Treasure Planet *** (2002, voices of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emma Thompson, Martin Short, Patrick McGoohan) – Classic Movie Review 7942

Writer/ producer/ directors Ron Clements and John Musker’s 2002 animated feature Treasure Planet brings the Robert Louis Stevenson novel Treasure Island freshly up to date in the space age in Walt Disney Pictures’ gleaming and entertaining sci-fi version of the yarn.

The animation is spruce, the voices appealing and the dialogue is amusing with satisfying wisecrack humour, though perhaps it is still all a bit too cosy and unchallenging. Third Rock from the Sun’s Joseph Gordon-Levitt provides the voice of young Jim Hawkins aboard a solar-powered vessel and Brian Murray voices a cyborg Long John Silver with an alien shape-shifter for a parrot.

Other voices include Patrick McGoohan, Roscoe Lee Browne, Laurie Metcalf, David Hyde Pierce, Martin Short, Emma Thompson, Michael Wincott, Corey Burton, Dane A Davis, Austin Majors and Jane Carr.

Treasure Planet is U certificate in the UK but it was a PG in the US.

It was the last film work of Patrick McGoohan (1928–2009).

This simple animation cost an astounding $140,000,000 and grossed only $38,000,000 in the US, and $109,000,000 worldwide.

 © Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7942

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