Two by Two (also known as Ooops! Noah is Gone…) is billed as the story of two families of animals on Noah’s Ark. The main characters aren’t animals which exist or have ever existed, and the design of these ‘Nestarians’ is so bizarre and neon that i can only assume that this film’s target audience is three year olds.
The main characters of Finny the Nestarian and Leah the Grump, and their families are posed as opposites but they fail to be at all endearing. The side characters, such as the lions, elephants, giraffes, etc. are animated in a style which is rather less than visually pleasing and the villainous Griffins (which honestly just look like very large bats) are ugly in a way that speaks of poor design rather than implied evil.
Some of the background art isn’t as painful to look at, though the water is animated on a level with anything from Veggie Tales. Much of the line delivery is over acted to an extent that must be obvious even to the targeted three year olds, and there’s even a sexist joke when the Nestarians are trying to get onto the ark. The only consistently funny character and running joke through the film is the chimpanzee butler.
Beyond the animation and voice acting, the script for this film hits viewers over the head again and again with themes of ‘finding where you belong’ and ‘not having to live up to society’s expectations of you’ and even ‘if we work together as a team we can accomplish the impossible!’ Each is delivered in such a trite and obvious way that any adults in the audience will be hard pressed not to roll their eyes every five minutes or so. Finny is an especial offender, panicking every few minutes over what they’ll do in the face of a new disaster but then snapping back into a forced and irritating level of blind optimism.
If you’re after a heart-warming family film,… Ice Age is a better bet over all.
If you’re after a heart-warming family film about over coming the odds and learning to work together in the face of extinction, Ice Age is a better bet over all. If you were interested in the movie for the platform of the religious story, which is honestly barely a consideration in this film and only used as a source of fairly unthreatening peril, then Prince of Egypt or Joseph: King of Dreams are much better on all fronts. I would definitely give Two by Two a miss.
1/10
A.F. Dean
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