I paid a matinée price for 3D and feel like I've a refund coming. Great animation and the new 3D is just phenomenal but the story is a cliche. Come on now, super bad guy somehow ends up with small children and realizes what's important in the world and turns nice? It's been done a million times. Done better too. This just didn't bring anything fresh to a tired old plot line. No one involved needs to be ashamed because they participated but it's just the same old story and nothing more.
Yeah, strange isn't it? Four stars and then I say I didn't like it. Well, the fact is I didn't like it. So many of the sequences flashed back repeatedly and stretched out so long I was soon impatient. Another reviewer said they were looking at their watch in the last hour, I started after the first 20 minutes. I didn't care about the characters, the plot was absurd and it took too long to play out. That's MY opinion. Why 4 stars? Because while I was busy hating (not too strong a word for what I felt about it) it, I was also critiquing it. The writing was tight, not overblown, the acting superb, even the action sequences were done well. I couldn't tell this story in a shorter amount of time and include all it's nuances. It's probably a very good movie that I just don't like.