Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius is a movie.
Two days out to the post going up and that’s where I’m at.
This movie made me feel clean because it just washed right over me.
I saw Zone of Interest recently. That shit shook me to my core. I could write about that? Something something banality of evil something something evil of banality?
No?
Fine.
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius is a movie.
Look, we all like to make fun of Disney and their utterly shameless milking of their beloved animated classics with cheap and tawdry cash ins. But give them this; even during the height of the direct-to-video boom after Return of Jafar had proved that cheap sequels to big-name animated features were basically a licence to print money, they never went to the same well more than twice. Okay, twice and a tv series. That was it. Three movies and a TV series, MAX. No more. They had standards. Allegedly.
Of course, Disney had a very large stable of properties to exploit. But what if you had a studio that
a) Really wanted to get in on that cheap direct-to-video cartoon action.
b) Had a very, very small pool of household name animation to sequelise and
c) Had absolutely zero shame?
Well…you’d get the cinematic donkey-show that was Universal’s Land Before Time franchise. Now, Land Before Time was a pretty damn good film and it did, y’know…decent at the box office. It opened at No 1. But it also lost to Oliver and Company in terms of overall ticket sales. So…fine, but nothing to crow about either.
Certainly, it did not do the kind of numbers that would justify 13 GODDAMN SEQUELS. THIRTEEN.
ONE. THREE.
AND A MOTHERFUCKING TV SHOW.
Now, I am not going to review every single one of them, that’s why God made Jenny Nicholson. I’m just here to review The Land Before Time XIII: The Wisdom of Friends, the second last entry in the series and, by all accounts, the worst of the bunch (because my readers think I’m a bad person and wish me harm).
However!
We can’t just dive in after an eleven movie gap without being hopelessly lost so I have set my team of extremely well-paid maps to work on a breakdown of everything that happens in this series between the first and thirteenth installements.
The Land Before Time II: The Great Valley Adventure
The gang must fight to protect their new home when Sharpteeth find a way into the Great Valley.
The Land Before Time III: The Time of Great Giving
When a sudden shortage of water threatens all life in the Great Valley, the gang of young dinosaurs must cooperate with a group of bullies to make a risky journey outside the valley and find the cause.
The Land Before Time IV: The Quest for Peace
The gang decide to rid the valley of nuclear weapons.
The Land Before Time V: The Final Frontier
Littlefoot’s previously unknown half-brother appears in the Great Valley, and he’s on a mission from God.
The Land Before Time VI:
In an attempt to save their failing marriage, Littlefoot and Cera open a bistro in Milan.
The Land Before Time VII: Long Hard Neck
The series’ one brave, but ultimately misjudged, entry into the genre of hardcore pornography.
The Land Before Time VIII: Littlefoot versus Godzilla
The no-brainer crossover that couldn’t fail. Actually failed quite a bit.
The Land Before Time IX: Please No More
Clip show.
The Land Before Time X: Tokyo Drift
In order to avoid a prison sentence, Littlefoot becomes a drag racer.
The Land Before Time XI: Ultimate Betrayal
The gang are shocked to learn that Spike was working for Internal Affairs the whole time.
The Land Before Time XII: Time Arrives
The gang have to adjust to living in a land that has time now where they can actually age and die. Directed by Werner Herzog. Harrowingly bleak.
Okay, we’re all caught up. Let’s do this.
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You know the thing about the dinosaurs? It’s really, really sad when you think about it.
These beautiful animals lived for millions of years and then one day, literally one day, their world turned into a flaming hell and they died horribly. And they never understood why.
I was thinking about that a lot as I sat down to re-watch Don Bluth’s third film, The Land Before Time, and the last one he made before parting company with Stephen Spielberg. On one level, this is the least personal of Bluth’s early, pre-sellout films and the one that he had the least real affection for. Whereas Secret of Nimh and An American Tail were true collaborations, The Land Before Time seems to have been the point where Spielberg (and new producer George Lucas) really took the reigns and Bluth was more just the guy who animated what the execs wanted. Story-wise at least. Whatever you think about him as a film-maker, Bluth had a tendency to stamp his work very strongly and it does still very much feel like one of his films in terms of atmosphere, if not necessarily subject matter.
