Prince of Egypt was a spectacular animated movie that blended seriousness, clever animation techniques, great voice actors, and a perfect soundtrack that avoided the pitfall of most modern animated movies - overbearing musical numbers.
Joseph King of Dreams came very close to matching Prince of Egypt in a lot of those areas. Though it's not quite as serious as Prince of Egypt, it deftly avoids any kind of slapstick comedy or cute animals. Ben Affleck gives a good performance, and the animation is near feature quality.
Where King of Dreams fails, however, is the music. The songs are not nearly as good as those in Prince of Egypt, tending to be more flowery and flighty. Furthermore, they interrupt the action in most cases and soon become overbearing. Prince of Egypt used songs to advance the story; the songs were in the background, and the characters rarely actually "sang onscreen." In King of Dreams, however, characters will break out into song in the middle of the action, and the song won't really have much to do with the plot of the movie. Fans of Disney animation probably won't have a problem with this, but I was disappointed in both the quality of the music and the timing of it.
The dream sequences in the movie were very well done, each having a surreal art style that reflected the dreamer.
If you were a fan of Prince of Egypt, you'll probably enjoy King of Dreams but be disappointed that Dreamworks didn't get Stephen Schwartz and Hanz Zimmer to do the music for this one.
Joseph King of Dreams came very close to matching Prince of Egypt in a lot of those areas. Though it's not quite as serious as Prince of Egypt, it deftly avoids any kind of slapstick comedy or cute animals. Ben Affleck gives a good performance, and the animation is near feature quality.
Where King of Dreams fails, however, is the music. The songs are not nearly as good as those in Prince of Egypt, tending to be more flowery and flighty. Furthermore, they interrupt the action in most cases and soon become overbearing. Prince of Egypt used songs to advance the story; the songs were in the background, and the characters rarely actually "sang onscreen." In King of Dreams, however, characters will break out into song in the middle of the action, and the song won't really have much to do with the plot of the movie. Fans of Disney animation probably won't have a problem with this, but I was disappointed in both the quality of the music and the timing of it.
The dream sequences in the movie were very well done, each having a surreal art style that reflected the dreamer.
If you were a fan of Prince of Egypt, you'll probably enjoy King of Dreams but be disappointed that Dreamworks didn't get Stephen Schwartz and Hanz Zimmer to do the music for this one.