Rijndri Load of rubbish!!

MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

Konterr Brilliant and touching

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Moritz Meyer You can tell if a kids movie just hit the mark, if the young viewers shout "We want to watch this again", immediately after the end credits start to roll. "Zambezia" is a very sweet, well crafted and engagingly told south-African animation, that works very well with its target audience, tells an ambitious story; and ends up being hold back by its budget restrictions. Director Wayne Thornley aims high with his home grown south-African story of the young hawk Kay, who lives alone with his father at the top of a gorge of the Zambezi in an otherwise deserted landscape. When Kay abandons his home to live in the bird's big city of "Zambezia", where he learns the truth about his origins and has to find his own strength, parallels to "The Lion King", "Finding Nemo" and other genre classics become obvious. To my surprise, Zambezia fits surprisingly well into the shoes of its predecessors. The animal characters are developed very nicely and with attention to detail. Clearly the creators of this movie know their subjects very well. I always like, when animal characters like these are still rooted in their natural behavior, something "The Jungle Book" or the mentioned "Lion King" do all so well (while annoying movies like the "Madagascar"-franchise don't seem to get this right). The south-African landscapes are stunning. It is a joy to follow Kay and all the other birds of prey as they race over rivers and waterfalls, through gorges of stone and wood at breakneck pace. These visual treats are accompanied by a simple story with an important message ("Stronger together"), both transported in a very engaging way for the young viewers. The movie is funny and exciting and the main villain is very creepy, so there is a lot to enjoy for the kids. So, that Zambezia ultimately cannot quite reach the heights of its paragons, has nothing to do with bad story telling or movie making. The creators clearly had a vision of what they wanted to accomplish and it only seems, they have been held back by limited resources. They are some plot points, that would have deserved greater development, such as the relationship between Kay and the female kite "Zoe". Though the story paces along at falcon speed, I would have loved to see some story arcs told with more patience. But these are adult complaints, that surely don't diminish the fun of younger viewers.Zambezia is a certainly underrated, definitely ambitious and well crafted piece of animation, that deserves to be given greater attention. If you need to kill an afternoon at home with your kids, this one is well worth the time.

Shopaholic35 I was not expecting to like this movie very much but thought I would give it a go. Turns out I throughly enjoyed this movie as it had a great storyline was beautifully colourful and had a good amount of heart. I'm not sure when people starting basing a movie's likability on it's level of animation/CGI special effects but they are missing out when they pick every little technical flaw apart. I didn't notice any problems with the animation because I was too busy allowing myself to enjoy the movie. Silly me not documenting every flaw of every movie in a notebook.I definitely recommend this movie if your looking for a fun way to fill your time. But please leave your jaded adult world views and expectations at the door and just enjoy.

soulsmile33 i am a HUGE fan of sam jackson, which is the reason i got the movie to begin with, because my kids and i never even heard of it. not to mention jeff goldblum (i love this man) and leonard nimoy (c'mon, how awesome is this gonna be?!). and although not one trailer for the movie was ever seen by any of us, i know as a fact that some of the best movies made are foreign or underground, so i never judge a movie by its lack of promotion.my boys and i were anxious to see SOMEthing we hadn't already seen, (we watch a lot of movies), and since we happened to be near a Redbox while on an errand, we opted for a movie that looked like the best of both worlds; awesome actors voicing over what appeared to be a cute, computer animated story with a ecologically-based message. cool, right? wrong. it appears that the majority of the $20 million (WHAT?!!??) budget was spent bribing sam jackson to partake in it, and possibly threatening one poor overworked and underpaid animator. why? because while the animation was barely tolerable, the writing was horrendous,the characters were insanely boring with ZERO personalities, making you so indifferent and frustrated that you lost all interest in whats happening to whoever for whatever reasons. i vaguely recall blood tearing from one of the twins' eyes as he begged me to turn it off, while i fought with them to 'give it five more minutes' with high hopes that it might somehow get better. and because it never did, i was literally screamed at to turn it off after a half an hour, before both kids tackled me for the remote, then one had the bright idea of simply walking over to the TV and turned off the power. :( i don't know what else to say other than to warn intelligent parents of discerning children and not subject yourself or your undeserving offspring to this torture, even if it was free and/or on television. however, on a positive note, it COULD be used as a negotiating tactic for chores or even used as a punishment, if you can force your kids to watch it in a locked room with no way to turn it off or lower the volume. p.s. child protective services might get involved if you dare go that route, so you didn't hear it from me. oh, sam jackson, i know it's a kids movie, and your infant grandkids will most likely love that their grandpa was once a bird, but you're just not you unless you curse like a pirate and kill someone. 'bad casting' doesn't even apply in this case. lesson here... don't let celebrity names fool you. watch the trailer, watch another trailer, then watch the trailer again. also, prepare backup gift offerings of apologies when your trusting children opt to disown you and vow to never let you pick another movie EVER again.

in1984 8.2 of 10. The second awesome film of 2012 Samuel L. Jackson is in (as a key character voice), and it's very different from Django Unchained, although there's an underlying common bond in working together in each film.Besides making you want to pet birds, maybe not the vulture-like marabous, the animation doesn't get nearly enough credit. The lizards are bordering on life-like and the waterfall and mist (not to mention sand and other colored dusts) simply has never been better outside of actual filming of waterfalls. Even the bird poo is as gross as in real life.As for the character voices, I was concerned that Nemoy and Jackson would dominate the audio and distract from the story. Instead, they both give surprisingly understated performances where you need to listen closely to identify them. Even Goldblum deserves credit because I still don't know which character he voiced.Dear Oscars/Academy, you failed us again. Do any of you actually watch animations/cartoons?