Bluth’s films are famously dark and melancholy and I think that’s why this one works.
More than any other movie, this one captures the essential truth that any story about dinosaurs is a tragedy.
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What was it about the seventies anyway?
I’ve reviewed a few animated films from this decade by this point and they are all (with the exception of the Disneys) weird as balls.
But I get ahead of myself. I’m going to let you in on a little behind the scenes secret. Ever since this mouse escaped the rat race and started writing full time, I’ve actually had less time to devote to this blog with work starting on most posts a mere few days before they’re scheduled to go live. This can be a problem when I starkly under-estimate just how much there is to research on a given movie and go plummeting down rabbit-holes
And my oh my, Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure is less a field full of rabbit holes than a giant hole with occasional bits of field clinging to the edges. But okay, a little background.
So waaaaay back in the 1910s an American named Johnny Gruelle patented a doll that he named Raggedy Ann and then wrote a series of stories starring her, which were such a success that Raggedy Ann became possibly the first bona-fide modern American toy fad. And, of course, as Jane Austen herself once said “it is a truth universally acknowledged that a toy franchise in possession of a fortune must be in want of an animated tie-in.” And boy howdy, did Raggedy Ann manage to get some impressive talent over the decades. For starters, there was a short series of Fleischer cartoons that were (naturally) as charming and well made as they were horrifying.
There were also two television specials produced in the seventies by Chuck Mofawkin Jones. But, without a doubt, Raggedy Ann’s most famous foray into the world of animation was 1977’s Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure which is…well, it’s something.
Here’s what it’s like. Imagine Hasbro want a new Transformers movie. And the director they initially tap dies and so they bring in a replacement; David Lynch. And now Optimus Prime is dancing with a backwards talking midget in the red lodge. That’s kind of what happened here.
Lynch in this instance was Richard Williams, who we’ve had our dealings with in the past. One of the best animators to ever work in the medium, period, Williams was shanghaid into making a glorified toy commerical and decided to use that opportunity to have the time of his life. This film is basically Williams and some of his most talented animator friends (Betty Boop co-creator Grim Natwick, future Genie animator Eric Goldberg and Art “I created Goofy and sued Walt Disney for unfair labour practices, took him all the way to the Supreme Court and lived to tell of it” Babbitt to name a few) having a ball on the dime of the good folks at the Bobbs-Merril publishing company.
But is it a good movie? Well…
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This map is wrong:
That’s not to say it’s bad.
It’s very useful.
It’s informative.
It is even, when you take a step back and consider it, quite beautiful. But it’s wrong.
The continents aren’t that size relative to each other. Not even close. Of course, you could use a different projection that shows them the correct relative size, something like this:
But now all the continents’ shapes are distorted nearly to the point of being unrecognisable.
Every 2 dimensional map of the world is wrong because, obviously, the world is not flat (I swear to God if anyone starts shit in the comments…). Ultimately, any attempt to render a three dimensional sphere as a 2 dimensional rectangle is, well, a lie. It’s an attempt to simplify that will always lead to distortion one way or another.
I love historical films. I hate historical films.
This was going to be a review of Inherit the Wind.
It became something else.
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These movies are terrible. I’m so glad I watched them.
Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula are in many ways the best candidate for a Bats versus Bolts that I’ve done yet. Not only are they by the same director and share many of the same cast, but they were made practically concurrently by the same crew.
Also, when I lie to myself and pretend that there’s some kind of high-minded artistic goal behind this series beyond me getting to talk about vampires and monsters, I like to think that each BvB pair says something about the time they were created in. That is absolutely the case with these two films which are not only seventies movies, but some of the most seventies movies I have ever seen.
These films were directed and written by Paul Morrissey, one of the more fascinating film-makers I’ve come across doing this blog. A member of Andy Warhol’s inner circle (we’ll get to that) he had a front row seat to the drug-soaked bacchanal that was the sixties New York arts scene. Morrissey is fascinating to try to pin down in terms of his politics. A self described right-wing conservative and staunch Catholic…who was also something of a trailblazer in terms of trans representation in film and a body of work that lends itself quite easily to Marxist readings with a consistent portrayal of the aristocracy as a shower of evil degenerate parasites. Like I say: interesting guy.
