An animated feature need not pander to all audiences, but it should at least respect them. Yet by rehashing character archetypes, repeating gastric gags and releasing "The Wild" just two weeks after the “Ice Age” sequel, Disney proves unable to do even that. Some visual stunts may keep less mature audiences interested, but they are too few to save the script.

The film’s premise seems so familiar that it would have been difficult not to laugh when it was first pitched. Five New York Zoo animals set out on an adventure to Africa to save Samson's (Kiefer Sutherland, "24") lion cub from certain doom. It would have been just as easy to ask what might happen if you tried stacking "Finding Nemo" on top of "Madagascar" and jamming them into your DVD player. The storyline seems to be built for success, but the events that get our furry friends from beginning to end are so disconnected and ludicrous that most people will be too confused to worry about laughing. How a lion, koala bear, snake, squirrel and giraffe manage to fit into a garbage truck and trek through the night life of New York essentially unnoticed may not be important to the kids, but it will make no sense to those paying close attention.

There are a few bright spots. Having the voices of recognizable names such as James Belushi, Janeane Garofalo and William Shatner allowed the well-written dialogue to be delivered with effective comedic timing. The love/hate relationship between the squirrel (Belushi) and giraffe (Garofalo) was so well orchestrated that I found myself wishing that it had been the main focus of the movie from the start. The visual effects team deserves some credit as well. The character models and lip-synching of the animals were realistic, almost to the point of distraction. There is just something odd about seeing a giraffe enunciate the word "olfactory" like a literature professor. While the environments could have used a bit of fine-tuning, there were so many close-ups that most viewers won't notice or care.

What "The Wild" truly lacks is the ability to know when it needs to conform to the genre and when it should take a more original approach. One farting joke may get a rise out of anybody if it is carefully timed, but when the director relies on four different orifices for humor he is taking bad taste to an extreme. The rest of the film uses the same visual, knock-somebody-over jokes that its predecessors already have. What is most amazing is that former visual artist and first time director Steve Williams doesn't seem sure of how to do them in a way that would make a 5-year-old chuckle.

The attempt to poke fun at the current state of the food chain is nothing innovative, and the one-liners make no attempt to be novel. Humans are at the top, and the lion is the king of the jungle. When we learn that a pack of wildebeests is out to change the latter of the two facts by sacrificing lions, it makes us wonder if the writers know anything about the chain to begin with. One has to ask how exactly five completely random zoo animals manage to take a boat devoid of any food across the Atlantic without tearing each other apart. I suppose friends don't let friends eat friends, regardless of how hungry they might get.

Even if you lift the constrictions of an animated film from your judgments, it is difficult to take any of the scenes seriously. What is most clearly missing is conflict, the fundamental element to any satisfying movie. We never assume any of the critters are in considerable danger for more than 30 seconds at a time, and the wildebeests only come across as mildly frightening (which is due to the fact that they are introduced with an overly cheerful dance number). Despite their intensity, chase scenes become tedious and sometimes make no sense at all. Why a lion would ever run from three scrubby stray dogs is beyond capacity.

It would be unfair to blame one or two people for the lack of charisma in "The Wild." Put simply, it fails to draw the audience in at any point in order to stand out from the growing number of animated features released each year. Whether this was another one of Disney's attempts to tweak a cash cow formula for profit isn't important. What matters is if they begin to realize that a little originality and courteous regard for their viewers, young and old, can go a long way.

Rating: 2 out of 5