In Which Trish Watches Three Bad Animated Films So You Don't Have To

Recently, I subjected myself to watched three animated feature films that don't *quite* deserve full reviews on their own, since their quality ranges from "the memory of this movie evaporated from my brain-parts an hour after I watched it" to "this is pure hate on film".  Let's get right into it with...

The Never-Really-Accurately-Named Random 90's Animation Month: "Happily Ever After" (1990)

Say what you will about notoriously execrable animation studio Filmation, but I have to admire the ginormous solid brass balls they must have had when they made unauthorized sequels to Disney's "Pinocchio" and "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" while, you know, being Filmation.  If you did not live during the 70's or 80's, the most you need to know is that Filmation animation was often eye-bleedingly bad, and this is well on display here.  And remember, if you chose to watch this, that this film got a theatrical release.  Ponder that during the eight or ninth time you see that one run cycle Snow White has.

There isn't much to say here because this movie is almost the opposite of interesting.  It turns out the Wicked Queen had an evil wizard brother, so this thing has the same setup as the most embarrassing Disney DTV sequels.  Snow White is joined by seven girl dwarfs because it is the 90's and we need more girl characters.  And I will admit that's kind of an awesome thing to do, except that just having more female characters in your movie doesn't help anyone if their personalities are nonexistent or stereotypical.  The lady dwarfs all have elemental powers, which I guess is kind of interesting.  But they really don't do anything cool with that idea and the "Dwarfelles" (ugh) remind me of the kinds of Pokemon I add to my team straight away because they're the first of their elemental types available but that I box as soon as possible after they die over and over to things they are supposed to be strong against. 

For it's next trick, the movie asks the question, "Hey how come Snow White couldn't save the Prince?" and then not only does not chose to answer that question at all but also does everything it possibly can to undermine it, since Snow White ends up a damsel in distress anyway.  Fun times.

Further Random 90's Animation Month Shenanigans: "The Princess and the Goblin" (1991)

"The Princess and the Goblin" is a Welsh/Hungarian co-production, and Wales' first feature-length animated feature.  So it's got that going for it.  Based on the so-excellent-they-deserve-a-far-better-movie-than-this fairy tales of 19'th Century fantasist George MacDonald, the film is... Man, I don't even know.  It is a film.  There are still drawings photographed in such a way as to give the illusion of movement (if not necessarily life in this case, although it will not make your eyes bleed like "Happily Ever After") and there is dialogue and music.  I guess some of the goblin characters are fun and the way they visualized the guardian angel character is kind of cool.  But the main characters are just black holes of charisma.  Furthermore, some of the crazier symbolism MacDonald was known for doesn't really translate literally to film very well.  (Survival tips: "Follow the thread!!!" = one sip, "Stomp on their feet!" = two sips, everybody sings along to Curdy's power-up song in the finale = finish your drink.)

Really, only watch these two films if you are for some reason compelled to watch every animated movie you remember getting a theatrical release in America in the 1990's. On that note, for more in this series, click this link or the "Random 90's Animation Month" tag below.

"My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic: Equestria Girls: Chaos Reigns"

Now, if you want the full experience of suffering through this end-result of a long, long string of sh**ty marketing board room decisions, read my review of "Friendship is Magic" and then head on over to this post, where my Tweetmentary is archived.  I only have a few more thoughts to share about this thing because honestly, I don't want to give it any more attention and I don't want to commit much more thought to it.

First off, it really is as awful as I figured it would be way back when we first saw that concept art all those months ago.  That concept art, as you may recall, resembled bad fanart -- actually, no.  It resembled uncreative fanart.  If they had taken a cue from bad My Little Pony fanart... well, that at least would have been something.  But no, this movie basically is uncreative fanart/fanfiction.  It's pretty much what you'd get if you asked a very unimaginative person what would happen if the Ponies turned into humans an attended a high school that is totally not a shameless "Monster High" cash-in you guys, it's not.

