starlac

The first official Popeye short - the first being billed as a Betty Boop cartoon - is surprisingly good for its time, though it does suffer from not having either Jack Mercer or Mae Questal in the leads roles of Popeye and Olive Oyl, due to their innate ability to make their post-production* dialogue genuinely funny; of course, Mercer wouldn’t voice the sailor until the twelve cartoon.

The story is thread thin; Popeye and company land on a desert island and encounter some Indians; and that’s essentially it. There are some nice visual gags; yet honestly, there’s not much to say, the later Popeye cartoons that Fleischer made are better, both in story, humour and well all round.

There’s a great piece of technical animation, where Popeye punches some trees and they form into a cabin, but there’s also some throwbacks to comic conventions such as the use of eye-line’s which betray the cartoon’s age. Fleischer’s habit of making stationary character bouncing completely arbitrarily - animation for its own sake essentially - is also evident in a few scenes, though not distracting.

The prior, titular, cartoon is better as a Popeye cartoon and that was a nothing special either. Fleischer’s cartoons would, however, get better as the studio and crew got a better grasp of the characters.

*Practically all of Fleischer’s pre-Gulliver shorts had the animation produced first, with the voices recorded afterwards, going against general animation practise of recording all sound necessary for timing prior to animating.

I suppose if I'm going to go and watch a CGI film in 3D* on a whimsy, it might as well be the one from the writers and director of Lilo and Stitch, one of my all time favourite animated films of the last decade. Director Chris Sanders, of course, left after a disagreement over the direction that his Bolt was taking with John Lasseter. In the end I felt that Bolt was too save and middle of the road for its own good and awarded it a just okay 2.5 stars (or about 6/10).

I feel that I got my answer as to whether or not the issues with Bolt where with Sander or Lasseter’s fixing; How to Train Your Dragon is a most entertaining ride.

It has an energetic beginning to be sure, like Cars and Bolt did, with the four-generation strong village under attack from a dragon raid on their sheep with our protagonist narrating some exposition dialogue that compliments the onscreen action rather than detracting from it.

The plot is essentially nothing new, young, inventive, misunderstood Chief’s son Hiccup tries his best to help, but his attempts and inventions cause more problems than they avert. Naturally his father doesn’t listen to him and he is the least popular member of the village amongst his peers, if not the whole village to whom looking after the boy seems to less preferable to a trip towards certain death. It’s a fairly standard trope in animation of the last few decades, but the film manages to stay the course without it venturing into the cliché.

He, of course, is not happy with his lot as the blacksmith’s apprentice, and intends to prove his worth by slaying a dragon. During the opening attack he manages to use his rope cannon to entangle a Night Fury, the most dangerous type of dragon, but when it comes down to the deed itself, his heart falters at the creatures helplessness and he instead sets it loose. He later discovers that it is unable to escape the valley it fell into due to a broken tail fan; broken by Hiccup’s earlier rope cannon device (I forget its real name).

Meanwhile the tribe sail off in search of the dragons’ nest, with the blacksmith left in charge of a group of teens, who are to be trained to fight the dragons in lieu of the fact that it’s probable that many of the tribe won’t come back. The film spends most of the rest of it runtime juxtaposing between the teens efforts in training and Hiccup's befriending of Toothless - he names the dragon this due to seeing him with his teeth hidden via being retracted - and subsequent discoveries of the idiosyncrasies of the creatures; which knowledge he uses to his advantage while coming to the realisation that dragons are far from the blood-thirsty creatures they’ve been painted as being.

In the meantime he also fashions a new prosthetic fan for Toothless’ tail, which both boy and dragon - the latter rather reluctantly - soon realise needs cooperation between the two to work properly, adding strength to the bond the two develop.

In all, sans the fact that here be dragons, the film has what could be said as a fairly standard story awkward teen befriends animal that’s been around in animation - and films in general - for a while, however with the great deal of polish that the crew have given to the production, the fact the story is in it basic form old, never gets given the change to come to mind.

The main comedy is personality and situation based, you know the kind that flows naturally and is maybe not laugh out loud stuff, but is more akin to good film creation than a never-ending barrage of pop-culture.

The most pop-culture reference related thingy I got from the film was that one of the teen trainees reminded me of a young Jack Black and another of the characters – the male twin - reminded me of Jay from Clerks,† although that might be overlooking for pop-culture due to ending up with that mindset, because let’s face it, most of Dreamworks film are pop-culture-a-thons.

