Orion and the Dark Review

 

Orion and the Dark is an animated fantasy adventure comedy movie, based on the children's book of the same name. It's produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Netflix. Orion and the Dark is written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Sean Charmatz.

The story is, Orion fears many things, but if there's one thing that he fears the most it's the dark. Then to his shock the living embodiment of his worst fear pays him a visit, and wants to show him there's no reason to be afraid of the dark, or in this case him.

Initial Reaction

Very simple reason for seeing this. Going off of the trailer, it looked very charming. So I thought I'd give it a watch.

Cons

Nothing here. Scroll down to the next part.

Middle Ground

If there's one gray area it's the story. Now don't get it twisted, it's still pretty good. There's many aspects to it that makes it entertaining. Such as Dark and Orion bonding, seeing how Dark and the other night entities work, and etc. Where it fumbles a bit is it does put too much into it. Now in a way it does make sense for the setting. Someone is telling a very silly story to someone else, and then they just wind up making it goofier because it's just some people having fun. But the thing is the story works best when it was keeping simple, but really the story of Orion overcoming his fear is a simple story itself.

Pros

One thing that was really good is the animation. Yeah that shouldn't come as a surprise because DreamWorks Animation has been doing great animation when it was doing both 2D and 3D animation, before doing just 3D. But it's always important to praise that aspect. What I especially liked was when both Dark and Light were going around changing things from night to day. It's very simple but it looked great. I also liked the humor in this. I laughed many times, but I think my favorite was seeing how the entity Sleep puts people to sleep. I was quite shocked how darkly comedic that was. The last thing I'll touch on is the voice cast. While everyone did good, I especially want to praise Paul Walter Hauser and Jacob Tremblay. They were definitely the best part of the whole movie, and they had some pretty good chemistry.

While I don't see Orion and the Dark setting the world on fire, I think I can see this as a movie the whole family can enjoy.

My final rating is, Good.

Alright, that's all for today. Come back on Thursday, Feb 8th, for part two of the Road to Kung Fu Panda 4, with my review of Kung Fu Panda 2. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day.