And honestly, that's the thing that kills me the most about "Equestria Girls": the kind of story the writers chose to tell once they were able to write for human girls in a human setting is EXACTLY the stereotypical girlie-girl show crap Lauren Faust went out of her way to avoid when she was in charge of "Friendship is Magic".  It's heartbreaking.  Every character has been reduced to their most basic personality trait, they all hang out in a high school where classes are evidently optional, Twilight falls for some impressively boring boy character she literally just met - or rather crashed into because she is a clumsy nerd-girl LOL, and there's a long, l-o-n-g montage of the characters shopping for dresses for -of course, of COURSE- the big school Promcoming Festivus Ball.

Then there's the main plot, which is about -I promise I am not making this up- cyberbullying.  Yes, the minute computers and the internet are introduced to the world of My Little Pony, they are used by the villain to ruin everything for our heroes.  And maybe I'm overreacting but when the character we see most prominantly using technology uses it for ill and then literally turns into a demon-thing (by the way, what in the actual f**k?), that strikes me as a really sh**ty message for little girls for whom society has already done a capital job of steering away from STEM interests.

The good news is, from all evidence so far, it appears as though the main "Friendship is Magic" show is pretending that none of the events in this movie ever happened.  So I guess we can pretend it never happened as well.

Next week, I plan on exploring a Random 90's Animated Movie that might actually be kind of awesome and at least has a fascinating origin story.  And if everything works out, then just in time for Christmas I may be seeing and reviewing another animated movie with girl characters in it that I hear is pretty good...

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Sketch of the Day!  Silliness based on a Twitter discussion a few weeks ago of a very oddly arranged display at the University of Wyoming photographed by Brian Switek.

Escape From the 90's: "Bebe's Kids" (1992)

As I have said many many times before in this marathon (at this point, more like a sprint that turned into a marathon that is now a leisurely stroll) of unusual and diverse animated feature films from random and/or unlikely studios in the 1990's, several interesting films that I wanted to revisit were not yet available through either Netflix, On-Demand, or Other Easily Accessible Means.  And looking at the films that were in the "Saved" queue about a week ago, I would have said with some confidence that there's not a chance that any of these films would ever appear in My List or in my DVD queue.

Well, one of the movies that I never expected to be available just became so very recently.  So there is some infinitesimally small hope for the others.  In the meantime, we have here 1992's "Bebe's Kids" to watch and review.  And believe me, of all the random 90's animated films I have seen during this project, I can say without a moment's hesitation that from the opening credits to the very end, this one is by far the most 90's.

One could make a really good argument that it is the also most random.  I wasn't able to find much information about this movie online, so I do not have the complete story that I desperately wish I had of how it came to be.  But the story I could piece together goes a little something like this: "Bebe's Kids" is based on the titular story on a comedy album by the comedian Robin Harris, who had developed a cult following in the early 90's.  He became good friends with the Hudlin brothers who wrote the "House Party" movies (he had a scene-stealing role in the first movie), and Reginald Hudlin wanted to make a live-action film adaptation of the "Bebe's Kids" story starring Harris.  Tragically, Robin Harris died very suddenly before this plan could come to fruition.  Reginald decided to make the film anyway.  But he decided, for reasons that are unclear, to make it as an animated feature with Hyperion Studios.  Yes, the folks who produced another incredibly unlikely animated feature film, "The Brave Little Toaster".  (They are also evidently responsible for another spectacularly unlikely film based on the work of a comedian whose stories did not quite translate well to animation, but we will get to that one when and if the opportunity ever presents itself; consider this a teaser for now.)

The resulting film, seen today, is a very strange thing indeed.  It is, as I said up top, the most 90's.  I mean that.  That's not entirely a bad thing, though; the movie has a very fun hip-hop/R&B soundtrack.  While the animation isn't as polished as it was in "Brave Little Toaster" (a lot of it was farmed out to other studios), the character designs, while not always appealing, are at least unique.  I especially loved the design of the Robin Harris character (here voiced wonderfully by Faizon Love).  While this may have been completely by accident, it's refreshing that the characters' expressions are allowed to be really exaggerated and extreme; there were moments that reminded me of the current and wonderful "Steven Universe" series.  Overall, this movie feels a lot like a very early episode of "The Simpsons", back when it was a lot stranger and more visually unusual.

