Unlike the previous three films I've watched for my Strange Animated Films from the 1990's Made By Random Studios Marathon, I remember actually liking "The Swan Princess" quite a bit when I saw it back in the day. Watching it again for this project, it is by no means a bad movie, but the Nostalgia Filter sure was strong with it.
This is the first animated feature from what would eventually be known as Crest Animation (formerly Rich Animation and RichCrest Animation; interesting evolution, that), a studio created and headed by Richard Rich. You may remember that name from the Disney Animated Canon project. Rich started at Disney in the late 70's, co-directed "The Rescuers" and directed "The Fox and the Hound" and "The Black Cauldron", and went on to found his own studio. The film generally agreed to be his best independent film was also his very first independent film. For some reason, this sounds familiar - but you may notice that far fewer people discuss Richard Rich's post-Disney career than do Don Bluth's; probably due to the fact that all but three or four of Rich's features have gone straight to DVD.
"The Swan Princess" is -if you will forgive me- an odd duck indeed. For all the world, it looks like what people who dismiss all Disney animated features as cutesy Fairy tales and girly pink Princess B.S. assume every Disney feature is like. (By the way, yes, such people exist, and this saddens me.) About a third of the ways into "The Swan Princess", I was thinking, "Oh, so this is basically 'Sleeping Beauty'. Now it's kind of like 'The Little Mermaid'. This scene reminds me an awful lot of something in 'Aladdin'. And suddenly, we're in 'Cinderella'." I suppose this is, in a way, admirable. Most low-budget animated fairy tale movies would only rip off one or two very popular Disney Animated Canon features. This one has the brass balls to swipe from damn near all of them!
Now don't get me wrong, as I said, "The Swan Princess" isn't necessarily a bad movie. As it happens, there are some very clever and creative moments in it. Some of the supporting characters are a lot of fun and the background paintings are gorgeous.
In general, the problems stem from the fact that while this movie is a distillation of what people who haven't sat down and watched a Disney movie in years remember from Disney movies, it's hampered from having a very small fraction of the budget. As a result, the animation is very inconsistent, and occasionally downright sloppy. In particular, the less caricatured characters like Human!Odette and especially Derek look very strange after a while (oh my good God, Derek's giant mouth). The songs range from slightly dull to utterly tedious, and some of the gags (especially the header image) run at very sharp angles to the rest of the film's overall tone. And, so help me, the villain's final boss form really does look like a fruitbat. Speaking of, if you avoid saying the word "Beast" this often, it eventually becomes really obvious and distracting.
Finally, since things like this have to be pointed out in a review written by me (heh): What we have here is a story about a human princess who is forced to be separated from a weird-looking unlikeable doormat of a prince who openly stated that he was only interested in her because she is pretty by being transformed into a big scary dinosaur that can fly, kill a child easily, and seriously maim an adult. Remind me again how this is a curse? (I know, but we're ignoring Rothbart being a total creeper for now, especially since the movie itself doesn't seem to know what to do with that plot point either.)
Overall, "The Swan Princess" is worth a look, and is certainly a better choice for children than, say, any of the DTV Disney sequels. Next up, something that isn't on my official Queue list but I would be a total bockhead to ignore.
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Sketch of the Day!
Went to the good old Maine Wildlife Park and drew some birds that -and you have to trust the birder here- are far less vicious and scary than swans.
Note: I had to watch and review this film way out of order. I was already three movies ahead of it when it finally arrived. Because of course the one DVD I was least looking forward to watching in this marathon had to take the longest time to get to me.
Also, there will be swearing in this one too. Lots and lots of swearing. And nerd rage, but if you are familiar with this movie, you probably already guessed that.
Your Too Long, Didn't Read review: "We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story" could be much more accurately retitled, "Things That Make Me Drink: The Movie!" Here goes.
The marketing for "We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story" (henceforth "WBADS") was kind of fascinating. Indeed, I remember it vividly from my early teens after all, it being not only fascinating but downright insulting. Picture this: It's the autumn of 1993. "Jurassic Park" has just thoroughly blown the minds of every dinosaur loving youngster to tiny pieces. Everyone is happy with the film and...
Actually, no. Some people are not happy with the film. Some people are very angry with the film, and no, I do not mean Michael Crichton fans who were mad with all the changes to the story.
I'm talking about everyone's favorite, concerned parents. Yes, there were people who brought their very young children to "Jurassic Park" and were very upset when the whole thing wasn't dinosaurs playing nice with little children.
Now, there are probably a few of you lovely readers out there who are in their early teens and familiar with the Jurassic Park franchise. And you are wondering how in the hell anyone could get that idea. For the benefit of those readers, let me remind you of the other big popular dinosaur-involving franchise from the early '90's. People old enough to have lived through this, brace yourselves:
Yes, there were presumably sensible adults who took their children to "Jurassic Park" expecting something more like "Barney and Friends". Let that sink in.
This probably explains why Amblimaton chose to clarify things and advertise "We're Back!" with the tagline, "Steven Spielberg Presents A Dinosaur Movie for the Whole Family!" Although, now that I have finally seen the beast that is "We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story" in it's entirety, I declare that it is not appropriate for anyone.