Note, I did not say maker of good films.
Anyway, Morrissey claims that the whole idea to make monster movies came about, appropriately enough, from meeting Roman Polanski. Polanski apparently suggested that Morrissey would be the perfect person to make a 3D Frankenstein movie, which honestly I would take as an insult. Morrissey didn’t, however, and arranged a shoot in Italy, filming both Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula back to back. Or, as they were known in the U.S.; Andy Warhol’s Dracula and Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein. Why were they called that? Oh, that’s very simple.
Lies.
It was just a marketing tactic. Warhol let his friend put his name of the movies to boost the alogorithim. They actually used the same trick for the Italian releases, putting a famous Italian director’s name on them to claim Italian residency which actually got the production in serious legal trouble in Italy.
The resulting movies are Morrissey’s critique of the sticky, shame-filled, bitter and angry come down from the Free Love era that was the early seventies.
That makes them sound a lot more classy and high brow than they actually are.
In 1984 Disney took a punt and gave one of their young animators, a skinny pale young-feller-milad named Tim Burton some money to make a live action short and recoiled, in horror, at what he wrought by tampering in God’s domain. It’s a truly terrifying film, and even looking at the poster has driven me quite mad. Oh yes!
Seriously, it’s a rather charming if ludicrously cheap and cheerful little short about a boy named Victor Frankenstein who uses lightning to bring his beloved dog back to life. And Disney took one look at it and said “Dark? Weird? GOTHIC?! We never expected this of YOU, Tim Burton!” and fired his ass.
Fortunately, the short brought him to the attention of Paul “Pee-Wee” Reubens and Burton’s career was off to the races. Flashforward a few decades and Disney have finally realised that they quite like this Tim Burton character and he’s settled into a groove as one of the most reliable nipples from which they milk their never-ending stream of content. And what better way to mend fences than for Disney to pony up the money for a lavish, stop-motion, feature length do-over of Frankenweenie?
Now, I’m a pretty big Burton fan all things considered but his late period collaborations with Disney have been the absolute nadir of his career. But, can this return to his roots shoot a few volts into his long dead artistic drive?
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At some point in the early eighties someone in Hollywood (possibly Stephen Spielberg) decided that the children must be made to suffer.
I don’t know what it was, but the eighties were an absolute Golden Age for media ostensibly aimed at children that seemed “aimed” more like you’d “aim” a psychological terror campaign against an enemy army.
And atop any list of eighties kid’s movies guaranteed to traumatise your little angels you’ll find 1985’s Return to Oz a movie that I never saw growing up, presumably because my parents knew that if they tried to take me to it the cinema would never not smell of piss again.
My wife, however, has seen it and has kindly agreed to watch it with me…
‘Till death do us part my ass.
Alright, what is this thing anyway?
1939’s The Wizard of Oz is regarded by many to be the greatest movie Disney ever made, which tears them up inside because they didn’t actually make it. L. Frank Baum’s been dead a long ass time and if you want to make a movie based on his Oz books you just knock yourself out because they’re all in the public domain. But so much of what people associate with the Oz story comes not from the books but from the movie, which is still owned by MGM. Which means you gotta be real careful when making your own movie that you don’t impinge on any of the unique elements of that film like the ruby red slippers or the famous dialogue or Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the West or else MGM will send the big lion around to eat your feet.
Of course, Disney would love to make their own direct sequel or remake to the Wizard of Oz but they can’t because a certain company lobbied hard and dirty to ensure that movie copyright in America lasts until roughly the heat death of the universe.
Ah karma. Sweet as mother’s milk.
Anyway, that’s more or less how we got Return to Oz. It’s a sequel based on an amalgamation of two of Baum’s later Oz books that the filthy Oz casuals among you probably didn’t know even existed. And rest assured, if it is shamelessly aping an older film, it’s definitely not Wizard of Oz.
Hello everyone. Recently I decided to get back into acting and I’m going to be appearing in a production of Comedy of Errors in two weeks time as Dromio of Ephesus aka the best Dromio.
