The result is technically dazzling but much less of a hoot than it should have been.
Legend is cute and beautifully voiced (Sam Neill, Helen Mirren, Hugo Weaving) but ruinously overlong and only shines during the closing credits which are Struwwelpeterishy sinister.
Dark but visually ravishing animated adventure.
It's all very weird sometimes, but engaging: a nice half-term treat for younger children.
We’re left with something gorgeous, turgid, and emotionally impenetrable – less a movie, more an Imax screensaver.
The stars of this computerised epic are the Design and Art departments, who provide stunning landscapes, caves and kingdoms, and whose 3D magic is genuinely thrilling. The trouble is the bloody owls: their features are insufficiently differentiated, the baddies and super-goodies confusingly wear masks and bow before supreme beings in white feathers.
Too witless to woo.
This isn't a particularly compelling or involving story, though the animation will perhaps prove striking enough to mesmerise younger audiences not yet bored by overexposure to the standard good versus evil fantasy tropes.
Recommended to anyone keen to see a bunch of cartoon owls knocking lumps out of each other.
A dull, morally uplifting tale.
A mish-mash of technical over-indulgence, needlessly complicated storytelling and heaps of too-intense-for-children owl-on-owl savagery, Legend will appeal mostly to ornithologists. Or very weird kids.
This is unlikely to win Kathryn Lansky’s antipodean owl fantasy any new fans, but even the bemused (and confused) can luxuriate in some grand-scale visual storytelling.
The owl-action hero
Zack Snyder: talking owls and Superman
General release. Check local listings for show times.