Tad, the Lost Explorer, and the Secret of King Midas

After a recent discovery is stolen from his beloved Sara, constructor Tad Jones embarks on a quest of helping her recover it before an ancient power granted by King Midas's necklace is unleashed in the hands of the bad guys. Helped by her sidekick and a curious mummy character, they will have to venture in various places around the world, racing to find the missing pieces of the artifact before their evil rivals.

It's an animation clearly inspired by the famous Indiana Jones, which presents the adventures of its own Tad Jones in his quest of helping the girl but also winning her heart. The characters involved are quite likable but not so complex and even a bit predictable, doing their job but nothing more, with quite simplistic dialogue most of the time. The plot itself is OK-ish, not bringing anything impressive but also being good enough most of the time, keeping it all together but without any shine, fact which represents a big letdown, at least as far as I'm concerned.

The action depicted is also OK, but not spectacular, with plenty of predictable events, or even awkward situations which shouldn't have been there. It's even pretty lame from time to time, not being able to generate enough suspense or drama in order to make you care about the characters or what is about to happen with them. Unfortunately, about the same can be said about the finale, which is predictable and even a bit disappointing, especially regarding the side-characters.

The animation on the other hand is the sole fact with managed to impress me. It's so well done, with plenty of details, vibrant colors and amazing scenery. It has to be noted that they have done a very well job in this department. Unfortunately though, a huge disappointment comes from something also related to this. The lips sync is completely off...and I don't mean that the sound is delayed or something. They simply weren't able to make the mouth of all the characters move enough to actually represent the words that were actually heard by the viewers. You could hear plenty of dialogue but the mouths simply couldn't keep up, closed too early or weren't wide open enough to be on par with the tone heard.

There isn't much to be liked about this movie. Yes, it looks great from most angles but unfortunately that's about it. You get an average story with average characters and some action maybe a bit above average but with a huge flaw in terms of lips sync. It's an animation which can be easily skipped unfortunately, as it is not able to bring almost anything out of the ordinary, of course besides the previously mentioned white ball.