Let me tell you how I felt about "We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story". Stand back, kids, and wear your protective eyewear, cause I'm 'bout to unpack my adjectives. We'll start with "terrible" first, then "condescending", "ugly", "annoying", "discordant", "offensive", "Trollicious", "Nightmare Fuel-errific", and finally "really, really bad and dumb". Furthermore, it's really really bad and dumb in ways I hadn't even anticipated. Because you would have no reason whatsoever to expect a big-budget mainstream theatrical animated feature to do things that are as horrible and stupid as the things we see in this movie. I suppose the only reason I survived "WBADS" in one piece is because I had just recently watched all those DTV Disney sequels as well as "An American Tail 2: Fievel Goes West" and "Cool World"; I was already hardened against incredibly sh**ty animated films.
"WBADS" is another bad movie that has a bare-bones DVD release, but needs a more informative one packed with commentaries and special features just so that the creators of the film can explain to us viewers, in so many words, what the f***?!? The film is very, very, very, very, very loosely based upon a well-liked Hudson Talbot children's book of the same title with the simple plot of Mesozoic dinosaurs given the ability to speak and brought to modern-day New York City to live in the Museum of Natural History and bring joy to the all the children of the world. The picture book is cute, charming, very funny, and basically everything it's film adaptation is not. Talbot later wrote a sequel where the dinosaurs are brought to Hollywood to make a movie of their story and... well, more than a few readers have read the main character Rex's frustration as the author's own.
Anyway, something had to be done to pad out the story so that it could be long enough to qualify as a feature. (As an aside, there are two nice things I can say about "WBADS", and the first one is that it is mercifully short and moves very fast. So you are more annoyed than aggravated during the process of watching the damned thing. The aggravation comes when you stop and think about the movie later, but we'll get to that.) Showing the same kind of delicate wisdom displayed by the studio when handling the works of Dr. Seuss, Universal chose to make the story feature-length with highly annoying things on the one hand and utterly bizarre things on the other.
On the highly annoying side, we've got a couple of "cute" "funny" sidekick characters voiced by Jay Leno(???) and Martin Short who are supposed to be helpful to the protagonists but who come across as JarJar-esque nuisances instead. We get a pair of kid characters who end up involved in the dinosaurs' adventure and contribute absolutely nothing to the proceedings aside from suddenly acting creepily like adults for a supposed "romantic" subplot, participating in a "save the day through the Power of Love" scene that the Care Bears would stare incredulously at, and being yet another example of the cowardly assumption that children will not sit still through a movie that hasn't got any characters "just like them" to relate to. (Though these kids do suffer the most trauma of any characters in the story, so that's fun in a "this is the exact opposite reaction the audience is supposed to have" way.) And we have the prologue and epilogue where Rex is telling the entire sequence of events to a baby bird because...? The last thing plays out a little like this:
By the way, according to this movie, kids threatening to run away and join the circus is still a thing kids do in 1993. It's a little thing, but I'm pointing it out because no single element of "WBADS" better sums up it's downright surreal disconnect from reality and sheer WTF-ery.
As for the bizarre things, we have the Brothers Professor (Something)Eyes. Kindly Professor NewEyes is a time traveler who invented a machine that allows him to read people's minds and see their greatest and most intimate wishes (because there's nothing sketchy at all about that). He brings them their hearts' desires. And so he's going to take dinosaurs from the Mesozoic Era, make them cute and cuddly, and bring them to New York City in 1993 to, um, make everyone happy. (Just so you know, in case it isn't clear by now, cute goofy-ass dinosaurs do not make me happy. They make me very upset, in fact.) At no time during this process, does NewEyes inform Rex and company why he needed to go all the way back to the Mesozoic to get nonavian dinosaurs for 1993 New York. Think about it. Ouch.
Now if you are at all paying attention, you will notice how deeply f***ed-up NewEyes and his "plan" is here. Imagine you're sitting around eating lunch and suddenly a time machine appears and this strange-looking creature from the far future captures you. He then feeds you a substance that transforms you, physically and psychologically, into the future's idea of what humans were like. And I say "were", because now he's going to transport you and three other randomly chosen and similarly transformed single specimens of Cenozoic animals millions of years into the future and long past your species' extinctions. Which, incidentally, he doesn't tell you about aside from the mysterious statement, "There are a lot of children from my time that miss you!" For the rest of your life you will be living in a museum, pretending to be a statue except for the brief moments where you are either fed hot dogs or must entertain the children of the future. Wow.
Even so, NewEyes is a sweetheart compared to his brother Professor ScrewEyes. He's our villain for this evening and I'm honestly a little ambivalent about him. He shows up at around the half-hour mark. If you are an adult who has been bored, irritated, and even a little offended by the events so far of "WBADS", he's here to wake you the f**k up.
If you are a child, he's going to provide you with some pure unfiltered nightmare fuel. ScrewEyes and his evil circus arrive right the f**k out of nowhere in what had thus far been a goofy colorful series of hijinks, so his scenes are still genuinely scary and upsetting even though it is pretty obvious that they were edited to hell and back to keep this, you know, "A Dinosaur Movie For the Whole Family". Yeah, keep that tagline in mind while ScrewEyes does his thing.
Incidentally, if you do enjoy weird circuses and horror shows and such, and if you have tattoos and crazy hair and clothes, then according to this movie you are a sad, strange person and you should feel bad, you weirdo freak. God damn this damn movie. It has a little something to p**s off everyone I know!
