Shrek The Musical (DreamWorks Theatricals, 2008)

Well well well. In the words of Staind, it’s been a while. See, I got all enthusiastic that my newly stable job would allow me the sort of schedule that would allow for more regular writing, but I forgot one thing: How FREAKING exhausting it is to be a teacher at the end of the year. Or a full time teacher in general, really. And I had to keep the ol’ bookstore job in order to have it over the summer, so the end result was if I wasn’t working, I was flat on my back. So if you’ve been wondering where the updates at, I wish it was a more exciting story, but nope. I was working my dream job by day, working a job I also love at night, and sleepin’ in the middle.

Thing is, school’s been out for weeks, and I haven’t picked up the pen yet. Metaphorically. Typing with a pen is difficult. But even if it wasn’t, I still just keep running into a wall when trying to put together my thoughts on The Land Before Time. And as the days ticked by, my mind wandered back to the weeks of the NJASK. Because the NJASK, you see, is part of what led me on this dark path I’ve found myself on. No, not the path of the writer’s block. The path of I've watched Shrek The Musical five times this summer. See? I told you it was dark.

MUSIC!

ALLEGED COMEDY!

REDUNDANCY!

BAD PLANNING!

IT’S SHREK THE MUSICAL!

The NJASK, for those that don’t know, is a standardized test taken from grades 3-8 in New Jersey. And schools take it REALLY seriously. High security, all sorts of new rules and regulations, and a mad orgy of test prep. The weeks leading up to the test are non-stop writing prompts and comprehension quizzes. And the kids have to be quiet. If anyone in the school is testing, the students must be absolutely silent for the duration of the testing, lest they provide a distraction to the testing students.

And the final part of our puzzle is that some students need to be taken from their classes and tested in small groups, in order to accommodate their learning needs. And what are the first classes to give up their rooms? The specials, of course. So the art, music, and Spanish classes were held in the gym, the gym classes lost their room, and the library classes had squat to do without their library. My school includes grades 4-8, so there is a LOT of testing to be done, and after a while, the specials teachers were getting kind of fed up.

This is a photo of Shrek, from the play "Shrek The Musical". So... there.

On the last day of 4th grade testing, I dropped my testing materials off at the vice principal’s office, and went off to the teacher’s room to grab a quick bathroom break before rejoining my very antsy and edgy kids. As it happens, the teacher’s room is right across from the gym, and it was 6th grade specials time. I saw that the gym was dark and peeked in the window to see what was going on. Oh, they’re just watching a movie. Well, I certainly don’t blame them. Great way to cap off a very stressful week. They’ve earned it, students and teachers alike. I poked my head in to see what movie they had, as I am always inordinately interested in what movies people are watching. And the result was... live action Shrek?

As a Broadway fan, I was of course aware that Shrek had been made into a stage musical, but I had no idea it had been professionally filmed and released. Intrigued, I poked about on the Netflix when I got home that afternoon, and there it was. So I watched it. Why not? Shrek was a good movie, there was a talented cast there, and I do like a good musical. So I watched it.

Fast forward to last week, and it popped up on my “Watch it again” recommendations on Netflix. Huh, I thought, I didn’t rate the movie after I finished it. That’s odd, I usually do that as soon as I finish. And after all, it was... Um... I thought it... I liked the...

I did not remember it at all. I remembered not a single moment of this movie which I had watched just a little over a month ago. I strained my brain but could not recall a single chorus, a unique costume design, an interesting bit of staging. Sure, it was a stressful time when I watched it, but surely something. I did remember one thing. I didn’t like it that much.

Was it garish? I feel like it was garish.

Intrigued by my lack of any memory other than a vague distaste, I did what any sensible man would do. I watched it again. And as the credits started rolling, I realized something very strange. I couldn’t remember the beginning of the show. It was slipping from my mind as soon as it entered. Sure, I had dribs and drabs this time, it being so recent, but it was fading fast.

Could this be the Perfectly Forgettable Entertainment? I’d encountered such things before, albeit rarely. The first Garfield movie, for instance, which I saw in theaters. Any number of NBC sitcoms designed to fill the gap between Friends and Seinfeld. A unit of entertainment that can be consumed and then immediately forgotten entirely, leaving no impact but the sense of its existence.

So I watched it again. And again. It’s been three days since my last viewing of it, and already it’s slipping away yet again. Will I watch it a fifth time, to see if I can vanquish its lethian powers? Probably not. It’s not that good.

A main problem is that it’s just trying to put the movie on stage, and that doesn’t work in the best of circumstances, much less with a movie like Shrek, which has dragons and explosions and crap. The scenes are awkwardly structured and don’t fit together right, the dialogue is often stilted and poorly timed, and the musical numbers rarely fit in organically. The famous “Gingerbread Man interrogation scene” was terrible, as it was missing the closeups and timing of the movie, but the dialogue was kept identical. The movie as a whole was full of that.

They try to match it exactly in terms of the costumes, too, and while they certainly look right, it leaves the whole thing looking like a theme park stage show than a proper musical. The original designs are busy and ugly, too, which is a problem, but Shrek was always a fairly dull and ugly series, anyway, with the strength of its writing as the main appeal. The dragon is particularly bad in this respect, as they attempt to copy a look that was really designed just for a CGI movie, and for a non-verbal, constantly moving character, who by the nature of the medium has to now stand still and speak terrible new dialogue. The puppetry is really bad, too, which is odd, as it was performed by Avenue Q’s John Tartaglia, and that guy knows his stuff.

I mean, at the very least, its eyes should be able to look at things. I feel like that's not too much to ask.

Tartaglia also appears as Pinocchio, in a role somewhat beefed up from the movie, and he does better there. He makes an impression, at least, which is more than I can say for most of the supporting cast. The leads... Well, there’s good and bad. Princess Fiona is the amazingly talented Sutton Foster, who may be skilled and beautiful, but Fiona’s a fairly dull part to begin with, and she’s not given much. Compared to what she is capable of, they really don’t challenge her abilities at all.

On the flip side is Christopher Seiber as Lord Farquaad. Seiber is a very tall fella. When I saw Spamalot, he ran past me in the aisle as part of a bit, and I, in the standing room section, thought, “Whoa. That dude’s tall.” True story. So how do they have him as the famously diminutive Farquaad? Simple. He wears a black lined cape and black pants with tiny legs sewn on, and spends the whole show on his knees. This must have been exceptionally difficult for him, and amazingly, he never gives it less than his all. He’s so committed and sells his material so well that his presence on stage is always a welcome break in the tedium, at least. Here’s a video of his big number, one of the only parts of the show I enjoyed wholeheartedly. Clever, funny, creative use of legs, Wicked parody, it’s got it all.

