There are a lot of great articles in TV Guide's Summer 1993 Parent's Guide to Children's Entertainment Issue but I think this one might be my favorite.
I dearly miss Roger Ebert. His yearly Movie Guides were a huge influence on me, and I'm sure they are how I learned how to write a good essay. Funny, I wasn't really into the "Siskel and Ebert" show. In fact, I think this article was my main interaction with Gene Siskel as a critic. I miss him too, but here he comes across as the crankiest of cranky old men. I'll let it speak for itself but I really want to see the alternate "Honey, I Blew Up the Kid" he proposes...
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Art of the Day!
More MerMay Mermaids! Goodness knows what we're drawing for August!
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?
"Return to Neverland" got a theatrical release in America in February of 2002. The opening sequence quickly drops us smack into the London Blitz. Our young heroine, Jane, is constantly aware that her country has been plunged into a violent war, her city is under attack, and her family is in constant danger as death is suddenly a moment-to-moment possibility.
Once again, it probably looks like I am making this plot point up, but I promise you I am not. It was probably unintentional, given the length of time given in making an animated film even one as half-assed as this, but intentional or not, we have here a post-9/11 Disney movie.
And it is a God-damned direct-to-video "Peter Pan" sequel that was clearly put into theaters at the last minute as a shameless cash grab.
I'll admit the setup, the very idea of setting a sequel to "Peter Pan" in the middle of World War Two (by the way, hell of a context for kids to learn about these events for the first time) is fascinating, and it might have actually worked out had they spent more effort on it. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, this film is half-assed. Every single thing about it is half-assed. The animation is far worse in quality than "Pooh's Grand Adventure" (for the record, the two films were done in different Disney studios. Moment of silence for the international branches of Disney Animation.) The songs are terrible and feel even more like an obligation. And there is some use of fully-rendered computer animation that... Conspicuous CGI doesn't even cover it.
And then, there's the main conflict of the movie. It's not the fact that Captain Hook is back and has traveled to our world to kidnap a descendent of one of the characters in the original story and now Peter has to save them and blah. (There's a lot of originality in these "Peter Pan" sequels isn't there?) Nope, it's a conflict that's alarmingly common in children's fiction and that drives me up the God damned wall.
In this film there are two opponents: faith and skepticism. Jane, who -just as a reminder- is living during a time period when her home was likely to be bombed into oblivion at any second, is skeptical and realistic about her situation. And according to arguable insane troll logic of this film, if you are a person who is skeptical and realistic about anything, you are ALSO a person who believes in nothing. So Jane doesn't believe in Peter Pan or magic or wonder or childhood whimsy or fun or getting any sort of enjoyment out of life. But her mother and little brother Believe! Oh, wouldn't it be better for Jane if she just Believed! If she could stop worrying so much about her family dying horribly at any moment and live in a wonderful world of make-believe and denial and... yeah, if you can't tell by now, this whole subplot is f***ing ridiculous. It's handled as badly and clumsy as that one episode of "Friendship is Magic" that p**sed everyone off and that I am probably going to quickly and strongly regret ever bringing up. It's that ridiculous.
As an aside, it should be noted that at least neither "Return to Neverland" nor "Feeling Pinkie Keen" handle this theme in a way that is as nauseatingly bad, deeply insulting, and even downright dangerously as "Tinkerbell and the Great Fairy Rescue" does. I'm not covering the Tinkerbell movies here, even though up until the third one they were much better than I expected. But in case you are blissfully unaware, in "Great Fairy Rescue", the hero is a little girl who believes in Fairies (who are absolutely real in the world of the film) and her main antagonist is her own father, who is -pause for drama- a skeptical biologist. You cannot imagine how much I would love to be making all of this up. Like all the mean old adults in this movie, he's under the assumption that that Fairies aren't real, so he flat-out tells his daughter to stop "studying" the Fairies and even throws her Sketchbook away when he sees that she's filled it with Fairies. Because if there is anything scientists are known for, it's that they will completely discourage their own children from using their imagination or engaging in creative play of any kind because scientists themselves suffer from a complete and utter lack of imagination. And as we all know, all scientists operate under the assumption that they already know everything there is to know about the world and that there is absolutely nothing new at all to learn anywhere ever. That's totally how science works. And when confronted with firsthand evidence or one living specimen of a creature that for centuries was assumed to be extinct or mythical, they will treat it as cruelly as humanly possible. Lastly, in this day and age, we very very definitely need a movie for very young girls where science is bad and wrong. Yeah, f*** you very much, writers of "Tinkerbell and the Great Fairy Rescue."
