Customer Reviews

Impy's Island

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This movie is has kept my grandson fascinated for hours. The characters are life like, there is plenty age appropriate humour and important life lessons imparted along the way.
The story line is easy to follow and describes animals on an island who live toghether and encounter many adventures. It promotes values such as accepting differences in others, the dangers of risk taking, problem solving, seeking help and looking out for others in a moving and light hearted manner.
I inted to purchase one copy for each of my grandchildren.

My 3 year old daughter loves this film. The colors are bright, the character CGI is adequate, though nothing moves very quickly. The set animation however, is quite nice: water and foliage effects are well done. The pig character undergoes some development that is not entirely convincing, but then this is a kids movie originally in German. In the end, the pig's acceptance of Impy is warmly done. Impy's Island is a pleasant film. However, if your kids like extras on DVDs, there are none with this film.

This movie is based on a series of 11 books from the German author Max Kruse (His mother is Käthe Kruse who is a famous doll and toy creator Käthe Kruse 74198 "Nicki" Baby Pale Pink ). The books are from 1969.
This is a classic, lovable and non violent story that children have loved for over 35 years. Animals and people, with all their different characteristics, live together peacefully - accepting and loving each other for who they are.

My son just turned 4, and he loves this movie. I find him laughing out loud.

In effort to be thorough, my tour of computer generated animated feature films has taken me down some odd roads. I recently suffered through The Legend of Sasquatch for purpose of review but did note that the DVD opens with a pretty solid preview of another fairly un-hyped film called Impy's Island.

Impy's looked to soar in the areas Sasquatch came up short: bright, crisp visuals and cleanly rendered textures. I ordered the DVD with fairly modest expectations and upon completing it last night, am ready to share my opinion with the world.

Impy's Island, it turns out, is a 2006 animated remake of the classic 60s and 70s German TV Series "Augsburger Puppenkiste", which itself was based on the novel Urmal from the Ice Age by Max Kruse. Having no prior experience with the originals, I am unable to comment on the faithfulness of the translation but apparently the story (in all of the incarnations goes as follows):

On a hidden tropical island, a fun-loving group of misfit exiled talking animals (mixed with a few people) makes a marvelous discovery when an iceberg, apparently dislodged when the Titanic made its infamous collision, floats into the tropical waters.

Within this particular slab of ice resides an egg apparently frozen in place since prehistoric times. With a little reheating action, the island's inhabitants manage to get it to hatch. What emerges is a young winged dinosaur they name Impy. All would be well for this ragtag group of creatures except for the fact that a king from a faraway country learns of the dinosaur's existence and sets of on an expedition to the island in search of the rare trophy (Impy's head to be mounted on his wall).

German animators Reinhard Klooss and Holger Tappe co-helm the CG animated family film and to be honest, the visuals are perhaps the film's greatest strength. The fact that a small firm/ primarily two individuals handled the bulk of the workload is pretty darn impressive when you stop to consider that the look and feel to the animation really gives little up to the big boys of the genre (Pixar, DreamWorks, ImageWorks and so on).

However, the film isn't a total success the likes of which the above-mentioned companies have spoiled viewers with throughout most of the past decade and much of this can be attributed to weak plotting, mediocre scripting and abysmal character development.

The tragedy is that between the visuals and the fact that there is absolutely nothing contained within that could strain its G-rating, one can't help but feel that this one could have been so, so much more.

Most of the interplay between the characters is pretty kid-friendly stuff and interlaced with valuable lessons about working together, the dangers of lying, cruelty to animals and so on. I mean technically even the gun touting, trophy hunting king and his henchman aren't really evil so much as they are just overly enthusiastic and slightly trigger happy.

Life-lessons aside, the film seems to plod along with little definitive destination as we bounce around between characters that somehow manage to come up short on the personality department. In fact save for some pretty annoying speech impediments, all of the characters are essentially interchangeable.

Music scoring comes in the form of living-legend Hans Zimmer and hits the right cues all along (and ends on an optimistic We Are Family music video).

In all Impy's Island will definitely entertain the younger set based on the slapstick and clean visuals alone. Older kids and adults are going to find the meandering style of the prose and the tedious pacing a bit difficult to sit through. However I assume many of my complaints stem from the English dub over the original German vocal track. Apparently the property is quite beloved in its native land and the word on the net is this film was successful enough to warrant a sequel there called Impy's Wonderland that, at present, has yet to receive an official US release.

I purchased this for my 4 yr old granddaughter who saw the previews on Sasquatch.
She loves both these movies. She watches this movie after pre-school every afternoon....she truly enjoys every minute of it. I would recommend this to all grandparents. It has a great story line and meaning of friendship & kindness and changing ones attitude from meanness to kindness. It's a wonderful movie all ages can learn from.

It's a shame this movie has only one female role in it - a pig who mops and cooks. It's a bit shocking and offensive a movie made in 2007 claiming to be for children completely over looks positive role models for little girls.
I'll be throwing this movie out. This is not the type of example I want my daughter to see.

Skip it.