Shrek is played by Brian d’Arcy James, and frankly, he’s so good, his performance is terrible. He’s too earnest and talented to give the role the kind of delivery it needs, and his face is buried under a movie-mimicking pile of latex that robs him of all but the broadest emotion. His attempt at mimicking Mike Myers’ Scottish accent is weird at best, and frequently runs to nasal. And his Shrek head has really obvious earholes. All the same can be said of Daniel Breaker as Donkey, but far worse. While Mike Myers is a talented performer, Eddie Murphy is a revelation, and while the best years of both are long behind them, they can sell their lines like no one’s business. Breaker has no opportunity to make the character his own because he’s forced to do an Eddie Murphy impression, and that’s not a thing you can just copy. So he’s just freaking annoying, and not charming, funny annoying like he’s meant to be. It’s a fine line to walk. and only an Eddie Murphy can walk it. (Man, I just realized how much I’d hate Mushu if anyone else had voiced him). On top of that, the costume people seem to have just given up on his costume, leaving it, well...

"I'M AN ABOMINATION. And I'm comin' to your house after school..."

I mean, honestly, what is that? He can’t use those hooves for anything, and his body language is all awkward through the entire movie. And they didn’t even bother connecting the head to the body. Ugh. He looks like a broke furry.

The music is... well, I didn’t hate most of the songs as I was watching it. There are a few that provoked eye rolls, and Pinocchio and the Gingerbread Man shouldn’t be given solos with those voices, but in general they were decent. I even remember the occasional chorus. Or at least the key lines from them. But, ever a flaw with some musicals, a lot of them are inserted awkwardly at best. It’s another side effect of trying to copy the original film; the original film wasn’t a musical, and therefore, there’s no place for songs in it. Worse is that one of the film’s best aspects was its well-chosen soundtrack, with the scenes well-complimented by the pop songs playing in the background. Of these, only the Neil Diamond/Monkees/Smash Mouth classic “I’m a Believer” makes the cut, sang as a grand finale. But for the most of the play, you’ve got scenes written to include certain songs in the background, those songs removed, and new songs tacked on to the end where they don’t fit.

Really, it's impressive how old this joke doesn't get.

Now’s the part where I surprise some of you. It’s worth a watch. Seiber and Foster give the production a lot of life, and for all its blandness and poor adaptation, there are quite a few individual moments that provoke a smile. Kids will almost certainly like it, and I don’t begrudge them that. Particularly if they’ve seen the proper movie, which, again, I quite enjoy. More importantly I strongly believe that every Broadway show should have a performance recorded for posterity, and the more people see this, the more other producers will think about it. And that’s a message worth putting up with two hours of mediocre entertainment to send.

All right, let’s get back on some sort of schedule. Stay tuned for The Land Before Time.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

* A bit more visual imagination could go a long way to making me enjoy this more, I think. In the course of my photo search, I found pictures from some productions that were a little more free with the costumes, and I found them quite intriguing. Here’s one inspired by William Steig’s original illustrations, and this one works a bit with textures and presentational costumes for a more appealing look.

* If you happened to read something interesting in the URL on that second link, yes, that Donkey is played by James Earl Jones II, no, he’s not related to James Earl Jones, no, I have no idea why he doesn’t change his name.

The show does contain Sutton Foster's legs, so it can't be all bad.

* Jen Cody (who is, incidentally, Sutton Foster's sister in law) has a bit role as a featured dancer in the "Welcome to Duloc" segment, in which she dances with Farquaad, and she is about as tall standing as he is kneeling. What a tiny, tiny actor. * I'm going to make one of my rare breaks from the blog's "no cussing" policy to say: Have you ever noticed that "Farquaad" sounds like "Fuckwad"? I mean, that has to be intentional, right? With Shrek's accent and all? They were just trying to say "Fuckwad" in a kids' movie, right?

* For what it’s worth, I’ve also watched Speed Racer five times so far this summer. But that’s different. That movie is awesome.

Someday. Someday.

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An American Tail (Sullivan Bluth, 1986)

Remember in the NIMH review when I said Bluth had no trouble attracting money for his future films? Well, he attracted something else, too, and it was something that sure didn’t make the money any harder to come by, because that something was named STEVEN FREAKING SPIELBERG. And Spielberg took a very hands-on approach to producing this film, which left Bluth with a lot of money, but also with an enthusiastic yet inexperienced (in animation, at least) executive. And with Spielberg’s money and art, there also came the marketing department and their sinister needs. Bluth’s first film was a scrappy little indie, but this new movie, the first from the newly formed Sullivan Bluth Studios, was suddenly a Big Deal. Would Bluth be able to rise to the challenge of going corporate so soon, or would the ideals that set him off on his own be scuttled? Well, Disney had just made The Black Cauldron, so there wasn’t too much pressure. Combining Spielberg’s inspiration, the storied history of the Jewish diaspora, and Bluth’s inspiration, talking mice wearing an inappropriate amount of clothing for the setting.

TRADITIOOOOOOOON!

TRADITION!

TRADITION!

IT’S AN AMERICAN TAIL!

You know, for months, I’ve been characterizing Bluth’s filmography to people as four good movies and a sharp downhill turn, but not having seen this one since my childhood, I was sort of assuming. And I wasn’t… completely wrong? The film contains may winning moments, and Bluth certainly knows how to work the heartstrings - a talent that will prove ever greater over the next few films - but as a whole, there’s a lot of the movie that just doesn’t work.

As a critic, it’s important to be aware of what complaints are my personal issues, and which are more objective, so I’d like to get the major personal one out of the way first. HOW DOES THIS MOUSE WORLD WORK?! It’s like The Rescuers, where there is no apparent effort made to conceal the world of fully-clothed, intelligent, industrious mice from the world of humans, even though the humans act completely normally. The mice have a little gathering area before they board the boat to America, complete with little mouse banners and a little mouse band, but nobody thinks this is odd? The Mousekewitz family lives in the baseboards of a human family (named Moskowitz, which just raises further questions), but they have a door and glass windows and their name written outside. Is this relationship parasitic or symbiotic? WHAT IS HAPPENING?

Don Bluth Animation Fetish Alert : SPARKLES!

Further making it like the Rescuers is the international parade of stereotypes, including, among others, an Italian Mouse whose mama was-a killed by-a da Mafia, and an Irish Mouse who appears drunk, sings an overly maudlin song, and seems to have built a burial mound. Bluth is really aping the Rescuers hard in this, which is odd, as that’s one of the crummy films that drove him away from Disney. Though it was also the one where he, as animation director, had the most creative freedom, so maybe that was all him. I don’t know.

But the other issues the film has are more objective. Even if I had been able to get past the mouse world issues more quickly, there’s still the fact that the film opens with a pogrom. It’s a shockingly violent opening to a children’s film, and as I watched, I couldn’t help but think of Fiddler on the Roof. When the pogrom comes in that movie, it’s after a long setup of the political situation, the persecution of the Jews, the character of the Cossacks - Here, it’s just random violence without context, making it look like they were leaving Russia because it’s full of freaking werewolves. And that’s barely a joke. The Cossack cats - who wear big furry Cossack hats because of course they do - snarl and roar like wolves and, somewhat more justifiably, lions. There’s no context, it’s just “CATS ARE EVIL”.

HOW IS YOUR HAT STAYING ON?

