Delgo
Let me start this review by asking the simple question, "Who the fridge remembers this movie? Anyone remember this movie that came out in December 2008? Anyone, anyone at all? Nobody? Okay." Well, if you do remember this movie, you may as well remember what an absolute train wreck of a film it was! I mean seriously! When it came out, the most money it earned back from the Box Office was an abysmal total of $694,782 to $915,840 on a $40,000,000 budget! And if that weren't enough, the movie alienated audiences so much that it was pulled from theaters a week after it premiered! After which, the movie quickly fell into obscurity and is what I'd like to call the animated Garbage Pail Kids movie given the fact that the movie I just mentioned was also pulled from theaters not long after it premiered. Nowadays, the movie does have something of a fandom as most people have garnered a new appreciation for the movie or just watch it to make fun of it, making it fall into the "So Bad, It's Good" category. I think that the main component of why this movie is so awful is that it took at least a decade to make! Really, the movie's director, Marc. F. Adler spent nearly ten years trying to get this movie off the ground and the movie has hit many bumps in the road of its production, like how a couple of the vocie actors died three years before the movie was finished and how Adler saved as much money as he can to add into the movie's budget. So, I am here today to review this terrible piece of garbage movie and I must ask myself, will I end up appreciating this movie or will I label as an early "Foodfight"? Let's find out.
The Story: One thing I must give the movie some praise for is that it is very straightforward with the story it is telling. About how two race of creatures, the Lockni and the Nohrin, are at odds with each other due to a long-standing war between them caused the villain Sedessa and it soon culminates in a Lockni named Delgo and a Nohrin named Princess Kyla fall in love, but Delgo ends up being framed for kidnapping her and he must set out to clear his name and also find a way to bring peace to the two feuding sides all while Sedessa, who kidnapped Kyla, plans to take revenge on her brother, King Zahn, for banishing her 15 years before. The opening beautifully established the world-building for the movie with the lore of how the feud came to be. Once it is over though, we are stuck with the most basic cliched movie there ever was since Escape from Planet Earth and that movie came out a little more than 4 years after this one. The story becomes your typical "hero has to exonerate himself" tale that we've seen in many other films. Even the stuff that the movie dishes out in its execution isn't really all appealing either; the romance between Delgo and Kyla is your typical Romeo and Juliet story, the amount of humor this movie dishes out isn't all that funny; in fact, it is completely annoying in every meaning of the word, the anti-war and prejudice message the movie tries to give to its audience is just as bland and not to mention how it feels no one has learned the lesson in the end when the two races start working together to wage war against "another" race and a lot of the other stuff just fills like it's there for the movie to reach the 90-minute mark. However, circling back to how I said I was very impressed with the worldbuilding, I must admit that it is nice seeing how things are in the fantasy world within the movie, from the land of the Lochni of how they are basically ruled by monks to the land of the Nohrin of how the function are a monarch society. Other than that, though, I honestly cannot say that the plot of Delgo is anything to immediately go and see to captivate yourselves in. It is just a very bland anti-war story that follows all beats you might expect to find within it. I give the movie credit for at least trying to be serious with what it is doing, but it failed miserably.