The animation is, naturally for a top-tier movie studio outstanding throughout, with meticulous attention to detail. Characters have a sense of individuality in their movements; the dragons are neat designs, although we only get to delve in any depth with Toothless.

Toothless - recreated from the book into the feared Night Fury - in both his design and the sounds he made, reminded me a lot of Sanders other creation Stitch; mixed with the mannerisms of a cat (or is it dog). He acts as the glue that holds the story together, a fair holding given his role in the story. He shifts from defensive, curious, playful to courageous and even pitiful throughout. Outside of animal noises - that sounds like they being made by Chris Sanders - the dragon is a pure animation character and the animation does a fine job convening him as a living sentient being.

Dreamworks has a great, but not perfect film in How to Train Your Dragon, and while it may not be the deepest ever story ever told, it is sincere in it goals and emotions, doesn’t talk down to its audience is dramatic, at times moving and has that intangible polish you get when a film’s production team obviously really enjoyed making it.

Dreamworks now has quite a few films to its name that don’t rely on a barrage of culture references to be entertaining. And here’s to hoping that future Dreamworks projects continue to take heed that your film doesn’t need to be full of baloney faux-humour to sell itself.

*As far as I’m concerned, while the depth of vision that the 3D effect made was in many respects, spectacular and I thankful that the filmmakers kept the depth perception inside the frame, instead of projecting out of it; although saying this, I still confident that I would have enjoyed the film just as much in 2D. I also probably wouldn’t have the eyestrain and subsequent headache that the polarising glasses gave me through most of the movie – and the hours after it.

†specifically Jay, with also made me think that the character who reminded me of Jack Black could’ve been Silent Bob – only without the silent part.

During Tex Avery’s self-imposed, year long hiatus in 1950, the director chair for his unit was filled by ex-Disney animator/director Dick Lundy, with the apparent hope that he’d be able to bring Barney Bear out of retirement again (or at least that's my understanding given that only one cartoon he made didn’t star the bear). If the year of the short’s release doesn’t tally, then you should know that MGM stockpiled their shorts and released them as needed.

This was a cartoon that I quite liked back in my childhood, though Barney Bear’s cartoons are hardly likely to get the pulse racing, they are more gently in their humour and make a nice break from manic cartoons from Warner Bros. and, well other directors MGM shorts.

For the most part both characters are amiable to each other, although not enough that they could drown you in sentiment but there’s no real antagonist to speak of, which could be said to be a nice change from all the hunter/hunted cartoons that there are out there.

The gags, such as they are, revolve mostly around Jimmy Squirrel doing little things that keep Barney awake. Cracking walnut shells, having a nightmare, and other low-key things like that. If you’re used to and expect the wacky rapid-fire style of other MGM shorts than this may disappoint; it’s more in line with Dick’s other shorts he did at Disney, after all he was a Disney short director. Besides, when he tried to emulate the more zany aspects of the director he was temporary replacing, he never quite hit the mark.

It’s cute, but not too cute as to be nauseating; quietly fun and while it’s not the most gag-filled short ever made, it doesn’t have to be; it fits Barney Bear and the expectations that I have for his character: and it works.

Sometimes, that can be all that you need to be classified as good.

The Grinch Stole Christmas was a huge success, so corporations, greedy as they are, decided to make other specials based on other stories based on Dr. Seuss’ stories, the best two other than the aforementioned, where Norton Hears a Who and The Cat in the Hat adaptations. However there were other ones here and there, like Halloween is Grinch Night.

Firstly, the title is misleading in the extreme because this special has nothing to little to do with the holiday of Halloween whatsoever outside of a passing semblance. The story, which is laboriously explained to us in a telling rather than showing way, is that when the sour-sweet wind blows it sets off two creatures who in turn irritate the Grinch into coming up of his mountain down to Whoville to spread terror and make the place his own until the wind dies down again.

It is worth noting that subsequent re-releases have generally had the sense to throw the “Halloween is” part of the title away, probably realising just how little this special has outside of theme to All Hallows’ Eve.

It’s not made clear where or if this fits in with the timeline or universe of Christmas, or has nothing to do with it. Is this the same Grinch from the more known special? a different one? Is it a retcon, or set prior? Though this really isn’t the special’s real issue in the whole scheme of things.

The animation in How the Grinch Stole Christmas may have been nothing special on a purely technical level, which is the case of many Specials, but Chuck Jones managed to bring the best out of the limited animation available to impressive form. The animation in Night only rises to the level of merely adequate, no higher and even then it’s always evident that much less money went into this special’s creation.

