Valiant

Rating: B-

Remember when Disney animated movies were released with huge fanfair and were giant hits? Now Pixar is doing the talking for Disney and movies like Valiant get shoved to late in the summer and are released with hardly a whisper, which is sad, because this is a pretty decent little flick.

Valiant is the story of WWII messenger pigeons that travel through the worst of times avoiding the enemy falcon to deliver important data to the allies. Pretty good setting. Valiant, the smallest of the pigeons decides to join up with the Royal Homing Pigeon Air Force to prove that size doesn't matter. That's what I've been saying all along! He gets grouped in with the misfit recruits, and after everybody else is killed by the falcon, his group is called in to save the day.

Ewan McGregor brings the life to Valiant, and voice veterans John Cleese, Tim Curry, and John Hurt round out the cast. The movie is a lightweight, coming in at around 1 hour and 15 minutes, but it's entertaining enough to keep your kids busy. There's not a lot of jokes for us adults, but the kiddies will love it. One more thing, humans are noticably absent from the picture. Weren't we fighting the war?

Anyway, it's worth running the kids to if you've got the time. I'm sure they'll like it. And if you don't have time, it will be on DVD in mere months. I just wish Disney would return the animated movies to glory once again. I miss good old 2-D animation.