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Somewhere and somewhen in fantasy land: Cerebus the Aardvark (voiced by
John Di Crosta) roams the countryside to fulfill his (probably
questionable) destiny - but when twins G'ar and T'ar (both voiced by Yuell
Newsome) take him for a mercenry and hire him to help them steal the
flamed jewel from wizard Maki (Stephen Mendel) for a pouch of gold, he's
more than happy to give up on his destiny, even sell the helmet causally
linked to it for a fitting disguise to do the job. Now Cerebus's destiny
is not very pleased about this and tries to get him back on track by
throwing all kinds of eccentrics and weird adventures in his way, but
Cerebus trods on. However, the twins might not have told him everything
about the wizard's powers, powers even his magic sword might be not match
to ... First published back in 1977, the (indie) comicbooks
about Cerebus the Aardvark have gathered a quite sizeable
following over the years - but this CGI-animated feature is the characters
first on-screen appearance. And with that in mind, it's all the more
surprising that this is a no-budget yet authorized adaptation - but it's
not so you see that it's no-budget for real, as while the animation might
not always be up to Pixar
standards, much care has been put in character designs, richness of
backgrounds and looks in general, and the animation is very fluid. But
what makes this movie even more is the writing that's character-based and
veils its somewhat standard heroic fantasy story in enough sarcasm to make
it feel as fresh. Really the only complaint here is that the movie tries
to squeeze way too much into its 70 minutes as many of the film's episodes
and subplots would have deserved their own feature or at least extended
short - they're just that good in temselves - and thus the movie sometimes
seems to lose focus. But that's really a complaint at a very high level,
as in all The Absurd, Surreal, Metaphysical and Fractured Destiny of
Cerebus the Aardvark is actually really good and also pretty funny
genre entertainment.
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