And I mean this for good and for ill because this was also back when "The Simpsons" was a great deal more random and hadn't really found it's groove yet.  "Bebe's Kids" started out as a long story and the film still has that feel.  It isn't so much a coherent movie as it is a recount of bunch of events that happened.

It is also, and this was my biggest problem with the movie, trapped in an uncomfortable spot where nobody working on the movie seemed to know whether they were making a movie for kids or adults.  It's kind of fascinating to see, because nearly every mainstream animated feature made today is directed at a target audience of "everyone", like the entire family.  Sometimes, this means genuinely good writing and engaging characters and visuals, sometimes it means fart jokes for the kids and references to old movies for the parents.  Here, we basically have two completely different movies awkwardly mashed together.  One of them is for adults and centers on adult characters and concerns, in this case making a huge personal sacrifice in order to impress somebody you really like.  Watching as an adult, I was more engaged with this subplot.

The other movie is very definitely for the kids and involves the kid characters running amok in an amusement park and fighting adult authority-types, because as you may recall, "kids vs. adults" was a Thing back in the 1990's.  They are specifically fighting amusement park security.  And robots for... some... reason?  That entire sequence honestly is a much bigger Big-Lipped Alligator Moment than even the trope namer, since there is absolutely nothing done to set up a world where robots would put a kid on trial and, worse, the kids learn jack squat from the incident and continue to act as a force of destruction.  The whole thing is exhausting, to the point where the scene near the end where, after we have seen the kids reduce the amusement park to a smoldering crater for the past fifty minutes, we're asked to feel sorry for them feels... unearned to say the least.  If you really do not like bratty child characters, you are not going to last very long during this movie.

Other than that, I can't say I have a strong opinion one way or the other about "Bebe's Kids".  It's different, at least.  It's also important in being the first significant work from director Bruce W. Smith, and supposedly his series "The Proud Family" (a show I probably should have paid more attention to than I did when it was running, since during my research it turns out to have been much stranger and more interesting than the bland Disney Channel promotions suggested) ties into this film.

For more in this series, click this link or the "Random 90's Animation Month" tag below.

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Sketch of the Day! I say this every other year or so, but the new "Pokemon" game is SOOOOO good.

"Fraggle Rock" Month: Season 4, Episode 17 - "The Trial of Cotterpin Doozer"

The second half of the final season of "Fraggle Rock" is crazy emotional in its best moments, and I am probably not going to end up spending as much time as I should on this relatively lighter episode.  But I think there are some very interesting ideas presented in "The Trial of Cotterpin Doozer", so although it isn't the kind of crazy tearjerker the last few episodes of "Fraggle Rock" are rightfully known for, there are a few neat things to unpack.

So far, Cotterpin has been the main catalyst in bringing the Fraggle and Doozer worlds together by being one of maybe three Doozers ever who has even talked to a Fraggle, never mind made friends with one.  And this episode reveals that, really, Cotterpin herself IS the connection.  The other Doozers still think of Fraggles as those stupid weird bird-things that crash into their towers and eat their architecture.  A bullying Doozer calls her out and very suddenly Cotterpin finds herself on trial for consorting with Fraggles.  She'll lose her job unless she can prove Fraggles are intelligent beings worthy of the Doozers' respect.  And now that the trial has thus escalated, we've got ourselves the "Fraggle Rock" version of the good old Humanity on Trial story.

It's hard to tell if the Humanity on Trial story really is a rusty old science fiction trope or if it just feels that way, probably because it bookended "Star Trek: The Next Generation".  Never mind that in this series, we have an alien race putting a different alien race on trial instead -- and notice how closely we relate to Fraggles by now that they so easily slip into humans' role!  Humans had Captain Picard to defend our right to exist (we also got the Planeteers, according to TV Tropes; I really need to hunt that episode down because I can't even imagine...).  And the Fraggles get...

