DVD Review: Animalia: Welcome to the Kingdom

In 1986, Australian author Graeme Base made a very large splash in the field of children’s alphabet books with his gorgeously illustrated Animalia whose wonderfully rendered animals made it a natural pick to transfer to the visual medium of TV, and the result is a visually wonderful but occasionally narratively suspect children’s series. Adults may find the embedded theme of communication as the basis for our humanity a little sketchily developed, but the target audience of six- to nine-year-olds will be carried along by the action and amusing script. Animalia: Welcome to the Kingdom is now available on DVD and Blu-Ray format for the first time.

Base’s book featured each alphabet letter with a corresponding animal and an alliterative poem. There was no connecting narrative. Therefore, the creative team—a joint venture between Australian Burberry Productions, Graeme Base, and producer Murray Pope, along with L.A.-based Porchlight Entertainment-- had to find a story for the series. Although English language literacy would seem a natural fit, given the nature of the parent book, the Animalia team decided not to go that route so they would not be limited to distributing to English-speaking countries. Instead, the developers chose the importance of communication, including writing and computer proficiency.

The resulting series, which debuted in Australia in 2007 and is currently aired on PBS, BBC, and CBC, has a lot to recommend it, beginning, unsurprisingly, with the visuals. Like the book, the series is gorgeous. Described as high end CGI animation, the series approaches the standard of full-length feature animation. The CGI apparently cost $20 million, and yes, it shows. Purists will note that the animals have sometimes changed a bit in their travels from book to screen, but the results are still wonderful. In the special features, director David Scott describes the style as based on Japanese animation. The artists were not trying for complete realism, but rather for an artistic interpretation of the animal or landscape. Brushstrokes are readily visible. The animators were going for the simplest most efficient way to convey emotion. Combined with the excellent voice acting, the results are engaging and very individualised characters in a nicely realised universe of their own.

However, the storyline is a little less successful, though it probably plays fine with youngsters. The concept has two kids, Alex and Zoe, accidentally stumble through a portal into the hidden kingdom of Animalia, where animals have evolved to be just like humans, except they live in peace and are all vegetarians, even the lions. Livingston T. (stands for "the") Lion is the king and the keeper of the Core—the magical living crystal which holds all that makes Animalians so human. Unfortunately, the Core has developed a crack and the disconcerting habit of shooting Core spores out into the kingdom, and whatever Core aspect the spore controls goes haywire. With communication as the underlying theme of the series, the spores control things like speech and memory. Every time one of these areas goes wonky, the animals become more animal-like and less human, to their horror.

Article Author: Gerry Weaver

Gerry loves film, books, a few television shows (House, True Blood and Supernatural come to mind), and writing about them.

Visit Gerry Weaver's author page — Gerry Weaver's Blog