OFF THE SHELF – Issue # 33: ANIMATION
And we’re back! There was only meant to be a one week delay whilst I got my shit together and, before you know it, an entire month has passed! So, I apologise. Profusely! This column barely had the highest amount of readers at the best of times so I’m guessing what little readers there were, have now disappeared on to bigger and better things. Which is a shame as we’re only maybe three or four issues away from total completion (which will have given us a review total of just under 1500 films! Jesus, who’d have thunk it eh?)
This week we’re looking at the subsection of films that make up my DVD collection marked ‘Animation’. It’s a bit of a “safe” collection in terms of the titles held within. There’s very little “foreign” fare (one title in fact!) and I know there’s going to be a whole host of hate mail about the fact that I have this subsection without any Asian art-house titles or how I’ve forgotten this classic or that classic but have so much ‘recent’ CGI “rubbish”.
Bear in my mind that the collection is kind of made up of titles that I rush out and buy for my nephew(s) when they come round so go easy. This has been rushed together and there are a lot of titles to cover so apologies in advance if it’s not what you’d usually expect of Off The Shelf. Anyway, without further ado and because of the fact that I’ve got about another 6 reviews to get published on the site today, here is my thoughts on the animated DVDs that make up my collection:
I still think this is one of the greatest animated movies of all time. Yup, still! Even after Pixar and all their wonderful little movies that steal my heart with each release. This is animated and executed with such a deft, breakneck pace. Everything, absolutely everything, about it is totally note-perfect… from the song-and-dance numbers which were [then] a Disney mainstay, the obligatory animal sidekicks, the schmaltzy song-to-a-montage-sequence-designed-to-be-released-as-a-chart-topping-single, the one-liner-laden script and, of course, the big name A-list celebrity doing ‘voice over’ work in a role. And this is where Aladdin transcends “just another’ Disney movie. In Robin Williams they have found an actor whose ad-libbing is so ferociously fast-paced that the animators had to struggle to keep up (check out the late addition of the scene where the Genie rolls through a variety of impersonations and his head changes to match!). It is Williams who makes this film the joy that it is. It is Williams who owns every single minute of it that he is involved with. Without him, the film would be a memorable Disney ‘classic’ of the modern era in the vein of Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid. With him, the film is one of the greatest pieces of entertainment of the last twenty years and on course to becoming the timeless modern masterpiece that very few Pixar-less Disney movies (post-1980s) can claim to be! Alice in Wonderland If you ever find yourself in the position of being a little drunk or a little stoned then this is probably a film you should watch if you have it to hand, but probably never thought worthy. It’s an absolute trip, still as beautifully and surreally animated and designed as it was all those years ago. It’s zany, it’s fast, it’s off the wall and it’s a film that is so inwardly bizarre that you can’t quite believe the ‘House of Mouse’ were behind it! One of the best of Disney’s “old school” productions when they were producing an output of consistently classic films!
Antz It’s probably sacrilegious for me to say this but, in the battle of the “insect” movies of 1999 between Dreamworks and Pixar (aka this movie and A Bugs Life) I opted for this movie. I love the cast, I love the script and I think this is a pitch-perfect little animated film with stellar voice work (Woody Allen, yes Woody Allen, Sly Stallone, Jennifer Lopez, Danny Glover, Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Christopher Walken, Dan Akroyd, Catherine O’ Hara, Eugene Levy and many, many more!) and some thrilling set-pieces. The end of act one battle between the ants and the wood lice is shot in a style no less thrilling then something out of Zulu or Saving Private Ryan, regardless of the fact that it’s for a “kid’s” animated film. The musical score by Harry Gregson Williams is also worthy of paying mention to in this quickly derided, easily forgotten, genuinely superb little animated film!