So let you dear Auntie Tricia tell you the most important reason why this movie made me drink (aside from everything I have mentioned so far): Before NewEyes can bring the dinosaurs to modern NYC, he uses a cereal he invented known as Brain Grain to turn them into what struck me as a bunch of characters who were kicked off the set of "Barney and Friends" for insulting the three-year-old audience's intelligence too much. So help me, Rex looks like Barney himself in everything but color scheme. We are informed that this cereal has made them "smart", and in an offhand line of dialogue, NewEyes notes that Brain Grain has essentially caused world peace in his home time. Living things that eat it will no longer harm each-other. Man, there are some f**ked-up implications there. One is left to wonder if every animal in NewEyes' time has likewise been transformed into a cockamamie depowered cuddly plush toy...
On the other hand, ScrewEyes has invented a Brain Drain pill. We're told it's just an antidote to Brain Grain, but we are specifically not told it turns you into a vicious evil monstrous version of yourself as a side-effect. (There is that scene where the children are forced to take the pills and it transforms them into honestly refreshingly cute -and more importantly quiet- chimpanzees for about a minute and a half, so I don't even know. But again, there are some pretty weird and uncomfortable implications there.) So when Rex and friends take the pills, the glowy-eyed, giant-fanged, screaming, roaring, slavering monsters they become are... Well, those are apparently supposed to be "real" dinosaurs. I wish I was kidding. This is meant to show us what our nonhuman protagonists were like before they got high on Brain Grain. Yup, even the hadrosaur is bloodthirsty. I... I need a beer.
This, ultimately, is why I hate this movie with the white-hot passion of a thousand stars. If you are a dinosaur in the world of this movie, you must either be a vicious primeval murderbeast or a giant toy that's safe to leave the kiddies with. The only thing you can't be is a normal animal. Really, the most haunting thing about "We're Back" is that it reminds us all of how people who do not understand dinosaurs think of dinosaurs! You can only be either Barney or a monster, and it'd be absurd to imagine you as just another animal.
That is, unless you are an extant avian. Believe it or not, and here comes the second of the two good things I have to say about "WBAD", the movie has this weird bird motif going on. It's set during Thanksgiving, one of the human characters is named Nuthatch, you've got the bookends with the annoying little baby bird, the villain gets his comeuppance at the claws of a Parliament of crows (I will consider those corvids the real heroes of the picture), and we even get a very brief impression of a little nonavian dinosaur with feathers on it's head (and only there, but it's the early 90's and that's the most you could hope for back then). It all makes me wonder if somebody working on this terrible piece of s**t knew...
(As it happens, the night I watched "We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story", the local water birds were crying and screaming and singing dirges in the dark. While I was writing this review, all the little songbirds in my backyard were likewise acting very strange. I am not entirely convinced that this was a coincidence.)
I haven't said much about the actual animation, have I? This is the second feature-length effort from Amblimation, and I'd like to be able to say they've improved since "An American Tail 2: Fievel Goes West" but "WBAD" manages to look worse. (It certainly does not help that they made "A Wish For Wings That Work" in the interim, since the animation in that Christmas special is quite excellent.) A lot of this has to do with the character designs, which range from uncreative to eye-explodingly bad (holy s**t, the Parasaurolophus...) I could swear the little girl character was drawn a completely different age in every shot. Overall, the animation is just sloppy and weirdly "off". It's good the movie is so short, because after a while the weird sloppy animation actually started to hurt my eyes.
Yeah, yeah, I think that's enough words about "We're Back!" Next up, a movie where a human transforms into a big, scary, flying dinosaur and, for some improbable reason, she is terribly upset about it.
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Art of the Day!
Man, dinosaurs just can't catch a break in animated films, can they?
Important Disclaimer for Concerned Parents: "Cool World" is a PG-13 rated film about a comic book artist whose character wants to have sex with him. This review will contain adult language and content and thus may not be appropriate for young children or people who act like young children.
Come with me, dear readers! We are going on a magical adventure through the imagination of Ralph Bakshi! On our journey, we will see all the wondrous things Mr. Bakshi sees when he closes his eyes! Won't that be so much fun?
You... you don't want to go on an adventure through Ralph Bakshi's mind? Well, frankly I don't want to either. But unfortunately, you can't have any kind of effective discussion of bizarre animation from the 1990's without addressing "Cool World". And so, we are on our way. Please keep your hands and arms inside your boat at all times, and for the love of God do not touch the water or even look at it. (I sincerely hope that's water...)
Love him, hate him, or dismiss him as a creepy old man with seriously reductive depictions of women in his films, you cannot argue with the fact that Ralph Bakshi has had one of the most fascinating careers imaginable as an artist. I once read a recent history of animation book (the title escapes me) that dedicated twice as much ink to Bakshi as it did to Don Bluth and noted that "only Walt Disney has made more animated feature films". Huh. "Cool World" is thus far the last of these films, and if Bakshi never gets around to making another feature, this will be a hell of a note to end on. And this is because this movie is essentially seeing what happens inside Ralph Bakshi's subconscious.
This is a strange thing to observe, since "Cool World" was famously born out of a perfect storm of executive meddling and flat-out desperation to get the damn thing finished. The film started life as a hard-R straight-up horror film about an artist literally haunted by his vengeful character who wants to seduce and murder him for creating her. That script was so heavily altered during production (oftentimes without Bakshi's knowledge, since changing everything about a movie without the director knowing about it always ends well) that halfway through filming the thing, lead actress Kim Basinger was operating under the assumption she was in a children's film. This is all so fascinating and helps to explain so much about why the film is such an incoherent mess that I am almost sad that the DVD is bare-bones. Bad movies deserve elaborate making-of documentaries too - maybe even more than the good movies do, just so we can see what went wrong.
