Marco Polo: Return to Xanadu

Making it in just under the deadline to qualify for the Best Animated Feature Oscar is this independent production that doesn't have a chance in hell of winning. Give due credit to director Ron Merk and his associates at Tooniversal for even producing an independent animated feature, but did it have to be this bad? Teenager Marco (Nicholas Gonzalez), descendent of the Marco Polo, sets out on a quest to rejoin two halves of a magic medallion with the aid of a talking seagull (Tony Pope), a stereotypical Indian fakir (Pope, again) and a dinosaur who talks like Woody Allen (John Matthew). Attempting to thwart him are some of the most racist Asian stereotypes since The Phantom Menace's Charlie Chan aliens, led by a wizard named Foo-Ling (yes, Pope one more time), who does, in fact, twirl his mustache. Perhaps if this film turns kids on to Coleridge or Italian history, it isn't such a bad thing, but lacking in even the camp value of similarly themed Hanna-Barbera atrocities such as Shazzan, it's strictly for kids too young to have developed standards. The blatant set-up at the end for a potential spin-off animated series is atrocious, but the musical numbers are all mercifully short.