1991 - Beauty and the Beast

Boy, when I started to write this one, I was in a pickle. I didn’t really have anything to say about Beauty and the Beast, because - well, I try not to overexaggerate things, but it’s perfect. Not flawless, mind, there’s still the occasional goofy bit of animation, and Belle can be a bit of a doormat, but what they made succeeds on every major level. The songs (Menken and Ashman again) are great, the voices (especially Paige O'Hara as Belle and Richard White as Gaston) are fantastic, the dialogue is tight and funny, the designs are imaginative, the romance is heartfelt… I didn’t want to write a review saying “This is great, this is great, this is great,” over and over. Especially since you’ve seen it! Yes, you, the person reading this, has seen this movie. Everyone has! How can I find a good way to approach telling everyone roar they already know? I mentioned this on Facebook, and my friends started chiming in with suggestions for topics. So here it is, the first-ever viewer mail edition of My Year With Walt Disney Animation Studios! Feeling participatory? So am I. So try the gray stuff, it’s delicious, and let’s talk about Beauty and the Beast.

I think you're not giving Gaston enough credit. While the basic idea is an obvious one, a beautiful man with an ugly heart to contrast the monster with hidden depths of goodness, they made the character more complex than they needed to. He's not at all intellectual, but he is quite intelligent and calculating. His single minded  determination to never be denied anything is backed up by actual nerve. People sometimes remember him as a coward because he begs Beast for his life before stabbing him in the back, but he was literally being dangled off a building like so much Prince Michael Jackson II. Prior to that, he was storming a magic castle and holding his own against a 7-12 foot tall monster. I think he could do all right for himself. Of course, in the Disney Villain Hunger Games, he'd still go out pretty early. All the hunting skills in the world can only take you so far when the competition is like 4/5 evil witches.

Speaking of. Well, as I mentioned, the very existence of Gaston kind of belies the claim that the movie is exclusively pro-physical beauty. But that is something the animators struggled with, when they realized that the reason they hated every "prince" design they came up with was because everyone had fallen in love with the Beast. This is not a new problem by any means. It is said that Marlene Dietrich herself, sitting next to Jean Cocteau at the first screening of his masterful 1946 adaptation, called out "But where is my beautiful Beast?" when the prince appeared. But in both Cocteau's and Disney's, Belle is hesitant. She doesn't trust the goofball in the ripped-up pants. She, like Dietrich, wants to know the whereabouts of her beautiful Beast.

As to the more direct question of the enchantress, if you wanted to teach a jerky guy not to judge by appearances, than being an ugly person while you curse him might send a mixed message. Probably better to go "Psyche! I'm hot! And a jerk! Enjoy your life as a buffalo gorilla!"

Nice job covering your hinder there, Friend Who Definitely Doesn't Work For the Disney Corporation. My insider source is right, Beast changes in size rather a lot. He normally seems to hover at eight feet or so, but seems able to grow about a yard when convenient. But he is animated by Glen Keane, who, as I have already mentioned, has a gift for animating gigantic characters, and part of that gift is knowing when to adjust the size a bit. If you're looking for it, you'll notice it - in the ballroom scene, for instance, Belle reaches his shoulder as they walk in to eat, his chin as they enter the dance floor, and his chest as they dance - but Keane works it so naturally it's hard to spot. Also, he switches between biped and quadruped a lot, which helps keep us confused.

  

I've heard a lot of people say this, but I don't buy it. For one thing, it's not in the source material. In the original story, the Beast is nothing but kind to her from the beginning, but she says she only loves him as a friend (it probably sounds better in French) until he gets incapacitated by heartbreak when she takes a long weekend, and she feels guilty and says she loves him after all. I could write an entire book on the unfortunate implications there, but Disney removed them by having the Beast act not as a creepy weirdo, but a roaring tyrant. 

And even in this movie, it's not as present as people seem to think. When he is cruel and demanding to her, she despises him, and flees the castle. She only comes back because he saves her life, and she feels obligated to return the favor, but even then she's not remotely happy with him. It's only after he starts feeling actual gratitude that they make a connection, maybe the first genuine one he's ever made. He stops the abuse first. Then the connection grows. It's made quite explicit in the movie that she doesn't think of him romantically at all until she sees him trying to feed the baby birds.

Standard fairy tale rules, man. Why did the whole kingdom have to go to sleep when Sleeping Beauty pricked her finger? Because the common people are just appendages of the royalty in these things. That's why I don't read much High Fantasy. Too much of what the rich people get up to, not enough of the average joes. Look at Game of Thrones. Two seasons in, and the most notable character that's not noble or working directly for one is Hot Pie. And we only get to see him because he hangs around Harry the Not-a-girl.

The writers of this film agree with you, though, and in the stage musical version, they are explicitly being punished for bringing up the prince to be such a privileged little turd. 

I'll be sure to keep an eye out for that. Ahem.

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1992 - Aladdin

If The Little Mermaid started the new formula, and Beauty and the Beast codified it, Aladdin turned it into a full-blown juggernaut. Once again we have a well-known story, a misunderstood iconoclast for a main character, music by well-known Broadway types, and wacky sidekicks. Ohhhh, the wacky sidekicks. This is where they start getting really numerous. But we’ll get to that. For now, let’s see what happens when what was once bold and daring becomes the new standard and kick off the longest running “house style” this production company ever had. The production wasn’t easy, but they had unprecedented studio support, massive critical cred, and a dynamite creative team. Is there any point in a rhetorical question? No, you already know this was good. So get yourself some falafel, and let’s talk about Aladdin.

Dang, this one was good. Really well-made, well-cast, and there’s barely a single moment that feels dated. It doesn’t reach the heights of Beauty and the Beast, but that would basically be impossible, and the few minor issues I have aren’t anything approaching the buts of the Little Mermaid. And while there were no big technical leaps in the story (Well, one, but it didn’t catch on. We’ll get to that.), there was one major thematic leap: Princess Personality.

Jasmine is a criminally underrated princess. I can see a lot of the other princesses doing the “dress as a commoner to sneak out” thing. Heck, Cinderella did the reverse, and Aurora did it by accident, so they’ve come close. What I can’t see them doing is angrily insisting that they aren’t a prize to be won. I can’t see them angrily rebuffing the advances of a suitor and physically attacking him. When she finds out Aladdin was lying about being the guy she met in the marketplace, she gets PISSED and asks if he thought she was stupid. Finally, we get a totally confident and self-possessed princess who won’t put up with any patriarchal crap. Belle was close, but she was still, for instance, way nicer to Gaston than he deserved. When Gaston’s Middle-Eastern equivalent shows up to propose to Jasmine, she doesn’t make small talk with him, she throws a tiger at his pompous ass. And she’s clever, too, suing her wits to come out on top in every situation, just like Aladdin does. For once, the lead couple clicks right away and it makes sense on more than a physical level. Also of note - unless I missed something, this is the first time a Disney couple actually kiss each other before their big dramatic ending. We’re getting closer to real relationships every day, folks.

Boy meets girl, boy's giant blue friend helps him, the usual cliches.

