David Ogden Stiers

Continuing on its recent arc of solid storylines in its animation and quality visuals, Atlantis is successful in both being a wide-eyed roller-coaster ride for kids and is interesting enough to keep adults from passing out from boredom. The film follows the adventures of Milo Thatch (Michael J. Fox), a bookworm/boiler room attendant/linguistics expert who probably hasn't had a date in years. Milo's grandfather was an explorer looking for Atlantis who knew where to discover the location of the lost city -- in a hidden journal. With the help of eccentric billionaire Preston Whitmore (John Mahoney), the lost journal is recovered, providing new clues to Atlantis's whereabouts. Milo then joins a group of rag-tag explorers -- including a 200-person Navy, enough surplus to take over a small county, and no cute sidekicks -- in the search for the city of Atlantis.

Continue reading: Atlantis: The Lost Empire Review

Lilo & Stitch tells the story of two outcasts searching for a place to fit in. Lilo is a young Hawaiian girl who is shunned by her friends because she picks fights and plays unfairly. Her older sister, Nani, is raising her because their parents died in a car crash. The social worker assigned to their case has threatened to remove Lilo from Nani's care because she cannot control Lilo's poor behavior. It sounds like the prototypical dysfunctional American family - how un-Disney-like!

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Though it's still good, pop this Special Edition DVD into your player and you're instantly greeted with a crash of noise. Beauty lets you know right from the start that it is not a subtle film, full of bluster and fire and singing and talking everything. (And everything talking at the top of its lungs.)

Continue reading: Beauty And The Beast (1991) Review

In real life, Pocahontas was an Algonquin Indian who is said to have prevented the execution of colonist John Smith in 1607 by her father when she was only 12 years old. Since Smith couldn't speak Powhatan, his interpretation of the events may be mistaken, but it's generally thought today that the story is true. In thanks, Pocahontas was later captured by settlers at Jamestown, taught English, and taken to England where she was celebrated as an "Indian princess" and married off. Before much time could pass, though, she got smallpox (or some other disease) and died at the ripe old age of 23.

Continue reading: Pocahontas Review

Disney animated features have never been known for their originality, but their creators almost always craft delightful entertoonment from threadbare grab bags of clichés and contrived plot devices.

This year's regularly scheduled summer cartoon release is a perfect example of this principle. "Atlantis: The Lost Empire" is a grand-scale archeological adventure that, if it were live-action, would be the kind of campy, glossy, bottom-rung syndicated stuff you find padding the prime-time schedules of the UPN and WB networks.

It's populated with an unlikely racial balance of stock characters -- a muscle-man African-American doctor (voice of Phil Morris), a sassy teenage Latina tomboy mechanic (Jacqueline Obradors) -- most of whom are mercenaries ("adventure capitalists," one proffers) on a quest for the legendary ancient city in the title. The catalyst for the endeavor is, of course, an eccentric millionaire (voiced by John Mahoney) who funds the expedition.

Continue reading: Atlantis: The Lost Empire Review

It's a very convincing 1940 in Woody Allen's "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion," and impetuous Howard Hawkes-style love-hate sniping -- infused with the requisite Allen neuroticism -- is the foundation of this comedy about an insurance detective hot on the trail of the cagiest jewel thief he's ever encountered: Himself.

Allen stars as C.W. Briggs, his company's best (or is it just luckiest?) in-house dick for the last 30 years. You can tell C.W. thinks he's a pretty smooth cat because he walks with a saucy bounce in his step and chases young secretaries around the office. He's the guy who found a stolen Picasso rolled up in a telescope, after all. "And it wasn't easy," he boasts, "because I was supposed to be looking for a painting of a woman holding a guitar, but it was in all these little cubes!"

But C.W. is stuck in his ways, and these days he spends most of his energy butting heads like a stubborn billy goat with the company's new tough-as-nails efficiency expert, Betty Ann Fitzgerald (Helen Hunt). She thinks his department is obsolete and that the firm should hire out when it needs a detective.

Continue reading: The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion Review