Obviously, I’m not saying that the Cossacks were justified in what they did, I’m saying that there’s a way to tell this story without simplifying it to the point of nonsense. Ebert observed in his review that the film’s target audience would neither know nor care that the Mousekewitzes were Jewish, and that’s emblematic of a basic problem with the writing. It’s so obsessed with putting this kid and his family through every single bad thing that could happen to an immigrant in the 1890s that they never take time to actually go into any of it. There’s a scene where Feivel is sold to a sweatshop, but he escapes in the next scene with no trouble and we never even see him working. There’s a scene towards the end where he winds up homeless and angrily declares that he’s giving up on his family, and then he IMMEDIATELY hears them calling him and runs to them. His total time on the streets is like 15 minutes. It’s a hard knock life.

And the story in general suffers from this same flaw of compression. Everything is so crammed in. We don’t get a sense of what the villain is like, we see almost no personality from anyone, and the nine millionth time Feivel narrowly misses seeing his family, it loses some zest. A messy story is fine with strong characters (as we’ll see in All Dogs Go To Heaven) and dull characters are fine with a strong story (as we’ll see in The Land Before Time), but this movie gives up barely-there characters and a plot that takes no time for making sense.

Because my people.

The animation is good, but even there you can see cut corners. Sadly, I have to blame Spielberg for a lot of this. Never having produced animation before, he wanted to see dailies and request changes like he would on a live-action film, and that resulted in some fairly choppy quality. Bluth was, for the first time in his solo career, unable to complete storyboarding on his own, and had to use assistants. Fudd flags pop up all over the place, more obvious than even in the cheapest of Disney films. The cels and backgrounds seem at times to be completely separated. There are some good points, I will say. The character design is VERY strong, particularly in the aforementioned terribly-written villain, whose animation and voice won me over quite a bit. The occasional human characters are rotoscoped, which is another example of Bluth compromising artistically, as he’s not a fan. But it actually works here, emphasizing the difference between the human and animal in a film that desperately needed some difference there. And the scene where Feivel is swept out to sea has some excellent animation on the waves, giving them a slightly human shape as they crest but having it collapse into a torrent of unstoppable water as soon as they break.

So there’s good and bad in the animation. but the songs are uniformly awful. There’s this one, perhaps you’ve heard of it? “Somewhere Out There”? It’s a horrible piece of treacle - wait, does treacle come in pieces? What is treacle? Anyway, it’s a horrible... unit of treacle sung by two annoying child actors. It’s less than two minutes long, and rhymes “tonight” with “moonlight”. Despite these and more shortcomings, it managed to win an Oscar and a Grammy for best song, so I don’t even know any more. Apart from that, the music tends to be dull, repetitive, and overwritten. I will admit a grudging fondness for “There Are No Cats in America”, though. I don’t know why. Maybe my time with Disney has left me with some sort of ethnic stereotype Stockholm syndrome.

"Mama mia! The meatball, she was-a too spicy! I'ma gonna go an' jump-a onna some turtles!"

This is all not to say that it’s an entirely bad movie. Far from it. It’s one of those where even though every specific thing I can think of about it is some form of criticism, the movie as a whole is still really enjoyable. You can see Spielberg’s hand as a producer in the contrived yet effective way the movie yanks at the heartstrings, and Bluth’s hand as a director in the strong tone of the film. He may have had to take a less active hand than he likes, but you can still feel his work throughout the movie, and that consistency glues together a lot of cracks. There are also a couple of legitimately good characters. Feivel’s father, played by Israeli actor Nehemiah Persoff, is a wonderfully loving and warm character, and Tony Toponi is a second generation Noo Yawk mouse who’s just a bundle of stereotypes and I LOVE IT.

The other voices are also generally fine. Feivel is just annoying as hell, but he’s a child actor, so we put up with it. Dom DeLuise turns up again, as a cat character of relatively little consequence who seems to mostly be there to apologize for this film’s blatant anti-cat agenda. He’s good, but his patented nervous chatterbox routine wears a bit thin, especially so soon after NIMH, where he did the same thing, only as a bird. Maybe next we’ll see him do it as a dog. (FORESHADOWING?) Christopher Plummer plays a French pigeon with a lot more dedication than the role deserves, and Madeline Khan phones in a role as a wealthy dowager, but Madeline Khan’s ‘phoning in’ is everyone else’s ‘110%’. The villain Warren T. Rat and his cockroach henchman are played by John Finnegan and Will Ryan respectively, both of whom do great work with lousy characters. Finnegan does particularly well, given that his character as written is annoying and almost nonsensical, but as performed is rather charming and enjoyable.

Don Bluth Animation Fetish Alert : Characters luxuriously smoking.

So yeah, this might sound a bit odd after what I’ve had to say, but I’d still recommend you see this. It’s mostly lousy, but with a wonderful heart to it. Great voice work, great design, and a lousy script makes for a surprisingly good time in this case.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS:

* McDonald’s had a series of advertisements in the 1986 holiday season which showed the Mousekewitz family celebrating Christmas. It’s like they didn’t even watch the movie. Actually, a Russian/Jewish friend informs me that the decorated tree is actually a New Year’s thing over there, likewise Santa (Ded Moroz, or Grandfather Frost), stockings, and all that stuff, so Jews would likely have all that. But I doubt the marketing department at McDonald’s knew that.

* Feivel’s pants are constantly falling down, which is particularly strange because he wears a belt.

On his shirt. Ugh, this kid's the worst.

* Understandably, the pun in the title didn’t translate into other languages. The Spanish version was just called Un cuento americano, or “An American Tale”, and the French was Feivel et le Nouveau Monde, or “Feivel and the New World”. The Germans, however, got clever, calling it “Feivel der Mauswanderer”. See, ‘auswanderer’ is German of immigrant, and ‘maus’ is - well, you can probably guess.

* Speaking of Maus, Art Spiegelman considered a lawsuit because he had been serially publishing the now-classic comic book “Maus”, a biography of his Holocaust survivor father that depicted Jews with mouse heads and Nazis with cat heads, for several years when this movie came out. Really, the works have almost no similarities, and rather than a lawsuit, he wisely moved to publish the collected edition in two volumes to beat the movie’s release date. Anyway, he wound up winning a Pulitzer prize for the comic in 1992, and this just got a Grammy for its terrible song, so he definitely came out on top.

Oh, this also happened. And hey, more sparkles.

* Feivel’s favorite book is The Brothers Karamazov. That’s a little weird.

* Somewhere Out There may be an awful song, but the video, a story of star-crossed animators who long for each other, though they are separated by... a hallway? Is hilarous. And contains mid-80s Linda Ronstadt.

* Also, this scene from Community, which is nothing short of perfect.

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The Secret of N.I.M.H. (Bluth Group, 1982)

IT’S FREAKING DON BLUTH TIME WOOOOOOOO. You all remember Don Bluth, right? The scrappy go-getter that started working at Disney as an animator, and decided to strike out on his own when he realized Disney was mostly making garbage anymore? Well, after scraping together the cash and resources to make the short “Banjo the Woodpile Cat”, Bluth and his partners were able to interest folks enough to get funding for a feature length production. The pressure was intense, with the former animators ready to take on the Mouse with… well, a mouse. Stick with what you know, I guess.

