A quirky band of adventurers goes searching for the ruins of the lost continent of Atlantis. Only instead of ruins they find a city one still occupied and protected by a mysterious power source. But now having found the lost continent will they be allowed to leave it�alive?

This latest outing for Disney is very good, but much different then their usual style. For one, though the background music is good nobody breaks into song during the film. Second, there are no cutesy animals though the geologist, �Mole� Moliere, is so bizarre he almost qualifies for the animal part though definitely not the cute part. Finally, the animation is of a somewhat different style then Disney uses resulting in the characters having a harder edge, with more of a film noir quality, that's reminiscent of Chester Gould�s Dick Tracy comic strip. None of these detract from the film, which is a lot of fun, but if I hadn't know it was a Disney film going in I wouldn't have recognized it as such.

All of the voice work is well done especially that by Michael J. Fox as Milo Thatch, the hero, and James Garner as the bad guy, Rourke. All the other characters, a fairly diverse group ethnically speaking, are also nicely done and I, for one, would enjoy seeing them return in a sequel or, even better, a series of films. As for the story, it has a nice �pulp� quality to it bringing to mind adventure stories by the likes of Edgar Rice Burroughs or Lester Dent.

The film isn't perfect however and its major problems are two-fold. First, there are too many characters and the film would have been better served had at least a couple of them, notably the �crusty� old communications officer and the �crusty� old cook been left out to give more room to the rest of the cast. Second, Atlantis: The Lost Empire suffers from the regular Disney deficiency of having stereotyped villains. From the moment they appear on the screen you know that these are THE BAD GUYS in large flaming letters. I've yet to see a Disney film in which I couldn't pick out the heavy within thirty seconds of his/her first appearance. Sure, most of the characters in Atlantis: The Lost Empire start out as bad guys, but it's almost a given they will reform by the film's end whereas the two main villains are as obviously unredeemable.