Atlantis: Milo’s Return
Year: 2003
Rating: G
Length: 70 minutes / 1.17 hours
Back before movies went straight to streaming instead of having a theatrical release, Disney leaned into “Direct-to-Video” sequels of some of their famous films. While this was mostly something that happened during the VHS era of the 1990s, Atlantis: Milo’s Return (2003) certainly seems to fit that bill. The real problem with these slapdash sequels is the quality, but Milo’s Return is even worse than that in the sense that it’s not even a movie as much as it is three TV episodes in a trench-coat.
The ‘80s and ‘90s were full of Saturday morning cartoon tie-ins to big movies. Even if movies like Ghostbusters (1984) and RoboCop (1987) weren’t appropriate for children, they still pumped out TV shows for kids to watch. This made more sense for Disney, with shows from their ‘90s renaissance being the perfect match for kids to watch at home on TV. But when Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) flopped, they had already started down the path of creating a TV show tie-in. And if Direct-to-Video quality wasn’t great, TV show quality was even worse.
I think I could have forgiven this movie if it had any semblance of connective tissue to bring the three episodes together in an overarching story arc. As it is, Milo’s Return somewhat undoes everything that the original movie set up when its plot completed. Ultimately, if you really liked what Disney was doing with the Atlantis series, then it might be worth your time to see where they were going with the TV show. The only reason I even sat down to watch it with my kids was because it was included in the Blu-ray for the first film.
A sub-par sequel, even by direct-to-video standards, I give Atlantis: Milo’s Return 2.0 stars out of 5.
