"Delgo" is yet more proof that not everyone with access to the tools and talent pool to make an animated film should be allowed to. It's a focus-group film, from its all-star voice cast (Jennifer Love Hewitt, Burt Reynolds) to its mash-up of a plot and "cuddly" critters acting it out.
The animation, from Atlanta-basesd Fathom Studios, is not bad. But the staggeringly complicated Tolkien-C.S. Lewis setting, the reptilian leads and the faded fairy-tale plot skewer poor "Delgo" before we have a chance to figure out what's going on here and why.
The title character (Freddie Prinze Jr.) is a tall, thin Lockni lad, a mod dinosaurish dude with an inexpressive face and ears only a Lockni mom could love. He lives in a land where his people invited the winged Nohrin to stay after they'd ruined their own country. Treachery rules the day as the Nohrin, decades on the ground, seek to seize control over peaceful Jhamora.
Hewitt is the winged Nohrin Princess Kyla. Malcolm McDowell and Val Kilmer voice competing generals and Chris Kattan and Eric Idle do comic relief.
Michael Clarke Duncan is the Obi Wan who teaches Delgo how to master the magic stones. Did I mention there are magic stones? Never mind.
With dinosaurs and magic stones and computer animation, "this has everything," the filmmakers must have declared to potential investors. But if there's a lesson recent Hollywood history has taught us, it's that not every cut-rate animation that comes along finds an audience, and not many of them deserve one.
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