Movie Review: Alpha and Omega
by KYW's Bill Wine --
Humphrey likes Kate, but Kate's not allowed to be romantically involved with someone like Humphrey. Yet the two of them, by an accident of fate, have been drugged, driven halfway across the country, and deposited in the woods.
Now, stranded, their relationship will really be tested as they try desperately to get home.
Oh, and by the way, Kate and Humphrey -- whose names may suggest the pairing of Hepburn and Bogart -- are actually wolves.
They're the lead characters in Alpha and Omega, a perfectly respectable 3-D animated adventure that ought to tickle the youngest viewers while their older escorts merely tolerate it.
Wiseacre Humphrey, voiced by Justin Long, is an omega wolf, a slacker who likes to hang out, joke around, and play games with the other omegas.
Kate, voiced by Hayden Panettiere, is a serious and dutiful alpha wolf, one who does what has to be done and is being groomed to become a leader.
Humphrey is smitten with Kate, and they are in the same colony but pack law dictates (as if this were Wolf Side Story) that omegas and alphas, who are from opposite ends of the social order, don't mate. And Kate's father, Winston (Danny Glover), the main alpha wolf, has promised her to the son of pack leader Tony (the late Dennis Hopper, in his last role).
But right now Kate and Humphrey have got bigger problems than unrequited crushes or star-crossed romance.
The two of them have been sedated compliments of tranquilizer darts and taken by park rangers and shipped to faraway Idaho, as part of a relocation effort to repopulate Sawtooth National Forest at a time when trouble is brewing back home, where peace must be restored.
Kate feels a special obligation to return not only because of the conflict but because she is betrothed to alpha Garth (Chris Carmack), even though her younger sister, Lilly (Christina Ricci), seems strongly drawn to him.
So K and H stow away on vehicles; encounter bears, dangerous wolves, stampeding caribou, and a golfing goose (Larry Miller); struggle through a torrential downpour; and start mirroring each other's tendencies.
That is, Kate loosens up a bit while Humphrey indulges his serious, responsible side.
Directors Anthony Bell and Ben Gluck work from a script provided by Steve Moore and Christopher Denk that, in its anthropomorphic humor, exuberant slapstick, self-conscious cutesiness, awkwardly integrated musical interludes, and resourceful exploitation of the 3-D process, is aimed squarely at young children.
Those young'uns should be charmed by the characters, respond to the humor, and perhaps, for the more sensitive among them, be slightly frightened by some of the PG predators.
Which is why we'll pack 2½ stars out of 4 for a joyful junior romcom toon. Alpha and Omega is a competent kidflick that the very young ones ought to wolf down.