LEARNING!

SCIENCE!

MAGIC FOR SOME REASON!

IT’S THE SECRET OF N.I.M.H.!

The Secret of N.I.M.H. is a difficult movie to review for me, because I can’t shake the feeling that I really shouldn’t like it. Not because it’s a bad movie at all. Far from it, it’s very good. But if you’ve been reading this blog, you know my complex feelings toward adaptations, and how weird I find it when a movie adapts a book and completely ignores important aspects of it. And this movie takes one of my favorite books, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of N.I.M.H., and smashes its essential premise into the ground, grinding it under its heel, all in the name of proving that feelings and magic are better than science and that there are clear heroes and villains in the world.

Look, if you haven’t seen it or read the book, I’m going to spoil a bit here. And you know I only give spoiler warnings for old movies if I think they’re particularly good, so keep that in mind as you read this next bit. I LIKE THIS MOVIE. THIS IS NOT ANOTHER SPACE JAM SITUATION WHERE EVERONE HAS TO HATE ME. The story revolves around Mrs. Frisby (changed to Brisby in the movie to avoid a  lawsuit from Wham-O), an ordinary field mouse who needs to move her family out of the field, as it is being plowed, but her son has pneumonia, and can’t travel. So she seeks out the assistance of some rats who live near her home. These rats, as it turns out, have enormously increased intelligence as a result of being the subject of genetic experimentation at the National Institute of Mental Health, or N.I.M.H. They are initially reluctant to help her, as they are in the middle of a plan to move their society to a secluded valley and stop stealing electricity from the farmer, but when they find out she’s the widow of Jonathan Frisby, they agree to help her. Through this, Mrs. Frisby learns that her husband was subjected to the same experiments, and was instrumental in helping the rats escape from N.I.M.H. He continued to help them in secret, until he was finally killed by the farmer’s cat while trying to drug it, a task that now falls to Mrs. Frisby.

Um... There's about as much Science Goo in that needle as there is blood in the rat's body. And your lab is filthy.

The point that’s made over and over is that the rats are a product of science, and as such, largely unconnected to the world around them. They can’t live off the humans, nor can they truly be happy with the animals. The spirit of scientific inquiry is strong in them, and the ones we meet use technology and science in creative and original ways. There had been a conflict in the rat community between Jenner, a rat that thought they could get on fine relying on humans, and Nicodemus, the gruff mechanic that wanted them to move on and become independent. And in those characters we find the two huge changes in the film.

The first, an increased role for Jenner, is not that bad. Jenner only appears in flashbacks in the book. After his argument with Nicodemus, he takes his supporters with him and they are later found dead, which nearly exposes the rat community. In the movie, this conflict is moved to the present, with Jenner taking on a far more villainous role, attempting a hostile coup and killing Nicodemus in the process. I actually have no problem with this. The book’s plot, wonderful as it is, is separated into three distinct sections, and while the middle - the time at N.I.M.H. and the events following their breakout - is the most interesting, it’s also a very slow burn. Moving Jenner to the main plot adds a nice layer of conflict, and making him more of a villain is a necessary side effect of that.

It's a good thing I don't make dirty jokes in these reviews.

The other change I feel more conflicted about, and that is the addition of magical elements. Nicodemus, in the book an eyepatch-wearing badass and active leader, is in the film a wizard. Like with a long beard and glowing eyes and a crystal ball and crazy wizard fingernails. And rather than lifting and moving Mrs. Brisby’s house with ingenuity, it’s done with a magical amulet. You may wonder how these magical powers and objects came to be. And well you might. Because the movie never bothered to explain it. And what’s more irritating is that it seems to delight in not explaining, taking a really smug “ah, there are things in the world which science can’t explain” tone, and I just freaking hate that.

The reason the sections at N.I.M.H. are the most interesting parts of the book, and a major part of what makes the book one of my favorites, is the science of it all. The rats are given injections and treatments, but there’s also tests and mazes, analysis of continuing and increasing results, and an actual (successful) effort to teach the rats how to read. They even have a control group! When was the last time you saw a group of fictional scientists with a control group? But in the movie, this solid scientific grounding is abandoned, with the message that you have to trust your heart and accept that science will never give you answers in its place. And true to that moral, they never explain anything. Why did Mr. Brisby have a magical amulet? How did Nicodemus get his powers? No answers, no explanations, don’t question it. The story of their escape from N.I.M.H. is pretty much the same, so why all of a sudden are they sorcerers? It doesn’t make any sense and it weakens the story.

And yet, I can’t be too angry at the film for making these choices because it’s EXTREMELY good. Bluth’s directorial style has such a gift for tone, pacing, and character that all of these weird changes and plot holes don’t matter even the tiniest bit while you’re actually watching the film. It’s not perfect. A lot of the dialogue is clunky and the story is occasionally slow or stilted, but the movie as a whole works wonderfully.

I'm not sure why they all wear clothes?

The main credit, of course, goes to Bluth as a director and animator. The movie looks amazing. The underground chamber of the rats, the desiccated tree where the Great Owl makes his home, the sprawling workshop of mouse scientist Mr. Ages, all beautiful settings used to great advantage. Bluth indulges his style in enormous set pieces, like an action packed race over a rampaging tractor or the pseudo-psychedelic experience at N.I.M.H., where he really gets to show off his tricks. For the first film from an animator-driven studio, the Bluth Group really earned their laurels, and it’s no surprise that they were able to interest investors for their future work.

The voices, for the most part, match the animation in quality. Elizabeth Hartman as Mrs. Brisby puts a lot of life into a mostly reactive character, which is good, because the rats are largely pretty dull. Jenner is pure 80s cartoon bad guy, and his heroic opposite, Justin. Neither actor is a name, and neither brings much, but they’re both fine. The supporting cast, however, is fantastic. Dom DeLuise plays Jeremy the crow with the distracted high energy that would make him a Bluth regular. John Carradine brings all his formidable menace and horror movie zeal to the terrifying Great Owl. And while I disagree with the portrayal of Nicodemus as an old wizard, Derek Jacobi was the right choice if they were going to play it that way.

Bluth is really addicted to sparkles, for what it's worth.

So yeah, a really good movie, just one that I have an odd relationship with due to my fondness for the book. But the rest of Bluth’s filmography gives me a bit more meat to work with, and that should be good as we continue on. Sorry about the hiatus, but you may recall last year at around this time, I got a new job that ate up all my time and energy? Well, I’ve got it again, only this time I’m making enough extra to reduce my hours at the OTHER job, so we should be getting back on a regular update schedule here. Let’s Bluth it up, folks.

This movie also has the dubious honor of having one of the worst DVD boxes ever.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS
* Field mice are technically voles, not mice. There is technically no way Jonathan, a lab mouse, could have bred with Mrs. B. Well, let’s just say it’s a side effect of N.I.M.H.’s tinkering.