The plot of "Cool World" is, and I quote:
That's hardly an exaggeration. Gabriel Byrne(?!?) plays Jack, an underground cartoonist who has been in jail for a while for... reasons... Come to mention it, the most important thing to know about "Cool World" is that it gives no f***s about silly things like why a main character is in jail or how the rules of its imaginary world work or why anything is even happening. (Edit: apparently, we are told that Jack murdered his wife's lover, but we are informed of this in a very easily-missed line of dialogue. Okay, then.)
While in jail, Jack invents both the comic "Cool World" and the character Holli Would, who is horrifying sexism incarnate. Imagine the weird, sleazy, scary, trashy relative of Red Hot Riding Hood that Red hates to talk about and you're almost there. Come to think of it, though, ALL of the characters in this movie are weird, sleazy, scary, trashy, gross, and basically impossible to like. Those are literally their only interesting and memorable personality traits. Hell, come to mention it, the whole damn movie is weird, sleazy, scary, trashy, smutty, gross, and impossible to like, but I think you've all gathered this by now.
Anyway, Jack creates the comic "Cool World" and is thereafter haunted by visions of Holli Would seducing him. Because surely it's every artist's dream to have one of their own brainchildren all up in their personal business, am I right? There wouldn't be anything awkward or questionable about that. And there is certainly nothing uncomfortable about watching it in a movie directed by Ralph Bakshi, is there?
Wait, hold up. Thankfully you do not have to wrap your brains around that just yet. Because I forgot the opening sequence of the movie, which is utterly mystifying and makes me wonder if this isn't our second movie in a row that could be interpreted as a wacky trip on powerful hallucinogenics. Or perhaps that the film itself was made by people on powerful hallucinogenics? Listen, as much as "LOL, this moovee wuz maed on teh drugs" is cliched, just LOOK at this thing!
We open with Harris, a soldier played by a very young and clearly only here to pay off some overdue bills and bad karma from a past life Brad Pitt. His character is about as close to a protagonist as we're going to get here, and he's the only kinda-likeable person in it. Anyway, Harris comes home from World War Two, takes his... mom...? on a motorcycle ride, and they both die in a horrible crash. Once this sequence of events has sunk in (except it really doesn't), Harris wakes up in Cool World (the place), which apparently exists independently already before "Cool World" (the comic). Maybe. Kinda. Remember, f***s given by this movie with regards to how things even work in it = zero.
Much later on Jack crosses over into Cool World and has totally hot, graphic, boundary-obliterating forbidden sex with Holli and the audience gets to enjoy every minute of it, especially if they're into cartoons banging humans, and in particular if they are into cartoons banging the very humans who created them.
AH-hahahahaha!!! I'm lying! Jack and Holli *do* have forbidden sex. That does happen. And it happens mostly offscreen and in the most coy and childish way imaginable (see above screenshot). I promise you I am not kidding. Remember, this went from a hard-R Ralph Bakshi movie to a PG-13 Ralph Bakshi movie, but with all the sleazy sex and violence intact. It's kind of impressive how the scene that was the very selling point of this movie is almost utterly ignored once we get to it. (You may argue amongst yourselves whether or not the PG-13 rated Ralph Bakshi movie about sex is a stranger creature than the Ralph Bakshi Christmas special for children.)
Anyway, somehow this forbidden act turns Holli into live-action Kim Basinger and also gives her and Jack weird cartoon powers or... something. So, fellow artists, do not ever have sex with your own characters in the unlikely event they come to life and seduce you, I guess. Holli is now able to escape into our world. And believe it or not, that's where the movie gets weird.
I really don't know what else there is to say about "Cool World". I should mention that the animation is very inconsistent in quality and there are characters and objects who honestly look like they're from something else entirely. On top of this, the mixture of live-action and animation is really bad. Like, headache-inducing bad. There are scenes where human actors wander through cardboard sets and scenes where animated characters interact with photographs of the real actors.
Is "Cool World" worth watching at all? Well the weird thing is, for all that Bakshi told the animators to do whatever they want and so there are always strange, creepy, distracting things happening in the margins of the movie, and for all that the whole plot is about kinky forbidden sex, the movie is just NOT interesting at all. Ultimately, I found it pretty rancid and hard to sit through. If you've never seen it, and you like Ralph Bakshi's other movies, it may still be bizarre enough to be almost worth watching out of curiosity. But you will need to have a strong drink handy if you do.
Art Evolved members should have a particularly strong drink ready for our next movie...
Today we begin what I shall be referring to in full as the Strange Animated Films from the 1990's Made By Random Studios Marathon. I needed to watch some good -or at least decent- animation after My Summer of Sequels, so I filled my Netflix queue with all the 90's animation I can find. It seems as though shortly after the Bronze Age of Disney animation got into full swing, every studio suddenly wanted their own animated features to release, and the situation got even crazier when "The Lion King" owned the box office like no other animated feature before it.