Well, they don't get Red or Gobo, like Cotterpin was hoping for.  Actually, they don't get any of the major characters.  They've all evacuated the Rock due to a Poison Cackler egg found nearby that's due to hatch soon.  So in a great subversion, Cotterpin can't pick the most noble or wise among the Fraggles to stand up for the entire Fraggle species.  Fortunately, "Fraggle Rock" is at the point where, as with "The Simpsons", there are lots and lots of terrific minor characters, and lucky for Cotterpin, a couple of them stayed behind.  And thus Cotterpin recruits the two Fraggles who must now step up for the sake of all Fraggles: Large Marvin and his sidekick Feenie.  Oh, dear.

Thus far, Large Marvin and Feenie have been little more than joke characters doing weird stuff in the background.  They are, as stated, not the most noble or wise among the Fraggles.  If you knew these two were your entire species' defendants, it would not exactly inspire confidence.  But they are still the only beings around who are big enough to tackle a Poison Cackler - and that egg that's about to hatch is nested right outside the entrance to the Doozer Dome...

This is the last episode that centers on the Doozers, so it is effectively the end of their story arc.  There was some chatter a while back of a fully animated Doozer spin-off series.  I said it before, and I'll say it again, I sure as heck didn't see that coming.  But more importantly, I wonder if that series is even going to acknowledge the other residents of Fraggle Rock or if its going to be set entirely in the Doozer Dome?  As violently opposed as I am to the very idea of CGI Fraggles (quick aside: on that note, let's not talk about any animated Fraggles.  Let's just not.  Nope), I'd hate to see the Doozers deprived of their context.  It'd be a betrayal of all the work the original "Fraggle Rock" series did to bring these worlds together.

Okay, who's ready for a long string of emotional gut-punches?

"Fraggle Rock" Month - Season 1, Episode 19: "The Great Radish Famine"

So before we get into the big ideas in this episode (about which, in the good old bad old days of the Internet, essays were written.  Long ones), let's talk about world building.

There are, generally speaking, two approaches you can take with creating a setting.  You can do what most shows do and focus on the story and just make stuff up along as you go, making sure you keep everything moderately consistent -- or not.  Or you can do what the writers of "Fraggle Rock" apparently did: invent an entire imaginary world from the ground up and then play in the giant sandbox. 

That's kind of amazing.  I can't think of another children's program that sinks so much energy in creating a consistent fantastical ecosystem.  "Great Radish Famine" is the first episode that spells out explicitly the fact that we've been exploring a completely realized interconnected world.

There's a damn good reason why they spent so much time on this world, and you can think of this episode as the "Fraggle Rock" writers' thesis statement.

Up until now, we've been primarily concerned with Fraggles.  We have only very briefly visited the Gorg World, and the Doozer World.  Both Gorgs and Doozers have been presented to us from the Fraggles' point of view as mildly interesting (or dangerous in the Gorgs' case) Others.

This episode marks our first extensive visit to the Gorg and Doozer worlds.  In particular, this is the first time Doozers become actual people to us viewers.  Up until now they had about ten lines of dialogue in total and were basically fantasy Mound Termites -- if Mound Termites were adorable little bug-people who build their giant nests out of piles of candy.  They'd be developed even more in later episodes, as would the Gorgs (we'll get to them tomorrow).

The key concept in this series is that all three of these species are intelligent, noble, profound, and dependent on each-other in some way or other -- and each one thinks that they have nothing in common with the other two.  And the brilliant thing is that, in point of fact, Fraggles are very different from Doozers who are in turn very different from Gorgs.  This episode throws them all into a crisis with apocalyptic stakes and if they're ever going to survive it, they need to at least acknowledge they each depend on the other while having to deal with their differences.  (Note how parts of this episode illustrate the sheer difference in scale between the three worlds!)