Atlantis: The Lost Empire I’ve got a great deal of time for this film. Thrown out of the Disney Animated Division when they were in their late 90s/early 00s decline, this is actually a brave and interesting attempt to do something a little different and toy with the stereotypical “Disney Movie” formula. Chucking aside the cute animal sidekicks, the cheesy romantic ballads on the soundtrack and all that has seen Disney grow stale as they entered the year 2000, this is a proper full-throttle ‘boy’s own’ adventure flick about a team of explorers in search of the lost city of Atlantis. The animation is uniquely a little off-kilter and the voice work is interesting as opposed to starry. This is an under-rated little gem in terms of the late 2-D Disney output, wrongly derided and written off as a “disaster” by the critics and the American masses, but it’s really a great little rollercoaster ride in my humble opinion!
Basil The Great Mouse Detective I’ve got very fond memories of queuing in the pouring rain with my dad, who really didn’t want to be there, on a cold Sunday afternoon in Pilgrim Street outside the ‘classic’ (but now sadly defunct) Odeon Cinema. I’ve got even fonder memories of finally getting to the front of the queue after waiting, getting soaking wet, for an hour only to be told that they’d “sold out”, whereby my dad went all ‘Travis Bickle’ on the guy at the box office and two tickets were mysteriously – and quickly – found and allocated to us. The film itself was like the best film I ever saw when I was just a child. Now, it kind of annoys me a little with it’s over-use of below-par musical numbers and the stretching out of its story. Maybe I’m being a little overly critical about what is a essentially a cartoon movie about a mouse that investigates crimes though eh? Lol. The unarguable fact is that by the time you’ve got yourself to the thrilling climax in and around the top of London’s Big Ben and the crashing of all those flying machines, then you’re not going to take note of anything other than how much fun you’re having. One of the better movies from Disney’s lethargic 80s period!
Beavis & Butthead Do America I was never much of a fan of the whole Beavis & Butthead “thing” to be absolutely honest. I never watched their TV show or really got into the whole “animated syndicated shorts” that Channel 4 started putting out here in the UK. A friend of mine bought me this ‘movie’ on DVD because he genuinely thought I would dig it and thought I should stop being stubborn and “sniffy” about the culture of Beavis and Butthead. I gave it a try and I have to admit that I kind of enjoyed it. I haven’t watched it an awful lot in all the years that I’ve had it but I do remember liking what I saw and laughing out loud a good few times. Mike Judge – the creator – has gone on to do far funnier and more intelligent stuff since (i.e. Office Space) but this is relatively likeable stuff. I went and gave the TV show a try after watching this film and couldn’t stand it but this movie was actually okay!
Belleville Rendezvous Definitely one of my all time favourite animated films, you can check out my full review by clicking here! This was a massive film from my childhood. I’m not that much of a fan of it these days but “back in the day” I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread, and believe me I used to think sliced bread was amazing! I remember forcing my mum to take me to the cinema like three times or something to see this. I remember having a ridiculous amount of unused Kelloggs Cornflakes boxes lying around the house just so that I could collect all the free action figures from inside and I remember recreating scenes from the film in the playground with the loner kid who had eczema. These days though you can kind of see that the story is a little clunky, the animation unpolished and the voice work really uninspiring. There are massive opportunities for big, animated sword and sorcery moments that go unmissed and the whole thing just smacks of a rushed, un-smooth effort that even the animators themselves don’t seem to have a lot of love for. You do kind of adopt the film under your wing reluctantly though and go easier on it then you should because of the “ugly ducking” mentality that exists between this film and all the other Disney flicks out there. This is really kind of the runt of the litter!
A Bugs Life As I said earlier, I prefer Antz to this film but I still have a lot of time for this. Prior to Cars, I thought this was the weakest out of all of the Pixar films. It’s almost easy to dismiss as the “difficult second movie” when it’s sandwiched between the true wonders of Toy Story and the majestic Toy Story 2. I think the voice-cast, bar the excellent Kevin Spacey of course, is pretty weak and the story is over-long and over-cooked but it’s still a real beauty to look at and there’s a couple of very well executed, funny moments. There are far superior movies to have come out of the Pixar production house but what’s really interesting to note is that when you look at the likes of this movie and Cars, even Pixar at their allegedly worst is still head and shoulders above most other animated movies in the genre!
