not much thought went into the 3D.

Okay, before someone jumps in to say they don't care about 3d, and point out that 3d is a gimmick, yeah, I accept that sometimes it is, and it's not for everyone.

For anyone/everyone who does like stereoscopic 3d and is curious about how good or bad the 3d is, my assessment is that it's not up to much. Most of the time it's fairly dialed down. There's not much in the way of pop-out, and there's not much depth either. A few scenes in particular cry out to be richly dimensional but are flat as a pancake. Which is a shame, because there are places where it could have worked to spectacular effect if there'd been any enthusiasm about the process.

I got the impression different scenes may have been handled by different teams or different studios with no grand plan. I suspect a few may have been shipped out to be post-converted, and others natively rendered.

The effect seemed to be most pronounced during some of the dialogue scenes, which is really where you don't need much of an effect. Although it was never anything to evoke wows or write home about in those scenes either. I wouldn't say the 3d was ever used for dramatic effect or to enhance the storytelling. It was essentially an afterthought.

It's a shame because cg animated films often have some of the best 3d going. It's a more flexible medium for stereoscopy because they can re-render scenes if it's not giving the desired effect in the final edit. I've been most impressed with those of Dreamworks and the now-defunct Imagemovers. Purely in terms of good 3d, I'd recommend films like Beowulf, A Christmas Carol, Monsters vs Aliens and The Croods. Sometimes exciting 3d can be the saving grace in films like these. This was not one of these times.

On the plus side, there was nothing headache-inducing, or likely to cause eye-strain, and I didn't notice any glaring technical errors or shots that were converted badly wrong.