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Director: Lee Unkrich
Release date: June 18, 2010
Rating: ★★★★★ ♕
Review:
I don’t think sequels are a blessing for the animation industry, and I certainly think there are way too many of them, but I admit sometimes a sequel can be very strong. ‘Toy Story 2’, for example, was arguably even better than the original ‘Toy Story’, and even more surprisingly, Toy Story 3’ managed to top both and rounded up the story, neatly.
Unfortunately, Pixar/Disney saw a need for a fourth movie, which is not bad, but extremely superfluous and breaking up the harmony of the first three films. At the time of writing there’s even a fifth film underway…
Back to ‘Toy Story 3’. If there was ever a perfect modern American animated film, ‘Toy Story 3’ is a strong candidate (another strong contender is ‘The Incredibles’ from 2004, also by Pixar). The film already starts great with a fantastic fantasy sequence, showing Andy’s unlimited imagination. But then we move many years forward, and Andy’s no longer a boy, but a young man about to leave his parental home to go to college. Like the moving plot of the first film, this sets a deadline to all subsequent events, which unfold in a combination of chance, errors and misleadings.
The film’s central theme is what are toys to do when their owner grows up? And this theme is played out marvelously, leading up to a very moving and great finale. By now the main cast has become very limited, consisting of Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Jessie, Bullseye, Rex, Ham, Slinky, Barbie, Mr. & Mrs. Potatohead, and the three aliens, and all have enough screentime to shine. But this film also introduces some new toys. After three quarters of an hour the film even turns into a classic prison break movie, and there’s a ridiculously film noir-like reminiscence by a toy called Chuckles (which is a minor highlight in a film rich in great scenes). More importantly, the film makers are able to have new, and pretty brilliant takes on Barbie, Mr. and Mrs. Potatohead, and especially Buzz Lightyear, which I won’t spoil here. We have come to love these characters, and everybody who watches the film up to the finale will experience a range of emotions seldomly felt in such rapid succession.
In all plot twists the film makers keep in mind what it means to be a toy and play marvelously with it. The film is so well told that only after repeated viewing some plot holes become apparent (how did Bullseye retrieve Woody’s hat? How did the toys retrieve Mr. Potato Head’s body from the sandbox?). The only real and immediately apparent flaw of the movie is its deus ex machina scene, which is too much in your face, and not explained satisfyingly, at all.
The animation and rendering, meanwhile, reaches new heights, and by now the humans and animals have left the uncanny valley, and become real characters, too. Anyway, what’s more to say? Watch this film if you’ve never done it before, and I’m pretty sure if you did you love to watch it again, and again…
Watch the trailer for ‘Toy Story 3’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Toy Story 3’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Greg Franklin
Release date: March 18, 2010
Rating: ★
Review:
‘Drawn Together’ was an adult animation series created by Dave Jeser and Matt Silverstein that ran on Comedy Central from 2004 to 2007. The premise of the series was promising: animation heroes from different styles of animation film living together in one house in what was supposed to be “the first animated reality TV series”. Thus we watch e.g. a Disney Princess (Princess Clara), a Betty Boop-like character called Toot, rendered in black and white, a weird yellow classic cartoon character called Wooldoor Jebediah Sockbat that resembles Spongebob the most, and a Pikachu-like animal called Ling-Ling, which talks in gibberish, which is supposed to be Japanese, but clearly is not.
Unfortunately, the series quickly eroded into a rather raunchy affair in which vulgarity was presented as ‘humor’, and nowhere this is more apparent than in the series’ finale, its one and only feature film, which was only released on DVD in 2010.
Unlike other feature films based on adult animated series (‘South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut’ from 1999 and ‘The Simpsons Movie’ from 2007 come to mind), ‘The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie!’ doesn’t do any attempt to become something bigger and more spectacular than the series. The movie retains an extremely vulgar and surprisingly dull atmosphere throughout the picture, mingled with some clearly bitter resentment, especially against fellow Comedy Central series South Park.
For example, during the film some other, more famous cartoon characters get killed, but without any attempt to draw laughs (it seemed the film makers could freely use the Warner Bros. catalogue, for their characters are particularly abundant). Even the best gag, in which the characters temporarily listen to commentary track to find out how to proceed, is milked so long that it becomes yet another annoying episode in one long series of vexations.
