Riverdance – Quick Movie Review

The 2021 animated film ‘Riverdance’ is only 90 minutes long, but it took me three days to finish watching the film on Netflix. While it starts with a brilliant introduction told through animated that looks like paper cut-outs in motion. But that’s only for a few minutes. And even though the animation is bright, colorful and quite nice to look at, the movie has no charm.

Directed by Eamonn Butler and Dave Rosenbaum, ‘Riverdance – The Animated Adventure’ is inspired by a theatrical show of the same name that was started in the 1990s and consists of traditional Irish music and dance. The story follows a boy called Keegan and his friend Moira, who meet mythical deer-like creatures that love dancing and are the source of their town’s rivers. While I haven’t seen the real ‘Riverdance’ dance production, the long dance scenes in the film get a little tedious to watch, because they just don’t have that human spark to them. If an adult (and I love to watch dance forms) could get bored quickly, kids are probably going to fall asleep.

Now, for some weird reason, the protagonist Keegan reminded me a lot of Chucky, the doll from the famous horror movie franchise. There aren’t a lot of similarities, but maybe that’s the biggest flaw of this flick – the lead animated characters are quite unimaginative. The jokes are all flat. And there is no stand-out character. It’s a pity, because the animation quality is pretty good and the makers did have an interesting concept at hand.

After being done with half the film, I pretty much fast-forwarded the rest of it. Skip this one if you are looking for a fun entertaining movie to watch.