Finding The Wrong Words

... FOR "WALT DISNEY'S ANIMATED FIFTY (PART 35 - 'HERCULES' EDITION)"

2012-01-21T19:24:00.000-08:00

My     continuing foray  into Disney's fifty official Animated Classics. As     always, don't hesitate to  share your thoughts/memories/complaints  in    the comments section below. Links to  previous entries have also  been    included below.

Title: Hercules (1997)

The Plot: Through the machinations of Hades, Lord of the Dead, the son of Zeus is adopted on Earth, and must prove himself a hero in order to reclaim his immortality.

The Songs: "The Gospel Truth I / II / III," "Go The Distance," "One Last Hope," "Zero To Hero," "I Won't Say (I'm In Love)," "A Star Is Born," "Go The Distance (End Title)"

A Little History: Production on Hercules began in late 1994, under the direction of Disney veterans John Musker and Ron Clements (Aladdin, The Little Mermaid). The original myth was considered too adult for family fare, however, so Musker and Clements were forced to clean up their story considerably. (Among the film's many gloss-overs: Hercules is actually the illegitimate son of Zeus and a mortal woman, Alcmene; Hera, Zeus's wife, tried to kill Hercules in fits of jealous rage; and later, drove Hercules to murder his wife Megara and six sons. The film makes only passing reference to the 12 Labors Of Hercules, including battles with the Hydra, Stymphalian Birds, and the capture of Cerberus.) The characters' quirky design was the brainchild of artist Gerald Scarfe, best known for his work on Pink Floyd's The Wall. Hades was originally written as a big, booming villain until actor James Woods impressed the producers with his fast-talking, huckster-type approach to the character (Woods ad-libbed most of his lines, and enjoyed the role so much, he continued to voice Hades in Disney's Hercules: The Series and Kingdom Hearts video games). The line, "Don't let your guard down because of a pair of big, blue eyes" was changed to "goo-goo eyes" after Megara's eye color changed during production. Composer Alan Menken had previously written Motown/gospel-inspired musical numbers for 1982's off-Broadway Little Shop Of Horrors - which, coincidentally, is what landed him a job at Disney in the first place. The Spice Girls were initially considered to play the Muses; Belinda Carlisle recorded a pop cover of "I Won't Say (I'm In Love)," but this version was cut from the final film. Hercules opened in U.S. theaters on June 27th, 1997, and eventually grossed $252.7 million worldwide. "Go The Distance" was nominated for Best Original Song at the Academy Awards, but lost to "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic.

How It Broke New Ground: Disney's first full-length Animated Classic based  entirely on mythology, rather than folktales or fairy tales.

How It Holds Up Today: Imagine that: After trying (unsuccessfully) to prove their political/ intellectual worth  with Pocahontas and The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Disney took a sharp left turn toward comedy for their next animated feature, and still couldn't make everyone happy. Never mind that Hercules plunders Greek mythology for the sake of entertaining the masses - of course they'd do that, this is Disney, after all. I happen to like the change in pace myself, which - despite some lazy writing (the script is a virtual beat-for-beat riff on Richard Donner's Superman) and obvious in- jokes (Marilyn Monroe, The Karate Kid, and Scar from The Lion King all make appearances) - still manages to score important points about staying true to yourself, and the difference between heroism and fame. The Alan Menken/David Zippel song score is fun, as is the sultry-on-the-outside, tortured-on-the-inside Megara (Susan Egan), who easily tops my list of all-time favorite Disney heroines. Even James Woods as the wisecracking Hades comes close to matching Robin Williams' Genie for sheer verbal wit. Hercules will never be mistaken for art, but it's a bright and breezy way to pass the time. Sometimes, that's entertainment enough.

Grade: B

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Hang on, Disney fans –  there's more to come. Need to play catch up? Click on the following for:  Snow White And The Seven  Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, Saludos  Amigos, The Three  Caballeros, Make Mine  Music, Fun And Fancy  Free, Melody  Time, The Adventures Of Ichabod  And Mr. Toad, Cinderella, Alice In  Wonderland, Peter  Pan, Lady And The  Tramp, Sleeping  Beauty, One Hundred And One  Dalmatians, The Sword In The  Stone, The Jungle  Book, The  AristoCats, Robin  Hood,  The Many Adventures Of  Winnie The Pooh, The  Rescuers, The Fox  And The Hound, The Black Cauldron,  The Great Mouse  Detective, Oliver &  Company, The Little  Mermaid, The  Rescuers Down Under, Beauty And The Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas, and The Hunchback Of Notre Dame. Please  comment!

