It's not easy to make a movie, let alone an animated one. You have to create a good story, memorable characters, and craft animation that looks captivating and gorgeous. It's no small feat and it takes a lot of creativity and skill to pull it off. With that said though, there was no creativity or skill whatsoever to be found in "Alpha and Omega". It's the kind of animated movie that typically comes to mind whenever bad animated movies are mentioned. It's not only bad, but it's also insufferable. It's honestly one of the worst animated movies I've ever seen in my entire life and that is not an easy thing to accomplish. Though the people at Crest Animation managed to pull it off and it resulted in one of the most unpleasant and tedious experiences I've had in a long time.
In the mountains of Jasper National Park in Alberta, a young Omega wolf named Humphrey (Justin Long) has had feelings for an Alpha wolf named Kate (Hayden Panettiere). While the two have been friends, the two cannot mate due to laws that forbid Alphas and Omegas to be together. Though that's not the only problem that's happening in the park. A clan of wolves from the east led by Tony (Dennis Hopper) have been invading the west for caribou and only have caused problems amongst the other western Alpha wolves. Hoping to merge their packs the leader of the west, Winston (Danny Glover) and the leader from the east, Tony (Dennis Hopper) plan to have Kate marry Tony's son Garth (Chris Carmack). Things don't go according to plan though as both Kate and Humphrey are captured by humans and shipped to Idaho in hopes to repopulate the species. Knowing a war will break out if they don't get back, Kate and Humphrey try to find their way back to Jasper National Park while along the way starting to fall in love. I guess you can figure out the plot from there.
I don't know where to begin with this film. It's such a disaster that it made me wonder how anyone who worked on this film thought it was a good idea. Then again, it was made by Richard Rich who was responsible for other bad animated movies like "The Trumpet of the Swan" and "The Swan Princess" as well as directing the disastrous Disney film "The Black Cauldron". After finishing the movie, it all clicked for why this film was so terrible in the end. The story was so unoriginal. We've seen the story of two characters where law forbid that they fall in love and yet they end up falling in love so many times that it's not new anymore. Not only that, it's not exactly made clear why Alphas and Omegas can't mate. The film just simply says that they can't be together without giving any reason to explain why. It's such lazy storytelling and makes things even more confusing for the audience. Also, the comedy in the film is horrendously unfunny. It's desperately trying to make the audience laugh and yet every single joke falls flat on its face. The animation in this film was also terrible. From what I read, this film had a budget of only $20 million and it shows. It honestly looked more like a PlayStation 2 game that came out in 2000 rather than an animated movie that came out in 2010. The fur, water, and snow effects, in particular, were seriously awful. To make matters worse, these characters didn't translate well into computer animation. The wolves all looked generic and unremarkable and didn't feel original in any matter whatsoever. Speaking of the characters, there also really awful. Humphrey and Kate have no chemistry whatsoever and their personalities are simply annoying and clash. Humphrey is the goofball with the good charm and Kate is the tough girl with a soft heart and they just make for an unremarkable couple. Also, there's this duck and goose named Paddy and Marcel and they were simply annoying comic relief. Every time the appeared on screen, I just rolled my eyes and groaned because their jokes were so horrendously unfunny and just left me feeling sour. I just wanted them gone. Honestly, I'm struggling to come up with positives to this movie. It was that bad. If there's anything noteworthy about this film, it's that it ended up being Dennis Hopper's final film before his death. I'm sad that this was because this was not a very good film to end on what was a trailblazer of a career.
In all honesty, "Alpha and Omega" is one of the worst animated movies ever made. The story is unoriginal and not clever in the slightest, the animation is awful and simply lazy, and the characters are all annoying and simply unlikable. I don't know what motivated Lionsgate to release this in theaters, but I can say they made a mistake releasing it. My only advice when it comes to this movie is to simply ignore it. Don't give it your time, money, or attention. It's a simply dreadful movie that will probably spend the rest of its life in a $5 DVD barrel and that's honestly where it should stay.
