Review of The Secret of Kells (2009) by Tina A — 27 Nov 2011

Phenomenal art direction and a well done score, but other than that, doesn't have a whole lot going for it. So we're on the heavily Irish island of Kells. It's so Irish that it's only inhabited by brother seamus (like an Irish monk?) The abbot of the island is obsessed with building a wall around the town to protect the townsfolk from the inevitable attack from the Vikings.

A newcomer to the town tantalizes our main character, a young boy named Brendan, into helping him finish writing a very important book. Brendan is torn between obeying the strict abbot, who is also his uncle, and helping this newcomer by going into the surrounding dangerous forest to retrieve things.

He chooses to help the newcomer and go into the forest, where he discovers that not everything can be learnt in books. I would like to start off by saying that the 2-D animation here is nothing short of breathtaking.

So much time and effort was put into the detail work, and it all has a very unique feel about it because it's an animation company in Ireland that isn't well-known... The thing is that that's pretty much the only thing that The Secret of Kells has going for it.

The voice acting is only okay, the story isn't all that good or engaging, and there isn't much there in terms of character progression. Perhaps it's because the animation is so good that the average everything else looks so much worse, but that's no excuse for everything else not being on par with animation.

It's worth a watch if you get the chance solely for the animation, but nothing you need to go out of your way to see because it isn't that strong of a film.