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Director: Piet Kroon
Release date: October 13, 2018
Rating: ★★
Review:
The Dutch animated feature film industry long consisted of one movie only, ‘Als je begrijpt wat ik bedoel’ (The Dragon That Wasn’t (Or Was He?)) from 1983. But in recent years several other films saw the light, mostly directed at youngsters: ‘Nijntje de film’ (Miffy the Movie) from 2013 , ‘Pim & Pom: Het Grote Avontuur’ and ‘Trippel Trappel – Dierensinterklaas’, which are both from 2014, and more recently ‘Knor’ (‘Oink’) from 2022 and ‘Vos en haas redden het bos’ from 2024. An oddball within this recent canon is ‘Heinz’ from 2018.
‘Heinz’ was a comic strip by René Windig and Eddie de Jong that run in Dutch newspapers from 1987 to 2000 and again from 2004 to 2006. The comic strip was about a cat, Heinz, who quickly got more anthropomorphized until he became a sort of everyman. The strip knew some continuities but remained first and foremost a gag strip. Nevertheless, the authors dreamt of an animation film at least since the early 2000s.
Although film studio Zig Zag film started working on a film already in 2002, Windig’s and De Jong’s dream never amounted to anything. That is, until the project got new backing and new support from veteran animator Piet Kroon in 2015.
Piet Kroon had ample experience in America, having directed the animation for ‘Osmosis Jones’ (2001) and having worked on stories for a wide variety of animated feature films, e.g. ‘The Iron Giant’ (1999), ‘The Tale of Despereaux’ (2008), ‘Rio’ (2011) and ‘Ferdinand’ (2017). Kroon wrote a completely new story for the film, and with this much of the charm of the original comic strip got lost, and I doubt whether Windig and De Jong are pleased with the end result.
The first aspect of the original comic strip that went out of the window was its family-friendly nature, despite being produced by Burny Bos, who produced some of the best Dutch live action children’s movies. The feature film is clearly directed to adults and has little to offer for younger audiences (in the Netherlands the film is advised for 12 years and older, that says enough). The second major change Kroon made was the setting. The original comic strip takes place in an undefined fantasy Netherlands, but the movie Heinz clearly lives in the center of Amsterdam, which incidentally is also the residence of the comic strip’s two authors.
A more profound and more disturbing change than these two is the change of character of the cat himself. In the comic strip Heinz certainly is cranky, and sometimes insufferable, but in the movie, he is a downright irresponsible drunkard and deadbeat. In fact, in the early scenes the cat is so unsympathetic one wonders why he must watch the cat’s immature antics in the first place. Heinz’s voice by Ruben van der Meer, on the other hand, is well-chosen.
Heinz’s girlfriend Dolly fares little better, as she has changed from a sweet love to a working-class shrew, while Heinz’s friend Frits is nastier and more unsympathetic than his comic book counterpart. Frits also suffers from a bad voice choice (Reinder van der Naalt). In fact, one must look hard for any sympathetic character in the film…
Kroon certainly has tried to put as many characters from the original comic strip as possible into the film, and thus the movie is simply crowded with characters, who mostly make little to no sense to anyone not familiar with the source material. These characters and the rather random inclusion of some gags from the original comic strip make the film too much of an inside joke. On the other hand, the story itself is entertaining enough: it involves time travel, takes Heinz to a remote volcano island and to New York, where he must battle an evil scientist from outer space. But the unsympathetic leads, the plethora of characters, and the random, and often repeated gags make the film a tiresome watch.
The film’s stylistic choices don’t help. The background art is pretty ugly and consists of reworked photo material against which the characters don’t read very well. The ocean is even live action footage. Again, with this method much of the original charm of the comic strip gets lost. The computer animation is a mixed bag. There are a lot of animation cycles, and especially the numerous background characters walk around like automatons with little to no life in them.
No doubt, these technical drawbacks result from an all too tight budget, as it’s a marvel that the film came about in the first place. Most charming are the depictions of Heinz’s fantasies, which consist of traditional animation of René Windig’s idiosyncratic drawings. It’s too bad only these little sequences were made this way.
In all, ‘Heinz’ is a disappointing movie that will attract small audiences, neither satisfying fans of the original comic strip nor anyone else. I cannot find any figures, but I am pretty sure the movie turned out to be a box office flop, and I regret to say unsurprisingly so.
Watch the Dutch trailer for ‘Heinz’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Heinz’ is available on DVD (Dutch only)
Directors: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey & Rodney Rothman
Release date: December 14, 2018
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
For American feature animation 2018 was mostly a rather uneventful year. True, the year started off well with the release of ‘Isle of Dogs’, and it was also the year of Nina Paley’s second animation feature, ‘Seder-Masochism’, but for the rest it was a year of uninventive sequels (Pixar’s ‘Incredibles 2’, Disney’s ‘Ralph Breaks the Internet, Sony’s ‘Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation’) and mediocre stand-alones (Warner Bros.’ ‘Smallfoot’ and Illumination’s ‘The Grinch’).