The writing is surprisingly long-winded and extraordinarily talky, with the narrator butting in to inform you that “Eukariah said” several times, a practise that isn’t needed when all the character have easily identifiably, distinct voices. Mostly the text just doesn’t feel up to par with expectations considering that Dr. Seuss is supposable the writer.

The songs – and musical score – are provided by Joe Raposo, who is most famous for writing the music for Sesame Street - with lyrics contributed by Seuss I’d wager, they are as basic, shallow and forgettable as the ones in Raggedy Ann and Andy’s Musical Adventure with Max’s song being far too sappy for its own good. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine that any of the songs here were written by the same man who wrote “Being Green”.

When we get to the events in the Paraphernalia Wagon, it brought to my mind two things: The Pink Elephants on Parade sequence from Dumbo and the inhabitants of Wackyland in the theatrical cartoon Porky in Wackyland, but with the imagination or execution of neither.

As a child the Pink Elephants failed to make an impact on me in any shape or form, except to intrigue my imagination; ditto with the transformation sequence in Pinocchio or any really supposed scary scene from any number of films. After reading some traditional folk tales, the Grinch’s wagon is a mere collection of parlour tricks in comparison.

I’ve no idea how this won an Emmy, probably due to a lack of competition at the time, but while it isn't absolutely terrible it is a shallow retreat by TV special standards and not worthy of the green-furred grouch.

If you want to watch the Grinch, then stick to Christmas, if you wish to watch another Seuss story in animated form, then I would suggest either The Cat in the Hat, or Horton Hears a Who (the original specials preferably).

In the UK this was just another Hanna-Barbera cartoon on Boomerang, its roots as part of the Cattanooga Cats never mentioned. This repackaging of Hanna-Barbera’s older cartoons is nothing new, especially in the UK; in fact here it appears to be the norm for most of the studios work to be shown as their separate segments. This is why I’m only able to make a connection between the segments these days, when I have much more information available, be it the internet or the fairly extensive book on Hanna-Barbera that I have.

There’s not a long to expect from a cartoon of this period, television animation was, and had been, made on the cheap and so had to reply on strong poses, good storytelling and well voiced dialogue to get through. Many cartoons of the time focused on wordplay and character tics. It’s the Wolf gets it animation poses right for the most part, and this is a generally okay package to come out of late sixties television.

It’s the Wolf follows the day-to-day lives of three characters,: Lambsy, Bristle Hound and Wilbur Wolf in the sort of thing that Hanna-Barbera – and yes, Warners – had been doing for years. In fact the first thing that came to mind upon watching the show was that it had a bit too much in common with the earlier Yakky Doodle, only Lambsy isn’t quite as obnoxious as that loudmouth duck.

Wilbur is the best character of the show,* though to be fair he really doesn’t have much in the way of competition, he makes humorous jokes and jives, not laugh out funny ones, but they do break the monotony; he constantly breaks the fourth wall (although so does Lambsy how and then), and also has the benefit of an unusual design with his short, stocky legs and long body. Basically the wolf steals the show and is essentially the only reason to watch it.

The other two characters don’t fare as well; the dog doesn’t do a lot outside of make the occasion droll comment and, naturally, come running after Lambsy’s trademark titular yell. Otherwise he almost might as well not be there, in spite of the fact that his presence is necessary.

Lambsy has Daws Bulter’s Elroy’s voice, which is also somewhat similar to Auggie Doggy’s and likely other characters - I think I’ve watched too many HB cartoons of late. Lambsy has his moments, but most of the time I ended up wishing that the creator’s would just let Wilbur eat him.

The show has its fair share of corny dialogue and ten-a-penny jokes, and I’ll admit that it made me chuckle when Wilbur exclaimed “It’s the Dog! It’s the Dog!” when Bristle caught up with him on one episode I saw. Though I later heard the line later from Lambsy, ironically it was an earlier aired episode; it wasn’t as funny the second time.

And that is kind of the problem in some ways, there isn’t much to find beneath the surface of these late Sixties cartoons, it’s what you seen is what you get, and the problem is that while there is certainly enough on the surface to entertain, there’s not much else in here. Its entertaining enough to past the time for sure, but it is also highly derivative and not hugely memorable outside of its often heard namesake to earn much more than a mere passing look once in a while.

*In fact he was the only character from the whole enitity of The Cattanooga Cats to appear in a later cartoon.