The animation is really good. The design team was influenced by the work of caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, whose swooping lines and curlicues evoked the feeling of Middle Eastern calligraphic art and architecture. The only exception was the villain Jafar, who was designed by Andreas Deja with a lot of long, straight, flowing lines that matched the others, but still set him apart from them. This is the first movie in a while to have a really impressive setting, too. The crowded city streets of Agrabah, the opulent Cave of Wonders, the insanely huge royal palace, all fantastic marvels of design. The layout supervisor, Rasoul Azadani, used his hometown of Ishfan as his primary influence, and the love he feels for it really comes through.

There’s two slips in the otherwise great animation, and that’s from the company’s premature decision to completely integrate CGI elements, inspired by the success of the ballroom in Beauty and the Beast. The results are… less than perfect. The flying carpet, with its complex pattern, is done with CGI and looks great, but it’s also just a rectangle. The other two major uses are not so great. The huge, talking, stone tiger that acts as entrance to the Cave of Wonders isn’t horrible, but does not fit in with its surroundings at all. Worse is Aladdin’s escape when said cave collapses, which is all CGI rendered and looks terrible. I remember being really impressed with it when I was 8, but it’s so flat and blocky and pixilated, I can’t imagine professional animators looking at it and saying, yes, that deserves to be in my movie.

"Can we make this quick? I have a ReBoot audition."

The character’s voices are also great, with one issue that will unfortunately stick around for a while. Minor teen heartthrob Scott Weinger plays Aladdin like he was born to it. He’s not a big star or a famous voice actor, he just hits the perfect voice for it. Which is good, because voicing Aladdin in spin-off media is like 95% of his career now. Linda Larkin as Princess Jasmine doesn‘t have that same spark. Her voice is Standard Princess, but rather lacks the extra je ne sais quoi Jodi Benson and Paige O’Hara had. She’s fine, though. Douglas Seale, who is a small guy with a twirly mustache and big white beard, plays the sultan unsurprisingly well, and Jim Cummings’ “mean voice” makes an obligatory appearance as the chief guard (and like, four people in the marketplace). Jonathan Freeman, ever sinister, rocks the house as Jafar, with condescension and loathing hanging on his every word. His cool menace is nicely contrasted by his parrot, Iago, voiced by Gilbert Gottfried, which is not as bad as you might expect. Gottfried actually does a really good job, and while his character is a bit grating, it’s meant to be, and he actually kind of sounds like a parrot. I’m just not sure why Jafar would have a pet parrot in the first place, let alone a sarcastic comedy relief one. I’d love to know their backstory. There’s one really cute moment where they make a little “Eeeeeeeeeugh” noise together when they think their beheading may be imminent, Iago has a painting of the two of them in his cage; they‘re clearly good friends with a long history. Maybe Jafar used to be a circus hypnotist or something, and he met Iago there. Okay, that‘s my personal canon now.

Of course, no discussion of the cast would be complete without discussion of The Actor Who Played The Genie. The director really wanted The Actor Who Played The Genie to be in the movie, and when he was initially hesitant, they animated some of his standup act with the genie, and he signed on right away. Because Disney had produced some very successful live-action films of his, and because he loved the character and the production, and because he was rich enough where he could afford to do it, The Actor Who Played The Genie offered to work for Guild scale, the lowest they were legally allowed to pay him. This came out to about $75,000, which is a deranged amount of money for someone like me, but for an actor of The Actor Who Played The Genie’s status, it constitutes a huge pay cut.

In exchange for this boon to the budget, The Actor Who Played The Genie simply asked that his name not be used in advertising, and his character not be a sole focus of ads or merchandising. He had a live-action movie coming out a few months after, and didn’t want Aladdin’s advertising to oversaturate him. Honoring the memory of their dear founder, Disney agreed to his requests and then basically ignored them. This led to some pretty severe acrimony and lawsuits, the hiring of Homer Simpson for the sequel, and most importantly of all, publicity material that really awkwardly had to avoid mentioning The Actor Who Played The Genie by name.

But I'd know that Ethel Merman impression anywhere. Or it might be Paul Lynde. It's hard to tell.

There are two actors that I am less than enthusiastic about, and that’s Broadway types Lea Salonga and Brad Kane, who provide the singing voices for Jasmine and Aladdin. Starting now, and continuing for a long time, Disney gets into a bad habit of hiring actors who can’t sing for their musicals, and having separate singing voices who sound nothing like them. Kane in particular sounds like a goofball, but with Salonga, it’s hard to imagine why they didn’t just cast her as Jasmine. It’s not like Linda Larkin is a big name, and Lea Salonga’s a very good actress. It gets worse before it gets better, though. At least this is just for one song.

On a final, uncomfortable note, there is a little bit of that classic Disney racism in this. The film came under fire upon its release for its use of stereotypes, and I must say, the protestors had some point. While the leads look appreciably Semitic, they are also attractive and voiced by white, white actors. The minor characters, especially in the market, tend more to being ugly caricatures with thick accents that wouldn’t be out of place in a Jeff Dunham show. Fortunately, outside of the marketplace, the stereotyping tends to be of the bland, setting-based type. It may look a bit silly, 20 years on, and in 20 years more, it’ll probably look a bit like the crows from Dumbo, but like them, it should be easy enough to get past. Other than the guy who tries to cut off Jasmine’s hand as punishment for stealing, I don’t think anything hits Class 1 in this movie.

This was also the movie where they really started heaping on the reference jokes.

So yeah, what else is there to say? It’s a hell of a good movie, it holds up remarkably well, and I’d recommend it if it wasn’t for the fact that you’ve all already seen it. But hey, see it again.


ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

* The reason they had to get influence from an American cartoonist whose work resembles Arabic writing and architecture rather than cutting out the middleman is that there isn’t any Arabian figure art to draw influence from. Islam, like Christianity and Judaism, forbids making drawings or sculptures of anything that exists in the real world, but unlike the other two, they’ve decided that that’s one of the rules they pay attention to. Creative Arabian types got around this by producing some of the most impressive buildings of their age, and some of the most impressive calligraphy ever. You ever see an Ottoman sultan’s signature? Redonkulous.

Seriously. This is how some Turkish nob actually signed his name.

* Speaking of history, the reason the villain is named Jafar is because of a historical vizier, Ja’far ibn Yahya, vizier to the caliph Harun al-Rashid. Ja’far was not remotely villainous, he was actually kind of awesome. He was a huge booster of science, bringing scientists from all over the world to Baghdad, and leading the movement to translate ancient Persian works into Arabic, and introducing paper to the caliphate. So awesome were he and his boss, that they were written into the Thousand and One Nights as characters, with Ja’far being a sort of detective, solving a murder mystery, and later appearing as an Indiana Jones type adventurer. So why is the villain named after him? Simple. Ja’far was so famous that his name became synonymous with ‘vizier’. If you needed a name for a vizier, Ja’far was the easy choice. It’s like naming a butler Jeeves. So the filmmakers probably just noticed the vast amounts of viziers named Ja’far (or Jafar or Giafar) and figured it was a good choice.

* Speaking of Jafar, his face and neck are different colors, and that has always bugged me.

Right? Tell me that's not weird.

* The Genie only has four fingers, to indicate that even in a cartoon world, he's a cartoon. Nice touch. He also loses his wrist cuffs and grows feet as soon as he is freed, but those get undone in the sequels, probably because he looks weird.

