Khumba

KHUMBA

Director : Antony Silverstone

Year : 2014

Genre : Animation

Rating : **

Despite some lovely visuals and the vocals talents of some pretty big names from the worlds of film and television, 'Khumba' is a highly generic and unbelievably bland movie from the up and coming South African animation company Triggerfish . Telling the story of a zebra named Khumba who is born with only half of his stripes, the film very quickly becomes a boringly conventional tale as the young zebra embarks on an epic journey across the African landscape in an attempt to gain his stripes. Along the way, he meets a menagerie of strange and quirky animals including a dog voiced by Steve Buscemi, an ostrich voiced by Richard E. Grant, an eccentric sheep voiced by Catherine Tate and a villainous leopard voiced by Liam Neeson.

As is the case with many substandard kids fare, 'Khumba' has very little story and a number of increasingly annoying characters who act as the comic relief; and not very funny comic relief at that. None of the voice artists really put anything into their performances and the animation while incredibly pretty, is nothing we haven't seen a billion times before. 'Khumba' will certainly entertain the very young; it's colourful, it's bright and there is plenty of fart gags and silly humour to keep them happy. Adults however will be constantly checking their watches and wishing that they had their children to see 'Muppets Most Wanted' or 'The LEGO Movie' instead'.