Sometimes I am really concerned about the level of intelligence that the makers of films for children assume of their audience.

Alpha and Omega

From Easy Rider to this?

Two wolves from a pack living in Jasper National Park, Canada are captured and taken to Idaho to repopulate a park there. Kate is an alpha, destined to become the leader of the Jasper pack, while Humphrey is an omega. Think princess and stable-boy. Anyway, Kate and Humphrey decide to make their way back to Jasper to rejoin their pack and halt a brewing invasion from a rival pack. Will they fall in love on the way? Does anyone care? Did this really have to be Dennis Hopper’s last movie?

I don’t enjoy being mean about the films I watch. Okay, sometimes I do, but occasionally I feel like I’m shooting fish in a barrel. Tranquilised fish, in a really shallow and well-stocked barrel. With a rocket launcher.

This is not a good film. The animation is of a standard that would disappoint me in a Saturday morning cartoon. The story is trite and predictable with nothing new to say about class struggles or forbidden love. The actors – including Hayden Panettiere as Kate and Justin Long as Humphrey – don’t seem to be enjoying themselves, with the possible exception of Larry Miller as a French-Canadian, golf-playing goose named Marcel (yes, really). Danny Glover and Dennis Hopper both just sound bored as the rival pack leaders, Winston and Tony.

Setting aside for a moment that he can manipulate his feathers to grasp a golf club, Marcel also has a caddy. Named Paddy. That’s what we’re dealing with here.

If you have any five-year-olds at a loose end, then they might find something to keep them entertained here, but I wouldn’t recommend it for much else.