''Spark'' (known as ''Spark: A Space Tail'' in the United States) is a 2016 animated

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imagination, imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, Paral ...

adventure An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extr ...

comedy film A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending ( black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the o ...

written and directed by

Aaron Woodley Aaron Woodley (born 1971) is a Canadian film director and screenwriter. Early life Woodley was born in Toronto, Ontario, the son of costume designer Denise Cronenberg and nephew of filmmaker David Cronenberg. He studied animations at Art Gallery ...

, and featuring the voices of

Jessica Biel Jessica Claire Timberlake (née Biel ; born March 3, 1982) is an American actress and model. She has received various accolades, including a Young Artist Award, and nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and two Golden Globe Awards. Biel be ...

Hilary Swank Hilary Ann Swank (born July 30, 1974) is an American actress and film producer. She first became known in 1992 for her role on the television series '' Camp Wilder'' and made her film debut with a minor role in '' Buffy the Vampire Slayer'' (199 ...

Susan Sarandon Susan Abigail Sarandon (; née Tomalin; born October 4, 1946) is an American actorMcCabe, Bruce"Susan Sarandon, the 'actor'" ''Boston Globe''. April 17, 1981. Retrieved January 21, 2021. and activist. She is the recipient of various accolades, ...

Patrick Stewart Sir Patrick Stewart (born 13 July 1940) is an English actor who has a career spanning seven decades in various stage productions, television, film and video games. He has been nominated for Olivier, Tony, Golden Globe, Emmy, and Screen Acto ...

Jace Norman Jace Lee Norman (born March 21, 2000) is an American actor. He starred as Henry Hart in the Nickelodeon television series ''Henry Danger'' from 2014 to 2020. Early life Norman was born in Corrales, New Mexico. He moved to Southern California whe ...

and Alan C. Peterson. The film premiered on April 22, 2016, at the Toronto Animation Arts Festival International. It was released on April 14, 2017, in the United States by

Open Road Films Open Road Films, LLC (formerly Global Road Entertainment from 2017 to 2018) is an American film production and distribution company based in Los Angeles, California. It was founded by Eric Hohl on March 26, 2011 as a joint venture between the t ...

with distribution sold by Double Dutch International in all international markets except China and South Korea. ''Spark'' got mostly negative reviews, and was a major

box-office bomb A box-office bomb, or box-office disaster, is a film that is unprofitable or considered highly unsuccessful during its theatrical run. Although any film for which the production, marketing, and distribution costs combined exceed the revenue after ...

, earning only $1 million on a $40 million budget.

Plot

Set in a galaxy where

anthropomorphic animal Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics t ...

and

aliens Alien primarily refers to: * Alien (law), a person in a country who is not a national of that country ** Enemy alien, the above in times of war * Extraterrestrial life, life which does not originate from Earth ** Specifically, intelligent extrat ...

live together, Thirteen years ago, the evil

primate Primates are a diverse order (biology), order of mammals. They are divided into the Strepsirrhini, strepsirrhines, which include the lemurs, galagos, and lorisids, and the Haplorhini, haplorhines, which include the Tarsiiformes, tarsiers and ...

General Zhong overthrew his noble brother to seize the throne of the planet Bana, using a

spacetime In physics, spacetime is a mathematical model that combines the three dimensions of space and one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional manifold. Spacetime diagrams can be used to visualize relativistic effects, such as why diffe ...

anomaly known as "the slick", which has the ability to create black holes; slicks were made by a wild creature known as a space

kraken The kraken () is a legendary sea monster of enormous size said to appear off the coasts of Norway. Kraken, the subject of sailors' superstitions and mythos, was first described in the modern age at the turn of the 18th century, in a travel ...

. The black hole created from the slick partially destroyed Bana, and swallowed up many subjects. Among the few survivors were a

monkey Monkey is a common name that may refer to most mammals of the infraorder Simiiformes, also known as the simians. Traditionally, all animals in the group now known as simians are counted as monkeys except the apes, which constitutes an incom ...

only a year old named Spark, a warrior

fox Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelv ...

named Vix, and a

boar The wild boar (''Sus scrofa''), also known as the wild swine, common wild pig, Eurasian wild pig, or simply wild pig, is a suid native to much of Eurasia and North Africa, and has been introduced to the Americas and Oceania. The species is ...