But then, at the closing of the year suddenly a complete game-changer entered the scene: ‘Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse’. The film was brought by Sony Animation, the most evasive from all major animation studios, releasing both gruesomely bad movies like ‘The Smurfs’ (2013) and ‘The Emoji Movie’ (2017), as well as more interesting experiments, like ‘Surf’s Up’ (2007). This animated Spider-Man feature certainly falls into the latter category, bringing the animation world a totally new aesthetic.
Like all other films mentioned (sans ‘Seder-Machochism’) ‘Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse’ is a 3D computer-animated film, but unlike all others this feature has a distinct comic book style, complete with clearly visible halftone dots, and even color-shifts that look like misprinting of color layers when the ‘camera’ gets out of focus. The film even adds other stylistic elements from comic books, like page-turning effects, text panels and panel-like split screens to enhance the comic book feel. Even though traditional texturing and rendering is completely in place, never does the art aspire to be realistic, but always to keep the comic book feel intact.
‘Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse’ thus is a delight to watch, and a welcome fresh take on traditional 3D computer animation. In fact, the excitement the film stirred in the animation world is comparable to that of ‘The Matrix’ (1999) in the live action film industry. That its stylistic innovation was not an isolated event was proved by subsequent films like ‘Puss in Boots: The Last Wish’ (Dreamworks, 2022) and ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem’ (Paramount, 2023). Certainly the latter took heed of the lessons from ‘Spider-Man’.
The story of ‘Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse’ is another reboot of the then 56 years old comic. This time we follow a black teenager from Brooklyn called Miles, who is a son from an over-protective cop, but who leans more towards his less well-behaved uncle Aaron. The most remarkable event in the film is that the original Spider-Man, Peter Parker, actually dies, and Miles, who due to unexplained events is bitten by a radio-active spider, too, must take his place.
In fact, the plot is much more complicated, and involves villain Kingpin trying to get his deceased wife and son back from a parallel universe opened by a portal devised by Doctor Olivia “Liv” Octavius, another villain who apparently is the successor to Doc Ock (I’m hardly familiar with the Spider-Man world, so these villains are unknown to me).
The portal also imports five spider-men from alternate universes (and I guess, the Alchemax spider that bit Miles), most importantly a less successful middle-aged Peter Parker and a young Spider-Woman called Gwen, but also a manga girl-spider-man, a black and white film-noir Spider-man and even a looney tune-like spider-man-pig called ‘Spider-Ham’. Part of the fun is the play with these alternate universe characters, some of which are gleefully silly, but I must say the main story is told pretty heavy-handedly.
In fact, the film’s story is hardly as good as the visuals: it’s hard to follow, it’s full of plot-holes, it has some rather forced scenes (most notably the utterly improbable scene in May Parker’s basement, and a believe-in-yourself-like scene in which Miles really becomes a Spider-Man), and a large dose of melodrama that I could hardly stand. Moreover, the finale is taking place in such a messy setting, I had no idea what was going on.
No, did ‘Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse’ not have the astonishing looks it has, I wouldn’t have been entertained so much, the fun parallel world plot notwithstanding. But as it is, ‘Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse’ is one of the most important animated features from the 2010s, a status corroborated by its equally praised sequel, ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ from 2023.
Watch the trailer for ‘Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Airing Date: December 18, 1996
Spacecase
Directors: Paul Rudish & Genndy Tartakovsky
Stars: Dexter
Rating: ★★★★½
Review:
This episode starts with Dexter activating an alien communicator.
Almost immediately he gets a visit of three aliens in a flying saucer. Unfortunately, they’re mostly interested in taking Dexter with them for further examination, but Dexter manages to send Dee Dee with them, instead. First he enjoys the bliss of her absence, but before soon remorse kicks in.
The scenes in which Dexter is taking in by guilt are a great echo of other guilt-cartoons like ‘Pudgy Picks a Fight‘ (1937) or ‘Donald’s Crime’ (1945). Also very entertaining is the heroic sequence in which Dexter ascends his space ship, which borrows elements from both Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars.
The Justice Friends: Ratman
Director: Genndy Tartakovsky
Stars: The Justice Friends
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
In this episode Krunk and Valhallen clog the toilet, so they have to go down in the basement to fix things. But something is lurking there.
‘The Justice Friends: Ratman’ is pretty silly, and overtly tongue-in-cheek, but also all too talkative. I’m not sure about the addition of the laughing track, which does add to the corniness, but which is also pretty annoying itself. Best is Tartakovsky’s staging, with the Justice Friends frequently taking dramatic poses.
Dexter’s Debt
Director: Genndy Tartakovsky
Stars: Dexter
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
In ‘Dexter’s Debt’ Dexter gets confronted by a bill from NASA of 200 million dollars.
Dexter’s attempts to raise the money are feeble, indeed, and what’s worse, Dee Dee outdoes him every time. ‘Dexter’s Debt’ greatly plays on the relationship between brother and sister, while both Dexter’s mom and dad get more screenplay than usual. Highlight, however, is the entrance of the two NASA men.
‘Spacecase/The Justice Friends: Ratman/Dexter’s Debt’ is available on the DVD ‘Dexter’s Laboratory Season One: All 13 Episodes’
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 