The films I'll be reviewing will be kind of, duh, random. And yes, we will creep into the early 2000's for a couple of them. But they are all interesting and strange in some way or other and worth revisiting and discussing... I hope... Sadly, a number of intriguing films were not available through Netflix, but then again, I am a little pressed for time (I am doing this for-fun project concurrently with -and I might as well spill the beans- a sudden influx of commissions I need to finish). Finally, before you cry, "But what about 'Ferngully'/'Pagemaster'/etc.?!?", try searching Nessie's.
It looks like we're getting the most tedious and aggravating films out of the way quickly. (You may notice a lack of "Space Jam" in the above list. This is due to the fact that I have nerd-raged enough about it as both a Looney Tunes fan and basketball enthusiast in the past. And, more importantly, I can already tell without even having seen it that "We're Back" will provide me with more than enough nerd rage-worthiness for one movie marathon.) On that note, with our first film, I will be washing off the stink of all those terrible ill-conceived shameless cash-grabs of sequels with... a terrible ill-conceived shameless cash-grab of a sequel! It's "An American Tail 2: Fievel Goes West". Oh joy.
For those of you who were mad at me for not doing any Don Bluth sequels during My Summer of Sequels, (a) chill the eff out, I said I was only doing Disney sequels right from the beginning; (b) I really hope you're happy now, since this is the only one I'll be even acknowledging. Now, to be fair, it was not surprising that Universal's newly-formed Amblimation unit would wish to make a sequel to "An American Tail" for it's very first foray into animated features. After all, it was up until a certain point the highest-grossing animated film of all time. What is surprising is everything else about "An American Tail 2: Fievel Goes West", starting with the fact that it's title is so inane, I just have to refer to it in full through the whole review.
A bit of poking around the Internet reveals that there are a surprising number of otherwise reasonable adults who have nostalgia for "An American Tail 2: Fievel Goes West", and there are a few who even prefer it over the original "An American Tail". These people are objectively wrong and they should feel bad. (I strongly suggest you watch it again as an adult before you argue with me here.) As I said during Don Bluth Month, I was never a big fan of "An American Tail", but I have since grown to appreciate it's darkness and it's willingness to stick with that weird, dark tone and frankly strange overall premise. And of course it also has that lovely James Horner music and gorgeous Don Bluth character and effects animation.
"An American Tail 2: Fievel Goes West" has got none of this. Well, that's not entirely accurate. James Horner is still around to contribute his themes from the first movie and to resurrect a song deleted from the first film. Speaking of the songs, all you really need to know about "An American Tail 2: Fievel Goes West" is that yes, we do get to hear a character sing "Somewhere Out There" again.
And the song is quickly interrupted by people jeering and complaining and throwing fruit until the character gives up singing it. This is immediately followed by Poppa making a long and astonishing speech that completely undermines the whole conceit of the original film. And this happens:
After seeing this gag, I started to imagine that everything happening in the film had to be the result of Fievel innocently stumbling onto a cache of the 19'th Century equivalent of powerful hallucinogenics. Oh, and as for the hopeful-signature song from this film, the aforementioned "new" song, it... well, it deserves better than the slightly creeptastic scene it's sung in here.
Don Bluth (I could only imagine him drinking heavily during the entirety of "An American Tail 2: Fievel Goes West") and Steven Spielberg parted ways some time after "The Land Before Time". So Bluth is not at all involved in this film. And although he was supposedly the head of Amblimation, Spielberg apparently was only involved to personally direct James Stewart. (Oh yeah, Jimmy Stewart's very last IMDB film credit ever = "An American Tail 2: Fievel Goes West". God's honest truth. *Sigh...*) I say this because the thing that struck me about "An American Tail 2: Fievel Goes West" is that what you see onscreen constantly throughout the film are all the very worst impulses of the people behind the original "An American Tail". Not only that, but it's louder, sillier, and throws the characters in a new situation that does not really suit them at all ("Fievel in Space" would have only been a little more ridiculous, given that this is already a movie where a character living in 1890's New York City idolizes Western icons that weren't popular on the east coast until well into the 1920's).
"An American Tail 2: Fievel Goes West" also feels an awful lot like a television cartoon. It has a TV series plot and TV series pacing; hell, it's only about 75 minutes long but you feel every second of it. "An American Tail 2: Fievel Goes West" in fact was followed by a Saturday morning series that, from the looks of it, is now largely forgotten and perhaps deservedly so.
One thing I'm not entirely sure I've gotten across effectively is just how deeply bizarre "An American Tail 2: Fievel Goes West" is, especially as a sequel, but really just as a thing that exists and that was released on -again, honest truth- the very same weekend as "Beauty and the Beast". There's a spider character who *pukes* webs at people. There's a highly uncomfortable scene where Tiger the cat is worshiped as a god by old-timey "Injun" stereotype desert critters. There's another highly uncomfortable scene where the lead antagonist is squished against the gigantic breasts of a woman who constantly screeches "Oh, pussy! My PUSSY!!!" This last gag was apparently so funny and edgy and mature to the filmmakers that they had to repeat it near the end.
Like I said, the whole thing has to have been a hallucination. Along with the aforementioned terrible Saturday morning series, Universal also produced two direct-to-video sequels long after the fact which both sport headache-inducing subtitles and a total disregard for the fact that these characters were ever out West at all, so my theory is as good as confirmed as far as I care.
Next up, another early 90's film that is weird as f***, but for very different reasons.
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Sketch of the Day!
Apropos of nothing, here are some live studies of a female Mallard.
