Adventures in Zambezia

I think Zambezia is fairly impressive coming from a relatively low budget. For the most part, the movie's plot and story is fairly unique and stands out from other movies a bit. However, in some scenes of the movie it almost seems cliché-like. The film's animation may look a bit wonky and unrealistic at times as well.

When I first heard of this movie, it immediately reminded me of the likes of Rio. After giving this movie a watch, this has to be one of the best underrated movies I have ever experienced. The cast: the voice actors for this movie were very well done. Jeremy Suarez does a fantastic job as the main lead. How can you also go wrong with the likes of Samuel L Jackson and Leonard Nimoy? Jim Cummings is also a brilliant and sinister villain. This movie had some great casting. The animation: the animation may not be as detailed as the likes of Disney movie but given that the company aren't exactly rich, they did pretty good for a movie. The animation didn't appear to skip any frames and played out quite smoothly. The story: Zambezia tells the story of a young bird who is eager to explore the world. While he runs away from home to travel towards Zambezia, old dangers from his father's past return. The story's quite simple and may sound like a retelling of other stories but it kept my interested enough to watch the full movie. Overall, this was a good movie. If there were any complaints to this movie, I felt that a couple of more of the characters could have been given some more development but nevertheless, brilliant. Due to the poor box office, it is a shame we may never see a sequel. I would have paid for one no doubt.

All the characters were stand out lovable creations you could bond with, even the bad guys. This was just pure fun from the get go and, never let up in its fast paced good guys beat the bad guys hands down tale! The animation was superb and vibrantly colourful with each characters voice over actor/actress perfectly matched. This will, I believe, go down in animation history as one of the most memorable children's films ever.

Having seen the movie on TV and having read all the comments, I was surprised to learn that nobody noted a social-political context. To me it seemed obvious the main plot of Zambezia carries the notion of the 'Rainbow Nation', stressing that by only working together and including every bird, and that goes especially for the evil marabous (with their English accents), a nation can survive and flourish. In other words, South Africa. I thought that was the point the movie wanted to make, apart from the usual coming-of-age and searching-your-roots motives so dear to American movies. But maybe I am digging too deep.

8.2 of 10. The second awesome film of 2012 Samuel L. Jackson is in (as a key character voice), and it's very different from Django Unchained, although there's an underlying common bond in working together in each film. Besides making you want to pet birds, maybe not the vulture-like marabous, the animation doesn't get nearly enough credit. The lizards are bordering on life-like and the waterfall and mist (not to mention sand and other colored dusts) simply has never been better outside of actual filming of waterfalls. Even the bird poo is as gross as in real life. As for the character voices, I was concerned that Nemoy and Jackson would dominate the audio and distract from the story. Instead, they both give surprisingly understated performances where you need to listen closely to identify them. Even Goldblum deserves credit because I still don't know which character he voiced. Dear Oscars/Academy, you failed us again. Do any of you actually watch animations/cartoons?

You can tell if a kids movie just hit the mark, if the young viewers shout "We want to watch this again", immediately after the end credits start to roll. "Zambezia" is a very sweet, well crafted and engagingly told south-African animation, that works very well with its target audience, tells an ambitious story; and ends up being hold back by its budget restrictions. Director Wayne Thornley aims high with his home grown south-African story of the young hawk Kay, who lives alone with his father at the top of a gorge of the Zambezi in an otherwise deserted landscape. When Kay abandons his home to live in the bird's big city of "Zambezia", where he learns the truth about his origins and has to find his own strength, parallels to "The Lion King", "Finding Nemo" and other genre classics become obvious. To my surprise, Zambezia fits surprisingly well into the shoes of its predecessors. The animal characters are developed very nicely and with attention to detail. Clearly the creators of this movie know their subjects very well. I always like, when animal characters like these are still rooted in their natural behavior, something "The Jungle Book" or the mentioned "Lion King" do all so well (while annoying movies like the "Madagascar"-franchise don't seem to get this right). The south-African landscapes are stunning. It is a joy to follow Kay and all the other birds of prey as they race over rivers and waterfalls, through gorges of stone and wood at breakneck pace. These visual treats are accompanied by a simple story with an important message ("Stronger together"), both transported in a very engaging way for the young viewers. The movie is funny and exciting and the main villain is very creepy, so there is a lot to enjoy for the kids. So, that Zambezia ultimately cannot quite reach the heights of its paragons, has nothing to do with bad story telling or movie making. The creators clearly had a vision of what they wanted to accomplish and it only seems, they have been held back by limited resources. They are some plot points, that would have deserved greater development, such as the relationship between Kay and the female kite "Zoe". Though the story paces along at falcon speed, I would have loved to see some story arcs told with more patience. But these are adult complaints, that surely don't diminish the fun of younger viewers. Zambezia is a certainly underrated, definitely ambitious and well crafted piece of animation, that deserves to be given greater attention. If you need to kill an afternoon at home with your kids, this one is well worth the time.