Atlantis: The Lost Empire
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 Atlantis is waiting...
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Atlantis: The Lost Empire is a 2001 American animated science fantasy action-adventure film created by Walt Disney Feature Animation, marking the 41st entry in Disney's animated features canon and its first science-fiction film.
Plot
An inexperienced young adventurer becomes the key to unraveling an ancient mystery when he joins up with a group of daredevil explorers to find the legendary lost empire of Atlantis. A naïve-but-determined museum cartographer Milo Thatch (Michael J. Fox), dreams of completing the quest begun by his late grandfather, a famous explorer. When a journal surfaces, an eccentric billionaire funds an expedition and the action shifts to high gear.
Good Qualities
- Its attempt to branch out into the sci-fi genre and (like The Hunchback of Notre Dame) appeal to an older audience is a pretty interesting take for an animated Disney film.
- The animation style is pretty unique, giving the appearance of a comic book or graphic novel.
- Milo and a lot of the side characters have charm to them, which shows in several scenes, with characters such as Vinnie, Cookie, Mrs. Packard, and Sweet giving some pretty good one-liners. The side characters also all have very distinct personalities and backstories, and each of them cone from all around the world and all kinds of different countries, making them some of the most memorable characters in Disney film history.
- Vincenzo "Vinny" Santorini is an Italian demolitions expert who has a strong passion for his job as a demolitionist and generally keeps himself in a deadpan snarking mood. His family ran a flower shop, which he was manning one day, making corsages for a prom ("You know, the one they put on the wrist."), when the next-door Chinese Laundry exploded due to a gas leak. He survived the explosion, but the store was ruined.
- Dr. Joshua Strongbear Sweet is a medic who from African American and Native American descent. When he talks, his voice is loud and boisterous, showing good self-confidence, along with having a habit of getting his priorities mixed up. While living on Reservation Territory, Sweet was tutored by his uncle, an Arapaho Elder and Medicine Man, Iron Cloud. During this time, Dr. Sweet developed a talent and appreciation for unconventional forms of medicine. During his time spent trying to earn his medical degree, Sweet was drafted during his second year of medical school to join in the Spanish-American War. When living and traveling with the 24th Infantry, he would assist the medical corps where his father was assigned as a medic, including providing aid to Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders in The Battle of San Juan Hill in 1898.
- Audrey Rocio Ramirez is a teenage Puerto Rican mechanic who is generally aggressive and sarcastic and very proud of her family and job. When her family moved to Detroit, her father and sister took night jobs at the Henry Ford Automotive Plant to supplement the income of Manuel's shop. Audrey soon got one in a huge and well-appointed machine shop at Ford. She began a period of research and invention, where she specialized in gear drives and hydraulics, and she became the forefront of the new Automotive Labor Movement. And because of her, the Ford Motor Plant is now one of the most enlightened and well-paying manufacturers in the Automobile Industry.
- Wilhelmina Bertha Packard: an elderly, sarcastic, chain-smoking radio operator. She married multiple times (her first husband being Cavalry Officer Dennis Whitehead, her second one was Rep. Truman, she had no less than 6 more husbands between the years of 1876 to 1890, then Chichester Bell, with her most recent marriage being to Curtis Packard).
- Jebidiah Allardyce "Cookie" Farnsworth, a Western-style chuckwagon chef. In 1866, he was with the 7th United States Cavalry. He toured with Custer during the 1867 Sioux and Cheyenne Expedition. In May 1876, he was blamed for a rash of food poisoning that struck the enter officers' corps and was demoted and transferred to the command of a general cook at Fort Abercrombie in North Dakota. He left the Army in 1878 and moved to Houston, Texas, where he quickly rose to the position of Yard Boss of Whitmore Industries Stockyard and Feedlot. He attended culinary school in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. He moved to New York and opened Three Chestnut Restaurant, where he worked as Chef. He later sold his restaurant at a loss and took a position as Chef for Waldorf Astoria Hotel.
- Gaetan "Mole" Molière, a French geologist who acts like a mole. He displayed an early interest in subterranean pursuits at a young age when he began exploring the vast sewer networks that lie underneath old Paris. By the age of thirteen, Molière had developed a specialized type of goggles and headgear to wear while exploring caves in the surrounding countryside, as the sewers and catacombs held no further challenge or mysteries for him. He entered the Sorbonne at age seventeen but left soon after when given the opportunity to act as a special technical adviser to a local mining company.
- Kida is a pretty cool Disney princess (despite not exactly being considered one by most people), proving to be fully capable of taking on several men by herself (she actually knees one in the groin, grabs another by the head and tosses him away and pulls a knife on a third).
- The Atlantean language is actually pretty original, and is stated to be the source of all other languages throughout the world.
- There is actually lots of creativity done with the world of Atlantis, such as having technology centuries before every other country in the world and having crystals that can heal and keep people alive for centuries. What's especially cool is how they have vehicles based on various sea creatures.
- The action scenes are cool to watch. Particularly the battle near the end with the cast coming together to stop Rourke and Helga from wiping out Atlantis for the sake of money,
- Amazing score composed by James Newton Howard, and it is his second Disney animated film he composed after Dinosaur.
- Each of the side characters gets a chance to show how useful they are, and gives the audience a chance to know them and how they got into their respective careers which led them into joining the expedition.
- Despite BQ#4, there's a rare moment where the romantic couple, Milo and Kida, only give a hug rather than kiss and/or get married. To have an animated film do something like this with romantic leads is extremely rare.
- Similar to The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Pocahontas, the dark, adult tone is a nice touch.
- Good Ending: After defeating Rourke, Milo stays in Atlantis with Kida (now the city's queen), and the Heart of Atlantis hovers over the city.
Bad Qualities
- Commander Lyle Tiberius Rourke, the main antagonist, is a very underwhelming villain, although his death was pretty cool.
- It can be clichéd at times.
- The pace of the film is rushed.
- A few gerontophilic moments that feel too out of place for a family film:
- The fact that Kida is a sexualized 8,500-8,800 year old woman (portrayed as being physically in her 20's) wearing basically lingerie for most of the movie and falling for Milo (also a likely around-20-year-old man) is kind of gross.
- The part where Wilhelmina states that she sleeps in the nude is rather inappropriate and creepy for a PG-rated film.
- The prologue where the Vikings try to find Atlantis was replaced by a scene where the Great Flood is seen, which gave away a good amount of the plot.