95 minutes; Italian/English dub; dir. Iginio Straffi

This CGI-animated parody of a gladiator film was one of the biggest box office bombs in Italian cinema history. Produced by Rainbow SpA in Italy in 2012, it was released in the United States in 2014 by Paramount Pictures. The film, which was clearly inspired by Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000), was in development for five years, cost about $50 million dollars to produce and earned about $10 million in total.

It tells the story of Timo, an orphan from Pompeii who is adopted by a general named Chirone and raised in a gladiatorial school in ancient Rome. Chirone is keen to train Timo in the gladiatorial arts, but Timo just wants to hang out with his friends, until he falls in love with Lucilla, Chirone’s daughter who has returned to Rome from Greece. Then, “through spells, crazy raids in the woods and the terrible trainings of a very personal lady trainer named Diana, Timo…transforms himself into the greatest gladiator of all time” and is able to outbattle Cassio, his rival for Lucilla’s love, in the arena.

The animation has a somewhat creepy aesthetic and the plot of the underdog-who-beats-the-odds is familiar to anyone who has ever watched a film from the 1980s (see Karate Kid, Rocky, etc.), but perhaps what is most disturbing about it is its extreme sanitization of the bloodsport of the arena for youthful audiences. Also the emperor Domitian makes an appearance?

More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladiators_of_Rome_(film)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1946347/reviews?ref_=tt_urv

104 min.; Russian/no subtitles; dir. Valentas Ashkins

HBO aired “The Animated Odyssey” as a four-part miniseries in the US in 2000. It was originally produced by Vilanima Studios of Lithuania and first aired in Russia as a feature-length film in 1998 under the title The Destruction of Troy and the Adventures of Odysseus (Разрушение Трои и путешествие Одиссея). As a series it was divided into half-hour episodes including “The Trojan Horse,” “The Cyclops,” “Circe, Hades and the Sirens,” and “Odysseus Returns.”

The production, which was supervised by original Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz and took three years to complete, was lavish and ambitious, and was intended to appeal to a wide audience that included school-age children and young adults. The narrative presented was more detailed than other animated treatments of the Odyssey and stayed closer to traditional storyline. It also included a powerful score by the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra, though some critics thought that the film was lacking in dynamism, due to its stilted and choppy character movement and awkward dialogue (likely due to its translation from Russian and dubbing into English). The English-dubbed version of the film is nowhere to be found online or streaming, only the Russian version and a modern Greek version are available.

More: The Animated Odyssey – Variety

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-jan-10-ca-52517-story.html