'Trumpet of the Swan' merely skims along

'Trumpet of the Swan' merely skims along

Friday, May 11, 2001

By SEAN AXMAKER
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Former Disney director Richard Rich has hardly distinguished his solo career, cranking out cheap, unimaginative animated features such as "The Swan Princess" and "The King and I," films that barely make the grade as straight to video fare, yet they somehow manage wide theatrical releases.

MOVIE REVIEW

THE TRUMPET OF THE SWAN

DIRECTORS: Richard Rich, Terry L. Noss

CAST: Voices of Jason Alexander, Mary Steenburgen, Dee Baker, Seth Green, Reese Witherspoon, Carol Burnett

RUNNING TIME: 75 minutes

RATING: G

WHERE: Bella Bottega, Cinema 17,

Grand Cinemas, Renton Village

GRADE: D

"The Trumpet of the Swan," his banal adaptation of E.B. White's classic children's novel, may hold the attention of the very young, but despite marginal attempts at Disney-style cleverness, the simplistic writing, flat animation and sloppy direction will leave adults bored.

Jason Alexander has some fun as a preening papa swan, declaiming with a combination of pompous pride and paternal warmth, but the tale really belongs to his mute son Louie. An outcast in the flock and a disappointment to his father, he flies off in search of a voice, first learning to read and write at school, then blasting out jazz lines on a trumpet.

The film just skips along these story highlights, failing to create personalities for the characters or drama from their conflicts. The script simplifies White's writing to storybook basics without any poetry or charm, and the cheap animation is an eyesore.

Badly designed and executed with a perfunctory blandness and cheap bluntness that looks all the more impoverished in the unforgiving dimensions of the big screen, it suffers from sheer creative apathy. The leads flap their arms and mouths and blankly look off into the distance with a glassy stare, while background characters simply rock from side to side as if the animator just needed to get them moving.

Upbeat but generic songs (one performed by Little Richard) and jazz lines add a little energy but the film feels less like a feature than an expensive ad for the upcoming video.