Scene Selection — Geoff Carter: Check out Disney’s little-seen ‘Treasure’

Friday, April 25, 2003 | 9:09 a.m.

Geoff Carter is a Seattle based free-lance film critic and entertainment writer. Reach him at carter@pre2k.com.

Late last year Walt Disney Pictures found itself in an anomalous position: it had an inventive animated film that it didn't know how to market. It wasn't created in what they considered their established formula, and some of its content was too intense for young kids. Ultimately, they flubbed the marketing, and when the movie was nominated for an Academy Award, no one figured it had a chance.

It didn't. The film I'm talking about isn't "Spirited Away," which enjoyed one of Disney's most sophisticated marketing pushes ever, had critics in its corner before they even saw it, and rightfully walked away with the Best Animated Film Oscar.

Meanwhile Disney's other holiday release, "Treasure Planet" (Disney DVD, $29.99), continues to be marginalized by an audience that might like the film if they ever saw it.

With "Treasure Planet's" timely release on DVD -- one week after "Spirited Away" -- the movie might finally find an audience. Disney marketed the picture as some sort of extreme-sports nonsense (it isn't), and left it to drift aimlessly behind "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," which it is superior to in nearly every way. "Treasure Planet" is a solid work, different enough from "Spirited Away" to rate its own kind of praise.

A labor of love by "Little Mermaid" directors John Musker and Ron Clements, "Treasure Planet" launches Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" into a fantastic deep space setting. The pirates are translated into fearsome aliens, the open seas into swirling nebulae and John Silver into a menacing half-cyborg with a soft underbelly.

The result is a pure, soaring fantasy -- neither cheesy pirate yarn nor pretentious space opera -- that employs every storytelling and animation gift Disney has at its disposal.

The story conforms closely to Stevenson's, sort of. Young Jim (voiced Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is given a map to the treasure trove of the title by a turtlelike alien whose dying words are, "Beware the cyborg."

Jim, enticed by "the loot of a thousand worlds," enlists the help of Dr. Doppler, a skittish half-canine astrophysicist (David Hyde Pierce), who charters a ship commanded by the barb-tongued Captain Amelia (Emma Thompson).

Jim is put to work in the galley with John Silver (Brian Murray), who soon becomes a badly needed friend to Jim, a father figure to guide him through the (metaphorical) rough seas ahead of him. There are worlds to discover, a treacherous crewmate (Michael Wincott) to deal with, and a loony navigation robot (Martin Short) to rein in, and even when Silver reveals his true colors, their friendship remains unbroken.

The documentary features on the DVD, while not as fun as those on Disney's other recent releases, nevertheless explain the nuts and bolts of making an animated film of this kind. Most surprising is a short test film in which the animators replace Captain Hook's "flesh and blood" arm with that of a robot. It's this kind of stuff that makes Disney's animated films so technically sound, and so fun to watch.

"Treasure Planet" may not have had a shot last fall, but it deserves to be seen now. Rent or buy it with "Spirited Away," and enjoy the sheer, giddy inventiveness of both.