* The decision to change Mrs. Frisby’s name came after the voices were recorded, and John Carradine was unavailable to record his new lines, so they just took a “B” from another line he said and looped it over. Very successfully, too. There’s maybe one line where I can tell, and the rest are pretty seamless.

* To apologize for this review being both late and short, please enjoy this image macro I found whilst looking up Cats Don't Dance screencaps. Really let it sink in. Speculate on the mental state of the person who made it. Then weep for humanity.

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Cats Don't Dance (Turner Feature Animation/Warner Bros., 1997)

The year were aught-ninety-seven. A 13-year-old Brian Lynch was perusing the VHS selection at the Arnold Schwartz Memorial Library. Since he was to be watching this movie with his younger brother and sister, he was in the kids section. “No matter,” said he, “For, after all, I still like cartoons. Why, 16 years from now, I’ll probably be writing a blog about them, whatever one of those is. What‘s this? ‘Cats Don‘t Dance‘? I‘ve never heard of such a thing. It‘s about a cat who wants to be a dancer? How foolish! How silly! Clearly this is an inferior animated product, designed only for the easily amused. I‘ll get the Little Nemo movie instead, there‘s a good life choice.” And time and again he went to that library, rolled his eyes at “Cats Don’t Dance”, and moved on, getting classic films like “The Saint”, “Phantoms”, and “Nothing But Trouble”. But that child is older now. He drives a car, and teaches at the school where he once was a student. He has traveled, sailed the ocean, and seen not one, not two, but six X-Men movies, three of which were pretty good. He has kissed girls, and done other things with them as well. He has finally gotten around to reading the one Wizard of Oz book the library didn’t have. And he has, at the age of 29, finally seen one of the finest animated films of all time.

SINGING!

DANCING!

A MOVIE THAT NEVER STOOD A CHANCE AT MAKING A PROFIT!

IT’S CATS DON’T DANCE!

I’m not kidding about that. I’ve been aware of Cats Don’t Dance for its entire existence, and I never even gave it a moment’s thought. It looked to me like one of those straight-to-video bashed out quickies, a video babysitter. I mean, a cat that wants to be a dancer? That sounds like a parody of a children’s book you’d see on a sitcom.

"Here is the elephant; he's happy with his balloon. Oh no! It's gone! Where is it? It's not behind the rhino!"

So imagine my surprise when I found out that this movie is actually kind of amazing. I initially started watching it about 20 minutes before I was going to go to bed one night, figuring I’d watch the first few scenes and see the rest the next day. I was so captivated by the opening, I wound up watching the entire thing.

One of the first things I was impressed by was the voice acting. I had known Scott Bakula was the lead, and while he’s a winning enough actor, I wasn’t expecting much out of him in terms of a voice performance. But good gravy, he nailed it. In retrospect that shouldn’t have surprised me. While his “tall, somewhat goofy Midwesterner” appearance keeps him playing fairly bland roles in live action, Quantum Leap was always finding excuses for him to sing and dance and otherwise show off. His love interest is voiced by Jasmine Guy, who does well, with Natalie Cole doing the singing. Cole is close enough to Guy to avoid my usual annoyance with singing voices. Plus, come on, it’s Natalie Cole. What are you going to do, tell her not to sing in your movie? The villain, played by a pair of unknown child actors, also has a singing voice and a speaking voice, but it’s seamless, both of them are phenomenally good, and with child actors you have to make more allowances for this sort of thing. The supporting cast, though, is where the actors get really impressive. The cat’s fellow struggling animal actors include Hal Holbrook (goat), Betty Lou Gerson (fish), Don Knotts (turtle), John Rhys-Davies (elephant), and Kathy Najimy (hippo), and the humans who run the show include George Kennedy, Rene Auberjonois, and Frank Welker.

How is he gripping the sign?

The plot actually is “a cat wants to be a dancer”, so my judgmental younger self was right about that. But it’s a plot that’s developed wonderfully. It’s set in the Golden Age of Hollywood, the summer of 1939, to be precise. Danny, a starry-eyed young cat from Kokomo comes to California with a goofy hat and a pocket full of dreams. When he arrives, though, he learns that there are plenty of eager animal actors, but the humans that run the studios never give them a chance to star. The best bet for an animal performer is Mammoth Pictures, who frequently use animal extras for the films of their child star, Darla Dimple. Danny thinks he can impress Darla and the director with a bit of showboating, but Darla turns out to be a psychotic tyrant who rules the studio with an iron fist, and when Danny’s showboating ruins a take on her latest movie, she vows to destroy his career, and those of all his animal friends.

So the plot is solid. It’s also formulaic and clichéd, but that’s not always a bad thing, when it’s done well, and this is done amazingly well. Because in addition to being a solid story, it’s also really funny. The director, Mark Dindal, is primarily a special effects guy, but he’s got a killer sense of timing as a result of that, and the film is full of perfectly executed wordplay and physical gags. Dindal also directed The Emperor’s New Groove, and this film contains much of the wild abandon that one showed, and the magnificent use of cartoon physics. He also directed… Chicken Little? That can’t be right. Okay, moving on.

Chicken... Little...

Apart from the comedy being on point, the animation itself is really beautiful. Turner and Warner poured a lot of money into this, and it shows. The characters are smooth, slick, and expressive, and the dancing is extremely well done. It was partially choreographed by Gene Kelly (his final film, in fact) and this ties it to the actual days of classic dance movies. Filtered through the talented animators, the moves of Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse, Fred Astaire, and their contemporaries look marvelous. These dancers always looked like they could defy the laws of physics, and now they actually can.

The songs that accompany those dances… Well, they’re mostly quite good, and a few are fantastic. Some of them are just a little generic, if still enjoyable. It’s Randy Newman at his most medium. Of course, inserting generic songs into a movie is a hallmark of Golden Age Hollywood, so it’s allowable as a reference. And the ones that do stand out are phenomenal. “Little Boat on the Sea“, Darla Dimple‘s song for her terrible Noah‘s Ark movie, has some wickedly funny lyrics, and Danny‘s arrival song, cleverly titled “Danny‘s Arrival Song“, is thoroughly catchy. The hands down champion, though, is “Big and Loud”, Darla’s villain song, which begins as false encouraging advice to Danny, and turns to shrieking megalomania as soon as he leaves. There are also several music-only numbers which Newman really lets himself get creative on, and those are always enjoyable.

Okay, here’s the thing: This movie bombed HARD. With a budget of about 38 million, it earned about 4 million at the box office. Part of the reason for that is the merge of Turner and Warner Bros. This was originally developed at Warner a modern-set live-action and animation hybrid starring Michael Jackson and the Looney Tunes, until they farmed the idea out to Turner and made their own “Iconic Michael J./Looney Tunes” movie. Once it landed at Turner, it was midway through production when Warner bought them out and a rotating series of executives tried to put their stamp on it, including one that attempted to tell Dindal to take the half-finished movie and make it about 1950s rock and roll. Dindal, correctly assuming that these execs would be reassigned, alternately talked them down and ignored them. But by the time the movie was finished, it was dumped into theaters with one poster, one trailer, no TV spots, 2 kids’ books, and a line of kids’ meal toys… at Subway.