Chicken Run You all know this one, the claymation version of The Great Escape but… you know… with chickens! Made entirely with a British sensibility that gives the humour a cracking, almost surreal but always hilarious edge, this is a genuinely brilliant little film that I must have sat and watched with my nephew over and over again and it never seems to get stale. The most interesting thing to note is that the voice cast is so inspired that the usual highlight – i.e. the big “name” American actor coming in to lend his support, here represented by Mel Gibson – is actually the weakest thing amongst the cast. It’s a constantly moving, always funny, totally involving, never less then brilliant family film that you should all own. Especially if you children, whether they’re your own or the result of a kidnap gone wrong!
Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride I can’t really comment on this film too much to be honest. I was handed a DVD screener of it for review purposes and promptly fell asleep during it. I watched it again the following day and fell asleep through it again. I’ve since watched it all the way through – with no sleep breaks – and I kind of enjoyed it but was so minus any opinion on it, good or bad, that I found it a difficult film to review. I still stand by that. I think it’s a good film, extremely well designed but, I’m not sure, maybe it’s the fact that I only discovered it was a “musical” midway through the film’s running time (with musical numbers that aren’t anywhere near as a strong as something like The Nightmare Before Christmas) and that kind of shook me out of the film a little. I must go back and rewatch this, I think.
Dumbo What can you say about this eh? It’s an unarguable classic, still as wonderful to watch and gorgeous to look at as the day it was released for the first time. It’s a sumptuous, funny, involving, touching and inspiring experience that is always the first example I use about the wonders and imagination of 2-D animation over the current (and ongoing) favouring of CGI animated movies. A vintage masterpiece of its genre!
The Emperor’s New Groove Another of Disney’s “rush jobs” to fulfil their (then) obligation of a late-summer animated release every year. I didn’t have any interest in seeing this at the cinema when it was first released simply because David Spade was the ‘lead’ and I normally cannot abide him. I picked this up on DVD one day when I was really ill and looking for a few titles to keep me entertained whilst sick. I’ve got to admit I was pleasantly surprised by this film. It’s completely off the wall, with some great voice work by Eartha Kitt and Patrick Warburton, and it seems to fly in the face of the average, stereotypical Disney movie. It’s no classic and it’s easily forgettable stuff but, for the eighty odd minutes you’re involved with it, it’ll entertain you and prove just about crazy enough to almost appear original. There were better Disney flicks before this and after it, but it’s still a lot better then you’d ever think it would be!
Finding Nemo I really wanted to hate this film. I really did. It came out in the wake of comments made by major players at Pixar who seemed to really disparage the world of 2-D animation, and their attitude appeared to be really cocky etc. I admittedly regard the first two Toy Story flicks as masterpieces of their genre, and I was insanely in love with Monsters Inc. but I wanted to see this film fail and die a horrible death just to knock them off their pedestal a little and make them realise that without the world of 2-D animation, then companies like Pixar just flat out wouldn’t exist. The film arrived though and I saw it on a self-imposed back-to-back screening with Kill Bill Volume 1, of all films, to take my mind of the major root canal surgery I had had that morning. I went in to the screening with the foulest of moods and was probably the hardest person to please but this film really blew me away. I couldn’t help but fall in love with it and I still think it’s one of the most beautiful films of it’s genre that I’ve seen in a long time. You look at Toy Story and then you look at this and you can’t help but be staggered by the advancement they’ve made in such a short space of time. Obviously Pixar would move onwards and upwards into the stratosphere with their next film after this, but at the time I was – and still am – completely bowled over by this flick!
The Fox and the Hound I’m not ashamed to admit this anymore, plus I can’t deny it because you’ve all seen my list of my top 100 favourite films of all-time, but this is one of my favourite animated movies! I love the story it tells, I love the style of animation, I love the songs, the voice-work, the little silly subplot involving the birds trying to capture the caterpillar. I adore the life-lessons that the film teaches you, the thrilling climax in which friends who’ve become enemies have to learn to fight side by side once again for the greater good and… I just love everything about this film. I discovered it and, for me, it will be like my Dad showing me The Jungle Book for the first time when I was old enough. I’m going to show this to my kids and get them to show it to the kids and so on and so forth. One of the best 2-D animated movies I’ve ever seen. Sorry, but that’s how I feel! Ha Ha.
