Disney is still making weird animated movies that are supposed to be for the family. This one is a little on the strange side. We enter with an odd fellow named Milo (Michael J. Fox) who talks to a fake audience about finding the lost city of Atlantis. He's preparing to go before the museum (that he's an employee for) and ask for funding to look for the city. 

The directors ignore him and he ends up getting a visit by a strange evil lady who is alluring. She takes him to Preston Whitmore (John Mahoney) and he learns more about his adventurer grandfather. His grandfather and Whitmore made a bet and after he died Whitmore decided to get his friend's grandson and make good on his bet. So, he finances Milo to go look for the city.

The cast of characters is actually quite memorable, although a little more strange then is normal for  Disney. There's "Mole" (Corey Burton) who digs a lot and likes microscopic things. There's a big black guy name Dr. Sweet (Phil Morris) who talks fast and is kind of cool. There's a teenage girl named Audrey (Jacqueline Obradors) who happens to be an expert on engines and then there's a cook and a strange communications lady with a bad attitude.

There are cool special effects in this movie in that they mixed a little CGI into the traditional cel animation and it's done very well. But the story is pretty predictable. We know who will win and who our hero will end up falling in love with. Of course, there's some unpredictable stuff too: like who knew that Princess Kida (Cree Summer) was going to be 8000+ years old and look like she's barely out of her teens? (And yes, she and Milo get together in the same fashion as Aragorn and Arwen do in Lord of the Rings. I guess immortal princesses just fall for mortals that are much younger then they are! At least with Aragorn, he was a king and hansom whereas Milo is dumb looking.)

 Anyway, the worst thing about this movie is all the "life-force" garbage and mystic garbage in it. Once you get to Atlantis we find out that the Atlantians worship a crystal god that saved them from destruction long ago. And it saves them again before the movie is over.  

Well, let's get to my little recap of the good stuff and bad stuff:

Good Stuff:

Bad Stuff:

The original story of Atlantis talks of Poseidon's (god of the sea) love of a mortal, Cleito. He ended up building the kingdom of Atlantis around her in concentric circles of water and mountains/land to protect her. Atlantis sounds like a pagan Eden where the people lived in prosperity until one day they were overcome with evil and greed. Therefore, Zeus and some of the other gods got together and destroyed it. This reminds me of Sodom and Gomorrah. 

In the movie, you don't really know why it got destroyed, although it sounds like the King of Atlantis (Leonard Nimoy) tried to control this mystical "force" that they worshipped and it was too powerful, so it almost destroyed them. It's confusing at best.

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