Subway! Who gets a kids' meal at Subway!? It's the promo toy version of a landfill!

But I have to say, it doesn’t seem like the film was particularly a victim of mismanagement, it just got lost in the studio shuffle. So while it stings that it made only a third of what “Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie” made (opened on the same day), at least I can be happy with the movie I got. Speaking of the studio shuffle, it turns out my research was a little off, and this was the only Turner/Warner co-production, so we’ll be moving from this straight into the solo films of Don Bluth. FINALLY.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

* Mammoth Pictures is pretty obviously a parody of 1930s Hollywood’s biggest man on campus, MGM studios, only with an elephant instead of a lion. The best part is MGM’s pretentious Latin logo, “Ars gratia aris” (Art for art’s sake), becomes “Optimum est maximum” (Bigger is better). I appreciate a film that tailors jokes for people who speak limited Latin and know film history. Why didn’t this make any money again?

Those that worked on the film were given sweet jackets...

And thoroughly sarcastic T-shirts.

* Speaking of references that are totally accessible to the film’s target audience, the greatest character in the film is Darla’s butler, Max, a clear reference to Erich von Stroheim’s character in Sunset Boulevard. Like that film’s Max, he is intimidating, creepy, and psychotically devoted to his boss. Unlike that film’s Max, he is a fifteen foot tall Frankenstein-looking monster. He’s also a real achievement in animation and comic timing, only moving whatever body parts are required for a task, up to the point of speaking by sliding his lips from side to side. And he’s voiced by Mark Dindal, on what was supposed to be a scratch track for the animators until they ran short on time and money and decided to keep it.

* And speaking of Sunset Boulevard, I’d like to break my loose “no cussin’” guideline to relate my favorite Classic Hollywood story. You always hear about these classic stars and directors and the witty one-liners they came up with on the spot, and this bit of wordplay is my favorite. After the premiere of Sunset Boulevard, studio titan Louis Mayer (the second M in MGM) was so offended by its portrayal of the movie business that he viciously berated director Billy Wilder outside the theater afterwards for betraying the industry that made him. Wilder, a known master of the clever insult, quickly assessed how much effort he thought Mayer was worth, walked up to him, and said, “I directed this picture; why don’t you go fuck yourself?”

"Get hot, Mr. Wilder."

* While Max keeps every body part isolated for maximum comic effect, the rest of the film does not agree, featuring an incredible amount of background business and character tics. Darla in particular is just a big pile of quirks and mannerisms which are always hilarious and not infrequently kind of terrifying.

* Lauren Faust’s first job as an animator was on this movie! She’s awesome!

A '90s animated movie that actually puts its actors in the opening credits? CRAZY!

* Okay, I did have one problem, but it was less with the movie than with the film industry in general. It has been said that the experiences of the animals reflects the experience of black actors in Hollywood at the time this movie was set, which is largely true, which is kind of annoying. I mean, how many movies have we seen where Fantasy Group X is supposed to stand in for Marginalized Group Y, and yet we don’t see any examples of Marginalized Group Y on the screen, thus keeping them marginalized. “Oh, the aliens in this movie are supposed to stand in for Native Americans! Let’s make sure we don’t hire any Native actors.” Or “The mutants in this movie represent gays. But all of the characters are straight. And most of them are white guys. And when we set a movie in the civil rights era, the only minority mutants were killed or turned evil by the halfway point. We‘re not very good at this?”

* That, however, is a problem with society and the entertainment industry at large, and doesn’t really diminish the enjoyment of the movie until it’s done and you think about it and get a little annoyed. Here, read this article about representation in media. It‘s good for you.

Speaking of bad treatment of black actors in 1930s Hollywood, references to this movie kept popping up. Probably not a coincidence.

* As a result of my confusion as to the nature of the relationship between Turner and Warner, I‘ll be moving my review of “The Pagemaster” to a later point on the schedule than originally intended. Also, I’ll be adding the Tom and Jerry movie, because apparently I’m a masochist.

* Speaking of Gene Kelly, Danny stole his job, as the end credits show some posters for the movies the animal actors made after hitting it big, and Danny was in Singin' in the Rain. Interestingly, the poster parodies are played completely straight, with the pictures just being completely accurate copies of classic movie posters with the film's characters put in place of the actors. I actually really liked this, as it showed an affection for the classic films, which included not only '40s and '50s movies, but went into the '70s, '80s, and '90s, without falling into the "Here's something popular right now!" trap. Except The Mask, I guess. And Twister. But still, that Grumpy Old Men poster makes it all worthwhile. Anyway, here's a link to a gallery of most of them.

Ha!

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Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (Warner Bros, 1993)

For the next few weeks, we’re going to be shuffling around the calendar to take a look at Warner’s feature film output prior to the creation of their own studio. While they’d had some success distributing the work of independent studios - and we’ll be looking at those in a bit - their in-studio films had largely been just compilations of old Looney Tunes, with maybe 10 minutes of linking animation as far as new material. The movie we’re looking at today was the first feature-length animated movie made entirely by Warner Bros, but it wasn’t intended to be. See, shortly after the release of the terrible yet successful movie Batman Returns, TV cartoon creators Paul Dini and Bruce Timm were tasked with making a new Batman cartoon for TV. The result, “Batman: the Animated Series”, was massively successful with children and adults, fans and critics, and spawned the DC Animated Universe, which lasted for 15 years across 8 TV series, 4 films, and numerous shorts. Urged by the show’s early success, Warner quickly commissioned a direct-to-video movie, but the executives were so excited by what they saw in early development that they decided on giving it a full theatrical release - and then increasing the budget and expectations while not giving the creators any more time, resulting in a grueling eight-month production schedule and a small release with no promotion. Oops.


FISTICUFFS!

DETECTIVE STYLES!

OLD TIMEY CARS AND GUNS FOR NO REASON OTHER THAN THAT THEY LOOK COOL!

IT’S BATMAN: MASK OF THE PHANTASM!

First off, I’m issuing a rare spoiler warning here. Even though this movie is 20 years old, and that generally falls well past the spoiler statute of limitations, it’s a noir mystery with plenty of good twists, and I always feel that a mystery is deserving of more spoiler consideration than most stuff.

Welcome back. Let’s talk about superhero origin movies. Do we really need them? Is there a person on earth who doesn’t know the origin of Superman? Hell, Grant Morrison was able to tell it in just nine words, and you could probably do the same with Batman. Spider-Man’s probably the only other hero where the general public is that familiar with it, but for a lot of heroes, you just don’t need to spend time on it. And yet they just keep on making them. And the most annoying part is that they tend to be very good. Batman’s an interesting case, as his “origin” takes only a few seconds in a dark alley, and the stories built around that moment give it a lot of variety.