The Fox and the Hound 2 My little nephew bought this for me as a joke for my birthday recently and I’ve got to admit that I was intrigued to see it, just out of my love for the first film. I try and avoid these straight-to-DVD-animated-sequels that are thrown out to bring in the extra revenue, and the fact that Patrick Swayze was leading the voice cast didn’t bolster much confidence for me either. How the hell can the guy freefall from being the dude from Dirty Dancing, who headlined his own action movies, to the sort of fella that turns up to phone in his voice duties via satellite link-up for a thrown-together sequel to a film that was first released in the very early 1980s? How the mighty fall huh? Or was Swayze ever mighty? Anyhoo, this film really annoyed the tits out of me quite frankly! It’s got absolutely no respect for the first film, seems to just make up it’s own chronology and it’s plot (about country and western singing dogs etc.) is complete piffle. We’re meant to forget that Todd and Copper have grown up and the events of this movie just slide somewhere, somehow, into the first film somewhere. As rubbish, offensively mediocre and silly as you’ve heard all of these stupid straight-to-DVD Disney rush-jobs are meant to be!
Hercules The songs don’t do much for me, it outstays it’s welcome by becoming a little too boring and saccharine before it reaches the end and the whole affair comes across as if it’s a bit of a missed opportunity when all is said and done, but the design is fresh and the voice work is great and, whilst it may not be the best thing that Disney has ever done, it’s worth a look and is probably one of the more stronger efforts that the ‘House of Mouse’ pushed out in their ‘stale’ late 90s stage!
The Incredibles Not just one of the best animated films ever made, regardless of it’s subgenre (CGI origins, over 2-D mastery!), but also one of the greatest films ever made full stop! Absolutely perfectly executed in every way, shape and form, this is the film that made me fall back in love with cinema and the movie industry once more after a year or so of repeated disappointments and let-downs. I’ve seen this film well over a hundred times now (yes, I know, totally sad!) and I still sit with a huge grin on my face from the minute it starts to the minute it ends! I walked out of Monsters Inc. so in love with that film that I genuinely felt it would never be bettered. Finding Nemo came extremely close but still didn’t steal my heart. Then I saw this and I think that this is now going to be the weighted milestone around the necks of, not just Pixar, but the animation genre as a whole. A classic. A real, full-bodied, hugely recommendable classic!
The Jungle Book What can you say about this without just completely stealing wholesale from what I wrote about Dumbo eh? It’s an unarguable classic, still as wonderful to watch and gorgeous to look at as the day it was released for the first time. It’s a sumptuous, funny, involving, touching and inspiring experience that is always used as an example when arguing about the wonders and imagination of 2-D animation over the current (and ongoing) favouring of CGI animated movies. A vintage masterpiece of its genre!
Lilo & Stitch I really kind of stumbled across this flick in much the same way as I did with The Emperor’s New Groove. I was bored one day, out looking to buy some new DVDs and thought I’d give this a go because I thought that – from reading the back of the cover – that Disney really were scraping the barrel with this film. It turned out to be a really bizarre (in a good way!) little family film that ended up totally stealing my heart. It made me laugh, it gave me a lump in my throat towards the end and it was just about off-the-wall enough for me to turn it into the word-of-mouth du jour every time I went to the pub with my mates. For a long time this was actually the post-pub viewing experience of choice between me and my buddies and it’s worth a look in that respect if nothing else! I’ve never seen any of the (copious amounts of) sequels that have come out, straight-to-DVD, and have no intention of either, but as a stand-alone experience this is a great little film! A real surprise!
The Lion King It’s very much a modern masterpiece. A real testament to Disney being able to pull it out the bag and shine in the arena of two dimensional animation at a time when everyone had written them off. Between this, Aladdin and Beauty & The Beast, this is a trilogy of films that shows (Pixar or not) the Disney Studio are truly the gods of the modern hand-drawn animated movie. This is still as wonderful to watch and gorgeous to look – proving to be a funny, involving, touching and inspiring experience!
