Made over 10 years, Fathom Studios/Alliance Films' Delgo represents a labour of love for directors/writers Marc F. Adler and Jason Maurer. However, serious script issues and animation glitches doom this movie.
What's Delgo About?
Long ago, the war between the winged Nohrin and the earthbound Lockni split the land. Now a tentative truce between the two nations is threatened by the evil Sedessa (the late Anne Bancroft), a royal Nohrin who had her wings cut off for treason. With the help of the traitorous General Raius (Malcolm McDowell), she plots to overthrow King Zahn (Lou Gossett Jr.), and destroy the Lockni.
Delgo (Freddie Prinze Jr.) is a teenage Lockni who falls in love with the Nohrin Princess Kyla (Jennifer Love Hewitt). When Sedessa kidnaps Kyla and frames Delgo for the deed, he must band together with his cowardly best pal (Chris Kattan) and the Nohrin General Bogardus (Val Kilmer) to rescue the princess and stop the coming war.
Alliance Distributes Delgo
As mentioned before, Adler and Maurer (along with 4 other writers) took 10 years to put this flick together. Perhaps they should've taken even longer to work out the kinks in the script.
The initial setup confused the kiddies in the audience. Items waved about early on – screaming their significance – are never used later in the film (left over from previous drafts?). Characters act out of character to further the plot, holes in said plot confuse the audience, and there's a gigantic deus ex machina moment in the climax. An airborne sword fight between two warriors delivers decent thrills, but, in comparison, the climax is, well . . . anti-climactic.
And let's not forget the hackneyed dead-villain-comes-back-to-life-to-deliver-one-last-scare that is the province of so many 4th rate horror movies. There's a serious lack of originality in this script.
The comic relief tries too hard to be funny. Kattan's sidekick is one bad accent away from cloning Star Wars' Jar Jar Binks, while Eric Idle's bumbling servant – complete with mangled diction – is funny at first but swiftly wears out its welcome.
There is some good in this flick. The character designs are stunning and the visual sense on display is nothing less than brilliant. However, it's killed by jerky, spastic animation: many of the characters move too much during their dialogue, which detracts from the performances. The action sequences are often jerky as well, and the characters sometimes seem detached from their backgrounds. The animation supervisors should have been more alert.
Most of the cast are "Hollywood actors" rather than respected voice talent, and it shows. A good voice actor needs to convey every nuance through their voice, since they can't use facial expressions. McDowell, Michael Clarke Duncan, Kattan and Idle understand this; Kilmer, Gossett, Bancroft, Prinze and Hewitt do not. Gossett in particular struggles with his regal character, especially when the animators depict him moving around so much.
The Final Analysis
Delgo tries way too hard. The story tries way too hard to be exciting, the characters try way too hard to be energetic and the comic relief tries way too hard to be funny. Despite the film's visual merits, it adds up to a mediocre mess. 4/10.
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