Thru the Moebius Strip (2005)

If you are an avid fan of anything and everything science fiction in combination with comics, chances are you have come across the name and works of the French artist Jean Giraud, also known under his moniker of Moebius. His wonderful drawings and designs are very striking and instantly recognizable. Moreover, he has influenced a great many others and many of his designs return in some form or other in films. 'Alien' takes some of his artwork and uses it, as well as various things in the Star Wars-worlds. Especially the latter. If you throw together the comics of Valerian and Moebius' ideas, you get almost the blueprint of everything George Lucas put on screen. 

Just to be clear: Moebius is a legend. 

It is a little surprising then, that it has taken so long for any film to be made based solely on his work. But then we got this one. 

And it's not very good, alas. 

Simon Weir is a scientist in the future and he is working on a space portal to cross vast distances. Something goes wrong, he ends up on another planet inhabited by blue giants (at least, to humans they appear to be giants) and seven years pass. Simon's son Jac is still adamant his father is alive and through a weird mix of science and magic, he contacts his father, discovering the secret lab. So of course Jac also gets transported to this far flung world. 

On this planet of Raphicca, not all is well. The old king is dead, murdered. His brother Tor has taken over and the heir to the throne Ragis is an insecure boy who has been trained by Simon, bizarrely enough. Everybody except Ragis kan instantly see that Tor is evil and plans to kill him and use the portal to reign over the galaxy! (insert evil laughter here)

But of course there are rebels and with some human ingenuity, plans are hatched to thwart Tor's plots and restore Raphicca back to its old glory. 

Oh, and there's a prophecy about a chosen one who will return the light one day. 

All seems familiar, no? 

Storywise, you get this uneasy mix between what is essentially a retelling of 'Jack and the Beanstalk' and practically every royal plottwisting scheme there has ever been. You know how this is going to play out, right from the start. There are never any surprises, no fun deviations, it just goes by the book. That is just a little boring. You can easily predict everything that is going to happen, right up to the hijinks. 

What also feels weird, is the extremely flat delivery of the voice cast. It's hard to find any emotion, except for Jac, who is a whiny kid all the way through. It's even more bizarre because people like Mark Hamill and Michael Dorn play main roles, but they seem less invested in this than in that fly on the wall in the recording booth. No seriously, Hamill and Dorn can do great things and have very distinct voices, but it seems as though the direction here was to go for 'as lifeless as possible'. 

The animation isn't thàt great, either. Especially the humans look very awkward. It was that uncomfortable CG-time where you could never make human faces and hair look convincing and it is just a bit off to look at them. Everything else though, looks decent to great. The backgrounds are wonderful and the Moebius' designs of the aliens are great, but for whatever reason, the blueskinned Raphiccans often show a dark black traceline along their edges. So sometimes, they look nicely CG-animated and other times like cutouts from a paper comic. It's bizarre and once you notice it, your eye keeps getting drawn to that. 

Is it an okay film for the kids? Sure. It's harmless and a little flavourless. I sometimes come back to it, but that's just to see those wonderfully evocative Moebius designs again. Never for the bland story or the flat acting. 

Watch only if you have nothing else to do and want to waste about 90 minutes. But you're not missing much.