The Little Mermaid Yes, I own The Little Mermaid! You, at the back, stop laughing and muttering the words “gay boy” please. I dig it. Sorry, but I do. If you positively had to choose one of those paint-by-numbers Disney movies where they just throw in the obligatory songs, cute animal sidekicks, romances, action beats and so on and so forth then this would be the one to choose in my opinion. Quite rightly regarded as the film that saved Disney after repeated “dropped balls” during the 80s, this is exquisite animation that set the writers and animators down the route of eventually being able to produce films of the calibre of Aladdin, Beauty & The Beast and The Lion King!
Madagascar I bought this solely with the intention of watching it with my nephew but it bored the hell out of him after half an hour and I ended up seeing it to the end on my own. I like the film. I like the cast and there’s a fair few funny moments caught up within it but it really is over-long and completely loses its way towards the end. It’s so heavily stacked in its first two acts in terms of humour, outrageousness and throwing anything and everything at the kids it’s targeting as viewers, that by the final third it’s really running on empty! Not a bad film, especially not in the glut of CGI-animated-animal flicks that seem to released every month, but there is better out there!
Monster House One of my favourite films of 2006, sliding easily into my Top Twenty of that year. This is from the people that did The Polar Express (i.e. all that motion-capture gubbins is involved!) and it’s, just as the marketing department suggest, like an animated version of all those really cool 80s family films or Amblin Entertainment productions like The Goonies, Explorers, Monster Squad etc. The voice cast is great, the script is smart and the animation is out of this world. It’s funny, scary (but not “too” scary!) and a genuine first rate gem. In fact see it now whilst it’s still a five star animated movie that not too many people have cottoned on to adopting, and pretending they’ve “loved it all along”.
Oliver and Company The film that my dad was forced to take us to see because we couldn’t get tickets for Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. I’ve got a real soft spot for this film. I love the musical numbers and I love the effort made to adapt the whole Oliver Twist thing into a modern setting with animals. This is one of the first hand-drawn efforts to try and integrate CGI animation into the proceedings and it really stands out in a clunky sort of way. However, that’s not to say that it’s not an interesting thing to look at now, in the age of films like The Incredibles and the like. This is total sugary, safe, family entertainment made during that ill-fated, aforementioned 80s period whereby Disney were rushing out a film a year regardless of their quality. There’s no real “bite” or surprises but it’s a film that still plays well enough as my nephew tends to rush to watching it nearly every time he is round here!
Open Season I bought this specifically for my nephew as I knew I was looking after him for the day and it lasted about ten minutes or so before he got totally bored. We ended up fast-forwarding to the big animals-versus-hunters battle at the end but that still didn’t do anything for him. I went back and watched this on my own and thought that it was okay, but really kind of by-the-numbers and unoriginal when you compare it to something like the next film in our list. Plus, when your two lead voice actors are Martin Lawrence and Ashton Kutcher then you know you’re going to have difficulty winning an audience over. That’s like asking someone to come to a dinner party and when they ask whose on the guest list, you say “Oh you know, Hitler and Satan!” Okay, maybe it’s not, but Lawrence and Kutcher are NEARLY as bad!
Over The Hedge I didn’t think I’d like this. I was so, so, so bored with the whole CGI-animal flicks they were seeming to churn out every other month, of which I immediately discounted this as being just another one of them. It was the voice cast that started to draw my attention towards the project and I’m not just talking about Bruce Willis and Steve Carrell, both of whom I’m fans of. No, I’m talking about the likes of Garry Shandling, William Shatner, Nick Nolte, Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara to name but a few. I loved the jokes, I loved the visuals and I loved the whole experience. I was at a point when very few films surprised me last year and I really had to lower my standards a lot to get some enjoyment out of the major films but this movie, and Monster House, came along and blew me away!
