Bilal: A New Breed of Hero

Starts with a bang but, after a while, turns into a violent and uninspiring mess that has little of worth to recommend it. The film was mediocre too...though the animation was pretty good.

Offensively bad. The plot is a disjointed mess, full of contradictory messages, peppered with overdrawn flashbacks and voiceovers, denoting amateur level filmmaking. Things just happen without being earned. The protagonist is a naive simpleton who does little more than get his ass kicked, daydream and sulk for the entire movie (while everyone else is a patronizing know-it-all) yet somehow becomes the center of attention and gets a great deal of other people's time invested in him. Given all that narrative corner cutting, you wonder where the fun went. Not a smidge of humor and wit, or anything emotionally compelling. You might expect some whimsical flair from an animation, but the constant drab tone would have been better served by live action. On top of that, while the environment and animal visuals are gorgeous, the humans are poorly animated, looking clunky and lifeless.