The Pride's Corner Drive-In is one of the last of it's kind. Opened in 1953 and still a cult favorite among the locals, it's one of the few remaining authentic Drive-In experiences available. And I say authentic because up until recently, they still used the little speaker thingies for show sound (you must now tune into a radio station. This is an upgrade, to be sure, but I wish I had known about it beforehand. I would have brought along a walkman or a little radio and headphones.)
Additionally, one of the highlights to a visit to Pride's Corner is their intermission, because they show a handful of oftentimes hilarious animated shorts promoting their wonderful, wonderful refreshment stand:
Lights are kept nice and bright during the intermission, the field is kept as clean as can be expected, and patrons are all but encouraged to bring chairs and coolers and sit outside under the stars. The only caveat is that the restrooms are... well, they could use an upgrade. But you get a double-feature for less than twenty bucks a carfull, and that cannot be beat.
The lot opens at around seven and shows start at dusk, but we arrived a little late both because this was a very impulsive night out and, well, none of us were enthusiastic for the first feature; we were only going for Batman.
The first feature was "Total Recall" and... err...
Yeah.
"The Dark Knight Rises", on the other hand, was very good. Very, very good. And I am pretty sure that anyone who was going to see it either already has or is about to very soon. So there's not really any reason for me to launch into a big, long review. Instead, I'll share some of my stray observations, and they will include vast galloping herds of unmarked spoilers. I should note that my main point of reference for these characters is "Batman: The Animated Series" and its spinoffs, and IMO there's nothing wrong with that:
* - So, this is the second major work of fiction I've experienced this summer where the villain's motivation initially appears to be totally noble. I say initially, because it eventually turns out that both Bane and Amon are merely exploiting their followers' wishes for social justice in order to amass an army that will first attack the people in power, and both villains ultimately simply want to cause chaos and utterly destroy the city they initially claimed they would save. Interesting. I'm sure there's already been a lot of digital ink spilled over this across the message boards, though.
* - My main, but really my only, complaint with the film is that the Talia Al'Ghul story needed a lot more room to breathe. There's also something kind of ridiculous about Bruce Wayne being an emo recluse for eight years, but fortunately the plot gets rolling pretty quickly and so there's not much of that.
So, all in all, a grand night out. If there's a drive-in theater anywhere near you, go to a show sometime. Do what you can to keep this unique theatrical experience alive.
The Animator's Survival Kit, by Richard Williams - I was looking forward to reading this massive tome by the great Richard Williams. It's very informative, filled with excellent artwork, and a good reference -- if you do not already have one that covers the same subjects. Because unfortunately, for me, this book didn't really contain any information that was new to me (my copies of Preston Blair's instructional books for Walter Foster have long ago been loved to death. Don't worry, I have the very nice omnibus edition as well.) Williams also does not talk much about his experiences in the animation world, and because he has had one of the most interesting careers imaginable as an animation artist, it was a huge letdown to find the book nearly half-filled with walk-cycles instead.
Color and Light, by James Gurney - Some time ago, on his excellent blog, James Gurney wrote a long and extensive series of posts about color theory, lighting effects, and different painting media and their lightfastness and whether "Cadmium Red", for example, will be exactly the same no matter what paint brand you buy. All of that information, ALL of it and plenty more, is collected in this book. It is definitely worth a read for all artists, but is probably especially useful for painters. For the rest of us, at least it is a very nice compilation of Gurney's beautiful art.
Chanticleer and the Fox, illustrated by Marc Davis - Speaking of beautiful art, this picture book is illustrated with the wonderful concept art Marc Davis created for the shelved Disney film based off the tales of Reynard the Fox and Chanticleer the Rooster. The character designs are wonderful, even if the story is a little mediocre. As it happens, this little book is more informative and interesting than some of the longer collections of never-produced Disney animation. Speaking of...
Disney Lost and Found, by Charles Solomon - Full disclosure: I read this a while ago and I don't even remember if I reviewed it here. It has, as you might expect, a lot of art in it. It also has very little explanation as to what you are looking at. Like, one of the particularly strange paintings in the first third of the book will simply have subtext that says, "This was going to be a scene in 'Rescuers Down Under'." The two chapters that contain art from two features that were never made have *just* a bit more information. "My Peoples" probably would have been charming, but "Wild Life" would have been fascinating. Funny thing is, there's more information about one of the lost films in this incredible, and very sad, blog post then there is in the book.
"The Butterfly Ball" - Three years ago(!?!) I wrote a post about a strange animated music video that turned out to be part of a larger concert film. That film quickly went into my Netflix "saved" queue and now it's finally here and I have watched it.
Welp.
Turns out "Love is All" may be the ultimate case of "Context will not help you in any way at all, sorry." That animated video is actually the least strange part of the show. I'm at a loss to describe the concert film, but there's a part of me who wants to rent it again next time I have a party and have it running in the background, just to see how long it takes for guests to wonder WTF they are looking at.
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Sketch of the Day!
Hey, finally a current sketch! Here is my incredibly appropriate contribution to a stunningly significant recent historical event:
The full list of reviews from My Summer of Sequels.
During a time period roughly stretching between 1994 to 2008, Walt Disney Television Animation created nearly thirty dubious sequels to popular (or not) Disney Animated Canon features, nearly all of which went straight to video. No, I did not watch each and every one of them, just the ones available via Netflix that are supposedly not terrible. (And strictly speaking, I didn't have to watch any of them.)