Peter Pan This is one of the first films I remember seeing as a child. My sister keeps telling me that it was a result of a “kidnapping gone wrong” with our babysitter but I don’t remember that. Although I do have strange memories of sitting watching this in my pyjamas in the cinema whilst everyone else had clothes on. I think I need therapy. Perhaps Disney’s Peter Pan is just some sort of “mental wall” created to block out some horrific abuse that happened and… Oh my God, I remember that priest now and… Only joking! Anyway, dig the film, still stands up well, there’s been better since but as Disney adaptations of classic literary material goes, then this is one worthy of note!
Pinocchio Just like Dumbo and The Jungle Book, this is an unarguable classic, still as wonderful to watch and gorgeous to look at as the day it was released for the first time. It’s a sumptuous, funny, involving, touching and inspiring experience that backs up the debate about the wonders and imagination of 2-D animation over the current (and ongoing) favouring of CGI animated movies. A vintage masterpiece of its genre!
The Rescuers This is one of my big, secret loves of the animated genre. I really, really love this film. I force-fed it to my nephew when he first started getting babysat by me and he really loved it too which made me feel great as I realised that, thankfully, he had good taste. I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do if any nephew of mine ever turned round and started showing a poor taste in cinema (saying that mind you, I had to be held back from punching his three year old face in when he told me that he thought Firehouse Dog was the best film he’d ever seen!). This is just a great example of Disney using excellent background art, great characters, fantastic plotting, wonderful set-pieces and just a great eye and ear for what an audience wants, to produce a really involving and exciting piece of animated family fare! A must-see movie from a studio that has produced so many big classics that the little slices of brilliance, like this, get left behind and forgotten.
The Rescuers Down Under The re-release of The Rescuers went so well back in the late 80s that Disney rushed out an actual big-screen sequel that saw the mouse heroes head to Australia to save another trapped child. It’s safe, uninvolving and routine stuff that’s not a patch on the original – how many sequels actually are? – but it’s an okay watch, all truth be told. The only problem is, when the original looked so good and was such a joy to watch, this film looks and feels cheap and rushed. It most probably set the standard for all those awful straight-to-DVD movies that followed in it’s wake!
Robin Hood Another of my personal favourites, a bullet-paced, wonderfully scripted, marvellously realised animated joy from start to finish. The songs are fantastic, the design is brilliant and it really is just a big bag of complete animated perfection from start to finish. It’s as timeless as you’d hope too because this has now moved generations and become my nephew’s favourite Disney flick at the minute too!
Shrek I loved this! I voted it in my Top Five movies of the year when it was released. I voted the scene when Shrek rescues Princess Fiona from the dragon as my scene of the year and I thought that this spoke volumes about the state and future of CGI movies more than what Pixar were talking about doing, post Toy Story 2. I think this is a film so smart, so witty and so well made that it will stand the test of time more than anyone will give it credit for. The problem is, I genuinely don’t think it’s a film that should have been prostituted like it has been because seeing Shrek The Third (and anticipating the upcoming fourth film and two spin-off movies!) and then going back and looking at this film, it kind of hurts as to how diminished the quality is!
Shrek 2 A genuine surprise, I have to say. I was really against a sequel because, as I said above, I didn’t want them to franchise the hell out of this particular character and cheapen it. As sequels to films I don’t want to see fucked with, this is actually a resounding success. Just as fast, funny and confident as the first film, with a bigger sense of scale and more ambition second time round. There’s no scene that steals my attention like the dragon-fighting scene from the first film (although the battle in the potion-factory comes close!) but, all in all, I had a blast with this when I never thought I would.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves What can you say about this eh? It’s not only the “mother” of the genre as we know it, so to speak, but it’s an unarguable classic, still as wonderful to watch and gorgeous to look at as the day it was released for the first time. It’s a sumptuous, funny, involving, touching and inspiring experience that is always the first example I use about the wonders and imagination of 2-D animation over the current (and ongoing) favouring of CGI animated movies. A vintage masterpiece of its genre!
