The great Scottish actor and former James Bond star retired from acting in 2006, three years after his role in the awful film The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but he did return once or twice for voice acting roles. He returned to the role of 007 for the video game From Russia with Love, and his most recent role was in this cartoon, Scotland's first CGI animated feature. Basically, in the west coast highland village of Catterness in Scotland, many animals are being murdered by a team of villainous policemen, including Officer McKenzie (Ford Kiernan) and Officer McTavish (Greg Hemphill). One of the animals to escape captivity is illegal fugitive, Bessie Boo the beaver (Valentina Hartmann),who was raised by rabbits and is now on the run. Meanwhile, Sir Billi (Sir Sean Connery) is the eccentric retired veterinarian of the remote village, respected and adored by the townspeople. He relies on a number of gadgets and his skateboard to get him through the day, as well as his companions, including Gordon (Alan Cumming),a goat who believes he is a dog. When Bessie comes along and asks for Sir Billi's help, he is thrown into an adventure that will take him across treacherous ravines and hazardous waters. Along the way, he encounters many other characters, including American oddball Patty Turner (Ruby Wax),aristocrat Lady Serena Sedgewick (Larry Sullivan),temptress baroness Chantalle McToff (Miriam Margolyes) and her husband Baron McToff (Taggart's Alex Norton),an Admiral (Patrick Doyle) who is afraid of water, and plucky pilot duck Vicky (Regina Reagan). In the end, Sir Billi saves the day and is praised as the "Guardian of the Highlands". Also starring Barbara Rafferty as Bessie's Mom, Elliot Doyle as Master Jake, Jamie Still as Wee Dave the rabbit, Amy Sacco as Toni Turner, Ford Kiernan as Banjo Barry, and John Fortune Fraser as Uncle Red. I question if Connery knew what he was getting into when he provided his voice, along with other talented stars like Cumming and Margoyles? I'm not surprised this has got a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes; it is abysmal. The animation is charmless and awful quality, the script and plot, including animals talking and predictable dialogue, is terrible, the attempts of humour, including James Bond jokes, are unfunny, the Dame Shirley Bassey song accompanying the Bond-style opening sequence, is wasted, and it just feels rather creepy and cringy. This is definitely up there with the worst cartoon movies I have ever watched, a truly atrocious animated adventure. Very poor!

Story 2/10 Animation 1/10 Characters 3/10 I walked out of this in the 13 minutes of the movie.

Were there reasons in the first place to see Sir Billi? Yes, that it was Sean Connery's comeback, that there are some talented actors on board and that it was billed to be the first animated film to be done entirely in Scotland. Avid fans of the animation medium would find a further reason to see it. It's a shame that such a great and charismatic actor like would comeback with a film that is a contender for the worst film of his career, certainly the worst animated film of 2013 and the worst I've seen in a while.

The only redeeming qualities are the striking Bond-style opening sequence and Dame Shirley Bassey's singing, nice song and she sounds great. You'd think that Connery would elevate things as well, sadly while it was nice to hear him and his distinctive voice his talent is wasted by being given little to do, it makes one wonder what made him break his retirement in the first place. The rest of the cast aren't much better, they lack energy and some of the accents are cringe-worthy.

And there's no better news with the animation, which is really quite bad. The characters are very plastic-looking and the colours are garish. It often looks very freaky-looking as well. The music is not bad-sounding but is not used well, like some lines it can be out of place, and the Bond references were completely pointless, adding absolutely nothing to the story. Were they paying homage to Connery by any chance?

Sir Billi is a very poorly-written film too. The dialogue as a whole is uninspired and unremarkable, ruined further by that it seems to have no idea who it's aiming at. There is a lot of smut and innuendo which will go over kids' heads, if they were trying to widen the target audience they failed at that. Even worse is that not only is the use of it overkill but even adults won't find it funny at all and will find it distasteful instead. The story is dull and incoherent, and filled with too many characters that serve little if anything to the telling of it. Regarding the characters here too, if you are trying to find any to root for, good luck, that certainly didn't happen with me(you might think differently though).

Overall, from a personal subjective opinion Sir Billi was dire with very little good about it. Considering the potential it had it was really disappointing too, Planes and Justin and the Knights of Valour were underwhelming films with some potential, but Sir Billi's potential was even bigger(being Sean Connery's comeback and claiming to be the first animated film from Scotland) and fell flat on its face even harder. 1/10 Bethany Cox