The Magic Roundabout 2005 Film Review

Animation fans you've seen me talk alot abut animated films over the years but I very rarely talk about one that's British. Well this film is both French and British since it's based of a French kids show that was adapted into English even this film has weird history with dubbing having been dubbed into French , British and for some reason American and so here is my review of the UK version of The Magic Roundabout.

The plot of the film is a group of friends embark on a dangerous journey in an effort to imprison their oppressor the evil wizard Zeebad. If i'm being honest the story is pretty decent for a kids film as well as a standerd affair for an adaptation in that it raises the stakes from that of the show and it places the characters in situations which could only work in a movie. The main issue I have with the story is that it lacks any of the heart or spirit of the show.

Starring in this version of the film is singer Robbie Williams as Dougal , singer Kylie Minogue as Florence , Tom Baker as Zeebad , Jim Broadbent as Brian , Lee Evans as Train , Joanna Lumley as Ermintrude , Bill Nighy as Dylan , Ray Winstone as Solider Sam and Sir Ian McKellen as Zebedee. Now I did some research here and I found out that out of all the actors I just listed only two appear in the American dub those being Kylie Minogue and Sir Ian McKellen altho Kylie did rerecord her lines with an American accent and i'll admit I have no idea why alot of these actors were recast since they do speak clearly enough for Americans to understand them.

As for what I thought about the acting in this film given that it's a kids animated film the acting is alot better then it has any right to be. That said you can clearly tell how's an actor and how's a singer because the quality of the acting goes up depending on who's talking. Which honestly makes me wonder why the hell they cast a singer as the lead character surely it would have made more sense to cast an actual actor to play Dougal.

Now I have no idea who the hell did the animation for this film (but it looks like it might have been Action Synthese altho I cannot confirm that) and trust me I looked and based on the quality of the animation that's not a bad thing. Since the animation in the film is pretty freaking bad like forgetting that this film came out 2005 the animation looks like something you'd see in a bad straight to DVD movie and there's no textures to either the background or the characters so at best the animation is amateur.

I can see why they chose to go the 3D CGI route since these characters haven't been done in that medium before and have only been seen in stop motion. That being said tho there was a certain charm to the stop motion animation which just isn't here in this film and that's due to the fact that they did go the CGI route and that makes it look like any other kids film instead of standing out which I feel stop motion would have done.

The film is based on the classic British kids TV show The Magic Roundabout which ran from 1965 to 1977 and was aired on BBC TV and was broadcast every weekday before the six O'Clock news with each episode also lasting around five minuets. Interestingly tho the footage seen in the original show was actually from a French show called Le Manège enchanté but the show as we know it only used the footage and not the original scripts those were re-written by Eric Thompson father of actresses Emma Thompson and Sophie Thompson.

This also isn't the first film based on the franchise with that honour going to 1970's Dougal and the Blue Cat. Now i'll admit i've not seen the Dougal film and i've looked all other the internet for a copy of it and I can't find it anywhere online. Which is a shame because as someone who grew up with the repeats of the original show it would be nice to see what it's original feature film was like but for now it looks like it's just a pipe dream.

This film has no idea who it's target audience is because while it is aimed at little kids they don't explain anything which makes it look like it's made for adults but if that is the case then I have to say that no adult would be seeing this because if the stereotype that animation is for kids. I honestly feel that the film would have been better if they did explain why the characters are so concerned about the roundabout breaking down since that's a major plot point but they don't and so your left wondering why are they concerned about it happening.

The film goes against the show by having several action scenes which doesn't gel well with the show or this film at all. The show never had action scenes which I assume was due to the low budget and short run time but here because they have a longer running time and alot more money poored into it they thought it was best to have action scenes which come out of know where and add nothing to the story.

This film is a comedy and so that means there is alot of jokes in the film and alot of the jokes aren't that good if i'm being frank. That being said there are alot of funny lines in the film and all of them rather fittingly come from comedian Lee Evans but even he can't save the jokes in this film because when he's not the one making the joke work it falls flat and yet when he's the one given a funny line it kind of works.

Overall I can see little kids being entertained by this film but it is still a really bad film but based of what i've heard this version of the film is better then the American version which for some reason was called Doogal and so this version of the film gets a 5 out of 10.