Are good movies for 11 year-olds extinct these days?

Samson (voiced by Keifer Sutherland) is a lion father whose son Ryan is tense because he can’t roar. They live in the New York City Zoo, and kids usually laugh at Ryan’s kitty-cat roar. Ryan (Greg Cipes) decides to run away.

Ryan has heard about green boxes which his father tells him are bad news. Regardless of what Samson says, Ryan goes into one anyway and gets trucked away. His cries for help grab the attention of Samson who then tries to save him, but doesn’t make it in time.

Samson then enlists the help of his friends. Nigel the koala (Eddie Izzard), Benny the squirrel (James Belushi), Larry the snake (Richard Kind), and Bridget the giraffe (Janeane Garofalo). Benny has a crush on Bridget, but she’s playing hard to get. Of course, a squirrel dating a giraffe is very unlikely.

Then they are off to the wild to save Ryan before it’s too late. The rest of the movie is basically about them going to the wild and having many adventures. If Walt Disney were alive, this movie wouldn’t have stunk like a baby’s diaper. They copied off “Madagascar” in such a stupid way that my mom fell asleep. Disney should have stuck with “The Lion King.”

I laughed a lot at different parts of the movie. I thought it was funny that they had little Nigel dolls that said “I like you” when koalas generally don’t have a warm sense of humor. Nigel also has a near puke experience when they are running through the city and he is hanging on one of Bridget’s legs, crying “Gonna throw up, gonna throw up!”

My least favorite part was that the story got off track. Way too many things were going on at the same time and I was thinking “Huh? Huh?” The lesson to this movie is that you should be happy with who you are and not try to be somebody else, but they focused very little on Ryan’s original roar problem. Rated G for Good Riddance! (But I would recommend it for 8 year-olds and below).

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