* As soon as Aladdin discovers the carpet is sentient, he starts referring to it as “he”. What if it’s a girl carpet, Aladdin?

* Friend Like Me was the first segment animated, and Aladdin is reeealy off-model in it, because his design hadn’t been finalized. But no one notices because the Genie is pulling all the focus.

* Why does The Cave Of Wonders contain all that fake treasure? I suppose it could be to test people, but when Jafar sent his goon in at the beginning, he didn’t get done in by his own greed, he got immediately eaten by a giant stone tiger head.

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1990 - The Rescuers Down Under

“Hello? Yes, this is Bob Newhart. Do another voice for Disney? Sure, I’d… Not *another* voice? I don’t think I follow you. Well, what’s the name of the picture? The… what? The Rescuers? We already did that one, didn’t we? Oh. Ohhh. Oh, I see, after several abortive attempts to make a sequel to the Rescuers, you’re finally pulling it off? Did anyone like it the first time? Yeah, I guess it did okay. So which of the books will this one be based on? Oh, an original story. Australia? Yeah, I guess it is pretty popular right now. Say, don‘t these cartoon pictures take a long time to finish? What if everyone‘s over Australia by the time it comes out? Yeah, you‘re probably right. I… Mm? Am I what? Fair dinkum bonzer? Ah, well, yes, I suppose so. So I‘ll just go and get a vegemite and Foster‘s sandwich and talk about The Rescuers Down Under. Uh-huh. Okay. Bye now.”

Ah, boy. Yeah, like I mentioned a few times, there had been some random attempts to do a Rescuers sequel before, or at least bring back a character or two, and when they were in their fairly experimental Great Mouse Detective phase, they finally put one into development. After all, they must have theorized, people clearly love mice. Well, by the time The Little Mermaid taught them that no, people love singing magic princesses, this was already well into development, and on its way to being the Disney company’s number one footnote. I will say that they definitely put a lot of effort into it. This wasn’t a hacky sequel, nor did they rush anything when their new model became apparent, though I have to imagine they were champing at the bit to move on to Beauty and the Beast.

I also don’t think the Australian setting was an attempt to be trendy. Well, not just an attempt to be trendy. I have no doubt that the setting was largely in response to, as the Simpsons put it, America’s brief-lived fascination with Australian culture. For some reason, the Aussies and Disney thought this would be a permanent thing. But despite the setting’s likely genesis, they really made it work, and it makes sense as a choice - sort of. What does make sense is that there are unique landscapes, the wilderness of the outback, and Australia’s famously varied wildlife to participate in the story. What doesn’t… Well, we’ll get to that. More of the good first. Specifically as it relates to those landscapes.

Darling, ever since the animation upgrade, you've looked even more beautiful. You're so smooth, and your outline isn't lavender anymore...

Not unlike the first Rescuers introducing the advanced xerography, this one included a huge leap forward in animation technology, a program called the Computer Animation Production System, or CAPS. CAPS bypassed the copying and painting of xerography with directly scanning the drawings into a computer, where they could be digitally colored and sequenced. This also allowed even better integration of computer animated elements, which they certainly made use of. Again and again and again. There are so many dramatic POV flights through sweeping vistas that I was starting to get motion sickness. The first is the most famous sequence from the movie, a giant majestic eagle sweeping majestically through the majestic Australian wilderness with majesty. It’s a really great sequence, and joking aside, it is actually majestic as all get out.

Pictured: Majesty

The casting is also quite good. In addition to the returning Bob Newhart and Eva Gabor, we get a deliciously hammy George C. Scott as our villain, an animal-torturing poacher straight out of Captain Planet’s nightmares, and John Candy as Wilbur, their new albatross partner. Character designs are quite good, though they‘re mostly just generic funny animals.

I’m sure you all remember my huge sticking point with the first Rescuers film. The talking mice, their apparent openness in the world, and who can and can not understand their speech. There was also the minor issue of what exactly the Rescue Aid Society aims to accomplish. Well, you may be happy to know that in this one, it’s even worse.

The plot involves a young boy named Cody, who lives on a wildlife preserve in the Australian Outback, and suffers from Accent Abandonment Syndrome. One day while exploring, he meets an enormous eagle, Marahute, who he rides around on and bonds with. But a sinister poacher named MacLeach has killed Marahute’s mate and wants to go 2 for 2, so he kidnaps Cody to try to get him to reveal the location of her nest. Some local mice get wind of this and send word to the Rescue Aid Society for help, and Bernard and Bianca are assigned to the case.

Okay, is there really no more practical way to go about this? Let’s convert this into human terms. George C. Scott kidnaps a kid in Australia. The police are informed, and their first move is to fire off an e-mail to NYC asking for two people to come by and see what they can do about it? And yes, when I say the police are informed, that is equivalent. The RAS headquarters in New York is informed of this by their local agents in Australia, using telegraphs and such. They even sneak into a military installation to send a message by satellite, so they’re definitely field agents. And when B&B arrive, they’re guided by one such agent, who’s far more capable than they are. Why didn’t he just go after the kid? And how do the mice operate in such secrecy if they’re hacking military satellites? And the clothes! And signs! CLOTHES AND SIGNS!!?

Of course, the human authorities didn't bother listing a contact number, warnings, useful information, or a first name. So maybe they don't have much on the ball.

And as with the last one, the kid can talk to animals, except the villain’s sapient yet mute reptile henchpet (a goanna named Joanna, which is cute). And neither the kid nor the animals mention this as being the tiniest bit odd. I mean, I think they’ve established that human’s in general can’t understand them, but despite the more clear unusualness of it, no one notices it as odd. Not the kangaroo, not the koala, not the platypus. Did I mention this was Australian? Oh, and Marahute is also mute, for no reason.

But despite that aspect of it, despite the overuse of  the new animation, despite the villain putting the kid into a ludicrous James Bond deathtrap instead of just feeding him to a crocodile, I did like it. It’s not quite as good as the original, but it’s a worthy sequel. Certainly better than Crocodile Dundee 2. I’d say it’s a bit underrated, but that’s a bit unfair, because when it’s rated at all, people tend to praise it maybe a bit more than it deserves. But a bit of infrequent overrating is probably earned given how it gets lost in the shuffle. Definitely one worth seeking out.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

* There’s a subplot about Jake, the Australian field agent, flirting with Miss Bianca, which shakes the confidence of Bernard, who is trying to pluck up the courage to propose to her. I was actually surprised at how well this was handled. Jake is never presented as a villain or a seducer, Bianca’s not presented as potentially unfaithful, it’s just a good, honest portrayal of adult romantic insecurity.

Lllllllladies. I mean Sshhhhhhhhielas.

* Jake was referred to in all the stuff I read as a kangaroo mouse, but those are only found in the US. I think they meant hopping mouse.

* More weirdness in the Rescue Aid Society’s methods: After a rough landing, Wilbur is left in the care of a RAS doctor, who attempts to perform unnecessary surgery on him, for… reasons? This is never addressed.

* Unless I missed something, this is the first Disney movie to feature a slapstick comedy bit involving an albatross wearing a bra.

