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Director: Eiichi Yamamoto
Release date: September 15, 1970
Rating: ★★½
Review:
The most important development in animation of the late 1960s and 1970s was the coming of animated feature films aimed at adults, instead of children/families. Heralding the new era was George Dunning’s 1968 film ‘Yellow Submarine’, but the two most important film makers pioneering in this new field were Ralph Bakshi in America (with e.g., ‘Fritz the Cat’ from 1972 and ‘Heavy Traffic’ from 1973) and Osamu Tezuka in Japan.
The three adult oriented anime films Tezuka made at his own Mushi Productions studio are called the Animerama trilogy and consist of ‘A Thousand and One Nights’ (1969), ‘Cleopatra’ (1970) and ‘Belladonna of Sadness’ (1973). The three show that Tezuka, like Bakshi, confuses adult oriented with a rather juvenile focus on sex and violence, making the films adult in content indeed, but otherwise rather immature and even exploitative products.
More than its adult orientation, ‘Cleopatra’ stands out for its highly eclectic style. The film tackles a variety of designs and animation styles, none weirder than the opening sequence, which takes place in the future year of 2001, and which starts live action actors with animated faces, an experiment luckily not repeated, for the results are pretty ridiculous, especially because there’s absolutely no lip synchronization, at all.
The film’s plot revolves around an alien planet called Pasatorine, which has a secret plan to wipe out mankind called ‘Cleopatra’. In order to find out the plans a trio of humans, naturally, goes back into time by “psycho-teleportation”, taking the souls of ancient characters in Cleopatra’s time.
Thus, the three main protagonists change identity: Jirov becomes Ionius, a powerful slave, Maria becomes Libya, an Egyptian city girl, and Hal turns into Lupa, a close companion of Cleopatra, who turns out to be a leopard, much to Hal’s chagrin. His character is the most annoying of the film, for the leopard is sex crazed and tries to get laid all the time, despite its animal features.
After ten minutes we’re in Egypt where Tezaku depicts the Roman conquest of the ancient kingdom in a very silly style, accompanied by some attractive space funk music. When we first see Libya, the adult orientation immediately becomes clear, for she’s bare breasted the whole time. The Egyptian plot is bizarre, too, with an ugly freckled girl changing into the sex goddess of Cleopatra with the sole reason to seduce Caesar and to kill him. Adding to the weirdness is the coloring, for Libya is rendered bright red, while Caesar is depicted as a green man.
Stylistically, the film is all over the place, anyhow, altering tiresome silliness and cheap rotoscoping with quite some beautiful graphic imagery, like the stylized fighting of the Romans and the Egyptian conspirators. The animation, too, is a mixed bag, from non-animation and cheating jump takes from pose to pose, without any animation in between, to far more interesting animation done in watercolors. The animation of the horse ride, and the struggle between Ionius and an Egyptian warrior are actually quite good, and even the first two sex scenes are interesting in their semi-abstract and even poetical stylization, while the third is depicted as a broken-down film. At one point the imagery reminds one of UPA or the Zagreb school, and at another point there’s even a cut-out sequence featuring variations on classic paintings.
What the film completely lacks, is character animation. Emotions are just indicated, not felt, and there’s only broad caricature, not character development. The potentially dramatic story is further hampered by random gags, often strange and out of place. Likewise, the story is sloppy and meandering, with the film makers having difficulty on whom to focus. For great chunks of screen time, the three protagonists from the opening sequence aren’t anywhere to be seen, and after the events in ancient Egypt have ended tragically (in that respect the film does follow Cleopatra’s real life), the film ends abruptly, leaving the viewer wondering why the whole ‘psycho-teleportic’ excursion, and thus most of the movie, was needed in the first place.
It must be said: ‘Cleopatra’ is not a good movie. It is more of an experiment than a success, more of a product of its time than a timeless movie, and rather a curio than an essential watch. It is a product of a more experimental era, but after watching the film, one can hardly wonder why this short age of adult oriented experimentalism stopped.
Watch the trailer for ‘Cleopatra’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Cleopatra’ has been released on Blu-Ray
Directors: Eric Darnell, Conrad Vernon & Tom McGrath
Release Date: June 8, 2012
Rating: ★★★
Review:
I’ve never really cared for the Madagascar series. I was pretty unimpressed by the characters, the rather forced angular character designs and the odd unconvincing story lines. In that respect, ‘Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted’ arguably is the best of the three films.
