DISNEY'S 'TREASURE PLANET' LIKE A CLASSIC WITHOUT WATER.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

'TREASURE PLANET'' is no treasure.

Like ``Atlantis,'' it's one of those Disney adventure cartoons that takes too long getting to anything really exciting - and once there becomes too frenetic to effectively wow.

Of course, the filmmakers, led by the usually reliable directing team of John Musker and Ron Clements (``The Little Mermaid,'' ``Aladdin,'' ``Hercules''), can blame part of the pacing problem on that stuffy old Robert Louis Stevenson, upon whose classic ``Treasure Island'' the film is based.

But Stevenson never told them to set the thing in outer space. An outer space where everybody dresses, talks and acts like 18th-century British people, which makes no sense other world-wise. And an outer space, by the way, where people solar sail from star to star in rocket-powered but open decked, wood-masted galleons, which makes no sense future/laws- of-physics/sensible aesthetics-wise - even in a cartoon.

So, no, no foul on Stevenson. All he did was was supply the plot layout that left so much downtime for viewers to think about how ridiculous the whole anachronistic enterprise is.

Mixing professional but uninspired hand-drawn animation with some undeniably beautiful big-canvas computer generated imagery, the movie's one unalloyed triumph is, well, its CGI/traditional cyborg. The picture's John Silver, who sounds more masticated than voiced by the Australian stage actor Brian Murray, is a fantastic vision. His robotic right half is an array of whirling gizmos, retractable tools and weaponry, his bloated human left its own small universe of expressive tics and deception-hiding folds.

But Silver is the only truly striking future/retro vision the film has to offer. The motley supporting crew of aliens, and the alien landscapes they slither through, don't look half as cleverly imagined as, say, the unfairly maligned otherworldlies George Lucas has been photorealistically conjuring in recent ``Star Wars'' entries. It's a different kind of Martian time slip in this department: ``Planet's'' space races have a tacky, 1950s comic book look, uncomfortably accessorized with Dutch painting details.

As for our intergalactic Jim Hawkins, he's played as a gravity- and law-defying 15-year-old spaceboarder whose sullen disregard for everything except fulfilling his need for speed is his single (naturally) mother's heartbreak. She runs an inn at the end of some world, which a lizardlike Billy Bones drops into just long enough to turn over a holographic map before bunches of cyborgs take him out - and blast mom's business in the process.

This sends Jim (who is voiced by ``3rd Rock From the Sun's'' Joseph Gordon-Levitt as if he'd just been exposed to the collected works of James Dean) and family friend Doctor Doppler (``Frasier's'' David Hyde Pierce), an upright-walking dog genius who resembles nothing so much as studio-staple Goofy with a Ph.D. and poorer comic timing, off to hire a stout ship, the Legacy.

Its captain is, literally, a cat lady named Amelia, and Emma Thompson sounds thoroughly amused to be elocuting her hissy, smarter-than-the-room put-downs. The Legacy is also where Silver has signed on with his slimy cadre of secret mutineers, just waiting to take over when the hidden loot of 1,000 worlds is found. But along the way, of course, the salty old bucca-bot and reluctant cabin boy Jim bond big time, often with the help of a shape-shifting alien pet called Morph.

Some will find this mischievous little ball of pliable plasma too cute to tolerate. But at least the parrot stand-in is funny, which cannot be said of this version's Ben - in this case, B.E.N. (Bio-Electronic-Navigator), a robot left alone to guard the Treasure Planet who turns way too needy once the contending hunting parties show up. He's done by Martin Short in if-you-can't-think-of-anything-humorous-just-babble mode, and he'll make viewers, like Jim does, wish they could find his off switch.

But none of the characters, other than Silver, proves very memorable. The big spectacle sequences, though technically excellent, aren't very involving, either. Besides the usual battles, big-scale traps and cliffhanger escapes, there is a nova blast that then collapses into a black hole the Legacy must somehow escape. Any Disney fantasy that actively reminds you of ``The Black Hole,'' the studio's embarrassing sci-fi debacle of a few decades back, is not operating in a dimension of smart entertainment.

But then, we kind of figured that out the first time ``Treasure Planet'' shows us a six-eyed, tentacled corsair in a tri-corner hat.

TREASURE PLANET - Two and one half stars

(PG: violence)

Starring: Voices of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brian Murray, Emma Thompson, David Hyde Pierce, Martin Short.

Director: John Musker and Ron Clements.

Running time: 1 hr. 30 min.

Playing: Wide release.

In a nutshell: Weird but still listless cartoon attempt to redo Robert Louis Stevenson's ``Treasure Island'' in outer space - with uninteresting aliens and pirates, spacecraft, buildings and clothes that all look like the 18th century. You just keep going, ``Why?''

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Photo:

``Treasure Planet'' puts Robert Louis Stevenson's classic in space, while keeping such period garb as three-cornered hats.