"Would you find me more terrifying with bat ears? Be honest, now."

See, with those others, there’s a structure. Superman’s parents raise him right, he feels a bit out of place with his powers, so he creates a superhero identity to allow him to embrace all sides of himself, and to protect the adopted planet he loves while still remaining true to himself as Clark Kent. Spider-Man’s a bullied geek who gets overly cocky when given super-powers in an accident, and that cockiness and lack of care kills the person he loves most, causing him to never lose sight of the Great Responsibility that comes with his Great Power. Their personalities are similarly well-established. Superman is a friendly Midwesterner, always seeking out the good in the world. In both his normal life and his superhero life, he protects and seeks justice for people who can’t defend themselves. Spider-Man is extremely intelligent and has a rapid sense of humor, he talks and jokes constantly, especially when fighting, in order to distract his enemies from their attacks and himself from his fear.

Batman, on the other hand, doesn’t have much of a personality. He’s usually angry, he’s cold, driven, and analytical. He doesn’t have a job, he has only a few close friends. His public persona as Bruce Wayne is a bit of a put-on, but doesn’t have any steady traits, either. So when an origin movie is made, it’s interesting to see what kind of story they build the origin on, and how they present the Bruce Wayne persona. Tim Burton’s 1989 “Batman” showcased Batman’s introduction to Gotham, as an urban legend terrorizing the crime world, and portrayed Wayne as a flighty, kind of creepy weirdo. In 2005, “Batman Begins” focused the story on his training and the development of his crime fighting style, and portrayed Bruce as a flightly, disinterested socialite. 2011’s “Year One”, based on the comic that largely inspired Begins, focused entirely on his development of Batman as a persona and decision to target the Falcone crime family, with the Bruce persona as easygoing and friendly, but something of a recluse and a drunk.

I'm not crying... It's just been raining... on my face.

Mask of the Phantasm, as you’ve no doubt guessed from my writing so far, is an origin movie. But it takes an approach that I’ve never seen in any Batman-related media before. It focuses on Bruce Wayne. The approach taken to Wayne in The Animated Series has always been my favorite, which is that as intense and driven and angry as Batman is, in his life as Bruce Wayne, he tries to be the son his parents would have wanted to have. He’s pleasant and generous, he’s reasonably social, he takes a fairly active role in running the company. This has always been the most satisfying version of Bruce for me because while the playboy versions are great for removing suspicion, I prefer the idea that Batman would want his civilian identity to be as good for Gotham as possible. And yeah, it’s still an act. He plays it a little more well-meaning than intelligent, and kind of goofy, and when no one’s looking, he drops it right away.

But what if it wasn’t an act? What if the Bruce he secretly wished he could be was brought to the surface and came into conflict with his drive to avenge his parents? That’s the conflict at the center of Mask of the Phantasm, making it the only Batman movie I’ve ever seen where Bruce is fully as important as Batman. The film deals with Bruce’s return to Gotham after training abroad, as he sets in motion his vigilante plans. But a wrench is thrown into the works when he meets a woman named Andrea Beaumont at the cemetery. With Andrea, he finds love, acceptance, the promise of a real life. He is deeply conflicted and undergoes great distress over his newfound urge to settle down with Andrea. Bolstered in no small part by his disastrous attempts to enact vigilante justice wearing a ski mask and leather jacket, he decides to try to build a new life with Andrea at his side. But she rejects him and, along with her father, leaves town, and the pain of this pushes Bruce down forever, leading him to become Batman.

Admittedly, this is not the most practical of weapons.

Several years later, Andrea’s back in town, and while this doesn’t for a second make Batman think of quitting, it does give him flashbacks to a time when that was a real possibility. But he’s got bigger problems, because there’s also a new vigilante in town. He’s called the Phantasm, he’s got a suit that lets him mimic a ghost, and he’s out to murder the enforcers of the Valestra crime family. Worst of all, he wears a shaggy black cape and skulks around in shadows, so people assume Batman’s the one taking the mobsters out. When law-and-order city councilman (and Bruce’s former romantic rival) Arthur Reeves starts an anti-Batman task force, things get real. Investigating the Phantasm’s murders, Batman discovers financial links - serious ones - between Valestra and Andrea’s father. Mr. Beaumont was in deep, and the reason he and his daughter flew the coop was to avoid them. With this new knowledge, Batman starts to believe Mr. Beaumont is the Phantasm. Plus, they’re both voiced by Stacy Keach. But Reeves reveals that in exchange for campaign donations, he gave up the Beaumonts‘ location, and Valestra had the man killed. Speaking of which, Valestra’s getting extremely nervous as the Phantasm hacks his way through the caporegimes, and turns to the only person he can think of for help. The psychotic former employee who pulled the trigger on Carl Beaumont. But he’s gone through some changes since then…

Hello, dum-dums!

Yes, they just couldn’t resist adding the Joker into the mix, and can you blame them? When you make your big-budget Batman movie, you’re going to want the Joker in there. The film’s vision of the Joker is very much in line with Tim Burton’s. Before he became the Joker, he was already mad, bad, and dangerous to know, and now even the other mobsters are afraid of him. Unlike Burton’s though, he’s removed himself from the mob hierarchy and now lives on his own in an abandoned World’s Fair expo, in the decrepit “house of the future”. It’s a great twist on the Joker’s old carnival hideouts, and even allows for a monorail fight, which I’ve always thought movies should have more of.

I admit I was a bit leery, knowing that the Joker was in the movie. I feared it would be one of those cases where the villain they set up for the movie is sidelined by a more popular villain that gets shoehorned into the story. Think Venom in Spider-Man 3 or Lex Luthor and Brainiac being the ones behind Cadmus, or Ultron in… well everything he’s ever been in. But they really do a good job justifying his presence and making it work. A mere Batman vs. Phantasm match would have made for a good movie, but throwing the Joker in adds an extra element of chaos that keeps both vigilantes off balance. Particularly in that the Joker is the only one who knows who the Phantasm is the entire time, because he killed her dad.

That’s right, the Phantasm is none other than Andrea Beaumont, who has gone a little bit bonkers after her dad was killed, and devoted her life to training, wearing a scary costume, and taking down criminals -HEY, WAIT A MINUTE. The movie hits the emotional point really well, and “Oh hey, you’re just like me, only way worse” would have been an easy point to mess up. But the movie seems to take the view that even considering all the murder, the Phantasm isn’t really all that more messed up than Batman. Before her secret, sorcret identity is revealed, he accuses her of stonewalling him on orders from her father, and she points out that the only one of them that’s controlled by their parents is him. Alfred also gets some scenes where he expresses serious concern for Bruce’s sanity, including a wonderful scene where he drops his butlery façade and recoils in terror upon seeing Batman for the first time. In the end, though, Andrea’s murderous vengeance takes her too far, and she follows the Joker to their apparent death by explosives. It seems that in this film, Batman’s unwillingness to kill saves his own life, too.

"Just... Just give me a second, I'm trying to work out how you're standing."

