WIZARDS
A Film Review by Brian Takeshita
Rating: 1/2* out of ****
WIZARDS is an animated feature that begins with a narration of epic proportions. Over black and white drawings, we are told that the earth is destroyed in an apocalyptic nuclear exchange, sending the remnants of humanity through generations of radiation-induced mutation. The "original" inhabitants of the earth, fairies and elves, return to populate the globe, along with their evil, mutant counterparts. One day (and I say "one day" not to be trite, but because that's exactly how it happened - no advance notice), a fairy queen gives birth to twins, one good and one evil. The twins grow up to be powerful wizards, the good one embracing magic, and the bad one utilizing technology to attempt to expand his evil empire. We are given the notion that an ultimate battle must occur between the forces of magic and those of technology.
As unoriginal as the premise is, I was still somewhat interested in how this story would play itself out. There's a lot you can do in an animated fantasy world, after all. I soon learned, however, that the fantasy was the expectation of a decent film. Once the transition was made from still art to color animation, an entirely different feel takes precedence. Rather than the epic saga promised by the narration, we get a goofy-looking world of a Saturday morning cartoon. Not just the look, mind you, but all the zany sounds like >honk< and >boing< when the characters go jumping around like....well, like cartoon characters. When we see Blackwolf, the evil twin wizard, he's pretty much what we expect. The good wizard, Avatar, is nothing like he is depicted in the opening. Rather than a sagely master, he's more like George Burns, complete with stogie in foot. That's right, he holds it between his toes. He doesn't even look the like he did in the black and white drawings. How disappointing. Papa Smurf and Santa Claus are serious wisemen compared to this guy. I imagine Yoda picks guys like Avatar out from between his teeth on weekends.
For years, Blackwolf has lost his battles against the magical forces of good, since his armies of ogres and other mutants would get dispirited or distracted soon after battle is joined. However, Blackwolf now has a secret weapon: Nazis. Yup, Adolf Hitler, the Luftwaffe and the Wehrmacht. Okay, not the real things, but an archival film his minions dug up. Projected into the sky for all to see, it inspires his own army while shocking the enemy into submission long enough for the ogres to hack them up. Before you know it, there are dead elves everywhere.
This is just as well. The characters are so bad that the viewer doesn't care about any of them. They're either silly, sappy, or both. The dialog gets much of the credit for this. An example is when Avatar nonchalantly says, "Well, looks like my brother and I begin our final battle." Not very formidable when he's also the guy who says, "This is the biggest bummer of a trip I've ever been on." My favorite line was from a sideline fairy who is asked by her child why good can't fight back against the Nazi-charged evil. Her response is, "They have weapons and technology. We just have love." Suffice to say, the characters are strictly two-dimensional, and we therefore don't expect anything more than the obvious to happen. Which it does. The only unexpected occurrence is the way the final battle between brothers is played out, which is anticlimactic and disappointing. Please note that it is the action that is unexpected. That it is disappointing is not.
The film couldn't settle on a particular mood. It seems to move from dark to light with the cuts from scene to scene and even angle to angle. Scenes which are seemingly meant to contain deep meaning are ruined by acts of levity. The dramatics, which seem to occur at random, are overly staged and overly acted, detracting from any kind of value or even enjoyment which could otherwise be gleaned.
Ralph Bakshi, the director, makes an obvious attempt to get a message across in this film: Hitler and the Nazis were bad. So who doesn't know this already? Well, maybe children. Okay, so you might say that this is a movie for children. It's not. In the scenes where good fights evil, there's a lot of violence and gore that children should not be seeing if they're watching a cartoon. So is the film for adults? If so, we probably don't need to be bashed over the head to get the point. Why not have the bad guys be symbolic of the Nazis instead of using old propaganda in a seriously disjointed attempt to show us something we already know?
WIZARDS gives us a lot of footage of Nazi tanks and airplanes, and Hitler giving speeches. However, we don't see any reason why they should be considered bad. We see no atrocities being committed, not even any real battle footage. There is absolutely no connection made between the armies of evil and the Third Reich, and we're not even given a cursory explanation as to why this stuff is inspiring in the first place. This needed to be thought out much more thoroughly if a point were to be made, since subject matter such as this deserves better treatment. I'd like to assume that Bakshi was trying to say that the same nationalist movement that drove the Nazis could happen anywhere, at any time, and we must therefore be vigilant. However, I'm not sure if I want to give him that much credit.
Review posted September 30, 1997
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