Poe's storytelling gift is so timeless, and the voice actors assembled so captivating, that "Extraordinary Tales" can't help but work on some level. It just never quite rises above that faint praise.
The fact that an author who died 166 years ago continues to be a draw for moviemakers says something about Edgar Allan Poe's imagination. And here's a feverish new animated Poe feature -- released just in time for Halloween.
The voices of the late Christopher Lee and Bela Lugosi reading from the text isn't quite the same. But Garcia compensates with a different animation style for each of the five stories.
The best sections reverberate with the power of Poe's words. As such, they serve as apt tributes to yarns that will always be more formidable on the page than on the screen.