I should also note that I have a lot of problems with the opposite version of this "skepticism is bad and so you should believe in everything" theme, as it so often and easily warps into "using your imagination is bad and so you should be uncreative and boring".
There's also a weird spit motif going on in "Return to Neverland", but that's neither here nor there. The -sigh- Indian Camp makes an appearance in this film, but it is unpopulated, which is actually more uncomfortable than not addressing it at all. And after a while, since they are onscreen more prominently here, the slow realization that the Lost Boys are essentially running around in fursuits gets... awkward.
But not as awkward as this thing that shows up in the end credits, which is as good a note to end on as any:
OK, let's just get it right on the table right away: Yes, "Song of the South" is a racially problematic film. And there are a few scenes that are downright weird and uncomfortable.
Having finally watched the film, it is absolutely understandable why Disney doesn't quite know what to do with it. Disney's usual method of dealing with the inconvenient spiky bits in the cotton candy of their films is to cut them right out. Unfortunately, there's no way to cut out the controversial portions in "Song" without altering the film beyond comprehension. And so, "Song of the South" was put on "permanent retirement" after it's anniversary re-release in 1986.
"Song of the South" quickly became the forbidden fruit of animation fans. I'd never ever get a chance to watch it, so I ran on what little information I could get out of animation history books. And nearly all of the books agreed on one thing: The animated portions of the film are fabulous, and probably the best animation to come out of the studio's features around World War Two. But the live-action portions are so inexcusably racist, they will melt your face off.
Well, what the history books don't tell you about those same live-action portions is this: Aside from being racially problematic*, they are also really boring. Really and truly and astonishingly boring.
The only bright spot in the live-action segments is the character of Uncle Remus himself. Warm and grandfatherly, his relationship with the unforgivably annoying child characters is very believable and sweet. The film picks up once he enters the story, and he leads us into the film's big "Holy Sh*t" Moment, about fifteen minutes in.
For this is where the animation begins, and it does so in a moment of... I can honestly and non-sarcastically call it Disney Magic. There are three animated stories in all, each with a signature song that I was surprised to already know all the words to. Disney may have Vaulted "Song of the South" for good, but they have lost no love for the songs nor the animated characters. (This is as good a time as any to admit Splash Mountain may be among my favorite rides if I have to choose.)
The animation is lively and gorgeous, and what's especially interesting about the animation is the fact that it doesn't really feel like anything else Disney was doing at the time. The humor and characterization both have much more in common with what you'd see in contemporary Looney Tunes, and there are scenes in the film that are directly referenced in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". Speaking of, the moments when live-action and animated characters interact are still something truly special to see. Indeed, the only bad thing I can say about the animation here is that there is far, far too little of it.
The animated sequences are the reason why one should go through all the trouble of finding a way to watch "Song of the South". The cultural kerfuffle over the film has, sadly, overshadowed it for... well, turns out during my research that this film has been causing controversy practically since the day it was conceived. The thing is, Disney's self-censorship of the film has just exacerbated it beyond reason. I am in agreement with the Antagony and Ecstasy blog that if Disney quietly put "Song of the South" out on a limited edition Blue-Ray tomorrow, honestly most of the people buying it would be doing so just to see what the whole hubbub is all about. Until that day comes, you will, sadly, have to find the film through unconventional means. And I shouldn't encourage this kind of thing, but what choice has Disney left us with?
Well in any case, it's far more important to note now that I have caught up on every big-deal classic Disney film that contains animation! It's been a hell of a journey, and one that I recommend to anyone with even the slightest interest in animation.
That said, I'm not stopping until Disney does. Bring on "Winnie the Pooh" and "Wreck-It Ralph" and "King of the Elves" (maybe?) and "The Snow Queen"! For more posts in this ongoing series, go here, or click the Chronological Disney Animated Canon tag below.
* - "But Trish, since I don't want to go through the trouble of finding a copy of the movie, just how racially problematic *are* the live-action portions of 'Song of the South'?"
Well first off, thanks for asking a person who has actually sat down and watched "Song of the South" rather than, as I suspect, one of the many, many people who refuse to experience controversial media yet form an opinion about them anyway. But the best way to find out how offensive "Song of the South" is to *you* (and notice the emphasis on *you*, because I simply have no way of knowing what would offend *you* as different people are sensitive to entirely different things), if you're really curious, is to just watch the darn thing yourself.
Listen, essays have been written on this subject. Long ones. By people far, faaar more qualified to talk about this kind of controversial and highly emotional issue. So I don't know what I could add to the argument, but I feel I should add something. But I highly suspect I wouldn't feel compelled to elaborate on any of this if Disney hadn't self-censored the film.
