Hey, dude, who you calling an alien?
War action, environmental dangers and a message of inter-species harmony combine with spirited results in the 3-D CG-animated feature “Battle for Terra,” an atmospheric sci-fi saga that may lack major studio marketing heft, but deserves a chance to win over toon-tested audiences.
Director/co-writer Aristomenis Tsirbas, expanding his own short film, unveils a classically devised invasion yarn a la H.G. Wells, but with the twist that humans are the aggressors. They’re fleeing an ecologically ravaged Earth to colonize other worlds, while the creatures we’d normally consider aliens -- the squiggly-shaped, gravity-defying pacifists of the energy-rich planet Terra -- are the besieged targets. (In the movie’s wry nature-over-industry symbolism, the Terrians live storybook-style in the stems of gigantic mushrooms, while humans roam the galaxies in a creaking metal monstrosity.)
Though not a love story, the outcome hinges on the combined will of a plucky teenage Terrian named Mala (voiced by Evan Rachel Wood) and a crash-landed human pilot (Luke Wilson) to prevent their respective sides from mutually assured destruction. Though there’s plenty of combat to please kids, it’s a refreshingly straight-ahead animated feature that eschews frantic vaudevillian comedy and knee-jerk pop cynicism for the single-minded focus of a short story.
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‘Battle
for Terra’
MPAA rating: PG for sequences of sci-fi action violence and some thematic elements
Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes
Playing: In general release
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