Atlantis: The Lost Empire

Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)

Directed by: Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise

Starring: Michael J. Fox, Cree Summer, James Garner

Other Actors of Note: James Varney, Florence Stanley, and Leonard Nimoy

Plot: Set in 1914, young linguist orphan named Milo Thatch buries himself in books trying to unlock the secret to the destruction of Atlantis. Althouth his theories are ridiculed by his colleagues he is persistent in his dreams of one day discovering the lost isle. His dreams are realized when he is given a spot in an expedition, financed by a friend of his grandfather, to go in search of Atlantis following Milo's guide: The Shepard's Journal. But the Guardians of Atlantis await the explorers putting them in danger at every turn. And the deadly truth about Atlantis's demise puts Milo, the royal family, and all of Atlantis in mortal jeopardy. Taken from www.imdb.com.


Atlantis wasn't the first animated film to take a more serious approach to a once "kiddy" genre. "Titan A.E." the year before its release and "The Iron Giant" before that showed a new side to the animated film that had never really come to the mainstream before. A serious movie with a serious story, a movie that played out less as a "cartoon" and more as a film that just happened to be animated. Disney at this time was on its way up in the animation department with this movie and "Treasure Planet" the following year before being cut off at the knees by the new surge of computer animated movies that pushed classical 2 dimensional animated films to straight-to-video travesties and Disney hasn't made a good animated film that didn't have Pixar's name attached since.

With their feud with Pixar and the fact that a good Disney movie without the name "of the Caribbean" in the title for the last 6 years makes it hard to remember why Disney used to be an animated film juggernaut. Sure a lot of their early pieces like "Bambi", "Snow White", "Cinderella", "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", "The Little Mermaid", and "Pocahontas" were shallow stories with poor story lines that relied more on good musical numbers than actual film quality Disney managed to do fairly well along the way with stand-outs like "The Lion King", "Aladdin" (Probably the only Disney series that actually grew better with sequels), "Mulan", "The Emperor's New Groove", and "Hercules." Of course all the potential Disney was showing was quickly swept away by the 3D animation movement and these films became lost.

One of the movies that was lost in the shuffle from 2D to 3D was Disney's "Atlantis the Lost Empire" it was never that it was a bad movie it was just the old style and didn't have the young kid appeal of say "Lilo and Stitch"

It's the story of Milo Thatcher (Michael J. Fox) a young linguist who believes he can find the lost city of Atlantis. His grandfather spend years searching for a book that gave exact details and unbeknownst to him a friend of his grandfather's has found the book and is planning on funding an expedition to find the city.

So Milo sets off with a crew of experts to find Atlantis. Of course along the way they run into several problems that end up killing over 9/10 of the group he has brought along leaving on a handful of men to assist. But what they find in Atlantis is more than Milo ever could have imagined.


Performances in this movie are all wonderfully done. Michael J. Fox works well as the skinny, fidgety, bookish Milo. Serving perfectly as a nervous and mousy man with a desire to impress those around him without knowing how to do it.

As usual James Garner is great as the tall overbearing military type, grey headed but still built like an ox, too consumed with the sound of his own voice to listen to reason.

This was also the last great performance of two great entertainers the late James Varney, best known for his portrayal as the character Earnest P. Worell and Florence Stanley who was best known for her deep and raspy voice as well as her cantankerous characters. Both are very well suited in the roles of ship cook "Cookie and radio officer "Packard" respectively. Florence went on to reprise her role in the horrible direct-to-video sequel but Jim Varney had already passed on at this point. It was a nice send-off for both actors and one final show to remind us what we're truly missing out on.


The animation is done beautifully and it leaves one a bit whistful of the inborn beauty of 2D animation that just can't be captured by its 3D counterpart. The characters are all well designed and exaggerated just enough to be acceptably "cartoony." The animatoin style can be credited to comic artist and writer Mike Mignola of "Hellboy" fame who's first question upon being contacted by Disney about working on the film was "How did you get my number?"

Going away from the Disney tradition of musicals and princess stories (though the former was more prominent at the time than the latter) it's an action/adventure movie with a surprisingly dark for the time tone. Many people end up dying and it's one of the first Disney animated features where I've seen blood (albeit briefly.)

The story is any 10-12-year-old boy's dream come true. A beautifully crafted storyline that combines the likes of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Arthur Conan Doyle's stories (Particularly "Journey to the Center of the Earth", "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", "The Time Machine", and "The Lost World") with the adventurous nature of films like the "Indiana Jones" movies and even the film "Stargate" (which holds many many parallels to "Atlantis", in fact Kurt Russell himself was considered for the part of Rourke before James Garner got the part) the musical score that reeks of a Universal studios adventure film completes the picture perfectly.

It is a wonderful adventure movie that pays homage to so many other classics both literary and film. It's a movie that speaks to the adventurous child in all of us and should be held as a classic up there with many of Disney's other titles.


"Atlantis: The Lost Empire" is not only a lost classic but one of Disney's best animated films. It deserves far more popularity then it has and it's my sincere hope that this review will ignite some interest in it.

I give "Atlantis: The Lost Empire" a 5 out of 5. No matter what your age, buy it.