Kids will love underwater turtle tale
Undated Film Still Handout from Sammy's Great Escape. See PA Feature FILM Film Reviews. Picture credit should read: PA Photo/Warner Bros. WARNING: This picture must only be used to accompany PA Feature FILM Film Reviews.
Stealing a march - or should that be swim - on next month’s 3D re-release of Finding Nemo, Sammy’s Great Escape is a sweet and inoffensive computer animation with a gentle message about mankind’s plundering of underwater resources.
Vincent Kesteloot and Ben Stassen’s film is a sequel to the 2010 Belgian picture A Turtle’s Tale: Sammy’s Adventure, about a sea turtle who is washed far away from his atoll but eventually finds his way home.
In the sequel, the diminutive hero is now all grown up and has to risk life and flippers to escape from an underwater aquarium, where wealthy tourists pay small fortunes to survey the stolen specimens.
The warning at the heart of Domonic Paris’s simplistic script is clear: leave nature alone or we risk the destruction of entire ecosystems.
Sammy’s Great Escape begins straight after the events of A Turtle’s Tale with Sammy (voiced by Wesley Johnny) and his sweetheart Shelley (Isabelle Fuhrman) proudly welcoming their tiny grandchildren into the world.
Nearby, Sammy’s best friend Ray (Carlos McCullers II) and his soulmate take care of their brood.
The adult greenbacks and leatherbacks stand guard over the adorable hatchlings, protecting the newborns from circling gulls.
The turtles are so focussed on airborne attacks, they fail to notice poachers, who capture Sammy and Ray and transport the animals to a vast undersea complex in Dubai.
Two hatchlings, Ella and Ricky, are also snared by the poachers and join their grandparents on the terrifying adventure.
En route to the aquarium, the children escape captivity and chase after their grandparents, aided by an octopus called Margaret and her baby daughter, Annabel.
Meanwhile, the turtles settle into new surroundings and befriend a split-personality lobster called Lulu (Joe Thomas), who treats his claws like puppets, and a bug-eyed blob fish called Jimbo.
Sammy and Ray hope to orchestrate a mass escape from the man-made environment.
Like its predecessor, Sammy’s Great Escape is pitched at a very young audience and there is very little in Kesteloot and Stassen’s film to engage parents and carers.
The visuals are slightly more polished than the first film but still lack the impeccable detail of Finding Nemo, which is now 10 years old.
By Damon Smith
HHH
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Weather for Worksop
Sunday 19 May 2013
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 9 C to 18 C
Wind Speed: 13 mph
Wind direction: North east
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 10 C to 15 C
Wind Speed: 20 mph
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