The very greatest scene in this episode happens in the last few minutes.  We get one of the most genuinely sweet songs of the entire show in a scene that honestly gets me every damn time.  And immediately afterwards, we see a hilarious and surprisingly cynical dip into (dare I say?) political satire.

And here's the wonderful part.  After all that, we get some reassurance from a voice of authority character that even though that last scene looked bad, very bad, things are going to be alright.  This was the big turning point because the various worlds are now at least aware of each-other.  They know they have at least one thing in common, and it set the stage for more crossovers between the three -but really, four- worlds.

My (slightly sarcastic) 2000's Time Capsule!

This is my version of the Obligatory End-Of-The-Decade List, mostly cobbled together from a semi-yearly version I posted at LaGremlin Land.
Here is a no-particular-order list of things I would put in a time capsule to represent the lovely decade that has just ended. I am sure the people of the future will understand the significance of each and every one of these items without question, as they will have passed into history:

* - A sun-shaped nipple ring
* - "Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water" CD
* - An "Edward can BUST my headboard, BITE my pillows, and BRUISE my body any day!" t-shirt
* - A magnetic yellow ribbon
* - "Some Kind of Monster" DVD
* - A bottle of Bling2O
* - A "Free Katie" t-shirt
* - A TMX Elmo doll
* - Spenser and Heidi's How to be Famous
* - A Snuggie for dogs
* - "Hung for Christmas" CD
* - The O'Reilly Factor: For Kids!
* - A "Vote or DIE!" t-shirt
* - A huge "Mission Accomplished" banner
* - A pair of Crocs
* - The MySpace servers
* - A bottle of Pimp Juice
* - An Anduril letter opener
* - "The Swan" DVD
* - The Kazakhstan Tourism brochure
* - Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
* - The Mtv All-Stars "What's Goin' On (2001)" music video
* - "Crazy Frog" CD
* - Of Pandas and People
* - "Bratz Babies" DVD
* - The International Astronomical Union definition of the word "Planet"
* - Green "Shrek" ketchup
* - Going Rogue
* - "Chinese Democracy" CD

What would you add to this time capsule?

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Before you answer that, read this excellent Total Media Bridge essay about "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (It's still timely. In the olden days, Christmas hype started immediately before Christmas Eve and lasted for several weeks after Christmas Day until Epiphany/Three Kings Day [there's the real significance of "The Twelve Days of Christmas"], instead of starting as early as August, leaving you burnt out by Thanksgiving, and leaving you with a deep disillusioned "now what" feeling that doesn't get resolved until New Years if even then.) I could not have written this better myself.
OK, real updates will start the second full week of January.

"Whale Magic" is going to break your mind.

I... I... I have no words for this (discovered by Cartoon Brew):

ZOMG Whale Magic!!!

I'm usually pretty good at sensing whether something is an elaborate satire or not and this is just too amazingly insane not to be real. Honestly, though, I'd rather see them elaborate on the story of Richter Duck.

Further "Avatar" thoughts...

I and other keenly observant watchers of the "Avatar" trailer have noticed something about the design of the film's alien characters, the Na'vi. These characters, who are "Unlike anything you have ever seen before, even in your wildest imagination," seem strangely familiar.
Let's be blunt: They look like something off of DeviantART.
They have animal features but are still very human-like, they have ginormous golden Anime eyeballs, and -most damning- they are that particular shade of blue everyone at DA seems to love, and -even more damning- they glow.
Really the only things missing are the glowing "Mystical Symbols" floating around their beautiful, beautiful Blue Jay patterned Angel wings.
I decided I wanted to play this game too! Here's what I came up with:


"Fun in the Backyard!" - Episode 38
Originally uploaded by Babbletrish
Click for big!

Yeah...
By the way, no offense is meant to the approximately 10% of awesome Furry artists on DA. I am obviously in no position to make fun of you and I won't for a minute pretend that Sturgeon's Law doesn't apply to Flickr too. It's just that your Online Portfolio Website of choice is a *little* bit more notorious for it.