Retro-Review: Treasure Planet

I recently watched the 2002 Disney animated movie Treasure Planet. I am told by my children that we rented it multiple times when they were younger, but I am sure I never actually watched the whole thing. Perhaps I was in the room while they watched it, but my attention was elsewhere.

My judgement is that Treasure Planet is an ambitious failure. It has nifty graphics, an interesting blend of cel and computer animation, nonstop action, some decent character moments, some hammy supporting voice actors, and a story which doesn't stray too far from Robert Louis Stevenson's classic original.

So why do I call it a failure? Three main reasons.

First, it felt rushed. It weighs in at 95 minutes, which is acceptable for an animated feature. But throughout the movie the interval between setup and payoff was too short. At the beginning, the aged pirate Billy Bones arrives at the Admiral Benbow inn, just as he does in the book. Stevenson's novel gives him a couple of chapters there before he dies, but in Treasure Planet poor Billy (voiced by no less than Patrick McGoohan!) doesn't even make it inside the inn before uttering a cryptic warning, handing young Jim Hawkins the treasure map, and dying.

A couple of scenes later, when Jim boards the ship RLS Venture (cute, Disney) he no sooner meets Long John Silver than he immediately suspects him of being the sinister cyborg of Billy Bones's cryptic warning. Again, in the book Stevenson took time to let his (and our) suspicions develop. 

Given its full feature length, where does the time saved by all this rushing go? To my second reason.

Second, it had too many pointless action sequences. Look, I'm no prude about pointless action. My complaint about the movie Battleship was that it wasn't stupid enough. But Treasure Planet had too many obvious "put that in so we can use it in the video game adaptation" chases with Jim riding his space sailboard through random obstacles. There's a scene with an exploding star collapsing into a black hole which comes out of nowhere, gets resolved by technobabble and handwaving, and serves no purpose in the plot whatsoever. But I'm sure there was a level for it in the game.

Finally, the scriptwriters wasted time and plot space on some stupid character motivation bullshit. Young Jim has (wait for it) an ABSENT FATHER and so has (yep) ABANDONMENT ISSUES and all the boilerplate "character arc" tomfoolery of every other film for young people cranked out by Hollywood. Stevenson managed to convey all the same information without resorting to maudlin flashbacks or having Mrs. Hawkins outright infodumping to another character. In the novel he just assumes the readers are clever enough to notice that Jim's father does not appear in the book, and clever enough to figure out that's why he has conflicting bonds with several different paternal characters in the story (Captain Smollett, Dr. Livesey, and of course Silver himself). Not every character motivation has to be displayed in giant illuminated letters.

Oh, and some idiot had the brilliant idea of including a couple of pseudo-alt-rock pop songs in the film, thereby locking it solidly into the decade in which it was made — a sure way to avoid timeless icon status.

My letter grade for Treasure Planet is a B minus. Adequate but nothing more, which is a shame because it could have been considerably better.