And this is because honestly, the awkward ethnic identity politics here are about as offensive as other films and animation and media from the time period. As I said, I didn't find "Song of the South" as face-meltingly racist as I found it just really, really weird and uncomfortable. What do I mean by that? Well, remember, the less you resembled what Walt Disney would consider "normal", the more problematic your onscreen depiction would be. Which means that anything uncomfortable in "Song of the South" is in good company with other (suspiciously not censored) Disney films. What's up, Peter Pan. How's Princess Tiger Lily? More to the point, how's her entire tribe?
The most obviously offensive aspect of "Song of the South" is the very, very bizarre "American Adventure"-ish Disney spin and big giant smiley face it puts on one of the most horrible chapters in United States history... maybe. The movie doesn't state openly whether it takes place before, during, or after the Civil War and that's what most of the awkward scenes orbit around.
Okay, details. So in "Song of the South" there's a rich old white woman who lives in a mansion that just happens to be right near a field where poor black people cheerily whistle their way to work and are generally depicted (much like other non-WASPs in Disney's movies) as weird/scary/fascinating alien Others. The word "slave" is never spoken out loud ever, and indeed the film takes the longest possible route out of it's way to avoid any racially charged language at all. Annoying Little Boy's best friend is a black kid, and the film interestingly does not approach this friendship as unusual at all. But then you notice that said best friend is conspicuously absent during the big (and ultimately kinda pointless) birthday party scene without explanation. The only truly mean human characters are a pair of unspeakably cruel poor white boys (though that's pretty loaded in its own way come to mention it). Uncle Remus lives in his own little shack and it is shown late in the film that he can pack up and leave whenever he likes. Annoying Little Boy's mother doesn't want her son playing with Uncle Remus, and in one of the more awkward scenes, Uncle Remus does not act more assertive when confronted by her. This is all because she is really really prejudiced against... storytellers. Yup. As it happens, the film is so obtuse and reliant on outmoded ethnic stereotypes from several generations back, I found myself saying "OMG, this is so racist!" much much less often than I was saying, "uhhh?" or "wait, what?" But if I am to be truly honest, I found the racial politics in a slightly more recent film more troubling. And there wasn't anything in "Song of the South" that was so openly racist that it melted my face off the way an obscure number in this stone-cold Christmas classic did. And "Song of the South" didn't p*ss me off nearly as much as "Gone With the Wind" did, so there's that. -----
Sketch of the Day!
Such controversy! Such drama! Let's wash it all away with in-progress turtles!
It's early in the summer of 1903 in the picturesque little town of Fulton County, located somewhere in the mythical turn-of-the-last-century midwest that Walt Disney so loved. And here begins the tale of what is perhaps his most forgotten film with animation in it: "So Dear to My Heart".
The film is as obscure as Disney films get. It's tucked away among the Anthology Features (obscure in their own right) like an afterthought. The very few scenes of animation within the film are at least as interesting as anything in "Melody Time" or "Make Mine Music", and include some fine moments indeed.
It's too bad the film surrounding those approximately fifteen minutes of full animation is such a slog.
OK, kiddies, gather 'round. As I said before, it's 1903 and we're somewhere in the mythical candy-colored midwest that very likely existed nowhere else but in the fertile mind of Walt Disney. As legend has it, Disney grew up on a farm where... hell with it. Suspiciously, no two accounts agree on what Disney's childhood was like. But we do know that in any case, whether it was rosy and happy or horrifically traumatic, he had a lifelong affinity for farms and for the Good Old Days.
Oh, the Good Old Days! When little boys lived with their fire-and-brimstone-and-horrible-guilt-and-blatant-contradiction preachin' grannies and did all the chores that didn't involve sewing or knitting or weaving or cooking or beating rugs with those rug-beating things. When uncle Burl Ives would come over with his guitar and his folky songs and little cousin Tildy, who has been a mite bit grumpy lately since her application to the Lollipop Guild was rejected cause her little squeakie voice wasn't *quite* grating enough. Where you could raise yourself a baby lamb to win the Special Prize at the county fair, even though that lamb is... well, you know...black! Where boys could tromp through the deep woods where the owl blinks and the werewolf howls and the Skunk Ape screams, and look for bee trees, whereupon they could raid the beehive without incident and bring a fortune in honey into town. Where the highlight of a little boy's day was puttin' pretty pictures in his scrapbook, and hallucinating while reading it. And where the highlight of a little girl's day was pouting and whining and runnin' home cryin' to her daddy.
Aw, gee wizz! You all don't know how nice we had it back in the Good Old Days! You kids these days and yer card games and yer face books and yer motor cars and yer rap music and yer public schools and yer piercings and yer electricity and yer animal rights and yer child labor laws and yer civil rights and yer women's lib...
