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...

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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)...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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