I honestly believe that anything can be the subject of a good movie if presented properly. But, fellas, riverdancing? And not just riverdancing, animated riverdancing? You are pushing me, big time, boy-o.
Such begs the question: what’s better than Irish Dancing? Animated Irish Dancing, amIright? There’s a lot of dancing in Riverdance: The Animated Adventure. And I do mean A LOT. If nothing else, this film is a serious premise achiever. I cannot say I was sold necessarily on said premise or the characters or the plot or the action or any of the creatures that showed up (well, except the army of frogs, of course. Frogz rule!), but
you wanted dancing? Well, yeah, they got dancing out the shillelagh.
The boy dances. The girl dances. The children dance. The adults dance. The townsfolk dance. The grandpa dances. The pets dance. The sheep dance. The wild animals dance. The mythological animals dance. They don’t need excuses. They don’t even need music; they just start tapping and away we go.
The stick-legged skeletal emaciations posing as humans in this small Irish port town never stop dancing, cuz, why would they? Our story, for lack of a better word, follows Keegan (voice of Sam Hardy), a boy of about 10 or 11 whose grandpa (Pierce Brosnan) runs the lighthouse when he’s not dancing – actually ‘m guessing he does both at the same time—lighthouse duty is important because while no ships ever seem to harbor, if the light ever turns off then animated Brendan Gleeson shows up. :shudder: That’s a subplot you just don’t want.
Riverdance, obviously getting its cues from Disney, kills off gramps before we can even decide if we like the old coot. Suddenly, Keegan –riding out his personal depression- is the immediate inheritor of grandpa’s legacy: the lighthouse, the leadership role, and grandpa’s smooth rivermoves. T
hat’s a bit much for a boy. And on top of that, his friend Moya (Hannah Herman) tricks him into losing his depression by visiting the local Brigadoon where the –and I want to get this right, because the film sure tried hard to entertain me here- Megaloceros Giganteus live. These are not quite the giant Irish elk gone extinct 8,000 years ago so much as, well, something else.
The Megaloceros Giganteus is presented here as a species of mythological XXL talking deer with fanciful antlers who care about exactly one thing: cribbage tax shelters dancing. Can the MGs help Keegan find the fun? I mean grandpa has been dead for hours already.
There is not much to Riverdance: The Animated Adventure. The film knows it and substitutes both plot and subplot for more dancing. If you don’t have the stomach for Irish Dancing, this film is absolutely useless. Considering it’s animated with happy creatures and a rousing scene of sportball, that’s kind of sad. The biggest threat in the film is introduced late and dismissed a half-hour early to find another film. All this should make me loathe Riverdance, but I don’t. It was a cute and quiet and unassuming little nothing of a movie. While I cannot recommend, I suppose it has use for a very select audience.
♪We can dance if we want to
We can leave our arms behind
‘Cause our arm don’t dance
The lie stiff in trance
And everybody thinks that’s fine
Say, we can float where we want to
A place that may or may not exist
And when we go there
The weird creatures will stare
And then dance just the same as this♫
Rated TV-G, 90 Minutes
Director: Eamonn Butler, Dave Rosenbaum
Writer: Dave Rosenbaum, Tyler Werrin
Genre: Dancing!
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Ummm … Riverdancers?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: “Why would you animate riverdancing?”
♪ Parody Inspired by “Safety Dance”