As you may have guessed, I have a healthy level of cynicism about nostalgia for the Good Old Days.
But all criticism aside, the animation is very pretty, and it has some truly beautiful moments. The idea is that Jeremiah (the little boy) is collecting pictures in a scrapbook and he imagines them coming to life. The animated characters interact with the scrapbook elements in really inventive ways. At the same time, all the animation is at the service of musical numbers with inspiring messages for the young audience, and these songs are very, very boring when they aren't downright head-scratching. There's a reason why you don't hear these ditties much anymore. (My gosh, "Stick-to-itivity"...)
So overall, "So Dear To My Heart" is pretty dull and unintentionally very, very weird. It's SO aggressively a product of it's time that children will likely either be bored silly or find the movie as utterly baffling as a student film. It's ultimately of interest only to the hardcore Disney animation completest.
For more posts in this ongoing series, go here, or click the Chronological Disney Animated Canon tag below.
So here's our first loose end from the Disney Animated Canon, just recently available on Netflix. Actually, I'll consider it a good thing that I had to skip this one during the time I was originally watching/reviewing the Canon all those years ago, since "James and the Giant Peach" is a very interesting, all but forgotten film that deserves a bit of elbow room, rather than a quick paragraph-long review. The same could be said of the other three films I'll be reviewing over the next two weeks.
Some years ago, there was considerable debate as to which animated features made by Walt Disney Pictures should be considered "true" Disney films and which ones shouldn't. This was largely spurred by the glut of direct-to-video/DVD Disney sequels, as seen here, but the question is one that seems to have haunted Disney as long as I can remember. There is an Official Official List of films in the Disney Animated Canon, and even so, part of me wonders how much was added and subtracted just so Disney could say they've hit fifty films in all just last winter.
You see, back when I was a kid, if a Disney film contained animation, it was considered an "Animated Disney Animated Classic Animated Entertainment Event What is Animated." Simple enough. So clearly "Fantasia" and "Cinderella" and "Sleeping Beauty" were part of what would in the future be called the Canon, but so were things like "Victory Through Air Power" and "Song of the South" and even "TRON" (speaking of, here are more thoughts on this issue). If you were a movie and you gave Disney a reason to brag about it's animation legacy, you were in, which made a lot of sense back when Disney was hurting for things to brag about with regards to animated films. (To get a sense of what Disney was like in the late 70's through the mid 80's, picture a peacock who is desperately trying to replace his shiny display feathers, even as they are moulting.) As you can see here, when you count every notable Disney feature-length film with animation in it as part of the Canon, we left #50 in the dust years ago (then again, given the movie that gets to be number fifty by my reckoning is the much-derided "Dinosaur"...)
"The Nightmare Before Christmas" in particular has always had a strange and uncomfortable position within the Disney Animated Canon and, indeed, within Disney films period. When the film was initially released, Disney had little idea what to do with it, how to advertise it, and, most importantly (and tellingly) how to make it into a toy or a theme park ride or a Happy Burger King Kid's Club Meal. It took years and years for Disney to figure out how to appease fans of "Nightmare", and while one could argue that they are going way too far in the opposite direction, it's nice to see them doing anything at all with it. By far, the greatest bone thrown to "Nightmare Before Christmas" and it's fans is the appearance of Jack Skellington and company in "Kingdom Hearts" back before that series went off the rails in a way that is, come to mention it, truly impressive. For this reason, I'd have felt remiss if I hadn't included it in the Canon.
And if "Nightmare" counts then, by God! so does it's immediate successor. Which brings us, finally to today's entry in my journey through the Disney animated films I'd missed out on earlier for various reasons and just recently procured copies of (and never you mind how, though mad props to those of you who have supported this project). Ah, "James and the Giant Peach", what a wonderful little oddball in the history of animated films you are. It is very sad to reflect that, while Disney has taken so very long to acknowledge "Nightmare Before Christmas", "James" might as well be completely invisible.
Henry Selick, the director of both "Nightmare" and "James", and also of "Coraline" and the impressively bizarre "Monkeybone", is, God bless him and his beautifully crazy mind, the kind of director who makes whatever Bizzaries and Fantasies he would like to watch and screw you all if you don't like it. Which is why his adaptation of a Roald Dahl storybook lies among the best Dahl-inspired films. And this is because Roald Dahl, may he and his beautifully crazy mind rest in peace, always struck me as the kind of children's book author who wrote what he wanted and never mind if there are any concerned parents who don't like it. (Maurice Sendak is a close soul-brother.) To that end, his characters tend to face the most unthinkable trauma before some kind of magical thing or other whisks them away to their Happily Ever After. And I do mean "unthinkable". Very early on in "James and the Giant Peach", we are told by the sweetly grandfatherly voice of Pete Postlethwaite (and how I miss him!) how our young hero watched on helplessly as his kindly mother and father were eaten by an angry rhinoceros.
