I'm going to try to make this one short and sweet. Battle for Terra is not a good movie. The drama is almost nonexistent, the script is as plain as a steamed rice sandwich, and it isn't even very pretty. What's worse, though, is that it drags. I got seven hours of sleep the night before watching this movie, about an hour better than my average, and I still almost dozed off a few times. It's not particularly bad, it's just sooo dull. So far it has been widely ignored, even by sci-fi fans. You can safely do the same.

The movie's about a peaceful little race of aliens whose world is suddenly invaded by what some of them think is a god and what the smarter ones realize is something hostile. One of these aliens, Mala, rescues a downed invader, which turns out to be a human (of course the aliens don't know what humans are), Lt. James Stanton. She takes him home, nurses him to health, and goes back with him to his base, the "Ark," in search of her father, who was captured in the raid. Skip forward a little bit, and we learn that the human race, after depleting Earth's resources, terraformed Venus and Mars, moved to them, and subsequently destroyed all three planets in a war. So, now they need a place to live, these aliens seem weak enough to conquer with little fuss, and the planet is prime terraform material. Blah, blah, final battle, happy ending. There's also a robot.

Where to begin? ... I'll start with the first thing that I noticed -- the simplistic morals. When the Ark first blocks out the moon, soon before the attack, and the aliens are trying to figure out what it is, they are told that they should go home and that the elders will figure out what is happening and how to react. When Mala suggests building a telescope to get a better view of the thing, her father tells her that the teachings forbid it, and she makes the supposedly bold response that perhaps the teachings should be questioned. She is, of course, sent to her room. The same sort of thing happens on the humans' side, with Stanton being one of the few who questions the morality of wiping out an alien race to use their planet. It's your standard "question authority" theme all around.

So, intellectually speaking, the movie has nothing to offer. Thats okay, strike one. We've still got two left. Then you begin to notice the script. This script sounds like someone at the studio had a computer in which they entered a few variables like "innocent aliens," "human aggressors," and "terraform," and received a printout of standard dialogue. There is not one single interesting line in this movie. At one point, they (or the script-computer) tried to add an ominous moment with one of the most clichéd mystical-esoteric lines of them all: "It has begun," spoken by one of the elders when the Ark arrives. What makes it worse is this isn't something that the aliens, not even the elder ones, should have in any way anticipated. The dialogue exists only to advance the plot, and the plot really is not worth advancing; it's so empty that I can think of only one or two scenes not covered by my above summary. Strike two.

Then we have the animation. The characters look like they're made of vinyl, resulting in a look that is neither realistic nor artistic. Everything is so stiff and smooth that I often had trouble determining what feelings characters' facial expressions were supposed to express. The mechanical elements look nice, but that is it. This movie was released in 3D, and the 3D is used so lightly that every once in a while I found myself suddenly remembering, Oh yeah, this is in 3D. This is clearly a case of "We have to use 3D because that's what everyone's doing!" It's pretty standard nowadays that if you're going to make an animated film, it needs to look really good or at least be bright and shiny. Battle for Terra has a handful of nice visual moments (the image of the Ark's gears blocking out the moon is awesome), but overall it just is not pretty enough. Strike three.

I feel like I've made my point, and I don't want to completely abuse this film, so I won't stay on the topic of pacing long, but for the sake of thoroughness, I have to mention it. This movie, even at an hour and twenty-five minutes, takes way too long to get from point A to point B. There are so many little segments that could have been shortened, like the extended period of time spent finding the materials for and constructing an oxygen chamber to revive Stanton in -- an essential event, an inordinate amount of time. Of course shortening scenes like these would have meant a much shorter film. Perhaps more substance is in order.

*Sigh* I almost feel bad about being so hard on this movie because I do think the filmmakers put forth an honest effort. This may be a rice sandwich, but at least it's not a cyanide sandwich, or a thumbtack one. There are movies that I think are trying to swindle a quick buck out of us, and there are some that try and just don't work. This is the latter. But I did get one good thing from going to see it. In the lobby there were some free promo posters for Star Trek. Woohoo!