Valiant (August 19, 2005)

This movie is a British-American co-production with the animation being done by Vanguard Animation It was only distributed in the United States by Walt Disney, they had no hand in its production. This accounts for its poor animation quality. Specifically, the birds are fine, but the environments are abysmal. The story of Valiant, however, is interesting. It is inspired by the true stories of hundreds of pigeons that helped soldiers in World War II. The voice acting is fine. The British accents are believable, but the French and German accents are quite terrible (having studied German I find the German accents particularly laughable). Moving on to the story itself, I particularly enjoyed how easily the pigeons were accepted because, much like in real life, recruiters were accepting just about anyone this late in the war (the movie is set in 1944). The movie starts out slow with long and drawn out training sequences but eventually picks up. The movie bills itself as a comedy, but it is not particularly funny. It is also fitted with a romance that feels forced and serves as an unnecessary side plot. Overall, It the movie is an interesting concept but poorly executed. Perhaps it would have been handled better by a larger, more experienced animation studio or perhaps the technology was not advanced enough to create the details required to make it believable. I do not think this movie is worth seeking out as It is just and below-average animated movie from the early 2000 and your time could be better spent watching Pixar or DreamWorks films from the same time period.

Final Rating: 4/10