Critic Reviews

Frank Gladstone's animated kids' movie The Hero of Color City is a perfectly pleasant pastiche of other movies, the most obvious antecedent being the Toy Story films.

For parents of very young children looking for a weekend distraction, “Color City” is passable fare — and will at least inspire kiddies to finish what they start, coloring-wise.

A weak "Toy Story"-esque animated film for preschool kids made with little imagination, little art, and even less soul.

For parents looking to get their preschoolers out of the house, The Hero of Color City will be good enough.

It’s all pleasant and forgettable.

The story and characterizations never get much deeper than "We're all special in our own way."

Color City is thin gruel, even by recent, weaker Pixar standards.

The best thing about The Hero of Color City is its good voice talent — and its running time of only 77 minutes. Other than that, this is a pretty lame computer-generated animated movie that will likely not engage kids much past the first grade.

Even if you allow for the the fact that the film is geared towards the 5-year-old set, it's still a pretty dreary experience, made even more so by screamingly vivid colors, uninspiring animation and grating songs.

Cheerfully exhorting imagination, creativity and bravery in children while demonstrating none of those virtues itself, The Hero of Color City proves to be a dispiritingly colorless feature-length babysitter.