Cyberworld

Ordinarily the venerable phrase "fun for the entire family" has a dutiful ring, as if the movie involved is something you'd better like if you know what's good for you. <br><br>But Cyberworld 3D

Friday, October 6th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

Ordinarily the venerable phrase "fun for the entire family" has a dutiful ring, as if the movie involved is something you'd better like if you know what's good for you.

But Cyberworld 3D is fun, creative and imaginative. And, to use a completely nondutiful adjective, it's also enthralling. If you are grandparents treating your grandchildren to their very first movie, both you and they will love it. And so will everyone else, from dating couples to the most coolly cynical teens.

As IMAX's first 3D animated feature, the film enhances both IMAX and animation, and its cute moments are rarely too cute. When coyness threatens, a stunning optical spins the audience right back into the happiest plateau of fantasyland. The contours and dimensions of computer-animated drawings have never been more impressively showcased, and the "reach-out-and-touch" aspect of IMAX is dizzyingly spectacular.

Jenna Elfman of television's Dharma & Greg provides the voice of Phig, tour guide of a futuristic museum that specializes in three-dimensional exhibits. The museum, called Cyberworld, is threatened to its very computer-coded foundation by three nerdy computer critters, Buzz, Frazzled and Wired. Will they be able to destroy Cyberworld? Not if Phig has anything to say about it.

Included in Cyberworld's gallery of greatest hits are two old friends whom you'll see from an entirely fresh perspective. The bar scene in Antz, in which Woody Allen's middle-child ant verbally spars with Sharon Stone's princess and Sylvester Stallone's tough guy, is given fresh clarity in 3D, reminding us how that wryly funny animated feature never got the full appreciation it deserved. And a scene from The Simpsons, in which hapless Homer suddenly finds himself in a parallel universe, will make you realize why you fell in love with The Simpsons in the first place.

New visuals feature a flight through space by two cone-heads, a spectacular glass city, elaborate palaces, awesome mother ships, feisty water creatures and a monkey-brain sushi segment at a multi-dimensional mountain lair.

The segments are all connected by a witty, coherent narrative.