Reviewed by Sean McNulty

I absolutely loved this movie. It is now one of my favourite films ever. The way it looks is enough to make me idolize it. The unique blend of colours in both scenery and characters allows the fictitious world in Cycles to come to life, and look amazingly brilliant. The combination of a stunning appearance, talented voice acting, beautiful settings, and an all around enjoyable story makes Cycles a movie for the ages.

I'm going to start with my favourite part of this movie, the setting. The world of Cycles is a small, flat piece of earth created by a powerful god named Zorn. It's a unique world, full of odd colour combinations and crazy looking people with green skin and a horrible fashion sense. One thing I noticed is that this place really reminds me of the Neverhood, especially the trees with the red fruit, which looks exactly like the trees in the Neverhood. Zorn's castle looks a lot like Hoborg/Klogg's castle as well. Yeah, it just gives me this big ol' happy Neverhood vibe. I'm not saying Andres stole ideas from the Neverhood; in fact I'm not sure he even knows that the Neverhood is... but yeah, I felt like mentioning the similarities. It should also be noted that this resemblance does not make me bias. I am disregarding that factor in the remainder of the review.

Moving on, the characters are kind of like little lovable creatures. Through a very short period of time, you find yourself captivated by their way of life. This is not something that is easily accomplished, especially in such a limited length of time. This helps add to the enjoyment of the conflict between man and god. Zorn, being the supreme being that he is, enjoys the occasional death while the people sit idly buy as it happens; except for one little green thing named Klux. Klux lives in a tree, and a mighty fine looking tree at that. The imagery in this movie is absolutely astounding. The angles, the colours, and the primitive design of the entire world are all beautiful. In the scene where Zorn blocks out the sun and the world is covered in a thin layer of snow, it just looks wonderful. I love it. Yum.

Well now we know how much I love this movie's looks, but what about how it sounds? First off, the music is perfect. The synching of the music is not always perfect, but the music itself fits the movie so well, I just can't imagine any other song that would work better. Out of all the songs in the world, the one chosen fits the best. But now, the synching issue. It's not really a big problem, but at some points the lyrics of the music crosses over with the voices of the actors, and makes it sound a little bit messy. You can still tell what the people are saying, but it just doesn't sound very clean. Again, not a big deal though. The sound effects are probably the one thing that really bugged me. The default "zap" sound used for the lightning just didn't fit at all. That and the enormous thunder sound when Zorn throws a bolt at Klux is so powerful, it covers up the start of what Klux says. When Zorn and Klux are racing, the starting noise is another one of the default "zap" noises. I normally wouldn't mind as much if it was mixed with some other sound, but this one was all alone and sounded just plain ugly. So other than the lightning sound, a bit of overlap, and the race zap, the sound effects are fine.

The voice acting, all done by James Burgon, is performed extremely well. The voices of Zorn, Klux, and the guy telling the story are all aptly done, the various villagers as well. At first I wasn't even aware that all the voices were done by the same person, so that right there shows you just how versatile James can be. Good job James.

Let's see, what else did I love? Another thing would be the random pieces of silly in the movie. This movie is not a serious religious movie, or a big satirical comedy, it's a brilliant mix of genius. That is a perfect word to describe this movie. Genius. Anyways, one silly part I loved was the footrace between Zorn and Klux. It seemed so out of place, especially for a god. But it's right afterwards that you realize Zorn didn't care about those green little freaks anymore, so a footrace is a perfect way to let Klux win. Other parts that made me laugh are the random killings, like when Zorn steps on a guy, and at the end when Klux zap some other guy. Those moments, mixed with the perfectly delivered lines, add so much more to the movie. That part where Klux goes to these giant heads for advice was a bit surprising as well as silly. I mean, they had no introduction, what are they doing there? Truthfully, it doesn't really matter. They're giant heads who give advice, and that's all that needs to be known. It's a lighthearted movie, that much is for sure.

So yes, this movie has a fair amount of comedic value to it as well. That's about all there is for me to praise and comment on... except one thing. The ending was a little bit awkward for me. I'm not talking about the fact that Zorn started a new race, and Klux has practically turned into the new Zorn for the previous race, that much is fine by me and has its respectable place in the movie. It's at the moment when Klux saves the world that I wasn't sure if I should laugh or panic. It was just so... so hilariously craptasticly cheap. Now that I think about it, I loved it, but it was still a little weird. The heads saying, "We're saved!" and the green people cheering, "Yeah! Klux saved the world!" Haha, yeah I loved it, loved it like a mother loves her ugly, retarded child (which is a good thing).

Despite some minor flaws, which I really can't deduct more than 1/4of a mark for, the movie is absolutely perfect. Now, in my opinion, 9.75ish just isn't a very nice number. I like my scores to be either a whole or a half, so I'm going to give Cycles a beautifully perfect:

10/10

Yeah that's right...

...I hope I didn't spell Klux wrong...