There are some nice touches (e.g. some of the characters visible in the Disney-like kingdom Clara visits), but the gratuitous splashes of obscenities and violence outnumber them by far. For example, the superman-like character Captain Leslie Hero drags a rotting female corpse with him throughout the picture and there’s even a random short scene in which all characters have sex with each other, without any clear reason, not even within a comical context. This long string of immaturities and the complete lack of anything that resembles humor means that this film could best be completely forgotten.
Watch the trailer for ‘The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie!’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie!’ is available on the DVD box set ‘Draw Together – The Complete Collection’
Directors: Tatsuya Ishihara & Yasuhiro Takemoto
Release date: February 6, 2010
Rating: ★★★
Review:
It is not wise to watch a feature film based on a series. The film presumes an audience already familiar with the characters and with several if not all of the episodes of the series, making it more difficult for a novice to watch.
‘The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya’ is no exception to this rule. Following the acclaimed anime series ‘The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya’ (which I’ve never seen) the film clearly takes off after the series, even though it’s based on a separate novel within the original book series (actually the fourth of no less than thirteen).
Main protagonist of the film is high school student Kyon, a rather timid member of “the SOS Brigade”, featuring his four friends. In some of the first scenes this troupe prepares for a Christmas party. All looks pretty ordinary, but we soon learn that apart from Kyon himself these high school students are actually time travelers, robots and espers. We see little of that, however, because one morning Kyon awakes in a much more mundane world, where Haruhu Suzumiya indeed has disappeared (hence the title), and his friends Yuki Nagato and Mikuru Asahina have turned into perfectly ordinary schoolgirls. Thus, how outlandish the series may have been, most of this film is surprisingly prosaic in its looks and its nature. Only after 100 minutes some of the spirit of the original series returns (we apparently even go back to events from a previous episode).
‘The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya’ is a strikingly heady movie. We’re inside Kyon’s mind and thoughts a lot of the time, and in one bizarre scene we even watch him in a discussion with himself. Throughout the film we maintain with this character, and we even literally watch the world through his eyes: a recurring theme in this movie is Kyon opening his eyes to the world, which is depicted as if we were Kyon himself.
‘The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya’ knows high production values: there are the usual intricate background paintings, the lighting is beautiful, the character animation is fine, even if the designs are disappointingly generic, and there’s a high number of special effects, including moving backgrounds rendered in computer animation. Nevertheless, the film never really transcends the high school meets science fiction trope, and Kyon’s revelation, that he should be content with the world he lives in, is as predictable as it is banal. Moreover, I felt that the mundane version of Nagato was too easily discarded, as she clearly had Kyon something to offer, unique to this version of the world. ‘The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya’ is in no sense a bad movie, but certainly a slow and heady one, with a lot of voice over, and of lesser interest to anyone not familiar with the original series.
Watch the trailer for ‘The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Robert Proch
Release date: 2010
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
In ‘Galeria’ a woman goes shopping, accompanied by her husband, while their bull terrier has to wait outside.
Robert Proch treats this simple and rather boring subject with the greatest of elegance. His film is rendered in black and white only, with some occasional reds, and the semi-abstract pen drawings burst with animated life.
Add some original stagings, some great metamorphosis, a rather associative way of story-telling, and an excellent score by Tupika, and we can conclude that ‘Galeria’ is one of those shorts that shows what animation can do. Despite its dull subject matter, ‘Galeria’ is a triumph of imagination, and its dance-like quality is a delight to watch throughout.
Watch ‘Galeria’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Galeria’ is available on the The Animation Show of Shows Box Set 7
Directors: Frank Braun & Claudius Gentinetta
Release Date: July 16, 2010
Rating: ★★★★½
Review:
‘Schlaf’ is a black and white film using white lines on a black canvas. The film is very poetic and follows the rhythm of a snoring person, with images alternatingly speeding past the camera, or being more or less calm, allowing the viewer to register what’s in them.
Once one realizes he watches an enormous ocean liner full of people with oars, one also notes the ship is sinking, as if the ship depicts the sleeping person’s consciousness drowning into a sea of sleep. The idea is so strikingly original and its execution so well done, ‘Schlaf’ easily holds the attention throughout, despite the puzzling imagery.
Watch ‘Schlaf’ yourself and tell met what you think:
‘Schlaf’ is available on The Animation Show of Shows Box Set 9
Director: Andreas Hykade
Release Date: February 24, 2010
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
After a sublime narrative trilogy on the loss of innocence (consisting of ‘Wir lebten im Gras‘ from 1995, ‘Ring of Fire’ from 2002, and ‘The Runt‘ from 2006), Andreas Hykade made a surprising move to a non-narrative film with ‘Love & Theft’.
