Valiant

Saw "Valiant" today (opening day).  Had quite a few kids and their families, but the theater wasn't as mobbed as I was expecting.  The crowds will probably be there tomorrow.

Here's the official website for the movie.

Now for my reactions (no spoilers... any snippets I give are also on the website as clips)..

When I heard about this movie and saw the poster in the theater several months ago, I really wasn't expecting much from it.  I'm not a huge fan of birds, much less pigeons, but another friend had said he had heard good reviews of it... and I figured, it looks interesting, why not...

And I wasn't disappointed.  Granted, the movie probably wasn't as good as either Shrek or Shrek 2 (the same producer also produced "Valiant" even though the Shrek movies were Dreamworks and Valiant is Disney)... but it had a typical war-movie flavor to it.  The story was cute, and it had different elements that were present during WWII... or at least the stuff you see in WWII-based films.

"Valiant" paces remarkably well... there aren't a lot of dead spots where the story seems to be dragging, and the movie isn't trying to be preachy, although it does have an underdog theme. 

Now the fun part... two characters, Rollo ("SABOTAGE!!") and Bugsy ("I can burp on all the letters, not just Q") , reminded me of ionotter  ("damn otter").  I'm not going to say exactly what reminded me of the otter, but I'm sure those that know both of us can probably figure it out once they see the movie.  :)

A couple of noted voice actors I picked out are Ewan McGregor (Valliant) and Tim Curry (General Von Talon).  One thing I thought was pretty ironic was the acronym RHPS (Royal Homing Pigeon Service).  But when you think about it, RHPS could also stand for "Rocky Horror Picture Show," of which Curry was one of the main characters.  And Valiant reminded me of Rodney Copperbottom ("Robots", also voiced by McGregor).

I don't know if kids will really enjoy this one, but adults may find it entertaining.

Just my 2 cents worth...