The Animation: On aspect that I can praise about the movie's animation is that...well, at least it's not Foodfight-level bad! The visuals here look like they belong in a video game rather than a movie. The way the characters look is stunning on how bad they look. Yeah, I know that it's a fantasy world, but did the animators really had to make the characters look like they belong in a Straight-to-DVD movie or better yet, a kid's TV show? I will at least say that the designs of the characters do look pretty interesting with the Lockni having a reptillian-esque appearance and the Nohrin looking like overgrown fairies and I won't say that they belong in a Tinkerbell movie, because again, the movie was released in 2008 and the look of the fairy was hardly overdone by then. That's not to say that the characters don't look less bad because, oh God, they most assuredly look bad. The only other things that I must praise about the animation is that the character's movements look pretty good, the designs of the various creatures in the movie are pretty creative and interesting and, what is singled-out as the most impressive thing within the movie is the background animation. The way the backgrounds look is pretty good, from the Lochni village to the Nohrin castle and to Sedessa's evil lair, all of it looks pretty amazing. In fact, I dare say that the background of the animation is the real star of the movie and Delgo is just a guy who is caught up in all of it! It's just a shame that those are the only positives to say about the animation of the feature because the background can only do so much to take away with how horrible the character designs are. Though, now that I think about it, the background animation does have its faults to. What are those faults exactly? Well, like the movie's story, they are rather bland and generic as heck. Don't get me wrong, I still like how they are designed, but it honestly doesn't take away how generic it is. The animation is like broccoli, it both looks a little gross but barely tastes good.
The Characters: Ny God; where do I begin when talking about these characters? Well, I might as well address the elephant in the room, THESE ARE SOME OF THE MOST ONE-NOTE AND ONE-DIMMESNIONAL CHARACTERS THAT EVER EVER APPEARED IN AN ANIMATED FEATURE! Really, the only worthwhile thing to take away from these guys is their singular personality. Delgo is the hero with a hatred for the Nohrin who, even with a backstory about how his parents died at the hands of Nohrin soldiers barely has anything else to give, Kyla is just the generic love-interest and damsel-in-distress, Sedessa is the power-hungry villain who's the Nohrin king's sister, General Raius is a Nohrin soldier who secretly works for Sedessa, King Zahn is just the standard king who tries to do what's best for his people, Elder Marley is just Delgo's mentor who tries to steer him in the right direction and Spig and Spog are Sedessa's bumbling henchmen duo. But there are two characters that stand out from the rest, one of them for better and one of them for worse. For the worse side, we have Delgo's friend Fido, WHO IS JUST ABOUT THE MOST IRRITATING CHARACTER THERE EVER WAS! All he does is just talk non-stop and act totally dramatic that he's almost even more hard-to-watch than the whole movie itself. Anyway, the other character that is singled out by even the most die-hard anti-Delgo fans is General Bogardus, if for no other reason that because he is the only character in the movie who has much more of a personality, him always knowing that is the right thing to do and is even given a solid performance by Val Kilmer. (Clip of Moses from "The Prince of Egypt" is shown.) Could it be that Moses turned into him after ascending to Heaven? Anyway, adding into what I just said about Kilmer, the only good thing I can say about the characters is that at least the voice acting is at least okay as the actors do the best they could with them, well except for maybe Chris Kattan as Filo due to sounding utterly obnoxious. The best of the voices, though, has to be Anne Bancroft as Sedessa as she does sound both alluring and threatening. Though it's a shame that she died during the movie's production and that this movie was the last one she worked on. However, I'm afraid that the voice acting and Bogardus cannot fully make up for how poorly-written and executed the film's characters are.
It is very easy to see why this movie wasn't all that well-liked when it was released and very easy why it was pulled from theaters after its first week. Delgo is a complete and utter animated waste-of-time with a dull story, mediocre animation and poorly-written characters. The fact that it took almost a decade for this movie to be released should be a dead giveaway of how bad this movie is as movies like Foodfight and to a lesser degree The Thief and the Cobbler end up being a mess in one way or another. It's safe to say that anyone who saw Delgo isn't all that excited. So apologies to Marc Adler, the idea you came up with had potential, but it ended up coming up coming out with much to be desired. For the animation studio Fathom Studios, this movie is a prime example of the phrase "first-is-worst" because after 13 years, they never made another feature film again, Mostly because of how much of a bomb it was at the Box Office. And with all of that, this movie more than earns the AniMat Seal of Garbage. It may not be Norm of the North, it may not be Foodfight, but Delgo is a movie that is bad in its own unique way.
Story: 3/10
Animation: 3/10
Characters: 3/10
Score: 3/10