondered just who the hell was this thing aimed at?
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