Not only does it round up nicely the story lines of the first two films, but it does also so in a pleasantly unpredictable way, with its free-flowing story making surprising turns here and there. Thus, I’ll try to reveal as little as possible about the film’s story below. Apart from that, there’s plenty of action, with the first chase scene already appearing at the 13th minute.
It surely does help that the film introduces some new stars besides the regular heroes Alex the lion, Marty the zebra, Melman the giraffe, and Gloria the hippopotamus. The new characters somehow are far more interesting than the four main characters, let alone the lemurs, chimps, and penguins, who never transcend comic relief. The Italian sea lion Stefano (superbly voiced by Martin Short) is a delight, combining naive optimism with a scent of sadness and insecurity. Even better still is the Russian tiger Vitaly. He gets a surprisingly tragic background story, which makes him far more interesting than the usual antagonist. In fact, Vitaly and Stefano completely outplay the four principal characters, whose character traits aren’t deepened, at all. Their best moment comes – spoiler! – at the end of the film – when they discover how much they’ve outgrown their former home.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the film’s main villain, Captain Chantel DuBois, leader of French animal control. She’s depicted as a supernatural, unhuman woman, willing to go far outside her country and duty to get her prey. As she is a French officer this is pushing the edges of believability way too far. Moreover, her antics hinder the more interesting plot parts which focus on the characters’ emotions. I dare to say that Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted’ could have been a really good film instead of an average one if the film makers would have focused on the emotional story more, and not on the mostly nonsensical antics of chimps, penguins and lemurs. Especially because the character animation at those more emotional moments is in fact very good.
The pushing of believability is a problem of ‘Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted’ anyway. The film completely throws the laws of physics out of the window, with characters jumping, flying, riding, and falling in complete disregard of plausibility (this is a waxing problem in American animation film, anyhow – for example, it’s also my main problem with the complete Kung Fu Panda franchise and with e.g. ‘Missing Link’ from 2019).
But worse, the film also pushes the boundaries of plausibility story-wise. We must accept that the four animals and their three lemur friends traveled Africa and the Mediterranean unhindered and that their problems only start in Europe. As said, we must accept that DuBois acts way out of her administration. We must accept that Marty and co. can acquire circus skills in no time solely because they follow their passion. Even worse, we are to believe that they can set up a complete circus show in seemingly one day (there’s not even a montage scene to suggest passing of more time). We must accept that one motivational speech by Alex can clear a lifetime of trauma in Vitaly, and we have to accept that Vitaly, after years and years without training can perform his prize act again at the highest level, without any rehearsal.
These story elements are all preposterous, and they are an abomination and an insult to all real artists. I wonder what got into the film makers to install messages like these into the minds of their audience. By all means, these elements push the all too American “you can do everything you want if you devote yourself to it” message way beyond its limits, and turn it into a downright lie (which, sadly enough, Dreamworks repeated without blinking in ‘Kung Fu Panda 3‘ from 2016).
The film also features an obligate break-up scene, one of the more irritating tropes in American computer-animated cinema, troubling a wide range of films from different studios, like ‘Up’ (2009), ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2’ (2013), ‘Kung Fu Panda 3’ (2016) and ‘The Secret Life of Pets’ (2016).
Story problems are not the only problems troubling ‘Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted’. The design, too, is unconvincing. The character designs are a mixed bag. For example, the bear Sonya occupies a completely different design space than the angular Alex. The rendering is often pretty ugly, with a high level of unreality. Again, the angular character designs of the characters are at odds with their decors, a problem that persists throughout the Madagascar series. Highlight, design-wise, is the first performance by Alex’s new Cirque du Soleil-inspired circus. This is a series of very colorful images, hardly rooted in reality, and looking more like coming from a dream. I wouldn’t be surprised if these images are a conscious attempt to emulate the same trippy feeling as the pink elephant scene, the most wonderful piece of that most famous animated circus film, ‘Dumbo’ (1941). The end titles, too, seem to be a homage to the classic Disney movie.
It may be clear that Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted’ never reaches the height of that classic film – it’s simply too flawed and too nonsensical for that. But the film certainly is entertaining, and a surprisingly pleasant finale to the Madagascar series.
Watch the trailer for ‘Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 