OxfordPress.com

Grade: D+

Verdict: Third-rate Disney — but the kids won't mind.

Details: Featuring the voices of Michael J. Fox and James Garner. Directed by Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale. Rated PG for scary action scenes. One hour, 35 minutes.

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Review: Come back, “Shrek.” I have seen the light.

Actually, I've seen “Atlantis: The Lost Empire.”

“Shrek” may have had parts that really bothered me (keep those e-mails coming, but let's keep 'em clean, kids!), but it had some wonderful, surprising stuff, too.

Disney's newest animated epic, alas, fails in all the old familiar ways.

Yet that's not what you'll think during the picture's eye-popping opening sequence. We witness the sinking of Atlantis, the legendary lost continent that, according to Plato, was swallowed up by the ocean eons ago. In a spectacular animation display that evokes the mind-boggling power and head-spinning imagination of Japanese anime, an entire civilization is engulfed by a tidal wave the size of Mount Everest.

The story then moves forward to 1914, when a bespectacled scholar named Milo (excellently voiced by Michael J. Fox) hopes to realize his late grandfather's dream: to find Atlantis.

The powers that be in the scientific community think he's just another nut case. But an eccentric zillionaire (John Mahoney) who knew Milo's granddad believes in the kid. To aid Milo in unlocking the secrets of Atlantis, he offers funding, a submarine right out of Jules Verne and a ragtag crew.

Here's where the movie starts to slide. Introduced with a kind of “Mission: Impossible” fanfare, said crew is more like a bunch of ragtag clichés lifted from an action-oriented Saturday morning cartoon (hint to baby boomer parents: think “Jonny Quest” with a big budget). There's the hard-edged, take-charge commander (James Garner); his harder-edged assistant with dominatrix tendencies (Claudia Christian); an explosives-loving Italian (Don Novello); a tomboyish Latina mechanic (Jaqueline Obradors); a cantankerous cook (the late Jim Varney); and a Peter Lorre-ish digging fiend (Corey Burton).

After some fairly thrilling adventures (including a lobster the size of the Ritz), they find Atlantis — am I spoiling things? — which looks a lot like the utopian paradise in “The Road to El Dorado.” Then the movie stalls out as Milo falls for a princess (Cree Summer) who kicks butt in a bikini and falls out with some of his colleagues who are just in it for — gasp — the money.

The kids will certainly want to know what happens next and, for a while, so will you. But for all its impressive visuals, the movie lacks an equally impressive story. What happens isn't in any way offensive, it's just predictable. And a bit ponderous. It's almost as if the filmmakers lost interest about two-thirds of the way through.

That's especially disappointing since those filmmakers are Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale, the creative team behind two of the best animated features ever made: “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Little Mermaid.” Long before “Atlantis” is over, you get so tired of this movie's darkness and deaths (lots of faceless extras, serving the same purpose as the safari natives in a Tarzan movie) that you yearn for the blissed-out exuberance of Sebastian the Crab singing “Under the Sea.”

That was Disney magic. This is Disney on automatic.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, (none)