Grade: C-

Verdict: Not a good
sign when the 'toon's backgrounds are better than the plot and characters.

Details: Featuring the voices of Matt Damon, Bill Pullman and Drew Barrymore. Directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman. Rated PG for cartoon violence. 1 hour, 30 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: Give "Titan A.E." credit for one thing. It certainly starts with a bang.

Some human-hating aliens called The Drej blow up good ol' Earth in the first five minutes. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is downhill from there.

Set in the 31st century, the picture picks up 16 years later. A few humans managed to escape the blast but they're essentially treated like the homeless of the galaxy. Among them is a 3rd millenium dude named Cale (voiced by Matt Damon) who's been slacking around a salvage station resenting the fact that he never saw his inventor-father again after the big bang.

What Cale doesn't know is that his dad left him a bequest - a map imprinted on his palm that reveals the location of his father's Titan project which has the potential to revive what's left of the human race.

Cale couldn't care less until some Drej try to kill him and he's rescued by a space buccaneer named Korso (voiced by Bill Pullman; prototype by Han Solo). Korso, who knew Cale's dad convinces him to help find the Titan. So they set off, assisted on their mission by Korso's motley crew: a gorgeous female pilot (Drew Barrymore); an acid-tongued reptilian thingie (Nathan Lane); a brainy Truman Capote-ish thingie (John Leguizamo); and a brawny kangaroo/gryphon thingie (Janeane Garofalo).

Co-directed by veteran animators Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, "Titan" mixes everything from "Star Wars" to "Star Trek" (especially "The Wrath of Khan"). The obvious target is the teenage action-lover. But while much of the background animation is arresting - fiery super novas, a floating forest of hydrospheres, crystalline ice rings that can crush a spaceship like a tin can - the characters look and act like leftovers from an old "Jonny Quest" episode. They're two-dimensional in every sense.

It's possible that 12-year-olds might show up for the first weekend or two. But once word-of-mouth gets around, "Titan A.E." is likely to be more tiny than titanic.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Cox News Service