... FOR "WALT DISNEY'S ANIMATED FIFTY (PART 34 - 'THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME' EDITION)"

2012-01-14T22:45:00.000-08:00

My    continuing foray  into Disney's fifty official Animated Classics. As    always, don't hesitate to  share your thoughts/memories/complaints in    the comments section below. Links to  previous entries have also been    included below. 

Title: The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1996; based on the novel by Victor Hugo)

The Plot: The deformed bell ringer of Notre Dame, orphaned as an infant and adopted by a cruel master, longs to escape the confines of his tower.

The Songs: "The Bells Of Notre Dame," "Out There," "Topsy Turvy," "God Help The Outcasts," "Heaven's Light / Hellfire," "A Guy Like You," "The Court Of Miracles," "Someday"

A Little History: Story executive David Stain originally sought to turn Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris into a feature film at Disney, inspired by the Classics Illustrated adaptation of the story. Directors Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale (Beauty And The Beast) selected Notre-Dame as their next project, eager to tap into the novel's rich thematic potential. Many characters and story points, however, had to be toned down for family-friendly appeal: Quasimodo is now capable of intelligible speech, Frollo has been "promoted" from archdeacon to Chief Judge, three wisecracking anthropomorphized gargoyles (named Victor, Hugo, and Laverne) are added as comic relief, and both Esmeralda and Quasimodo survive at the end. The animators traveled to Paris to study the detail and design of the actual Notre Dame cathedral (and were granted office space at Disneyland Paris during their stay). They also made extensive use of CG imagery for the cathedral bells, stained-glass windows, snow flurries and crowd scenes. The song score by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz (Pocahontas) incorporates selections from the Gregorian chants, including the Kyrie and Dies Irae. For the "Hellfire" sequence, co-director Wise and visual effects director Chris Jenkins made sure that Esmeralda's fiery apparition appeared fully clothed at all times, in order to avoid a PG rating. Cameo alert: Belle from Beauty And The Beast, Aladdin's magic carpet, and Pumbaa from The Lion King make fleeting appearances (all in the same shot!) during a verse of "Out There." This was the final screen role for veteran actress Mary Wickes (Laverne), who died of complications from cancer eight months prior to the film's release. Disney debuted The Hunchback Of Notre Dame at the New Orleans Superdome on June 19th, 1996, where it played on six gigantic screens to a crowd of 65,000. The film grossed $100 million in the U.S. and another $225 million around the globe. It was nominated for - but did not win - Best Original Score at the 1997 Academy Awards.

How It Broke New Ground: The first animated Disney film to embrace the subject of God and religion as thematic material. As such, it drew fire from religious conservatives and left-wing politicos who deemed the movie's sexual subtext, scenes of violence, and use of derogatory terms such as "hunchback" as morally offensive. Also the first Animated Classic to utter the word "damnation."

How It Holds Up Today: A misguided attempt by Disney to transform Hugo's sociopolitical classic into suitable family entertainment. This is especially frustrating since you can feel the animators striving for something richer and more emotionally complex than they'd ever tried before, only to turn around and pander to the audience at regular intervals. Take the song "Hellfire," for example, in which the pious, loathsome villain Frollo (Tony Jay) is torn between his devotion to God and his lust for the gypsy Esmeralda (Demi Moore). It's a beautiful sequence, filled with stark religious imagery and evocative melodies (indeed, almost all of Hunchback has twice the personality of anything in Pocahontas). It is also wildly inappropriate for a G-rated film, relying as it does on heavy uses of the word "hell" and sexual subtext. This is soon followed by "A Guy Like You," sung in typically dumbed-down Disney fashion by Quasimodo's three gargoyle friends, and it's this aspect of the film - constantly waffling between moments of undeniable power and obligatory comic relief, just when things get a bit dicey for the kiddies - that's truly offensive. Why bother pushing the envelope if you're just going to pull your punches every time? It's a nagging reminder to everyone concerned that, despite the best of intentions, you can't always have it both ways.

Grade: C+

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Hang on, Disney fans –  there's more to come. Need to play catch up? Click on the following for:  Snow White And The Seven  Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, Saludos  Amigos, The Three  Caballeros, Make Mine  Music, Fun And Fancy  Free, Melody  Time, The Adventures Of Ichabod  And Mr. Toad, Cinderella, Alice In  Wonderland, Peter  Pan, Lady And The  Tramp, Sleeping  Beauty, One Hundred And One  Dalmatians, The Sword In The  Stone, The Jungle  Book, The  AristoCats, Robin  Hood,  The Many Adventures Of  Winnie The Pooh, The  Rescuers, The Fox  And The Hound, The Black Cauldron,  The Great Mouse  Detective, Oliver &  Company, The Little  Mermaid, The  Rescuers Down Under, Beauty And The Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, and Pocahontas. Please  comment! Let me know you're out there!

