Movie Review: Alpha and Omega

(3.5 out of 5 starfish)

Have you ever fallen in love with someone you know you couldn’t have?  Just ask Humphrey.  In Lion Gate’s new 3-D animation “Alpha and Omega,” Humphrey is a lowly Omega wolf in his pack, and he falls in love with Kate, the stunning and skilled Alpha female of the pack.

Even though Humphrey and Kate are friends who play together, their status separates them.  So they can’t howl together at the midnight howl or have a litter of pups.

Kate’s duty is to marry Garth, the hunky Alpha-male-to-be of the Eastern pack to make peace between the warring packs.  But on the night of the moonlight howl, Kate and Humphrey are tranquilized by the park rangers (they live in Jasper National Park, Canada), and brought to Idaho to “repopulate” the area.

With the help of a comical golfing Canadian goose named Marcel, and his caddie, a duck named Paddie, Humphrey and Kate must make the best of the unlikely team, and get back home.

I rate this film 3.5 starfish.  It is packed with action, adventure, drama, and humor, especially from Marcel the goose, who adds just the right amount of humor and fun to the story.

The character design has lots of room for improvement as many wolves in the film don’t look like wolves.  While we were watching the movie, my mom noticed that some of the wolves looked like foxes, and Kate’s mother looked like a pig.

When the wolves howl, I want to hear real howl, not the fake howl in this film that sounds like a pop song.  I think the ending is too predictable and anti-climatic.

The Eastern pack is crossing into the territory of Kate’s pack, and is stealing caribou due to a food shortage.  In one of the movie’s funny scenes, Alpha male Garth howled horribly out of tune, and a flock of blue jays dropped dead on the spot right next to Garth!  If the wolf pack is so hungry that they resort to eating berries and flies buzzing around a carcass, then how come Garth didn’t eat the dazed and helpless birds?

“Alpha and Omega” is about friendship, love, tradition, and creating one’s own destiny.

Love is mightier than tradition.

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At 10, Perry Chen is the youngest award-winning entertainment critic, TV personality, Annie Awards presenter, filmmaker/animator, and radio host, reviewing movies and entertainment with his trademark kids-friendly starfish from a child’s perspective.  Perry became a national sensation on CBS Evening News with Katie Couric and National Public Radio (NPR) with Liane Hansen, and a frequent star on the red carpet at film festivals and premiers.  He is the youngest columnist for the San Diego Entertainer Magazine.

Perry is the youngest speaker at the upcoming TEDx conference at Microsoft campus in Redmond, WA on Sep 18, 2010. Speakers profile: http://tedxredmond.com/speakers/

Watch LIVE webcast, 2-7 pm, PST, Sep 18, 2010: www.ustream.tv/tedxredmond.

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