Atlantis: Milo's Return (2003)

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Sometimes people should wonder whether there are two Disney corporations. There's the Disney that moviegoers love and that consists of the classic titles that revolutionized the way people saw family and children films. Then there's the other side of Disney where it acts as a sellout / cash cow that churns out Direct-to-DVD sequels of their various popular films. Most of which these particular sequels either nobody asks for or just end up being despised by fans of the original. It makes no sense how such a well- respected company could have such split personality in goals. This is not to say that all of their DVD sequels are terribly made but to some, it would seem the mouse house operates solely on monetary impulse. The other odd thing is when sequels are produced to films that didn't even perform well. Of the early 2000's, Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) was one of them. Originally its sequel was for a TV series but was scrapped. Thus, this sequel feels more episodic in storytelling than a movie.Directed Victor Cook, Tad Stones and Toby Shelton (who have all worked on various Disney DVD sequels) and penned by six writers from various TV shows and genres, this sequel is okay but that's all that it is. Although the title suggests it's "Milo's return", the story is actually about Milo's original crew having him come back to the surface in order to understand and resolve strange occurrences happening with no reason in the country. Kida's thoughts are that they are somehow connected to Atlantis; once weapons of destruction that her father had locked away hoping modern day man would not find. These events in question are that of a small town being terrorized by a deep sea kraken, a dust storm of spirit wolves and a mad man looking to start the end of the world. Of these separate cases, none of them truly give any explanation to how their Atlantian connection affected history. They're really just lazy tie- ins with Atlantis and nothing more. The voice cast behind the characters thankfully help make the viewing relatively tolerable. There's only a few replacements; for Milo, James Arnold Taylor takes over Michael J. Fox and instead of Jim Varney, Steven Barr fills in as Cookie. Every other character remains the same. Cree Summer, John Mahoney, Jacqueline Obradors, Don Novello, Corey Burton, Phil Morris and Florence Stanley all return to reprise their roles and their exchanges are still commendable as the slew of personalities they make up. There are additional voices too and they consist of Frank Welker playing Obby (a three legged volcano dog,...precious), Jeff Bennett, William Morgan Sheppard, Floyd 'Red Crow' Westerman, Thomas F. Wilson and Clancy Brown. The unfortunate part is that with these new additions, somehow not all the main characters make it into every story. Characters like Vinny and Sweet disappear at times with no notice and don't come back until another story finishes. Strange.Another component to the writing that doesn't exactly make sense are some of the character motivations. Some of which these motivations completely contradict beliefs from the prior movie. It's another thing to also think that sharing the gift of Atlantis will bring about good and everyone will be accepting of it. If this were a real world event, the newbies to the world should think twice. Animation was handled by Toon City, a contracting company that has frequently worked with Disney in several animated TV show spinoffs and direct- to-DVD sequels. For what it's worth, the animation is nowhere close to its predecessor's quality but it isn't garbage either. There are few relaxed scenes that have some decent fluidity to them and the action scenes are engaging too. For the action there are explosions and various other character movements (kraken, dust storms or protagonists) that have natural movement to them. The difference in quality to this is more texture display than anything else.Of the animation, if there's one thing that really stands out, it's all the continuity errors that litter the screen. There are a considerable number moments when these problems develop. Parts of it show up for certain sections of backgrounds, while other times it's as simple as animating characters' mouths when clearly there's voice over work being played. It's moments like those that just feel sloppy and cheap. Also when Milo's friends come back to Atlantis, they arrive via plane. However the first movie had everyone go underwater; great job guys. The music to this feature is adequate though. Don Harper, who normally is the conductor to score recording sessions and who's best work would come later in The Lion King 1 1/2 (2004), composed the music. Occasionally, Harper does reference James Newton Howard's theme from the original but it's not around for long. The music itself is also not as grand but this is probably due to the constraints of the budget itself. It's just okay.Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) was one of those Disney films that didn't need a sequel. Is this worth any of your time - not really but it's not a total disgrace either. The music, most of its animation, and voice acting is praise worthy. Its weak plot threads are more of the problem.

I loved Atlantis: The Lost Empire. It wasn't Disney best Movie ever made but it's Handdrawn (and part CG) Animation was stunning, I would call it Disney best looking Animated Movie. It's Characters were more mature and darker and so was it's Story. That's why it's one of my favorite Disney Movies. Atlantis - Milo's Return takes everything we liked about the first Movie and smashes it. The Animation is awful, the Characters are Parodies of themselves and the Story is so lazy written it's unbelievable. The first thing we see is Queen Kida flying over a Sea of Magma, in which Animals are Swimming. There are Animals SWIMMING in MAGMA, 100 Seconds into this and the Movie already lost me. And it didn't get uphill from there. The Team from the first Movie visits Milo and Kida, to ask them for help dealing with a Sea Monster called the Kraken. So our Heroes travel to Norway to slay the Kraken and about 20 Minutes later they Win. And that Point you realize instead of one long Story they crammed three Incredible Bad Stories into this. It feels More like a Pilot for an Atlantis: The Lost Empire TV-Show, a bad TV-Show. The other annoying Part is the Characters. They got almost everything about those Characters wrong, as if they did't see the first movie. Vinnie for instance, he was the funniest Character in the first movie. I liked his dry sense of Humor and some great lines like:"But, nobody got hurt. Well, maybe somebody got hurt, but nobody we knew." He's not nearly as funny now. You can see they tried to target the Younger Kids with this. To me this Movie was was just a massive waste of Time, Money and Electricity. 70 Minutes of my life i'll never get back.

This movie was horrible, and it doesn't even deserve to be called a movie. The way I look at it, it's more like three mediocre day-time Disney cartoon episodes strung loosely together to make a single video that pretends to be the sequel to the first Atlantis movie, which was way more well-made and enjoyable. And where do i even begin with the problems of this DVD? The story? The characters? The pictures/animation? To me they're all bad and unwatchable. Firstly, the story in this direct-to-video DVD is ridiculous and pointless. The only good thing about it is that it is consistent--that is, consistently bad, from the beginning to the end. After the film's over i still don't know why Milo has returned and how the incidents occur in the three small stories are related to each other or to Atlantis itself. And all I could remember about this movie was how bad it makes me feel after seeing it. The characters feel wooden and lack personality, and the drawings look a lot different than that in the first. You can tell they're obviously not from the hands of the same animators from the first one. As the DVD played on, i found myself caring less and less about what might happen to the characters and just hoping the film would end soon. Besides the story and the characters mentioned above, the picture quality is poor in this one too, probably one of the worst in those direct-to-video products that Disney has ever released. As a fan of the the original Atlantis: the lost empire, I couldn't be more disappointed in Milo's return, which is a total waste of time and money. Thank goodness I rented it first instead of buying it. Even so, I still wish I'd never seen this crap or even known its existence.

I haven't seen 'Atlantis' but when I got the DVD of this one, I didn't think it would be as bad, in spite of being skeptical. Thankfully, I didn't buy it. 'Atlantis: Milo's Return' hugely disappoints. It doesn't even look like a Disney film to begin with. The animation is very weak and looks to be done in a lame fashion. If it were playing on TV, I probably wouldn't have guessed it to be a Disney film. The film itself is extremely slow paced and the story is uninteresting. The voice actors do not impress much. There are but a few funny moments e.g. the humour with the glass and spear. Disney sequels have hardly been memorable and 'Atlantis: Milo's Return' is certainly forgettable.