Movie Review: Battle for Terra: Snoot Entertainment, Menithings LLC Film Stars Evan Rachel Wood

(Writer's Note: This film was viewed as part of the Ottawa International Animation Festival)

You know your film is in trouble when your audience is alternately hissing and heckling your flick during screenings.

Despite this, Battle for Terra, directed by Aristomenis Tsirbas and written by Evan Spiliotopoulos, somehow impressed the judges enough to win the Best Animated Feature Film award at the OIAF. This film deserves only to be the featured flick at a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 revival. Indeed, there were some MST3K-style commentary thrown around the auditorium during the screening.

Between the leaden dialogue, cliché-ridden action, hammered messages, and phoned-in performances from a legion of veteran actors, Battle for Terra is an unintended comedy, with plot holes large enough for a pack of drunken jawas to drive an Imperial Star Destroyer through.

What's It About?

Battle for Terra opens on a peaceful planet of the same name, where sperm-shaped creatures lazily fly around, communing with gigantic flying whales. They're so peaceful, they're not sure how to even pronounce the word "war" (Huh! What is it good for?).

Mala (voiced by Evan Rachel Wood) is your typical teen who just happens to be a mechanical genius; Wesley Crusher as a female sea monkey. When Mala spots a giant object blocking the sun, she wonders if it's a new god. But no: it's actually a rag-tag group of humans in their crumbling space ship. After trashing Earth, Mars and Venus, the last dregs of the human race have flown all the way to Terra in order to colonize it too.

Naturally, the peaceful sea monkeys (sorry, Terrians) are willing to welcome the newcomers with open arms, but the evil humans have other plans. The atmosphere of Terra is poisonous to humans, and the human atmosphere does the same to our little sea monkeys. So the warlike General Hemmer ("These are not the Hemmer") declares war, sending down his cross-shaped fighters to wreak havoc.

Lt. James Stanton (Luke Wilson), a human fighter pilot who crash-lands on the planet, eventually meets and befriends Mala after she saves his life. He must decide between following Hemmer (does Hemmer drive a Hummer?) or allying himself with the peaceful denizens of this new planet.

Leaden Dialogue, Lousy Script

While the CGI animation is decent, the voice actors essentially phone in their parts. You can almost hear the boredom in Evan Rachel Wood, Brian Cox, Justin Long, Dennis Quaid, Beverley D'Angelo, Chris Evans, James Garner, Rosanna Arquette, Danny Glover, Ron Perlman, Amanda Peet, David Cross and Luke Wilson as they recite the wretched dialogue. These are all veteran actors, and they know when they're just cashing a paycheque.

First off, it's explained very carefully (by a robot who should've been named Basil Exposition) that humans would die if exposed to the Terrian atmosphere for longer than 27 seconds. But scriptwriter Evan Spiliotopoulos also throws in a deus ex machina: a plant on Terra produces oxygen! Isn't that wonderful (and more than a little convenient)? Stanton ends up in a tent filled with these flowers while recovering from his crash.

At one point, Stanton and Mala have a face-to-face conversation that lasts longer than 27 seconds, while the tent door is open. Neither of them are wearing any breathing apparatus, and they end it by shaking hands. Can we say, oops?

Speaking of breathing, Mala and the other Terrians sport nostrils on their foreheads. However, when she builds her own scuba tank (genius teen alert) so she can zoom around the humans' ship, her breathing mask only covers her mouth. Can we say . . . you get the idea.

There are a few other nitpicks. Much like the 2000 stinker Battlefield Earth, Battle for Terra asks the audience to accept that a group of peace-loving sea monkeys can suddenly morph into Top Gun-caliber flyboys for the final battle scene.

Oh, and there's no real explanation for how the Terrians can maneuver around the humans' spaceship with its standard gravity pull. Mala doesn't have any wings to keep her off the ground, just her tail that she occasionally uses to propel herself forward. It makes sense that her world features extremely low-gravity (how else to explain the flying whales), but how does she manage to stay aloft in human gravity?

The Final Analysis

If you're looking for an unintentional comedy, then check out Battle for Terra. Otherwise, stay away; stay far, far away from this flick. It gets a 2/10.

Apr 13, 2009 9:18 AM

Guest :

I saw this film in 3D at a press screening last week and liked it quite a bit, as did the reviewers who I spoke to after (LA Times etc). Some reviews are already up and all are positive so far. It's a strong film despite some a handful of dreadful bits of dialogue. But I'm not sure it'll do so well with Wolverine and Star Trek poised to steamroll over it come May.

However the above review is terrible, and has more holes and lapses of logic than the film it attempts to criticize.

For example the scene in which the the human and alien are talking does have a very clearly rendered tent present. I believe it only opens momentarily for the handshake (but I can't recall for sure).

Also there's no evidence or mention of low gravity on the alien planet in the film. Humans (seen in the hundreds at the end) walk on the planet as they would on earth. So obviously the aliens are somehow buoyant. So they would float on a human ship too. Finally as a snorkeler I breath only through my mouth, so the aliens doing the same is perfectly believable.

I can't take a reviewer seriously who doesn't seem to have the capacity to grasp the simplest concepts in a fairly straightforward animated film.

Battle For Terra: 8/10
This Review: 1/10

Jul 13, 2009 11:35 AM

Dominic von Riedemann :

According to Box Office Mojo, Battle for Terra earned $1.6 million during its theatrical run, with a 46% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (39 out of 72 reviewers polled hated it). It also got the all-time 3rd worst theatrical opening for an animated film, behind Fathom Studios' Delgo and Promenade Pictures' The Ten Commandments.