Treasure Planet is a futuristic update of the classic Robert Louis Stevenson novel Treasure Island. Jim Hawkins is a fifteen-year-old boy who longs for adventure and finds it when he comes across a map that point to a treasure planet in a galaxy far, far away.

In order to get there, he and a friend of the family, Dr. Doppler, join up on a space galleon. While on the ship, he's befriended by the ship's cyborg cook, John Silver. But as they get closer to the planet, Jim discovers that John isn't the tough yet tender mentor he pretended to be. He's a pirate who, along with his crew, is out to grab the loot for himself.

Taking a great adventure story like Treasure Island and transplanting it to the future was an idea with potential. Treasure Planet is impressive to look at (especially on an IMAX screen), even if it does borrow heavily from Star Wars and Japanese animation. Too bad everything else fails to impress.

With the exception of the computer-animated features from Pixar Studios, Treasure Planet's characters and plot can be interchanged with any Mouse House cartoon made since 1989's The Little Mermaid (also directed by the team responsible for this film). This familiarity sucks the life out of the story. Kids will care less but older viewers will be experiencing déjà vu in no time flat.

The voice cast doesn't do much to help matters any. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Jim Hawkins comes off as a whiny brat who deserves to be shot into the nearest black hole, David Hyde Pierce's Dr. Doppler and Martin Short's B.E.N., a robot Jim finds on Treasure Planet, are as funny as fingernails on a chalkboard. Brian Doyle-Murray as Silver and Emma Thompson as the ship's Captain, Amelia, are okay but hardly memorable.

Treasure Planet is another animated brick in the wall for Walt Disney's already troubled animated studios. In my recent review for Red Dragon, I stated that familiarity bred contempt the fourth time around. For Treasure Planet, it's more like the thirteenth time around.

Thar, it blows.

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