The voice work is amazing. Andrea Romano is one of the finest voice directors in history, and though all her work for Warner Bros, has cast and directed her performers BRILLIANTLY. Kevin Conroy as Batman is probably the greatest success of her career. He’s scary and intimidating without succumbing to the Christian Bale Monster Voice, but his Batman is still distinct from his Bruce. It’s not for nothing that he’s considered by nearly all to be the greatest Batman of all time. Mark Hamill’s Joker is equally, if not even more iconic. With clear influence from Cesar Romero, Hamill creates a layered performance of wildly varying laughs and energy levels, which has not been matched yet. While I’d give Conroy the narrow win for pure quality of performance, there have been other Batman voices that have succeeded on their own merits. No subsequent Joker, though, has ever even come close to Hamill. Joining them from the TV series are Efrem Zimbalist, Bob Hastings, and Robert Costanzo as Alfred, Commissioner Gordon, and Harvey Bullock respectively, all of whom do admirably, and get some good character work. And though the prequel nature of the movie means the Joker hasn’t yet met Harley Quinn, Arleen Sorkin still gets a cameo as a woman flirting with Bruce at a party.

As for the new voices, they are also excellent. Dana Delany plays Andrea, which at the time was something of a surprise celebrity voice. Delany took so well to voice acting, though, that Andrea Romano called her again a year later to play Lois Lane on Superman. Her performance was excellent, though as a DCAU fan, I kept expecting her to call Bruce “Smallville”. Valestra was played by mob movie legend Abe Vigoda, and the Phantasm’s first victim, Chuckie Sol, was character actor and Joe Dante mainstay Dick Miller. Stacy Keach, as mentioned above, was both Carl Beaumont and the Phantasm, the latter being revealed to be a voice modulator in Andrea’s mask. As Beaumont, he gets to play friendly and scared, which he doesn’t often get to do in live action, due to his terrifying face. As the Phantasm, he’s nice and creepy, and his voice gets a little bit of an electronic deepening tweak that doesn’t make it too obvious that it’s the same guy.

The animation… Okay, if there’s one problem in the movie, it’s the animation, and I don’t remotely blame the animators for that. The style and character design is excellent. Far from Anton Furst’s creeptacular Gotham in the contemporary Tim Burton films, Timm’s Gotham is all Art Deco skycrapers, 1940s-styled cars, and red skies at any time of day. It’s intimidating, and it looks great. The character animation, though, can get really shaky. With the limited production time and the fact that they had to largely work in their TV style, there can be some real clunky movement and awkward faces. It’s rarely an issue, though, and the action scenes - particularly Batman’s close call with the police -look good. I’d also like to call out the score, which I don’t often do here. Pioneering composer Shirley Walker, who also did the music for the TV series, really ran with her increased budget and created a truly epic, and well-paced score. Her Batman theme, modified from Danny Elfman’s movie theme - Walker collaborated with Elfman on the Flash TV series, and conducted for him on several films - is particularly stirring.

All the latest technology here, folks.

I can’t recommend this movie enough. One of my favorite things I’ve read about it  is that Siskel and Ebert didn’t review it when it first came out. They had assumed it was a compilation of scenes from the TV show like the old Looney Tunes movies, and since the distribution was so bad, they didn’t bother seeing it. A few years later, they both gave it a shot on the recommendation of other critics, and devoted an entire segment of their show to apologizing for their failure to review it later. Ebert in particular praised it for having a better story than any of the live action films. So when a movie can get two film critics,  one of whom was famously lukewarm on superheroes, to devote a segment of their TV show to apologizing for selling it short two years prior, that’s a movie with something truly special.

Siskel and Ebert’s experience was not unique. This movie flopped pretty hard, despite a surprising lack of family fare in winter 1993. On a budget of a mere 6 million dollars, it only made about 5.5 in theaters. (By comparison, the previous year’s Aladdin had 28 million in budget, and earned 500.)  But the positive critical response and creative success led Warner to decide it was high time to start making their own films. But before they got around to Quest for Camelot, they decided to pair with a studio that already had two flops, and throw a ludicrous pile of money at them to make another miserable failure. Jesus, when am I going to get to write about a successful movie that isn’t fricking Space Jam?

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

* That nine word Superman origin I alluded to went as follows: “Doomed planet. Desperate scientists. Last hope. Kindly couple. Superman.” That’s all he had to say, and then he could get on with the damn story.

"NOW, FEEL THE SLICE OF MY... WAIT, IT'S ON MY OTHER HAND, ISN'T IT? I CAN'T FREAKING SEE THROUGH THIS THING."

* Re: “Batman has only a few close friends.“ Comics-wise, Batman’s only consistent “inside” friends, that is to say, close friends that know his identity, are Alfred and Superman, and that’s really it. Maybe Wonder Woman. To a certain extent, Oracle and the various Robins and Batgirls, but they’re more co-workers, as are the rest of the Justice League. Bruce Wayne’s only friend is Lucius Fox, and Batman’s only “outside” friend is Commissioner Gordon. Harvey Dent was an interesting case, as he was friends with Bruce and Batman separately.

* Non-sequel superhero movies that weren’t an origin story: The Incredible Hulk, Dredd, Punisher: War Zone… That’s honestly all I can think of right now. Besides, two of them are continuity reboots of characters with recent origin movies, and Dredd is technically about a police officer, not a superhero. And even that was an origin of sorts for Judge Anderson.

Just think. If that bat hadn't flown in, he'd have gone out in this mess.

* As far as thoughts actually about the movie, minor mob guy Buzz Bronski has an almost identical character design to Rupert Thorne, the major recurring mob villain on the series. And every time I watch the movie, I think, “Oh, it’s Thorne.” It never is.

* The Joker’s writing is really on point. “Oh, Sal, why so formal? Mi casa nostra es su casa nostra.” He’s not an easy character to write well, but Paul Dini does it better than most. Frankly, the only people who should be allowed to write Joker stories are Dini and Grant Morrison. Though I’d settle for a lifetime Joker-ban on Kevin Smith and Brian Azzarello.

Oh, yes, Azzarello, have the Joker rape someone. That's how we'll all know you're writing a grown-ups book. It's very impressive. You didn't at all just take a leftover 100 Bullets script and scribble in different character names.

* One minor quibble: The Phantasm has super-strength, speed, and agility, is bulletproof, and is able to teleport. How? It’s never explained. Her appearance is always accompanied by a heavy layer of smoke/fog, so it’s easy to surmise that has something to do with it, but still, you know, one line about her robbing a science lab or something would be nice.

* The opening credits are a slow tour through the film’s wonderful Art Deco-style Gotham City, in early 90s CGI that actually looks really gorgeous.

* Siskel’s review of Batman Forever contains the great line “I liked it while I was watching it and as soon as it was over, it didn't mean anything to me and as the days have gone on it's meant even less.” I’ve felt that emotion a lot over the course of these cartoon reviews.

"Is this forwards or backwards? Atmosphere be damned, I'm not getting dressed in the dark anymore."

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