* As a former employee of Outback Steakhouse, I am licensed to say this film is entirely and in all ways accurate.

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2012 - Wreck-it Ralph

Now, I know everyone’s all rarin’ to go with the Disney Renaissance and all those great fairy tales and musicals and princesses and roar, but before we get to that - Actually, before we get to that, we have The Rescuers Down Under. But before we get to *that*, I wanted to review the latest film in the canon, Wreck-it Ralph, while it was still in theaters. Normally this is where I’d give some information on the development of the film and how it relates to the evolution of the company and what came before it. But we haven’t seen what came before it this time. So we won‘t. Deal with it. Annoyed at my reticence? Well, I‘m not. Deal with it. Once you’re through dealing with it, get a pair of giant cherries and let’s talk about Wreck-it Ralph.

I don’t want to go into too much detail on the plot, since it’s still in theaters and I’m urging you all to see it, but it is excellent. The bare-bones synopsis: The movie is set in an arcade, where after closing time, characters unwind and visit other games, traveling through the surge protector. Wreck-it Ralph is the antagonist of the classic game Fix-it Felix Jr., and as his game hits its 20th anniversary, he’s feeling a bit down on being a villain. After a disappointing Villains Anonymous meeting (which includes appearances from Bowser, Zangief, the House of the Dead axe zombie, and many others), he sets off to the brand-new first-person shooter Hero’s Duty, where his building-wrecking skills will be more appreciated. On the way back to his game, he gets lost in the candy-themed Sugar Rush Speedway, a late-90s kart racer with a rotating roster. As Ralph gets caught up in helping a glitchy aspiring racer try to get into the next day’s race, he’s pursued by Fix-it Felix Jr., who needs to get Ralph home before their game is found defective and unplugged; and Sergeant Calhoun of Hero’s Duty, who believes Ralph has unwittingly brought a dangerous alien to Sugar Rush.

And yes, that’s the bare-bones version. There is a LOT of plot in this movie, and what I wrote there barely covers the first half. But the movie, quite impressively, never becomes muddied or confusing. While the circumstances change frequently, it always seems like a logical step, the next obstacle to overcome, and never comes off as contrived. Actually, it seems like levels in a video game, which I think we can safely assume was the intention.

Tell me you wouldn't have played the hell out of this game. You are a liar.

A big help in making this all work was the characters, who are very well-developed and excellently cast. As they come from a variety of games, each comes with their own design style. Multiple styles actually. The characters from Fix-it Felix Jr. have their in-game blocky 8-bit style, and their cartoony rounded “behind the scenes” look. Ralph even gets a few more as he walks through a Pac-Man level stealing cherries, or has a drink at Tapper‘s. He’s voiced by John C. Reilly, who used to have quite the dramatic career playing these sorts of sensitive brutes before he took up as Will Ferrell’s understudy. The aforementioned glitch, the adorable Vanellope von Schweetz, is a rude and hyperactive child voiced by Sarah Silverman, Fix-it Felix Jr. is an overly polite hayseed voiced by Jack McBrayer, Sgt. Calhoun is a tall, strident, angry woman with short blonde hair voiced by Jane Lynch. So no one’s really taxing themselves. But at the same time, they fit their characters like a glove. Calhoun in particular, who speaks in lengthy inspirational speeches full of strangled metaphors, and if they didn’t come from Jane Lynch’s prodigious improvisational abilities, they came from someone who’s studied her work extensively.

It's equally possible she is actually that character. 

There’s also a lot of really good supporting actors. The various video game characters are played by some excellent voice actors that don’t usually do much for Disney, including John DiMaggio, Adam Corolla, Jess Harnell, and Maurice LaMarche. Sugar Rush’s resident mean girl is Mindy Kaling,  King Candy is voiced in an excellent Ed Wynn impression that I assumed was one of Disney’s utility men. Much to my surprise, it turned out to be versatile character actor Alan Tudyk, doing a fantastic and utterly unrecognizable job.

Wreck-it Ralph is an unusual movie to say the least. Frankly, it doesn’t feel much like a Disney movie. Not in a bad way, after all, everyone’s allowed to branch out and try new things, and that goes for film studios, too. After all, if Pixar can do a fairy-tale adventure with a princess and a musical number, Disney can do a character-driven modern story informed by an unusual setting. In fact, a lot of people assumed it was Pixar, which I think is mostly to do with it being computer animated, but I think there was a very strong Pixar influence in this one. The unusual setting, as I said, is very Pixar. It also has a strong feeling of Dreamworks, the other big players in the computer animation game. The sense of humor is pretty Dreamworks, with lots of slapstick, pop culture references, and product placement. That‘s not a bad thing. I quite like Dreamworks now that they‘ve found their voice, and the product placement in this movie, mostly candy brands in Sugar Rush, is always for the sake of a good joke. Nesquicksand. Heh.

And these two never stop being adorable together.

Of course, there’s also the video game characters, which some might see as a further example of product placement. I really think they made the right call on this, though. Think of Toy Story. While the majority of characters were generic or original, they did use some licensed ones, most notably Mr. Potato Head, Barbie, and Ken. Sure, the story could still be told with Betty, Karl, and Senor Turnip-Face, but in order to get the jokes they needed, they had to remove that level of disconnect, and the talent involved made sure it never felt like an advertisement. It’s the same here. Sure, they could have had Ralph at his meeting with a dragon, a general, and a mad scientist, but seeing him with Bowser, M. Bison, and Dr. Robotnik draws us in that much easier. Seeing Ralph wander disconsolately through Pac-Man gives a very different emotional impact than if it were Puck-Muncher.

I don’t want to go too much more in depth, though there’s a surprising amount of depth to go into. I will just implore all of you to go see it, particularly if you are a fan of video games. When this blog wraps up, probably around March at this point, I’ll post a few spoilery spare thoughts I didn’t want to mention.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

* I did not intend for Puck-Muncher to sound so dirty.

* It seems that all of the various video game cameos were very accurately depicted, with the exception of Street Fighter II’s famous Russian wrestler Zangief, who is depicted as a bad guy, and whose name is pronounced wrong. Apparently, the director just had such a tough time against him as a child that he can’t see him as anything other than a villain. I think that’s fair. After all, the characters didn’t have particularly detailed personalities apart from what the players project on them.

They did use an off-brand Kano, for whatever reason. 

* Probably the most famous character in the movie is Sonic the Hedgehog, who appears giving a public service announcement. This is hilarious, assuming this was the intended reference.

* Or this. Oh my.

* Most of the racers in Sugar Rush Speedway aren’t specifically mentioned by name, so you need a quick eye to spot them as they show up on the leaderboad. It’s worth it though, to catch the names, all of which have been designed to simultaneously sound obnoxiously sweet and also disgusting. Examples include Taffyta Muttonfudge, Jubileena BingBing, Snowanna Rainbow, Gloyd Orangeboar, and Rancis Fluggerbutter.

