Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003)

Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas arrived in 2003 as DreamWorks Animation's last traditionally drawn feature, a detail that lends it a certain melancholy in retrospect. The studio spent sixty million dollars and recovered eighty, a shortfall that contributed to a reported hundred and twenty-five million dollar loss and, eventually, an exclusive commitment to computers. There is a lesson in that, though not the kind the film itself cares to teach.

On the matter of cultural provenance, the record is complicated. Sinbad is identified in the production materials as an Arab sailor, and he is voiced by Brad Pitt, whose Missourian vowels were reportedly retained because the filmmakers believed they would lighten the mood. Historians of casting will study this decision for some time. The supporting ensemble includes Dennis Haysbert as the first mate and a pair of Asian crewmen who make bets with each other, gestures toward a wider world that never develop into anything. Lady Marina, an ambassador who stows away, steers the ship past the sirens while the men lie insensate, and earns the crew's grudging respect. It is a sturdy heroine arc, assembled from familiar parts, and it stops well short of argument.

Elsewhere the film is innocent. No character contends with questions of identity beyond the practical, no villain stands in for industry or empire, the sea is not melting, the bodies on display are uniformly athletic, and the mind is treated as a single uncomplicated organ. The moral instruction, such as it is, amounts to keeping a promise. A straightforward romantic adventure, then, and a costly one, which is its own kind of statement.