Methinks if almost any other children's book author at all had written something like that, it would warrant a passionate 😱 In a Roald Dahl book, getting maimed by an utterly random animal is Monday. Hanging with large invertebrates (here designed by the wonderful Lane Smith) is Tuesday.
The action inside and around the titular giant peach is why we're here and Selick's work in "James" is astonishing and wonderful. All the creatures have great physicality and marvelous little character moments. The same astounding attention to detail present in "Nightmare Before Christmas" is here too. The live-action bookends are a touch awkward... but I *did* just watch "Rock-A-Doodle", so I'm willing to let them slide.
So here we have a lost little gem that, I think, deserves a lot more attention. Next up, speaking of lost movies, we dig a little deeper into the Disney vault. For more posts in this ongoing series, go here, or click the Chronological Disney Animated Canon tag below.
A new month dawns and as it does, a loose end rears it's ugly head.
With any luck, I will have resolved several loose ends in September. To wit, "Rock-A-Doodle". It is now available via Netflix instant, where it was not available through Netflix at all during Don Bluth Month last year. My hideous dark twisted sense of completion and the private little hell that is my obsessive-compulsive disorder both demanded that I watch it and give a full review. I hope they are happy.
Where to start with "Rock-A-Doodle"? I don't know, but I feel that it's definitely worth noting that the story upon which the film is (very, very, very loosely) based had a long, very strange trip to the screen. Jim Hill tells the tale in excruciating detail here. It isn't hard to imagine Don Bluth hearing about the rejected project while working on "Robin Hood" and getting it hopelessly stuck in his head.
I should also note that personally, I was pretty messed up by the film. See, this is back when "The Land Before Time" was still my favorite movie and "All Dogs Go To Heaven" stung badly. The "All Dogs" video included a preview for a singularly strange looking upcoming animated film with a bunch of animals on an adventure down a river (promising) and a rooster Elvis impersonator (what?) I was hoping for a movie that would be on the level of Bluth's earlier films. Maybe -just maybe- we'd get something as good as "The Secret of N.I.M.H." Instead, we got "Rock-A-Doodle".
For those of you who haven't had the pleasure, here's the plot of "Rock-A-Doodle". I don't do plot summaries often but it's worth recounting the plot as it is probably the one thing critics of the film agree is the film's greatest problem. We start in space, where a bored-sounding Phil Harris (Baloo the Bear in "The Jungle Book", shameless Baloo clones in two subsequent Disney films) informs us that there is a singing rooster whose crowing raises the sun. Which would be an easier concept to take if we hadn't started in space. Anyway Chanticleer the rooster, king of the barnyard, is disgraced when the sun raises without his singing, and he runs away to The City to seek his fortune with folks who appreciate his golden syrinx (or whatever roosters crow with). This, naturally, causes the rains to come and flood the farm. Never you mind how the crops survive if Chanticleer banishes the rain with his singing, but a pretty straightforward animated folky tale so far, no?
"Rock-A-Doodle" takes precisely five minutes to run completely off the rails. That's when we suddenly shift to a live-action family struggling through a hurricane on their own farm.* The story of Chanticleer we just heard was actually a story read to the little boy of the family, because kids just love the Canterbury Tales. The child is played by the same kid who voiced the titular character of what was arguably the single most uncomfortable"Ren and Stimpy" episode ever. At least, I would have assumed the kid was being read a story if the narrator wasn't still hanging around and acting as if the tale of Chanticleer AND the story of the live-action family were both the God's honest truth. After some business that's way too pointlessly convoluted to get into here, the film switches back to animation, Chanticleer's friends set out to find him and bring him back to the farm and save the day, and we're introduced to the villain of the piece (I'll get to him later).
This transition back to animation is all prompted by the live-action kid transforming into an animated kitten. You can basically ignore all of this because it has no bearing whatsoever on the plot. None. I'm not kidding; everything introduced in the live-action sequence, including the very presence of humans in the world of this movie, is brought up in the very beginning and ending of the main story and in a few lines that appear to have been edited in during post-production and that is literally it. The whole rest of the movie completely ignores it.