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1989 - The Little Mermaid

Oh my, we are flying high now, aren’t we? While the not-inconsiderable success of the past two films provided Disney with reason enough to keep the theatrical animation division open, it was the massive success of a movie called Who Framed Roger Rabbit that caused them to be willing to spend gobs of money on it. A co-production with Warner Brothers, produced by Don Bluth’s producer, a wily young kid called Spielberg, requiring epic amounts of rights and royalties, hiring the finest screenwriters to extract a sensical plot out of the source novel... Expensive stuff. But they reaped the rewards and were now prepared to engage in the finest of all Disney Animation’s fine traditions, spending huge piles of money fulfilling one of Walt’s dreams. Jeffrey Katzenberg warned them that a “girls’ movie” wouldn’t do as well as their previous “boys’ movie”, but the animation crew was confident and sunk every cent of their hard-won budget into this film. Would Katzenberg’s predictions - Tell you what, I think we’ve established that JKatz was kind of an idiot back then, so are you guys okay if we skip the rhetorical questions this time? So am I. So fry up les poissons and let’s talk about The Little Mermaid.

I want to make one thing clear here, because I’m going to be complaining a lot. I do like this movie. It’s very well made, it’s deservedly a classic. In fact, it was the first movie since the inception of home video to get its first home release under the “Disney Classics” banner. And it’s earned it. I love it, it’s great, I am not disparaging it.

But…

Well, that’s it, isn’t it? In my head, there’s a lot of but in this movie. Of all the things I can think of to say about it, there’s a little voice of doubt in my head tempering it. I don’t deny that it’s important in Disney history, nor that it’s very good, but it’s a bit… Overrated isn’t the right word, I guess. But The Great Mouse Detective brought back quality, Oliver and Company brought back the music, The Little Mermaid brought back… Well, massive success. And better music. And princesses.

There's also a lot of butt in this movie.

Take the music for example. If there’s one thing everyone knows about this movie it’s that it has great songs, right? Hell yes, it’s by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, the creators of “Little Shop of Horrors”, and they made some classics. “Kiss the Girl”, “Under the Sea”, “Part of Your World”, and of course that great villain song, “Poor Unfortunate Souls”. There’s also a fun, if unnecessary song called “Les Poissons”, sung by the castle chef. BUT: their two stabs at introductory songs, “Fathoms Below” and “Daughters of Triton” are forgettable, the score is lackluster, and the integration of song and story is not always that good. And the good song that won the Best Song Oscar was the worst of the four. “Under the Sea” is fun, but it’s sort of stuck in awkwardly much later in the movie than it should have come, and the others are way better.

But still, mostly good there. How about the actors? They’ve been on a good kick there. Well, there’s certainly some standouts. Samuel Wright as Sebastian, the unaccountably Carribean crab, is really good, and sings the two award-nominated songs. Pat Carroll is deliciously evil as the villainous Ursula, and Rene Auberjonois is fantastic as always as the deranged chef. BUT: Everyone else is kinda generic. In the case of Ariel, played by stage actress Jodi Benson, I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt, because I think she only comes off as generic because her voice became the model for “cartoon princess” after this, and she really is quite good. But her dad and love interest are the most generic choices possible. King Triton is Ken Mars, who has pretty much two voices, the psychotic German, which is great, and the stern yet loving dad, which is bland. Guess which one he used here.

No, not that one.

Prince Eric is Christopher Barnes, who is so generic he sounds like the 1990s cartoon Spider-Man. In fact, he was, but I didn’t know that, because it’s impossible to listen to his voice and remember where you recognize it from because you DON’T, because it is BORING. Flounder is a generic teenager, Grimsby’s a generic butler, the maid is Edie McClurg, and you know what you’re getting with her. And the voices of Flotsam and Jetsam, Ursula’s servants, just confused me. They’re played by a woman, they speak in clearly female voices, but Ursula refers to them as “Boys” whenever she talks to them. It’s just weird.

Okay, so what about the story? Well, I’ll say this, it’s certainly nice and tight. There’s hardly any filler, and the story flows so smoothly I was amazed that it’s actually a bit on the longish side for these, at 83 minutes. And the basic beats of the story all hit, and I had a very enjoyable time while watching it. I also loved that for the first time, we see an actual relationship building. I mean, it’s only three days, but you remember how pleased I was in Sleeping Beauty when they had so much as a single conversation before falling in Twoo Wuv. And it’s also great that Eric initially has this fairy tale idea of romance and is hurt when he thinks Ariel isn’t the woman he met on the beach, and then actually grows to have feelings for her on her own merits. BUT: Pretty much as soon as it ended, I was struck with a load of problems I hadn’t noticed while it was on, which I shall now detail in my beloved bulleted list format.

I checked to see if Joss Whedon or Quentin Tarantino were in middle school when this came out. It would have explained so much.

* Ariel is willing to trade her voice for compatible organs with a man she’s never really met. Then her dad gives his freedom and his powers for her, then her boyfriend saves him, then she gets what she wanted. She has no arc, no growth as a character. I’m not too bothered about this one, because she should have been allowed to follow her dreams in the first place - or should she?

* The reason Ariel’s father is so opposed to her joining the human world is because they routinely haul fish out of the ocean and eat them, apparently unaware that all fish are sentient. (Except maybe the shark, but that’s another problem.) And when we get out of the water, it seems that the entire economy of Eric’s little seaside principality is based on their fishing industry, and the castle’s kitchen is basically a fish torture chamber. This is never addressed.

* I say principality rather than kingdom, because unlike Phillip and Charming, Prince Eric seems to have no father. Nor does he seem to do any governing, for that matter. And he just walks around downtown with no guards like he’s Christian X or something.

* Or maybe it is a kingdom, but he doesn’t get to be king until he puts a proper shirt on.

* A couple of years ago, I had a fairly severe laryngitis that left me mostly mute for about a week. It took all of six seconds to work out a simple charade for “I’m usually able to talk, but I can’t now. Sorry.” A little effort, Ariel, and we can clear this whole thing up before the halfway point.

* And I was willing to forgive her for not just writing it down, on the assumption that Merfolk have a different language, or are illiterate, what with writing being impractical underwater. But then my friend reminded me that she SIGNS HER OWN NAME to Ursula’s contract.

* What was Ursula’s evil plan, anyway? Screw with Triton’s daughter, get him to sign his life away to save her, steal his magic hat (?), grow gigantic, and… Then what?

* They have a boat just for weddings?

* The Wikipedia article for this movie contains the phrase “Closeup of the alleged penis”, and that’s all we’ll say on that matter, I should think.

* Two entries for the “I forget what the note I made while watching means” category: The first is “Black”. Possibilities: Ursula’s disguised hair color? Something in the animation? A reminder to download Michael Ian Black’s new book?

* Second: “Hellboy”. No idea.

* The opening scene contains among its “additional voices” none other than Mark Hamill and Tim Curry, unrecognizably playing random sailors. Awesome.

I'm not crying, I just have something caught in my FEELINGS.

Wait, that plot problems bulleted list seems to have accidentally segued into the usual “Additional Thoughts” section. Oh well, I’ve said what I need to. Look, this is a very good movie. It just has all these little bits that cause me to see it with a bit of trepidation. It’s a great movie on its own, but all the elements they need are not quite there yet. Anyway, I’m sure their next film will get it. It’s another big musical based on a classic fairy tale, right? Wait, what?