Also, Spouse of Mouse is on a business trip leaving me with two orphans crying plaintively for their mother night and day.
Also, I have a really tight writing deadline to meet this week.
Ergo, review short. Soz.
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Normally, a film like John Carter is exactly the kind of movie that I dread to review.
It aroused no strong feelings in me. I didn’t love it and I didn’t hate it. But honestly, the more I watched it the more I realised…this is kinda good? I mean, the elements are really strong. For being a decade old, the effects hold up a lot better than most of what Disney is putting out today.
The cast is full of actors I love or at least have no ill will towards (I like Taylor Kitsch, y’all are just mean). The script is nothing spectacular but perfectly solid. There was clearly a lot of thought and love and creativity and subtle world-building that went into the design of its fictional Martian setting. And there’s some strikingly beautiful cinematography. Like this scene where John Carter is fleeing on horseback across the Arizona Territory pursued by Union Soldiers:
Just gorgeous, old fashioned film-making. There is a lot to like in John Carter.
And yet, and yet…something isn’t working here. Some wheel just ain’t clicking.
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Hey kids, know what time it is? It’s “Mouse uses his folklore degree” time!
I know, I know, I’m excited too.
So, do you want to know what the difference is between a myth, a legend and a fairy tale (or “wonder tale” as the cool kids call them)?
A myth is a narrative relic from a now defunct religion. Thor, Odin, Zeus etc were all once worshipped, so any stories relating to them are myths.
A legend takes place in a real place and time, and may feature real historical figures but is nonetheless fictional or even fantastical. So, Saint Patrick casting out the snakes from Ireland is a legend. He was a real person, Ireland is a real place (I mean, I hope) but the events described are fictional. That’s a legend.
And lastly, a wonder tale takes place in a far off land in an unspecified time and is wholly fictional. Anything that begins with “Once Upon a Time, in a Land Far Far Away” will be a wonder tale. So Snow White, Cinderella, Rumpelstiltskin, you get the idea.
Pinocchio is a book. With an accredited author. Published just a century before I was born. It is not a piece of ancient world folklore. So when Pinocchio and Gepetto showed up in Once Upon a Time, a series puportedly about “fairy tale” characters, I was a bit confused because they have about as much in common with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as Hermione Granger. But of course, we all know why they’re actually here. Because this is a Disney show (well, an ABC show) and Disney made Pinocchio in 1940 (AND WISELY NEVER TRIED TO MAKE IT AGAIN).
And look, I’m sorry, I’ll get into the merits of the show in a bit, but something about this makes me deeply uneasy. Okay, here’s the premise of Once Upon a Time:
In a magical Fairy Tale Land, Prince Charming wakes Snow White and they get married. But the Evil Queen puts a spell on them that pulls them all into the real world and places them in a town called Storybrooke (sigh) where they spend decades living the same lives and never age. Only the Queen’s adopted son, Henry, seems to know the truth, as he has a magic book of fairy tales and has been able to piece together which fairy tale character everyone in town actually is. So what’s my problem?
Well, let’s take Grumpy. Grumpy is just one of the seven dwarves who we see in the background as Snow White’s story plays out. Now, this is very clearly not the 1938 Disney Snow White. The characters all look different, sound different, are costumed differently.
This is not based on the movie but a new version based on the original folk tale, right? All the elements we see here, Snow White, the Prince, the Queen, the magic mirror, the dwarves, are all from the original story. I mean, that’s the clear implication. But here’s the thing.
Grumpy is a Disney character. They created him. In the original story, the dwarves don’t have individual names or personalities. The famous names we know today were all Disney’s invention. And by including original Disney characters like Grumpy and Jiminy Cricket it feels like Disney are trying to Trojan horse them in to the canon of European folklore. It feels like an attempt to make Disney’s Snow White the ONLY Snow White, subtly implying that their version is the definitive one. And yeah, I know that it probably wasn’t intentional. I know the creators probably just thought “hey, we have the rights to Elsa from Frozen let’s use her”. But when has giving Disney the benefit of the doubt worked ever out well for anyone?
Anyway, let’s look at the show
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unshavedmouse 