mechanic named Chunk. In the present, Spark, Vix, Chunk and Spark's forgetful nanny bot, Bananny, secretly live on a shard used as a garbage dump, with Vix and Chunk leading insurgency missions against Zhong, although they constantly forbid Spark from coming along. One day, Spark intercepts an e-mail sent to Vix about a new mission, and decides to take the mission himself without her knowing. The e-mail leads to the Queen of Bana, whom Zhong still permits to live in the palace. After Spark infiltrates the palace and meets the Queen, she hands him a kraken-finder, which Zhong wants to use to find and recapture the space kraken in order to destroy another planet. Spark decides to use it to find the kraken himself; he tames the creature and brings it back to the garbage shard. But he then finds his home raided by Zhong's forces, who then capture both him and the kraken. Zhong forces the kraken to make a new slick into which he hurls Spark, Vix, Chunk and the entire garbage shard. The trio discover that the slick is actually a wormhole that leads to a desert planet. Vix and Chunk get upset at Spark for causing Zhong to obtain the kraken, and then split up. Spark finds survivors of the first slick, living in the King's old flagship battle cruiser. The Captain of the flagship reveals that Spark is in fact the son of the King and Queen, who entrusted Vix and Chunk to hide and protect him. He also reveals that the King had actually died in an accident some years ago, but Spark has a vision of the King when he visits a memorial to him, and finds a special weapon made for the royal family. Spark then learns from the deceased King that his friends have been captured by giant mutated roaches. Spark, with the help of his father's spirit and his roach friend, Floyd, defeats the mutated roaches and rescues Vix and Chunk. Spark rallies Vix, Chunk, the Captain and his survivors to mount an attack on Zhong, and Chunk figures out a way to use technology to make a slick of their own. In the meantime, Zhong uses the space kraken to intimidate the rest of the galaxy. The flagship and survivors return to Bana through their own slick, and ultimately defeat Zhong's forces after a prolonged battle. Spark personally rescues the queen from Zhong's own flagship, which gets critically damaged during the battle. Spark decides to rescue his "Uncle" Zhong as well, but the annoyed Queen then punches Zhong into the slick after he "begs" for forgiveness. The film ends with Spark's friends and allies celebrating him becoming the new Prince of Bana.

Voice cast

as Spark, the 14-year-old son of the queen and the king and the main protagonist of the film *

as Vix a fox and Spark's caretaker *

as The Queen, the king’s wife and Spark's mother. *

as Bananny, Spark's forgetful nanny robot. *

as the Flagship Captain * Rob deLeeuw as Chunk, Spark's buff boar friend. * Alan C. Peterson as General Zhong, the main antagonist and Spark's uncle. *

Athena Karkanis Athena Karkanis (born September 7, 1981) is a Canadian television, film and voice actress. She is noted for her role as Grace Stone in the NBC/Netflix science fiction drama series ''Manifest''. Life and career Karkanis was born in Alberta and r ...

as Koko, Zhong's muscular enforcer. * Jordan Pettle as The King, the queen’s husband and Spark's father * Ivan Sherry as Announcer * Evan Taggart as The Artist * Director Aaron Woodley voices Floyd, a tiny green cockroach-like alien and Spark's friend.

Production

In January 2015, ''

Deadline Hollywood ''Deadline Hollywood'', commonly known as ''Deadline'' and also referred to as ''Deadline.com'', is an online news site founded as the news blog ''Deadline Hollywood Daily'' by Nikki Finke in 2006. The site is updated several times a day, w ...

'' announced that

and

joined the cast with

directing, and Red Rover, Gulfstream Pictures and ToonBox Entertainment producing. Woodley would also be writing the screenplay with Doug Hadders and Adam Rotstein.

Release

The film premiered at the Toronto Animation Arts Festival International on April 22, 2016. It was released in the United States by Open Road Films on April 14, 2017. On June 27, 2017, Universal Home Entertainment released Spark on video.

Reception

Critical response

, on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

, the film has an approval rating of 13% based on 23 reviews, with an average review score of 3.8/10. on

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, it had a score of 22 out of 100, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".

Box office

''Spark'' opened in 365 theaters in North America and grossed $112,352 in its opening weekend, taking in $308 per theater. The film's total theatrical run brought in $891,925 worldwide, making the film a

box office bomb A box-office bomb, or box-office disaster, is a film that is unprofitable or considered highly unsuccessful during its theatrical run. Although any film for which the production, marketing, and distribution costs combined exceed the revenue after ...

References

External links

* * {{Aaron Woodley 2016 films 2016 comedy films 2016 fantasy films 2016 science fiction films 2016 computer-animated films 2010s adventure comedy films 2010s coming-of-age comedy films 2010s fantasy adventure films 2010s fantasy comedy films 2010s science fiction adventure films 2010s science fiction comedy films American adventure comedy films American children's animated comic science fiction films American children's animated science fantasy films American children's animated space adventure films American coming-of-age comedy films American computer-animated films American fantasy adventure films American fantasy comedy films Animated coming-of-age films Animated films about foxes Canadian adventure comedy films Canadian animated fantasy films Canadian animated science fiction films Canadian children's comedy films Canadian children's fantasy films Canadian coming-of-age comedy films Canadian computer-animated films Canadian fantasy adventure films Canadian fantasy comedy films Animated films about extraterrestrial life Canadian science fiction comedy films Animated films about monkeys Films directed by Aaron Woodley Animated films set on fictional planets Gulfstream Pictures films Open Road Films animated films South Korean adventure comedy films South Korean animated fantasy films South Korean children's films South Korean coming-of-age comedy films Chinese fantasy adventure films Chinese fantasy comedy films Chinese science fiction comedy films Chinese children's films 2010s English-language films 2010s Canadian films 2010s American films 2010s South Korean films Canadian animated comedy films Chinese animated comedy films