So why even bother with the live-action sequences? It would appear as though either Don Bluth or his supervisors wanted to cash in on the popularity of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". Which seems like an absurd excuse, given that the few scenes that combine mediums aren't even as good as those in Walt Disney's old "Alice" shorts. Mind you, the source I found this out was TV Tropes, but it and other trivia out there about "Rock-A-Doodle" is believable in terms of animation behind-the-scenes stuff. They're unbelievable enough to be true.
So... Chanticleer's friends go to the city and take way, way too long to realize Chanticleer is now the biggest rock star in the country. Come to think of it, every action that should move the story along takes way, way, WAY longer than it reasonably should. They try to bring him back to the farm, but the rooster is distracted by... Goldie.
Goldie is another element of the film worth her own paragraph. Okay. She is a Golden Pheasant, apparently, and female even though there is not the vaguest attempt to make her resemble a female pheasant. What the character designer DID take pains to make her look like is a female human. I have often said that certain tetrapods just can't be made into appealing anthropomorphic animal-people. Goldie demonstrates this fact beautifully nightmare fuel-illy. The result of mixing poultry and beautiful girl results in what can comfortably be described as A Thing That Should Not Be.
According to TV Tropes, Goldie was meant to be as sexy as Jessica Rabbit. Yeah.
The script has a cavalcade of other brain farts. For an example, there's a scene where our heroes are banned from Chanticleer's concerts by the rooster's boss. Said boss may or may not be under the employ of the main villain depending on what particular scene in the movie we're talking about, but never mind that now. See, specifically, there is a sign at the concert hall barring "Cats, Dogs, Mice, and Birds". Yeah. The heroes disguise themselves as penguins to get in, but it turns out that everyone at the concert -not just the heroes- must disguise themselves as penguins. Because... ??? (It seems unnecessarily pedantic at this point to note the searing logical flaw in having avian performers and patrons in penguin costumes at a concert that bans birds. Ye Gods, this movie.)
The songs, aside from maybe the opening number, are annoying and the animation is frequently terrible. Things to note in a film that arrived in theaters in-between "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Lion King". Actually, this is one of the few cases where Bluth and company farmed some of the animation out to make the release date deadline, and a lot of the same problems seen in "The Pebble and the Penguin" can be spotted here too. Characters "shimmer" and shift around in the picture plane, and they casually change size and perspective while standing still. (I have heard, since doing Don Bluth Month last year, that certain of his films were released out of production order, which may help explain why "Rock-A-Doodle" showcases the worst elements of both "All Dogs" and "Penguin".)
With all of this in mind, all of it, watching "Rock-A-Doodle" for the first time in all these years was... not as painful an experience as I anticipated.
I think I know why. Most Don Bluth fans haven't sat down and watched "The Pebble and the Penguin", and that one movie puts everything else in perspective.
Also, as it happened, I experienced a bunch of weird things during the day before I watched this movie in the evening. It was back when I was still entertaining my little cousin. We went to the Wildlife Park and encountered two field trip groups, with all the attendant chaos that implies. I got into what can only be described as a "Who's On First" routine with a person who saw my Sketchbook. We tie-dyed, which turned out to be way more involved than I remembered. We found parasite-infested caterpillars in the veggie garden. We watched a Barbie direct-to-video movie and...
You know what? It's Tangent Time. That last thing might have made the biggest difference. You want to appreciate a lesser movie from a quality animation studio, you go watch one of the "Barbie" movies. Because once you have seen "Barbie and the Secret of the Fairy of the Princess of the Pegasus of the Planet of the Apes", any subsequent animated feature you see -and I mean any one- is going to look like Disney's "Pinocchio" in comparison. (Also, you cannot imagine how much more you will appreciate what they do with Barbie and Ken in "Toy Story 3".) It's not just that it's as bad as you'd imagine it would be from the title. It's actually worse. In the parlance of a recent Temple of the Seven Golden Camels post, it's "all frosting, no cake." And that frosting is the gross cream cheese kind. It's absurdly cheap, the animation is downright crappy, the visuals are unimaginative, and the whole thing shows open contempt for it's young audience. I mean it. We're talking about a film made in 2011 where a character bends over backwards in slow motion to dodge some sh*t, just like in that awesome twelve-year-old sci-fi kung-fu movie that THE TARGET AUDIENCE IS TOO YOUNG TO WATCH OR HAVE EVEN HEARD OF WTF MATTEL?!?** Also, the term "Bling" is used unironically. And fashion designers are Fairies. Yup.
Auntie Tricia got to watch "Barbie and the Gooey Kablooey" with six-year-old cousin twice.