Star Wars: Clone Wars – Volume 1 I resisted getting involved with this whole animated extension of the Star Wars movies because I didn’t want to become that sort of “geek”. I like the Star Wars movies but I just don’t live and die by them or allow my dick to get hard at the thought of Princess Leia, and stuff like that. Mates of mine kept telling me that I really should check them out as they were – and we’ve heard this so much about the animated endeavours in comparison to the actual live action prequels – “exactly the sort of thing that the prequels should have been”. So I ventured into them and I had a blast with them. I’m sure there were people sat watching these, making notes and going online to talk about this character or that character but that’s not really my bag. I watched them, enjoyed them and agreed that if the first two episodes had contained anywhere near as much imagination, wit, excitement and action then we wouldn’t be hiding Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones in our collections, like they were the sort of pornography that even dirty bastards were ashamed of!
Star Wars: Clone Wars – Volume 2 Better then the first volume, simply because of the increased length to each episode and the more focused scope on events and proceedings, this animated anthology of shorts charts events between Episode II and Episode III in the Star Wars “universe”. As I said regarding Volume 1, I resisted getting involved with this whole animated extension of the Star Wars movies because I didn’t want to become that sort of “geek”. I like the Star Wars movies but I just don’t live and die by them or allow my dick to get hard at the thought of Princess Leia, and stuff like that. Mates of mine kept telling me that I really should check them out as they were – and we’ve heard this so much about the animated endeavours in comparison to the actual live action prequels – “exactly the sort of thing that the prequels should have been”. So I ventured into them and I had a blast with them. I’m sure there were people sat watching these, making notes and going online to talk about this character or that character but that’s not really my bag. I watched them, enjoyed them and agreed that if the first two episodes had contained anywhere near as much imagination, wit, excitement and action then we wouldn’t be hiding Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones in our collections, like they were the sort of pornography that even dirty bastards were ashamed of!
The Sword and the Stone One of my personal favourites, this is as wonderful to watch and gorgeous to look at as the day it was released for the first time. A genuine under-rated gem of its genre!
Tarzan I like this. That’s about all I can say, really. I thought I’d hate this. I avoided it simply because the very selling point of “a voice cast including Rosie O’ Donnell and Minnie Driver and a soundtrack by Phil Collins” doesn’t really rock my world. Someone brought it for me as a Christmas present (yes – I clearly have such wonderful friends!) and it went unwatched for the longest period of time possible. When I did get round to watching it I was surprised at just how much I didn’t hate it. I thought it was beautifully animated, involving and fun to watch. A real pleasant surprise!
Team America: World Police I love the hell out of this film. I prefer South Park: The Movie truth be told, but this is funny, funny stuff indeed. I just cannot believe that nobody thought of spoofing Jerry Bruckheimer movies by way of marionette puppets before. Seriously. Puppet sex scenes, political digs, slashing on actors and their political beliefs, it’s all here. Someone was saying that this is “the” cult movie of the last ten years or so, but I think that’s seriously undermining the film. I think it’s above even that term. I don’t know a single person who hasn’t seen and loved this flick. That doesn’t fit the term “cult” to me. When you look at this and South Park: The Movie, you can’t help but be excited about what these guys are going to do next. America? Fuck yeah!
Treasure Planet I bought this on the cheap for my nephew to watch, and because I’m a fan of The Goo Goo Dolls who did the soundtrack, and we both enjoyed this a great deal. It’s stupid, desperate stuff in which someone thought that it was a great idea to transport the classic Robert Louis Stephenson novel, Treasure Island, to space and include aliens and cyborgs and all that nonsense, but the film itself is so brilliantly and originally designed that you kind of get sucked along on a ride that – by it’s third act – is so intense and fast that you just have to hold on and go with it. The script may suck, the life-lessons may make your teeth ache and it might be no where near close to the standard you’d usually expect from a Disney movie but for young kids who know no better, then seeing space-skate-boarding and alien planets etc. is like porn for their eyes!
Wallace and Gromit: The Complete ‘Shorts’ Collection This is the collection of the trio of, now famous, classic shorts that Aardman Animations put out to make us fall in love with the characters of Wallace and Gromit. Every release, a Christmas Day guarantee here in the UK, betters the last so you go from the rather amateurish but brilliantly surreal wonders of ‘A Grand Day Out’ to the utter exuberance of ‘The Wrong Trousers’, all the way through to the pure, unadulterated eye-candy joy that is ‘A Close Shave’. And then just when you think that could never be bettered, they went and made a feature length movie!