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1988 - Oliver and Company

After the success of The Great Mouse Detective, the animation team was flying high. They’d made their mark, secured their jobs, and had a bunch of fun new toys to play with. And in the finest Disney tradition, they decided to go crazy for their next one. In some ways this was a return to form. This was their first full musical in a while, and it used non-anthropomorphic animals, a la Lady and the Tramp, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, and The A********s. But it also took risks, with a completely modern setting, a WAY more intense bad guy than they’d previously used, an extreme twist on a well-known story, and a use of popular singers not seen since the Jungle Book. So did it work, or was it also a return to the fine Disney tradition of disappointing follow ups? Did the technology hold up, or bog the film down? Wheeeeeeeere is Love? Beats me, kid. So get some chicken wings, because that’s what I was eating when I watched this and I’m tired of making pet food jokes, and let’s talk about Oliver and Company.

The first thing I want to address is the modern setting, because that has a MAJOR effect on the tone of the film. This is only the fourth movie they’ve done with a modern setting, and the first that really goes for it. Dumbo was set in the timeless world of the circus, and One Hundred and One Dalmatians and The Rescuers spent the majority of their films in rural locations. This movie, however, is set in New York City, and it really goes at it full-blast. The wire-frame technique from the last film’s Big Ben (containing clock) finale is used throughout here to create the vast city streets and legendary New York traffic, and it looks fantastic. The big and boxy cars of the mid-80s are perfectly suited to the necessarily blocky frames, and there’s an extremely citylike feeling of depth and scale.

It was exactly the right choice to make, because this is, in case you weren’t aware, based on a Charles Dickens novel, Oliver Twist. Dickens’s depictions of London are justifiably legendary, and the loving attention they lavish on NYC in this is the perfect connection to that. In case you were wondering how Oliver Twist becomes a pet-based Disney flick: In the original, Oliver is a homeless orphan who befriends a street urchin named Dodger. He is then taken in by Fagin, a sleazy jerk who takes care of a small army of children in exchange for them stealing for him. But he’s in deep debt to one of his former pupils, the vicious Bill Sikes. Oliver is taken in by a wealthy old man and comes to love his new home, but after being “rescued” by Dodger, Fagin attempts to ransom him, which gets violent and dangerous when Sikes gets involved.

The Disney version is exactly the same.

Plus or minus a few humans.

Oh, sure, Oliver’s a kitten, Dodger’s a stray mutt, Fagin’s gang are dogs, and he’s adopted by a cute little girl instead of an old widower, but still, they translated the beats of the story impressively. The only major change is that Fagin is kind of a nice and sweet guy who uses the dogs less for stealing and more for garbage picking, begging, and unsuccessful short cons; and Sikes is not his former student, but a vicious loan shark. Which makes sense, because if Sikes learned from Fagin, he’d be a dog. I suppose it also would have been nice for Dodger to be a puppy rather than an adult dog, to really make him a peer of Oliver like in the book, but the character is quite well-realized and well-acted, so we’ll let that go.

The look of the film is extremely 80s, but I don’t mean that in a critical way, nor to say that it’s super-exaggerated like Breakin’ or something. The animators very clearly studied the fashions and styles of the 80s, the layout and design of the streets and buildings, the patterns of city movement. I can’t tell you how perfectly they get the feel of the city, starting right from the opening montage, narrated musically by Huey Lewis, the first of the 80s superstars that populate this film.

Or PUP-ulate! HA!

The main draw is Billy Joel, who plays Dodger. He proves a very capable voice actor, turning up his Noo Yawk mannerisms to eleven. His musical number is the best one in the movie. You’re thinking about it right now. It’s the only part of the movie you remember. Ruth Pointer is another of Fagin’s gang, and sings a song so generic that I forgot about it while I was still watching it. I just started humming Billy Joel’s song. Bette Midler plays a snobbish show poodle owned by Oliver’s adopted family. I have no strong opinions about Bette Midler as a singer, but I’ve always rather liked her as a person. She seems sort of pleasant and goofy. She delivers her dialogue excellently, though her song reminds me mostly of a moment in The Drowsy Chaperone where the narrator informs us that the actress playing the Chaperone insisted on having “A Rousing Anthem” in everything she did, no matter how inappropriate to the situation it is.

The other cast members are all quality. Future teen heartthrob Joey Lawrence as Oliver, Dom deLuise as Fagin, Cheech Marin and Roscoe Lee Brown as a Chihuahua and Bulldog in his gang. Taurean Blacque gives real menace to Sike’s vicious Doberman, and Rober Loggia absolutely nails every second of it Sikes himself. And I meant what I said earlier, he’s probably the best villain we’ve seen so far. Oh, sure, your evil queens and flashy witches make the big splash, but this guy’s such a real kind of evil, you feel it. Oh, how you feel it. He’s animated by Keane, and just like with Ratigan, the main theme of the performance is the interplay of thuggish brutality and self-conscious sophistication, only this time, the brutal part is MUCH closer to the surface. And after seeing magic spinning wheels and Dalmatian coats, some simple extortion, kidnapping, and dog fighting seems all the scarier. Also: his death scene will not be topped until maybe Tarzan. See, after Sikes kidnaps Oliver’s owner to get a ransom from her rich parents, the dogs and Fagin go to rescue her. Sikes gives chase, winds up driving down the railroad tracks, and… Ah, just see for yourself.

And his Dobermans get electrocuted. It's pretty dark at the end.

The animation is also solid. Apart from the excellent use of the computer wire-frame technique I already mentioned, they’ve obviously gotten comfortable with the ATP technique and thin outlines are back. The character designs are really strong, too. Everyone’s personality comes across really strongly just by looking at them, and the even more overtly stylized humans look fantastic.

In design, not attractiveness.

So considering that I’ve had only good things to say about this movie, it may be surprising to hear that it wasn’t among my favorites. Don’t get me wrong, I really liked it, and there’s nothing that it really does wrong. But it doesn’t really hang together that well. It’s very disjointed. A lot of that is a holdover from the Dickens. Dickens wrote for serial publication in magazines, so naturally, a lot of his work is quite episodic. I won’t criticize them like I did with the Black Cauldron, because more than just an old-fashioned story, this is an essential part of the structure, but it still makes for a bit of an unsatisfying story. Likewise, the actual dialogue is rather dull. Not bad or anything, just kind of… there. I certainly enjoyed myself, and I definitely recommend it, but in the end, it’s a technically awesome movie with brilliant moments that just doesn’t have the spark to make it a real classic. We’ll save that for next week.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

* A lot of people in the opening scenes, which take place mainly at the animals’ level, are wearing spats. Were there a lot of spats around in the 80s? Or did they just figure that if they were drawing a lot of feet, they had to do something to make them interesting?

From the pitch session: "Come on, Katzenberg! This thing merchandises itself!"

* While there’s a few cameos in this film from former Disney dogs, like Pongo and Jock, far more surprising is the brief appearance of Scooby-Doo. Nice one, animators.

* While most of the dogs’ barking is done by sound effects, Georgette’s is just Bette Midler yelling “Bark bark!” I have no problem with this, though, because it’s funny.

* Jenny’s “school bus” is just a wireframe for a pickup truck with a covered bed and a “school bus” sign on top. Seriously.

* This is what, the third British Bulldog we’ve had? Okay, I guess the one in One Hundred and One Dalmatians didn’t count, they were all British.

