I've just finished reading the comments for Prince of Egypt, and then came to read a bit about King of Dreams...and was absolutely shocked at the 7/10 rating! Ye gods, people.
1. Joseph was a low budget production with not even half the effort put into animation as Prince of Egypt. The textures, particularly on Joseph's coat, were cheap and probably manufactured with an hour's tweaking in Adobe PhotoShop. The computer and hand-drawn animation was sloppily merged, reminiscent of the new Spiderman show, where it's obvious that Spidey's a 2-d character swinging through a world of 3d buildings. One dream sequence is a direct replication of the dream sequence in Joseph, with the stylised Egyptian art, and another done in makeshift watercolour is confusing and sloppy, and gave me a headache.
2. The music was cheap. Hardly living up to the PoE soundtrack, which I am listening to right at this very moment. Actually, if I recall, one song in particular was just a cheap rip off of a song from PoE.
3. The story and acting was horrible. Dialogue was badly written. Joseph's character was acted very badly.
My commonlaw spouse and I rented this movie in hopes that Dreamworks would have put out a film topping the calibre of PoE, but we were sorely disappointed. Dreamworks released this film with the intentions of catching the PoE wave before it had subsided (read: they wanted more money), and Joseph carried none of the passion, spirit, or tremendous impact that the Prince of Egypt carried off oh-so-well.
Strike one, Dreamworks. Don't become another Disney - they make their money with quantity, more often than not...stick with getting our dollars through quality.
Three out of ten stars for the occasional glimpse of character and story.
1. Joseph was a low budget production with not even half the effort put into animation as Prince of Egypt. The textures, particularly on Joseph's coat, were cheap and probably manufactured with an hour's tweaking in Adobe PhotoShop. The computer and hand-drawn animation was sloppily merged, reminiscent of the new Spiderman show, where it's obvious that Spidey's a 2-d character swinging through a world of 3d buildings. One dream sequence is a direct replication of the dream sequence in Joseph, with the stylised Egyptian art, and another done in makeshift watercolour is confusing and sloppy, and gave me a headache.
2. The music was cheap. Hardly living up to the PoE soundtrack, which I am listening to right at this very moment. Actually, if I recall, one song in particular was just a cheap rip off of a song from PoE.
3. The story and acting was horrible. Dialogue was badly written. Joseph's character was acted very badly.
My commonlaw spouse and I rented this movie in hopes that Dreamworks would have put out a film topping the calibre of PoE, but we were sorely disappointed. Dreamworks released this film with the intentions of catching the PoE wave before it had subsided (read: they wanted more money), and Joseph carried none of the passion, spirit, or tremendous impact that the Prince of Egypt carried off oh-so-well.
Strike one, Dreamworks. Don't become another Disney - they make their money with quantity, more often than not...stick with getting our dollars through quality.
Three out of ten stars for the occasional glimpse of character and story.