Wallace and Gromit – The Curse of the Were-Rabbit A five-star, no-holds-barred, unadulterated classic of the highest order. Pitch-perfect in every way shape and form, this was a long time coming and completely worth the weight. Made with such loving attention to every detail whether it be the characters, the overall design, the script, the score, the pop culture references, it is a genuinely brilliant piece of cinema and a film that came out of nowhere to land a place in my top ten favourite animated movies of all time! Fantastic!
And in my naff, cardboard, snap-shut cover collection:
The Iron Giant Believe everything you’ve heard about this film! The little film that it’s own studio threw in the corner and forget all about, is actually one of the best pieces of hand-drawn animation of the last ten to fifteen years. Brad Bird may have gone on to produce one of the best pieces of animation ever when he gave us The Incredibles but this was his starting point when he first left The Simpsons and what a starting point it is. I was enormously attached to the original Ted Hughes novella through my school days but the vast amount of changes don’t hurt the project. In fact, I can’t believe that I’m going to say this but the film is actually better for the huge changes it makes! I urge you all to check out this film!
Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas One of the film’s I drag out every year to throw on as a “starter” for my five-movie Christmas marathon around Christmas Eve time! It’s a brilliantly realised, superbly designed piece of stop motion animation with some fantastic song and dance numbers. Okay, some of the jokes clunk and some of the songs are not that great, but it’s still a great little film and when the genre was in a serious stage of falling apart under the weight of it’s own staleness, to experience something this witty and original is a sort of joy in itself!
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut This should never have worked! Never in a million years! Even if it had worked, it should never have worked on the level that it did whereby it managed to mock the musical genre, the TV-show-going-to-the-big-screen subgenre and the whole conventions of the large cast disaster movie/men-on-a-mission style of story! This is a film that I’ve seen time and time again, and I laugh out loud consistently every single time. I know every joke and every story beat and I still come away surprised every time. I wasn’t that much of a South Park fan going into this but I came out with a new found respect afterwards. Compare the recent Simpsons Movie to this and you’ll understand why there were a lot of people disappointed with this year’s offering. When South Park made a movie this friggin’ brilliant with only a trio or so of writers, why couldn’t The Simpsons clan equal it or better it with a team of fifteen or so of the best comedy writers from that show?
And that’s your lot! Was it worth the wait then? No, didn’t think so! 
Hopefully see you all next week!!!
5 Responses to “OFF THE SHELF – Issue # 33: ANIMATION”
I missed you buddy!!!
But dude, you own Little Mermaid? That movie isn’t gay, it just SUCKS.
Well, I finally got this sorted – sorry about the delay! That’s what happens when I don’t bother checking my emails for the weekend! (Blame fireworks displays!
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But it’s another great entry, even though it is tinged with a little sadness as we’re slowly but surely reaching the end.
Still, once again I find myself agreeing with pretty much every DVD here – apart from The Little Mermaid or The Emperors New Groove which I’ve never seen. Oh, and I am a BIG fan of The Fox and the Hound as well! Love that movie.
I do find it a little odd that you don’t have movies like Watership Down and Akira in the collection though……
Another great Off the Shelf, glad to see you back Gazz. I’ve been on somewhat of a classic animation binge lately so this was a good read.
Issue # 34 is going to be split and delayed slightly for no other reason then it is taking a ****ing age to write! So many titles and so many things I want to say about them.
The rundown of the issues left is as follows:
Issue 34 – Modern Classics (Part 1)
Issue 35 – Modern Classics (Part 2)
Issue 36 – Vintage Masterpieces (Part 1)
Issue 37 – Vintage Masterpieces (Part 2)
Issue 38 – Additions to the Collection whilst in Writing
Issue 39 – THE LIST
So, worry not Wyv, there’s still a fair old whack to go mate!
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