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Titan A.E.Did some chores this morning, and then headed off to see Titan A.E. with Lucy, her husband, and Bill. Titan is 20th Century Fox's new animated film, and the animation is very impressive. Well, the humans have that "all teeth" look which also characterized the style of Disney's Aladdin, but the 3D graphics were very impressive, and the general movement, flow, and designs were all as impressive as anything Disney's done.But oh, the story! I kept thinking as I was watching it, "They could have written a good story for this, darnit!" In the 31st century, Earth is destroyed by the energy-based Drej. Why? We never find out. (It's sort of broadly hinted that humanity has found a way to destroy the Drej, but it's a pretty implausible excuse.) Some humans escape in giant arcs and become refugees around the galaxy. This includes Cale (voice of Matt Damon, who sounds just like the guy who does the voice of Robin on the current Batman animated series), whose father headed up the Titan project, which supposedly was the project which urged the Drej into destroying Earth. A swashbuckler named Korso (Bill Pullman) persuades Cale to help him find the Titan spaceship. Unknown to himself, Cale turns out to hold the map to where the Titan is hidden. And so the quest begins, with the love interest pilot Akima (Drew Barrymore), and the flotilla of wacky alien caricatures (Nathan Lane, Janeane Garofalo, and John Leguizamo). You could see a mile away that one of the crew wasn't all s/he was cracked up to be (because if they were, then there wouldn't have been much of a story). The Drej turn out to be reasonably stupid. The secret of the Titan is no big surprise, and rips a page straight out of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. All in all, it's thoroughly routine, story-wise. The most disappointing thing about this film is that it aims so high and fails so badly, when it could have aimed a little lower, tightened up its characters and story a bunch, and been a pretty good story with some solid animation. As it is, I doubt anyone will remember this film in a year or two. (Lucy liked it much better than I did.)
 After the movie I went and worked out, and then met Trish for dinner. We went to the Peninsula Creamery for sandwiches and malts-that-are-a-meal-unto-themselves. Trish dropped the news that she's gotten a contractor's job at Apple - yowsa! She's a big Mac-head, and is pleased as punch to have the job (plus it comes with a big salary bump for her). We went to Borders afterwards where I bought the big Jim's Journal collection, and gave my individual books to Trish (the least I could do given some of the stuff she's given me). Then we hung out for a few hours before calling it a night.
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