atlanx Bad 08/15 story. They made the same failures like made in Final Fantasy(Spirits within). It's an standard, I would call it "american story". Not funny. And to technically without spirit.Probably I have watched to many Ghibli movies. And there is not one character I like. They are all stupid and to "designed".watch an good German made (animation-)movie watch "Obelix and Asterix in Amerika".Another tip: Watch this movie without sound, it's a really nice CG Animation without story.

Robert Walker-Smith This was one of those "the store is out of Movie X, so I'll pick up this and hope it's not too bad" movies.I was honestly expecting some "Ferngully"/"Dinotopia - Quest for the Ruby Sunstone" level abomination. The things we go through for our kids, blah blah.But it wasn't. Mind you, I'm not saying it's great - just better than a title like "The Snurks" would lead you to believe. "Return to Gaya" would have conveyed the quality better, but sounds like a sequel. The thing I liked best about it was that it did not unswervingly obey genre conventions. The idea of fictional, fantasy characters winding up in the Real World (tm) is by no means new, but it was treated with some intelligence. The Big Dumb Hero who, we discover, KNOWS that he's dumb, and doesn't seem entirely happy about it, the ostensible villain who displays a streak of heroism, the coward who, released from the narrative imperative, proves capable of bravery - and a real villain whose motivation for villainy is - get this - rage over having had his television show canceled in favor of less intellectually demanding fare - all these are surprising details, and display more originality than you'll find in a half-dozen similar movies.

Victor Field This may contain a slight spoiler or two."Back to Gaya" was rechristened "Boo, Zino and the Snurks" for its UK release, making it sound less like a bold fantasy movie and more like a bad animated series on Children's ITV or Fox Kids or whatever. In fairness, the movie does unfortunately play like a very long episode of a bad animated series on Children's ITV or Fox Kids or whatever, not the result the producers of Germany's first computer animated movie were hoping for (even if it hadn't opened here the same week as "Shark Tale" it would probably have bombed).The movie's premise - the stars of the hugely successful TV show "The Adventures of Boo and Zino" (which is so successful that they apparently have their own channel called Gaya TV) are brought into the real world by a mad scientist - isn't hugely original (as Rocky and Bullwinkle can attest; the upcoming Fat Albert movie is also based around that idea), but something could still have been done with it. One or two interesting ideas do come up, notably the notion of TV characters whose entire lives have been patterned out for them by other hands suddenly realising that they can function on their own, but they don't ultimately come to anything and the movie just lies there; the characters are all one-note clichés despite the attempts to graft some kind of emotions onto them, and the voicework isn't anything to write home about either.The animation itself isn't actually too bad, and the design is okay (though all the voices are English or American, the unnamed city the movie's set in has some European stylings) but the producers failed to get a point that Pixar fully understands; if there's nothing in the script for the animation to be based on, it won't work. Everything from the cheating in the race at the beginning to the climactic showdown is heartless, derivative and humourless, and the writing's unforgivably slack (not to mention refusing to make sense on its own terms; the villain who brought them from TV to the real world took them by mistake while getting Gaya's power source which will give him the power to take things from TV and bring them into the real world... but how did he manage to pull things from TV into the real world in the first place? Can you say "paradox"? I knew you could). The posters claim this uses writers from "A Bug's Life" and "Hercules," but they must have been on an off day.Is there anything to like about this movie? Well, this was one of two movies Michael Kamen was working on before his untimely death (the other being "First Daughter"), and his score does try to give the movie an epic touch that it doesn't deserve. Plus it's amusing to see that two characters look like a hollowed-out Kim Wilde and the guy with the mustache from Hale and Pace. And Alanta, the female Gayan on the trip - who's a tough lady, surprised? - is pretty fanciable; I think the producers must have thought so too, since the end credits finish with "Any resemblance to actual human beings is purely coincidental. Which is a pity, in the case of Alanta." But if you aren't a film music devotee or attracted to cartoon characters, skip this.And besides, in what universe could "The Adventures of Boo and Zino" really be a smash hit? I refuse to believe German TV can be THAT bad.

hobold The movie does have significant weaknesses, as the other comments point out, but there are a few strengths worthy of note.I was positively impressed by the global level of detail of scene backgrounds. Where in other CGI movies you get to see, say, a row of buildings with carefully modelled details near the camera, then a lot of empty space behind those, and finally a matte painting of the 'horizon', Back to Gaya shows you whole blocks of buildings, with the next streets showing through the gaps, all in credibly full detail, but without any obvious repetition of similar structures. To me these shots had a sense of realism that I had not seen before in CGI movies.Along the same vein, when there are open air views, the distant landscape is never a simple background painting, but a detailed model. As far as I can tell, even the clouds in the sky were actual 3D entities instead of the usual flat background painting. This gives the camera a lot more freedom to move large distances and freely look around the scenery. The filmmakers probably overused this freedom somewhat, though, making some scenes hard to follow.The outstanding level of detail extends to things like vegetation interacting with buildings, like plants growing inbetween and around fenceposts, for example. What I also liked was the general worn and aged look of things, a refreshing change from the polished featureless surfaces that are all too common on CGI movies' background objects.The character animation in comparison is two classes below that, as the other comments mention. One thing I like about the characters, though, is the courage of the designers to go for the outright bizarre with the 'human' roles. It was interesting to see character design exploring a different direction than the usual either hyperrealistic or more classical comic style.So, despite its weaknesses, Back to Gaya actually manages to advance the state of the CGI art on a few fronts. I do hope that it will be commercially successful enough that the makers get another chance to apply their talents to a better story.