This was a deeply strange and mostly regretful period in animation history. Here are eight reasons why I call it the Dork Age:
We've made it! We're at the end! We've only got one more movie to tackle!
And if you are at all curious about any of the DTV sequels I did not cover during this project, you better watch them and write about them on your blog yourself. Or go watch the much more extensive two-part episodeof The Nostalgia Chick on the same subject that -and you have to believe me here- I just now became aware of. Because I cannot emphasize enough that I am done with these damned things. Forever.
So DisneyToon made direct sequels, distant epilogue sequels, next generation sequels, alternate point-of-view interquels, all-dog country band involving midquels (once again, writer who came up with that plot point, what the f**k?), and even an alternate-universe time-travel retcon-the-whole-original-to-hell-and-back-quel. And if I am not mistaken, "The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning" (which sometimes goes by the utterly confounding title, "The Little Mermaid 3: Ariel's Beginning") is their only true prequel. And boy, don't we all love prequels? You bet! Prequels are always a good idea!
I very strongly believe that of all the sequels I have subjected myself to during this project, this one was the very worst. And a big part of the reason why is that, like many prequels, it is ultimately pointless. We know where these characters end up. Any drama in the prequel is kind of silly, since no matter what happens during the movie, we know the characters survive to be in the original movie. Since the characters are who they are in the original film, there isn't much new you could learn about them in a prequel that wouldn't directly contradict things in the original.
And then, there is the question of conflict. Now, think back to "The Little Mermaid". There actually was a briefly referenced potentially interesting back-story mentioned there: Ursula states that she once lived in Triton's palace. I was thinking maybe the prequel would tell that story.
Well, guess what? There is a bombastic power-hungry female antagonist named Marina in "Ariel's Beginning". She's part of the palace staff and is obsessed with her appearance, which leads this this bit of WTF in the end credits:
Yeah, really.
Anyway, Marina deeply resents Ariel and Triton. She has a villain song solo, a desire to do horrible things to all the nice creatures in Atlantica, a purple color scheme, deep blue and violet rings around her eyes, crazy hair, pet eels...
...and she very definitely does not turn into Ursula by the end of the movie. It's flabbergasting, since the whole movie seems to be building to this. She's locked in jail, with the weird implication that everyone forgot about her by the time the original happened. And this is the LEAST stupid thing about "Ariel's Beginning"!
Because here's the thing. During the making of "Ariel's Beginning", if there was a right decision and a wrong decision to be made, the filmmakers instead took a third option: make a stupid decision. And the entire film is profoundly stupid. Like a lot of the sequels I've seen during this project, it genuinely feels more like a really really crappy fanfiction than an officially authorized Disney movie. But this time, it almost feels as though the writers were actively trolling the young Ariel-loving target audience.
You know how I said that most of these sequels could more accurately be subtitled, "The Search For More Money"? This one could more accurately be subtitled, "Whatever! You'll Pay To See It! F*** You!"
Here's the conflict of "Ariel's Beginning". Triton forbids Ariel to do something. Ariel does it anyway. Triton gets mad. Ariel flees to pursue the forbidden thing. Triton realizes he has gone too far and is very sad, so he sends a rescue team. Ariel saves the day somehow. Triton admits he was wrong, sets everything to right, and good times are had by all.
I swear I am not kidding. The plot of the prequel to "The Little Mermaid" is "The Little Mermaid". I know we've run into DTV sequels whose plots are essentially identical to their originals, but the fact that this happens before the original makes it so much worse. It ends up looking like the characters in the original movie have not learned a thing from the previous similar events.
That and you've got the details of the plot, which is that long ago, Triton got to see his wife and mother of their eight or nine daughters get run over by a pirate ship(!?!?!) while all the merpeople were having fun and playing music. And so Triton declares war on... music. Not pirates. Music was the problem there. Ariel grows up without music until she learns that it is a thing thanks to Flounder and Sebastian, and you can guess the rest.
So we get to see Flounder beat-boxing and playing air-guitar, which is even more tedious than it sounds, and we also get to see him generally acting not the least little bit like he does in the original (for extra fun times, he also has been given a screechy, earsplitting, hyperactive little kid voice -- though thankfully not a lot of screentime). The animation is sloppy, to the point where they forget that the whole thing takes place in water and they forget to do things like not break the 180 degrees rule. I have not got the slightest idea what in the hell the aforementioned villain was exactly trying to accomplish. Or, come to mention it, why any of the characters were doing the things they were doing.
There's also the fact that it was very prescient of me to watch that Patton Oswalt sketch linked above some time before I watched this. Because in opening scenes of this prequel, Ariel is a little girl and her mom dies and she's sad. Honest to God.
And oh, the songs. They are a disgrace. When your best song is a cover of "Jump in the Line" (no, they couldn't even be bothered to write a new original song for Sebastian; that tells you everything you need to know about this "Little Mermaid" prequel), and even the villain song is terrible, you don't deserve to even have "Little Mermaid" in your title.
"The Little Mermaid 3" was famously, mercifully, Disney's very last official DTV sequel. All told, they spent fourteen years making sequels and made nearly thirty of the damn things. It was a very weird and mostly regretful period in the studio's history.
There is a part of me who is glad that I satisfied my morbid curiosity about this, but it's going to take an awful lot to detox my brain.
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Sketch of the Day!