This was actually less racist than it could have been. Or maybe I just still have low standards from the '50s.

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1986 - The Great Mouse Detective

The Great Mouse Detective

Well, the Black Cauldron flopped to a rather legendary degree, and the studio was in trouble. There were huge waves or layoffs and encouraged retirements, they were taken out of their historic offices and moved down the highway to a nondescript gray building, and they were told that they’d better churn out something cheap and profitable fast, or it would be CURTAINS FOR THEM! Nyah-hah-hah!!

(Artist's rendering.)

Fortunately, the new wave of animators, now unencumbered by the older guys, had a plan. Take the best storytelling techniques of the old days, the best filmmaking techniques of the modern age, and the new styles of animation that could cut corners and save money while still looking good. Unfortunately, time and money were working against them, and the company‘s reinvigorated focus on live-action films and distributing work through their various other studios meant they would not hesitate to cut the animation department loose if they continued on their spiral. Would they be able to pull it off? What innovative techniques would they use to get their project finished? Could they get away with having beer and strippers? In the movie, I mean, not in the office. Except maybe for research? Excited about the beer and strippers? So am I. So get yourself some beer and strippers and let’s talk about The Great Mouse Detective.

On the surface, there’s a lot going on there that’s similar to The Rescuers. A time of major creative shifts, a fairly obscure British book about mice that solve crimes, inexplicable clothes-wearing - the two seem quite similar. But there are differences. The mice in this one aren’t half-dressed, they’re all the ways dressed, with little pants and ascots and waistcoats and what have you. Also, instead of their homes and possessions being made of human things, they’re all fully built to mouse scale. This full commitment to the scenario means I’ve got less problems with it. Sure, they still have signs and businesses, but it’s a lot easier to have the intellectual disconnect between the human world and the mouse world.

It certainly helps that the story is really solid. It’s a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, which is something that generally works well. It’s a kid’s cartoon, so it trades on a lot of Holmes stereotypes, and the mystery is not exactly intricate, but it’s more than good enough, and they did manage to throw in some references to the classic stories. Dawson served in the same Afghanistan regiment as Watson, for instance. Though I must admit, the fact that the mice are apparently fighting international wars did crack through my suspension of disbelief. Basil is played in the manic Robert Downey, Jr. style, as opposed to the more languid Jeremy Brett style or the intense Benedict Cumberbatch style. This was clearly the right choice for a cartoon, and his introduction, where he bursts in wearing an outlandish disguise and starts firing his gun into the sofa for reasons we are never made aware of, is fantastic.

SCIENCE, that's why.

Supporting characters are also very well-realized. The villainous henchman, Fidget, is a bat with a crippled wing and a peg leg, and I can’t imagine that was easy to animate. He kidnaps a toymaker named Flaversham, which is a delightful name for a cartoon mouse. He’s voiced by Alan Young, doing his typical Scottish accent, and that’s never a bad thing. Flaversham’s daughter, Olivia, is a rather typical moppet, but her pwecious accent and tam o’shanter won me over. The greatest of them all, though, is our villain, Professor Ratigan.

Ratigan is an enormous (well, comparatively) sewer rat who hides a constantly stewing homicidal rage under a veneer of taste and class. The scenes in which he freaks out and straight up murders some of his henchmen are just magnificent, as is his eventual breakdown. His animation is phenomenal, and works absolutely perfectly with the voice, that of Vincent Freaking Price. Price never hit it as big as he could have, due to his association with B-grade horror, but he really is a phenomenal actor, and this role lets him really work his range. He’s so good that the movie isn’t a musical EXCEPT FOR HIM.

And he really knows how to berate a henchman.

To be precise, there are three songs in the film. One, “Let Me Be Good To You”, is sung by the aforementioned stripper in a seedy bar Basil and Dawson are infiltrating. It’s kind of out of nowhere, and has no real plot relevance, except to distract the heroes, but since they only needed to be distracted for half a second, I’m pretty sure this was just the filmmakers having fun. Nonetheless, it is digetic music, which is film music that exists in story, as opposed to background. We see the piano player, we know the audience is watching a singer. Not so with “The World’s Greatest Criminal Mind”, the only straight-up musical number in the entire film. It shows up pretty early on, when Ratigan’s employees are so moved by his evil they sing along with him about how evil he is. Then he feeds one of them to a cat, and they complete the song with rather frenzied and panicked expressions, which is very darkly funny. Also they‘re all drunk.

This is not some joke I keep making. She starts wearing more clothes than she ends with. I have no clue how they got away with this.

The last song, Goodbye So Soon, is my favorite in the movie. Ratigan has created a death trap built of every way he’s ever wanted to kill Basil. Basil and Dawson are tied to a mousetrap, which will set off a pistol, which will trigger a crossbow, which will release an anvil, and then a preset camera will snap a photo of the whole thing. Knowing that he wouldn’t be able to be there, he sets the mousetrap to be activated via a rope pulled by a phonograph arm. And for the occasion, he records a special song about how time is fleeting and how bittersweet it is to say goodbye. It’s hilariously upbeat and swinging, and provides the perfect background noise for Basil’s despair at his imminent death.

This movie is also where character animators really start to shine, becoming truly distinctive. Ratigan was, I believe, animated by Disney legend Glen Keane, who would go on to animate a similar battle of savagery and civilization in The Beast, so it’s great to see him applying the same to a villainous persona. I had thought he was done by Andreas Deja, but he was still fairly new, and doing the comparatively minor character of Queen Mousetoria. You’ll see these two names pop up a lot from now on, since I was a huge fan of theirs as a kid, because I was a nerd.

Reference joke!

Okay, so speaking of the animation, I need to address how they saved all that money I mentioned, and whether or not it looks any good. First of all, it looks great. I’m not sure to what extent the APT process was used, but the characters all have highly simplified designs with large blocks of color and noticeably thick outlines, which surely must have helped. They also used computer animation for the first time ever, to GREAT effect. The finale takes place in Big Ben, and the various gears were built as 3-D wireframe models, which were then printed, xerographed, and painted. The result is a huge sweeping chase that looks nothing short of amazing, and took a fraction of the time and money it would take to do it by hand.

And it worked! For the first time in a LONG time, Disney was a hit with audiences and critics, Roger Ebert giving it a particularly notable endorsement. Disney was back on top, and if you guys remember back to the heyday, you know what that means! Something highly innovative but not altogether great is coming up next!

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

* The score was by Henry Mancini, who provided the perfect mix of adventuring and cartoony whimsy. But then, he did the Pink Panther theme, too, so he knows what’s up.

* After Basil escapes the aforementioned deathtrap, he grabs Dawson and Olivia just so they can smile for Ratigan’s camera. Because what’s the point of living if you can’t gloat?

"Dawson, I believe this shop is engaged in false advertising."

* People say “You don’t understand,” a lot in this movie. Not making a point, but it happens often enough to be weird.

* The Animators wanted to call the movie “Basil of Baker Street”, but the execs insisted on the title we got. Basil’s animator sent a memo around suggesting they retitle some of their other movies, like “Seven Little Men Help a Girl”, “The Lady With the See-Through Shoes”, and "Puppies Taken Away".

