'Janus' worthy but ultimately unsatisfactory

Joko Anwar, Contributor, Jakarta

Local filmmakers, it seems, are racing to mark their territories in film genres left untouched by their colleagues.

Romantic comedies are taken, there is a glut of art-house flicks, while horror movies have already been beaten to death. Action films are still waiting for filmmakers who are wealthy enough to make them, while many local "mysteries" -- like the whereabouts of Eddy Tansil are still waiting to be exploited.

Meanwhile, there are young filmmakers brave enough to make a 3-D animation film, known to be a very costly project to make. While their effort, without doubt, is admirable, the result is still far from satisfactory.

True that we will not compare the computer animation in the newly released Janus: Prajurit Terakhir (Janus: The Last Soldier) with those by Pixar's. It's simply not fair. Besides, with a budget of around Rp 2 billion -- that's around 0.25 percent of the budget of Pixar's latest box office hit Finding Nemo, the guys already have achieved something with Janus.

The biggest problem with Janus, is that the filmmakers seemed so exhausted from the efforts required to put together all the animation, that they neglected other important issues.

And even if, somehow by miracle, the SpektraFilm animators who created Janus produce a flawless movie like Toy Story, still, it just seems impossible that local audiences will fall for the Janus character.

Janus, for one, does not have any funny lines as the characters in Toy Story are blessed with. Of course, filmmakers can come up with many ways to make the audience fall for their characters, but funny one-liners seem to work in many animated films.

All we get is, Janus giving long speeches about the origin of his kind to the kids. There's no "To infinity, and beyond!" only scientific blah blah blah.

The film's dialogs are so lame they seem to be there just to keep the movie from being a silent one.

In fact, there is one potentially funny idea where Janus switches his voice translator to Indonesian but he switches it to another language instead. But we won't spoil it for you since it is likely to be the only time you will chuckle during the whole movie.

Jamie Aditya who lent his voice talent for Janus is sorely missed as a VJ on MTV but he fails to give more life to the Janus character. It is not entirely his fault, though, as the script that is written by the director, stutters while trying to tell the story.

The movie opens with a scene where Janus and his mates are fighting a spider-like robot called MID4S in a forest on Earth sometime in the third century. MID4S kills all of Janus' friends and takes his time machine to go back to the 31st century where they all came from.

Then it switches to the present with two kids -- played by Derby Romero (Petualangan Sherina) and Alyssa Soebandono -- play with the boy's remote-controlled toy car in the woods. The toy car stops and, in a quite forced situation, the kids dig up the soil and find Janus who has been buried for centuries.

The boy brings his new-found robot home and brings him back to life after connecting him to a battery cell.

Janus then tries to build a device to "call home" a la E.T. but inadvertently lets MID4S know where he is.

The kids must help Janus to return to his planet that probably has been destroyed by MID4S and his ilk in an attempt to suck out the planet's resources a la The Matrix before MID4S gets him, or before unbelieving adults get rid of the little fella.

The plot seems to be a device for writer/director Chandra to tell a story which seems to amuse him very much (but unfortunately not the audience). Chandra admitted the story was inspired by the likes of 2001: Space Odyssey and Star Wars.

Too bad, since the result is not even in the same class as Stuart Little.

Another big complaint should be in the music department. The movie does open amusingly with Hip-Hop music by T-Five which is perfect for the soul of the film and lifts the movie by some notches. Unfortunately, the rest of movie score sounds too ethnic and helps sink the movie.

Will the children like it? With a release date around the same time as a Doraemon film, the movie might have a hard time getting a decent share in the box office. However, people might still go out to see it out of curiosity.

i-box:

Janus: Prajurit Terakhir (Janus: The Last Warrior) Two out of four stars Animation/Fantasy/Sci-Fi Starring Derby Romero, Alyssa Soebandono, Reggy Lawalata. Voices by Jamie Aditya, Torro Margens. Directed by Chandra Endroputro A SpektraFilm presentation