3 out of 5

Director: Ralph Bakshi

Bakshi studios simple yet amazing rotoscoped animation combined with Frazettas fantasy imagination create an eager animated oddity that straddles a line as far as targeted age range goes and unfortunately doesnt delve deep enough into its created world to really satisfy. Fire & Ice, over 25 years old, looks effing awesome. If ever there was a justification for hand-drawn vs. computer animated, its in this style. Many, many animated films added a fluidity of style to humans and characters, but the rotoscoping (filming actors, then tracing over the cells) in Fire & Ice, while using very simplified human forms, seems to capture something so realistic thats not again been replicated… seeing as how the technique has been used many times, I sense its just its application to this setting. Seeing an action film done in this style is stunning, and the battle scenes carry a visual punch. Alas, even with some great voice work and character design, the plot is cookie cutter fantasy – the fire (good) and ice (bad) kingdoms are at war, and a princess gets kidnapped, and a couple of brave warriors save everything… There are so many interesting elements dotted in thats its obvious that the scripters had some great ideas, but the movie would perhaps have gotten even more notice if some of these ideas were given just a bit more background. That goes for the whole story, really. We just skim the surface. So if youd like to see an animated movie that can still wow you, Fire & Ice will not disappoint. Just dont expect much meat beyond the fantastic visuals.