Hipster Tiktaalik was hating DTV sequels before it was cool!
In case you were wondering, there's a reason why I am doing My Summer of Sequels. It took me a while to realize it but here it is.
You can't fairly call the time period of Disney that roughly covers the 2000's the Dork Age without covering the DTV sequels. Because when you get right down to it, they are an integral part of the reason why this was the Dork Age for Disney. Make a seemingly endless string of direct-to-video sequels (nearly all of which could be subtitled, to borrow a phrase, "The Search For More Money") to your classic films and your classic films start to lose their special-ness. I've mentioned this before in an earlier post, and no, I will not be covering the sequel that prompted it ("The Fox and the Hound 2"; "Dumbo 2" never happened, thank the gods old and new). Even though I briefly considered doing so. Even though it was right there in the queue ready to go. Chronologically, it's review would have gone right about here. But I caved. You win, Disney DTV Sequels. You broke me.
And anyway, if I covered the sequel (actually a midquel so that, once again, the characters can be shown in their more marketable forms) where Patrick Swayze voices the leader of an evidently very popular country band consisting of one human playing guitar and five dogs barking and howling and yapping along (by the way, writer who came up with that plot point, what the f**k?), I'd obviously have to cover "Tarzan 2", the midquel where George Carlin voices a crazy old hermit gorilla. And the midquel where Belle rescues a baby bird and Beast goes out of his mind over that. And the sequel where Quasimodo falls in love with a chick and shows her a bell that is very literally beautiful on the inside (Get it? Get it?) And the sequel where Princess Kida reveals her people to the outside world for... reasons. And the sequel where Stitch basically becomes the Pikachu equivalent to 625 other Stitch-like creatures. And the one where... why am I even bringing these up?
I hope covering the sequel where Cinderella's wicked stepmother gains magic powers and alters history makes up for all this.
On to the terrible horrible no-good very bad task at hand. If anything positive is to be said about "Cinderella 3: A Twist in Time," it's that it is at least one of the more conceptually complicated sequels in the pack. Cinderella and Prince Doormat are celebrating their anniversary and the Fairy Godmother is there to do... absolutely nothing important except accidentally set the plot in motion. See the action here very wisely shifts right to Lady Tremaine and the stepsisters.
Side-note: during my last trip to Walt Disney World, I realized that if I am ever a Face Character (Characters who show their real faces, can speak to the guests, and can never break character ever), I want to be a stepsister. They have the best job out of all of the female Faces. Every other Face has to be polite and nice and happy to see all the children. The stepsisters, on the other hand, *have* to be rude and nasty and bratty. That is awesome!
Another side-note: I cannot even imagine all the important plot points I must have missed out on by skipping "Cinderella 2: Dreams Come True". I can't. Seriously, you guys.
So anyway, Anastasia and Drizella are whining and moaning all day and Lady Tremaine is seething over the fact that she could be the absolute worst and scariest of all the Disney Villains since she is just so needlessly cruel to every living thing within line-of-sight - but she doesn't have powers. Shortly thereafter, Anastasia stumbles upon the anniversary party and poor dingbatty Fairy Godmother drops her wand right in her hiding spot. Tremaine in turn nicks it from Anastasia, and now we are all well and truly f**ked.
Here's where things get... ehhhh... mildly interesting in a badly-written fanfiction way: Lady Tremaine uses the wand to travel back in time to when the whole Search For the Girl Who Fits the Shoe business happens (the most genuinely brilliant aspect of this movie is its acknowledgement that, again to borrow a phrase, strange magical women distributing transparent footwear to depressed girls is no basis for a system of government). She makes the shoe fit Anastasia, deletes Cinderella from the Prince's memories, and we suddenly find ourselves in a genuine "What If...?" Disney movie.
At a certain point, I realized that this movie was just turning into Megamorphs: Back to Before(stay with me). Somehow, Cinderella remembers what happens, so she has to spend the tedious bulk of the movie convincing the Prince that something is terribly wrong. Couple problems here: The DisneyToon studio just was not equipped to handle Silver Age style character designs. Cinderella and the Prince are onscreen an awful lot and the TV studio budget does not do them any favors. It's a little like watching Barbie and Ken court each other (and not in the fun "Toy Story 3" way). Furthermore, while Cindy at least gets a little bit of character development, the Prince appears to have all the awareness of a houseplant. Actually, given what I've seen of my houseplants, less awareness. It takes him way too long to finally figure out what's up.
And some time after he finally does figure things out, he jumps right out the window.
Like you do.
I have to give credit to this scene, as it actually woke me up. Like, did I really just see that?
Yup. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I am very proud to present you with DisneyDirectToVideoSequels.gif (Note: Not actually labeled as such and you can blame the Photobucket Apocalypse.)
Just trust me when I say that yes, this actually happens, and no, context will not help you in the least. It's also way funnier in the film because as you see, it is animated on ones, even though it happens so fast you could blink and miss it. So whoever was in charge of this little scene of WTF really put their heart into it.
After this scene, the only interesting aspects of "Cinderella 3: Electric Boogalee" are some honestly poignant character development in Anastasia, and a Dark Pumpkin Coach which is way more metal than it sounds.
Next up, our very last sequel ever! Seriously, I am not even acknowledging that Disney DTV Sequels are even a thing after this.
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Sketch of the Day!
Really Old Heraldry Studies, fit for a much more interesting Princess:
