DVD Review: Dante's Inferno
Dante's Inferno is an animated feature about this warrior dude who kicks ass through the nine levels of hell in order to rescue the love of his life. The art is great, there is a ton of action, it doesn't shy away from gruesome violence or nudity, and yet somehow this film manages to be quite boring. Who woulda thunk it?!
The first thing I noticed here was the great artwork. It reminded me of a classic anime called Fist of the North Star, though it seems the style changes throughout the film, like each time he goes to a new level of hell it's like some other art designer took over. Doesn't really matter though because it looks great all the way through. The next thing I noticed was the voice of the main character, Dante, because it just didn't feel right. It felt like acting, and that bugged a lot at first, then became accustomed to it as time wore on, though it never really got any better.
I think one of the main reasons I got bored by this film is that there really isn't much story here. The devil kidnaps the Dante's girl and drags her to hell, and he heads in after her and fights everybody until he reaches the end. It's like a videogame, and that makes sense because it's based on the videogame. Also, I really don't care about this guy. We are never givin much of a reason to care, and as he goes through hell we get flashbacks of sins he commited, which made me not root for him even more.
Oh yeah, and he has this magic cross which he can hold up to a soul to free it from hell. He uses a couple times, but then there are other times when he just forgets about it or something. Both my wife and I would be yelling at him to just use the freakin' cross already! On the plus side, not using the cross whenever possible meant he got to slice and dice a lot. And some of those demons were pretty cool looking. But that's basically all this movie is, eye candy with no substance.
Extra features? Not really. There are animatics and a trailer for the game, which looks a lot like God of War. I'd definitely like to try playing the game, as I'm sure it's way more fun to chop your way through hordes of opponents than it was to just watch him do it.