* Big Ben is actually the name of the bell, not the clock. But this isn’t Hunchback, so we don’t need to get too precise.

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1985 - The Black Cauldron

While I’ve mentioned a few movies that I was particularly looking forward to this or that film, this one is the clear winner. It’s a fascinating and important film for a variety of reasons. It was their first PG rated film, an attempt at a serious, dramatic animation for grown-ups. It was their first film to be completely non-musical, with nary so much as a background song and with a score by Elmer Bernstein, who was quite the new hotness at the time. It was critically despised but has built up a loyal cult following, and it was such a colossal failure that it almost resulted in shutting down the entire animation department. (Again.) So would its ambition and scope be its triumph or downfall? Would I find myself on the side of the masses or the cult? Is there a worse possible protagonist than this one? No. Feeling adventurous? So am I. So boil up a haggis, and let’s talk about The Black Cauldron.

Oh, I do believe I may have tipped my hand with that last rhetorical there, mayn’t I? First, the background. This was, as I said, intended to be a serious, mature, and dark movie to capture the adult audience. Everyone was on board with that, the old and new animators alike, but the animosity between the two groups had basically gotten to the point where they weren’t even speaking to each other. The lead animators of the old crew had more or less all gone by now, but their assistants were still clinging on, resentful of the new crew of hotshot CalArts graduates. This resulted in a movie that was wildly inconsistent in tone and quality, and I have no idea who to blame. Things were not helped by a third production team: The executives. While back in the Walt days, they largely let the animators get on with things, the 80s were the corporate age, and there were some very powerful people fighting over this film, including studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg and company CEO Michael Eisner. Upon seeing the final edit of the movie, Katzenberg suddenly decided it was too dark and unilaterally locked himself in the editing room to hack it to pieces. Eisner stopped him, but agreed to push back the film's release by six months for retooling. About 15 minutes were cut with nothing to replace them. I’m not going to be so naïve as to blame that for all the movie’s failings, but it couldn’t have helped.

Who gave this jerkhole a sword?

And what are the failings? Let’s start with the characters. Our “hero”, Taran, is an apprentice pig-keeper responsible for the stewardship of Henwin (my research material insists it’s Hen-Wen, but they are all clearly saying Henwin), a pig who can foretell the future. Taran is a whiny, petulant ego-case who insists that he is to be a great knight someday, and while he is off daydreaming about how great he is, Henwin is captured by the forces of our antagonist, the Horned King. You may expect Taran to grow and mature over the course of his adventure, becoming the hero he always was inside. You can just carry on expecting. As for the villain, I don’t need to describe him, because he’s just what you get when you pop Skeletor, Mumm-Ra the Everliving, Megatron, Cobra Commander, and Gargamel into a blender and hit frappe.

(And Sheriff Terrorbull. And one of the Misfits. And the Peculiar Purple Pieman of Porcupine Peak.)

He’s got the de rigeur hunchbacked lackey that he strangles for every minor failure, of course. And Taran’s got three idiots of his own. There’s Princess Eilonwy, who occasionally gets a spot of press for being one of two Disney Princesses not to be featured in official Disney Princess material. I’d assumed that was because the film was a flop (The other unlucky princess is from Atlantis, after all,), but I think it’s more that she’s a shallow, annoying character who never really provides any evidence that she is a princess. There’s also Flooder, whose name is spelled in some silly Welsh way, but we all know how I feel about that. He’s a bard, who is also a coward and constantly endangering them with his bumbling ways. A string on his harp breaks every time he lies, which I kept expecting to be a plot point, but wasn’t. There’s also our comic relief characters, Gurgi, a sort of Ewok thing that is also cowardly and talks like he’s auditioning to be Donald Duck, and Doli, a cranky old fairy who bypasses “80s Saturday Morning Cartoon” and goes straight for “80s Breakfast Cereal Mascot” in his characterization.

The plot… Well, I don’t know what to make of it, really. It’s based on two books by Lloyd Alexander, and as I understand it, they are quite good, and the characters aren’t nearly as annoying. But the plot seems to be largely the same, i.e. clichéd out the pigsty. But he was writing in the mid-1960s, when this stuff wasn’t as clichéd as it is now, so I can probably go easy on him. I think I can blame the Disney folks, though. When a Lord of the Rings movie finally came along after years of development, they changed things to make it work better with modern storytelling techniques, and it improved the story. Increased roles for Arwen and Eowyn, introduction of real conflict between Frodo and Sam, a more varied personality for Faramir, the moment of realization for Treebeard… I could go on, but the fact is, these were changes that were necessary to make the story work for a movie. Disney made changes to the story of The Black Cauldron, but rather than improve it for the medium of film, it’s just to make it less from a rather typical high fantasy book into a rather typical 1980s action cartoon. I might as well be watching G.I. Joe

The music would be better, too.

The animation gets a cut here, despite the use of another technical advancement, the APT process. This is another form of xerography that can copy blocks of color in addition to lines. Unfortunately, that leads to random shifts in color tone, and characters that don‘t appear to match their backgrounds at all. There’s no weight, no gravity, no lighting, and Fudd flags abound more than ever before. Characters often develop a sketchy white outline around their proper outline, and there’s occasional random use of photo backgrounds that don’t fit at all. I’m not going to lay all the blame on the method, because they use the same method in their next three movies, and they look fantastic. I just think that the background fighting and budget cuts took their toll on what we can see.

By this time, Don Bluth had left Disney, fed up with the company, and formed his own independent studio, making the classic film “The Secret of NIMH”, which captured the respect of critics with its mature and rather scary style. In a lot of ways, this seems like a response to that, but despite the work of Tim Burton and others, it just can’t measure up. There’s a pretty severe learning curve coming up, and the new guys are going to really take charge, in a pretty intense way.

Taran: Gurgi, you're alive!     Brian: FFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU...

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

* Because haggis is generally agreed to be disgusting, but some people really like it.

* There are three witches in this movie, but rather than the traditional Maiden, Mother, and Crone, they seem to have gone with Crone, Mother-in-law, and Overweight Harlot. There’s a lot of “humor” with O.H. smooshing Flooder into her breasts. HA HA! She’s fat but has the audacity to be sexual. That’s… inherently funny? I guess?

* I couldn’t remember while writing the last bit what plot-relevance the witches had. Then I remembered they gave The Black Cauldron to the heroes, which should have been easy to recall. I think this movie broke my brain.

* The Black Cauldron is the plot MacGuffin, by the way. It's a powerful weapon that the heroes must destroy, lest the enemy use it. Not that that sounds familiar or anything.

* Oh, and when they defeat the villain, his tower collapses. Which is weird, because it's not even really his. He's just squatting.

* And all it does is reanimate the dead, who are really slow and shambling and rickety.

"I expected my unstoppable army to have more..." "Muscles, my lord?" "Muscles, tendons, whatever." "Oh, like you can talk."

* There’s more special effects animation in this one than we’ve seen in a while, and it’s not all terrible. So that’s something.

* Disney acknowledges this movie in their theme parks less than any other, including the infamous Song of the South. The only standing reference to it was a restaurant called “Gurgi’s Munchies and Crunchies” that was removed in 2002.

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