Britain’s first attempt to answer the domination of Disney in the field of animation, this Halas and Batchelor adaptation of Orwell’s classic is lovely in pastoral patches, but woefully inadequate in pace and characterization. The bar has been raised so high recently in the liveliness of animation as an artform, that this retelling seems quaintly inert, more like an illustrated lecture than a living fable. (1955, dvd, r.) *4*
A reader asked me recently if I ever give negative reviews, and while I don’t shy from criticism or take a pollyannish or film-buff-ish stance, the movies I do watch are rigorously pre-selected for quality. Somebody somewhere has strongly recommended a film or I wouldn’t give it my time.
One of the great beauties of getting your dvd rentals through www.netflix.com is the maintenance of your online queue of films to rent. Everyone hears something about a film that makes them say, “I’d like to see that,” but in the course of things that rarely comes to mind when actually faced with the overpowering though still inadequate choice at the video store. On Netflix, when you hear a recommendation, it’s just a click to put it on the list of films coming to you. My queue, for example, now has 168 films waiting for my viewing pleasure, so by the time a film’s place in line finally arrives, sometimes I’ve forgotten why I wanted it in the first place. This so-so cartoon is an example. Anything under a *5* I generally consider a waste of my time -- and yours.
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