Auntie Tricia would have watched "My Neighbor Totoro" or "Fraggle Rock" or "Dinosaur Train" or -honestly- "Rock-A-Doodle"*** with adorable six-year-old cousin instead, but adorable six-year-old cousin refused to watch anything besides "Barbie and the Who Gives a Crap". Callback to a few weeks ago: Adorablausting.
So with all of this in mind, I found myself even enjoying the sheer open madness of "Rock-A-Doodle". There is some evidence in the film to suggest that events in it are, after all, supposed to be a fever dream that the kid is having and it (unintentionally) fits that tone perfectly.
So, about that villain. He's the Grand Duke and he is voiced by Christopher Plummer. It seems that Plummer doesn't get a lot of truly hammy bad guy roles, so he has way, way too much fun with the Duke, chewing up whatever scenery he is in. "Rock-A-Doodle" is, sadly, very definitely made for children (though lord knows what they'd get out of it), so the Grand Duke isn't allowed to do anything truly evil or even interesting (aside from the deleted scene above and the bit where he turns the kid into a kitten -- and remember the movie barely acknowledges that). But he is used frequently as an outlet for the few flashes of trademark Bluthy weirdness. This may be due to his being the last vestige of a proposed film called "Satyrday", one of Bluth's most deeply fascinating lost projects.
Honestly, the only real sadness I experienced while watching "Rock-A-Doodle" is the fact that there are no more Don Bluth features to be seen (though I remain optimistic that we haven't heard the last from him). It's a real bummer to end on such a weak note, and it was hard to watch portions of "Rock-A-Doodle" and wonder what happened to the Don Bluth who gave the world "The Secret of N.I.M.H.". Ah well, more loose ends await.
* - Ah, how timely! See, I'm posting this the day after we *just* got our electricity and phone/internet/cable back after Hurricane Irene came and kicked our asses a little harder than we though she would. And left us without power for three and a half days. Fun times.
** - Yeah, I know "Animaniacs" had an episode that was a direct parody of "Apocalypse Now". That's totally different. Because it just is, shut up.
*** - Don't worry, this wouldn't have been her first Bluth. We watched "Banjo the Woodpile Cat" together. D'awww...
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(Pre-Hurricane) Garden Update!
I am going to go ahead and declare this garden to be a successful experiment.
Well, here (via the wonderful /Film as usual) is the new trailer for Disney's "Winnie the Pooh", arriving in theaters this coming summer:
Now, this is an excellent trailer (though the editing is a little wonky at times). It has so far gained lots and lots of positive comments, which bodes well for Disney animation. And while the film is being released in a rather crowded market, it could be considered good counter-programing (unless A. A. Milne ever wrote an extended scene I am unaware of where every third character is violently killed).
That said, for some reason, this trailer felt... familiar...
EDIT: Well, that didn't take long now, did it?
OK, turns out that this trailer remix is kinda old, but even funnier now. And just for fun (and also because this post is a bit on the short side), here's one of my favorite trailer remixes ever: Christopher Nolan's "Dumb and Dumber" (it works out better than you'd expect because you tend to forget how damn dark "D&D" could get):
Well, fellow New Englanders, I hope you are all enjoying the snowy Solstice. I drew this little Junco yesterday. I hadn't seen snowbirds all year, so I was happy to see a small flock in my backyard all day. It felt Christmassy. I had filled the feeders the night before on a whim and there wasn't a flake until well after midnight. Now for some stuff that's too funny/scary not to share: Yes, this is silly and more than a little sloppy, but I had to make a point here. The Disney Channel used to show their version of "Babes in Toyland" over and over around Christmastime. I never actually watched the whole movie the whole way through, but I must have seen most of these scenes anyway, tuning in to TDC hoping they'd be showing anything else. This might also explain why I was surprised at how short it was. Anyone else have an experience like this?
Updates will resume in January. Everybody have a wonderful holiday season and a happy new year!
See, I really, really didn't want to have to post anything about this. But as I am a prospective animator with a uterus it seems obligatory. (And even that feels unfair, because I'm sure there are male artists who have an opinion about this too.)
First off, I think we can all agree that the history of animation in the United States is the good ol' Most Writers Are Male trope writ large. In heavy blocky letters. In red crayon. So it really isn't all that surprising that most of the lead characters in American animation are male (and I say American animation because I honestly don't know enough to discern whether this is a worldwide trend). And since I know my history and I know that it's still the case that most animators are male (and indeed, Pixar itself has a derth of women in it's writer credits -- but I don't think it will be very long before that changes) this issue honestly doesn't bother me that much.
But it bothers me a little.