In this film Hykade uses many animation cycles and continuous metamorphosis, not to tell a story, but to bring a homage to the great characters of animation and comics in mesmerizing and hallucinating images that never fail to entertain.
Greatly helped by Heiko Maile’s score, ‘Love and Theft’ knows an almost perfect build-up, starting very modestly in black and white, and with the simplest drawings. The first recognizable characters morphing into each other are Charlie Brown and Hello Kitty, soon followed by Mickey Mouse, Goofy and Spiderman, and later e.g. Spongebob Squarepants, Bert from Sesame Street, Tweety, Blossom from the Powerpuff Girls, Betty Boop, Ryan Larkin (as depicted in Chris Landreth’s animated short ‘Ryan’ from 2004), Gromit, Droopy, Koko, Donald Duck, the penguin from ‘The Wrong Trousers‘, Barbapapa, and countless others, including even Karl Marx, Che Guevara and Adolf Hitler.
Once changed into color, the animation goes completely berzerk, as one long psychedelic kaleidoscope. This particular sequence seems to owe something to Jim Woodring’s Frank, and somehow Andreas Hykade manages to capture the comic’s surreal atmosphere very well in this otherwise semi-abstract film.
Rarely were animation cycles and metamorphosis employed so creatively and entertainingly. ‘Love & Theft’ is a film that can be watched over and over again, without losing its gripping power.
Watch ‘Love & Theft’ yourself and tell met what you think:
‘Love & Theft’ is available on The Animation Show of Shows Box Set 9
Directors: Nathan Greno & Byron Howard
Release Date: November 24, 2010
Rating: ★★★★½
Review:
With ‘Tangled’ the Walt Disney studio arguably released their first really successful computer animated feature.
Despite the modern techniques with which it has been made, ‘Entangled’ really looks back, even more than the hand-drawn ‘Princess and the Frog’ from one year earlier. First, it’s a musical in the vain of ‘The Little Mermaid’ (1989) and ‘Beauty and the Beast’ (1991), and indeed the songs are by same composer, Alan Menken. Second, it’s based on a classic fairy-tale (Rapunzel), placing it in a tradition looking all the way back to ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ (1937) and ‘Cinderella‘ (1950). And third, there’s even an animal sidekick, the chameleon Pascal, something we hadn’t seen since ‘Mulan’ (1998).
Like in all these films the main protagonist is a young female yearning for love. With Ariel from ‘The Little Mermaid’, Rapunzel is the most overtly adolescent of the lot. She displays many behaviors of teenagers: not only is she torn apart between loyalty to her ‘mother’ and the longing for freedom, she also displays the naive and intoxicating excitement typical of her age. It seems like ‘Tangled’ was clearly marketed for this age group.
However, the studio changed the film’s name from ‘Rapunzel’ to ‘Tangled’ to attract other people than teenage girls, and rightly so, for the film has more to offer. However, it’s not necessarily to be found in the male protagonist, Flynn Rider. Flynn is a somewhat cliche overconfident macho, who discovers his softer side, and he is more of interest to young girls than to young men, who may have difficulties relating to him. In fact, I dare say they will more relate to Rapunzel herself.
No, it’s found in a well-told story, in which both the evil witch and Rapunzel’s hair gain new dimensions. Apart from its magical power, it is amazing what Rapunzel can do with her hair. It clearly defines her as a strong, independent and creative character: not submissive and to be won, but active, and with a will of her own.
The story knows plenty of fun, action and romance, but also allows for some deep emotional moments. For example, there is a short scene in which we see Rapunzel’s grieving father, and his emotion is played so well, it breaks your heart. Alan Menken’s songs aren’t the greatest, and can sometimes be missed, but the ‘I have a dream’ sequence in the tavern is acted out with so much bravado, it’s a great fun to watch.
I doubt whether ‘Tangled’ will become a modern classic like e.g. Pixar’s ‘Wall-E’ (2008), ‘Up’ (2009) or Disney’s later ‘Frozen’ (2013), but it seriously showed that the Disney studio still was able to make good animated features, even computer animated ones. That alone was a relief after a series of seriously bad (‘Chicken Little’, 2005), forgettable (‘Meet the Robinsons’, 2007) and average (‘Bolt’, 2008) films.
Watch the trailer for ‘Tangled’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 