See, I am an adult who is well versed in animation history, so I know why we didn't see a real-life Hazel Hedgehog in the Looney Tunes or Disney or Hannah-Barbera character casts. But we all know that this issue is being brought up because maybe it does bother young girls (of course, that's assuming that animation is for children, and that's a whole other issue that I can't get into right now unless you want a mile-long post. You really, REALLY don't want to get me started.) So maybe the thing to do is just ask kids what they fell about all this? That could be interesting.
I don't agree fully with Holmes' post, but I agree with her most reasonable request: We need more female leads in animation. And it'd be awesome if they don't need rescuing (a particularly weaksauce trend in animation is to have an exciting female lead who nonetheless can't seem to save the day by herself -- yes, I'm looking at you, people who adapted "Coraline"). And it'd also be awesome if they weren't largely defined by their relationships with whatever male characters are handy (also a weaksauce trend, see also The Bechdel Test.)
And I'm not saying it's bad for her to be a princess (though the specific Disney / Barbie Princess marketing blitz is yet another issue) and I'm not saying it's bad for her to be in a relationship. Heck, as far as the relationship issue, "Aliens" is a terrific textbook on how to handle it. Have you ever met anyone who described Ripley as "Hicks' girlfriend"?
There's certainly more to discuss here, but all told, Joss Whedon (who is male but can absolutely have a say in this) says it so I don't have to:
"(You ask,) 'So why do you write these strong women characters?' Because you're still asking that question!"
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You will notice that The All-New, All-Different Realm of Madness has been added to the list of My Other Websites at right. There isn't anything there but the reviews, but that's more than plenty for now. It took me two and a half weeks to get everything they way I like; it was like the neverending project because I kept finding new ways to be OCD about it new tasks to finish. I at least have a deadline (October 26) to rescue everything, but I am going to take a serious break before tackling the features.
Sad stuff first. I'm sure most of you dear readers have rented at least one DVD released by Warner Bros in the past few months, but in case you haven't, you've missed things like this:
I'm speechless. There's a "Casablanca" one too that's even more baffling/openly insulting.
Anyway, "Justice League Unlimited" season one! Good God, this series is amazing. I love, love, love how the series uses some of the more unusual and obscure characters; Question (how's this for an animation challenge?), Huntress, and Booster Gold are awesome and even Vibe, Gypsy, and the Wonder Twins get some love. Most of the episodes in this season involve a terrific story arc with an ending that makes your jaw hit the floor and stay there. "Epilogue" sticks in my craw a little, though I was warned that it would (spoilers galore in that link) and it is nonetheless a very nice episode even though it's kind of an odd one out. Really, I just cannot get over how good this series is. The fact that there's another whole season makes me giddy, but I don't really want it to end either, not least because this is the very last of the DCAU.
I could continue gushing for hours and hours but it's probably enough to say this: I feel sooooo bad for "Heroes"...
I also got around to watching "KungFu Panda" and it was..... the character designs were very nice. I loved the hell out of the prologue and I wish they'd had the courage to do the entire movie in that cel-shaded style. Otherwise, I just felt very "eh" about it. It's not a bad movie, the action sequences are quite good and there are some nice character moments. It just feels way too short. Also, it's strange to me that Dreamworks has gotten to the point where people are gushing over one of their movies because it doesn't have a pop-culture cross-reference every five minutes.
But what's especially strange to me is that so many people ask the question, "Do you like 'KungFu Panda' or 'WALL-E' better?" It might just be me but I find that issue kind of ridiculous; like the two movies have anything in common at all aside from the fact that they are animated. And you see this a lot. The "Best Animated Feature" Oscar category practically encourages it. Now, do people debate whether "Iron Man" was better than "Dark Knight"? (OK, they do, and while It's Just Some Random Guy makes it funny, it's still ridiculous.)
By the way, "WALL-E". It's hardly even debatable. And I liked both "Iron Man" and "Dark Knight" but for entirely different reasons.
On a much lighter note, if you haven't rented a Disney DVD in the past month or so, it means that you didn't get to see this truly amazing little slice of WTF:
I'd give anything within reason to know what Corbin Bleu's reaction to being asked to do the dubbing was. I also have to admit, as someone who grew up with such madness as "Kidd Video" and reruns of "H.R. Puffinstuff", that I am very happy that there are still filmmakers out there who are not afraid to subject little kids to some seriously trippyeesht.
My gosh, I almost forgot that it is alsoFeederwatch Friday!!! Eh... N.M.H. (People who are awesome recognize that acronym.) On Sunday, the ubiquitous house sparrows were spooked by a red-tail swooping overhead. I have not seen the big flock of robins from last week. It snowed mid-week, which usually brings a crowd, but this was the slowest snow day I've seen so far.
P.S. - Dammit, leave Jessica alone. >:(