... FOR "WALT DISNEY'S ANIMATED FIFTY (PART 33 - 'POCAHONTAS' EDITION)"

2012-01-06T18:42:00.000-08:00

My   continuing foray  into Disney's fifty official Animated Classics. As   always, don't hesitate to  share your thoughts/memories/complaints in   the comments section below. Links to  previous entries have also been   included below.

Title: Pocahontas (1995)

The Plot: The daughter of a Native American chieftain encounters English colonists in 16th- century Virginia, and falls in love with a soldier.

The Songs: "The Virginia Company," "Steady As The Beating Drum," "Just Around The Riverbend," "Listen With Your Heart," "Mine, Mine, Mine," "Colors Of The Wind," "Savages," "If I Never Knew You (Love Theme From Pocahontas)," "Colors Of The Wind (End Title)"

A Little History: Developed concurrently with The Lion King (1994). Most of Disney's animation staff decided to work on Pocahontas instead, feeling it was the more prestigious of the two films. The producers consulted with historians and Native American activists to lend the film greater historical accuracy, and even hired Native American actors to fill out their respective roles (save for Judy Kuhn and Jim Cummings, who provided the singing voices for Pocahontas and her father, respectively). Despite this, many organizations - including the Native American Powhatan Nation and the American Indian Movement (AIM) - protested the film's stereotypical presentation of real-life events. Production took nearly five years to complete, due to the intricate color design and geometric shapes of the characters. Supervising animator John Pomeroy modeled John Smith after Errol Flynn, while animator Glen Keane reportedly based his design for Pocahontas on supermodel Christy Turlington. Comedian John Candy was slated to play a turkey sidekick named Redfeather, until his death in 1994; secondary animal characters including Flit the hummingbird and Meeko the raccoon originally had scripted dialogue, but this idea was scrapped when the filmmakers took a more serious route. Composer Alan Manken (Beauty And The Beast, Aladdin) teamed with lyricist Stephen Schwartz to co-write the songs for the film; "If I Never Knew You," a duet between Judy Kuhn and Mel Gibson (as John Smith), was cut from the movie following test screenings (but was later reinstated for the 10th anniversary DVD release). Pocahontas grossed over $346 million worldwide, and won Oscars for Best Score (Menken) and Best Song ("Colors Of The Wind"). Two of its voice actors, Irene Bedard (Pocahontas) and Christian Bale (Thomas), were later cast in different roles for The New World (2005) - director Terrence Malick's live-action rendition of the same story.

How It Broke New Ground: The first animated Disney Classic based on real-life historical figures. Its June 10th, 1995, world premiere - held in Central Park, NYC - currently holds the record for largest viewers in attendance (100,000).

How It Holds Up Today: It wasn't supposed to be this way. Heck, give me the choice between a talking animal picture, about a lion cub deposed by his evil uncle, and a sweeping revisionist take on the Pocahontas legend, and I'd choose the latter myself. But then, guess what? The Lion King's hip comedy and epic grandeur struck a chord with audiences (to the tune of $772 million), while Pocahontas, for all its New Age philosophizing and one-note character types, simply did not. Of course, it doesn't help that the tone is so self- serious and dull - as if, in their quest to "enlighten" us to the wonders of Native American culture (and atone for the many accusations of racial insensitivity Disney'd engendered in the past), the animators forgot to give their movie a pulse. Instead, they rely on the hoariest of Disney clichès: the bodacious free-spirited heroine, the constant cutaways to cutesy animal critters, the scheming effeminate bad guy - it's all here. Even the songs - when they aren't beating you over the head with their pandering, Indians-are-people-too sort of tripe - sound like holdovers from Beauty And The Beast and The Little Mermaid. Critics may have balked at it, but for once they had a point: this is history rendered bloodless.

Grade: C

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Hang on, Disney fans –  there's more to come. Need to play catch up? Click on the following for:  Snow White And The Seven  Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, Saludos  Amigos, The Three  Caballeros, Make Mine  Music, Fun And Fancy  Free, Melody  Time, The Adventures Of Ichabod  And Mr. Toad, Cinderella, Alice In  Wonderland, Peter  Pan, Lady And The  Tramp, Sleeping  Beauty, One Hundred And One  Dalmatians, The Sword In The  Stone, The Jungle  Book, The  AristoCats, Robin  Hood,  The Many Adventures Of  Winnie The Pooh, The  Rescuers, The Fox  And The Hound, The Black Cauldron,  The Great Mouse  Detective, Oliver &  Company, The Little  Mermaid, The  Rescuers Down Under, Beauty And The Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King. Please  comment!

...FOR "SANTA SAID WHAT?!!" (OR, "QUIZ TIME, PART 7") - UPDATED: WITH ANSWERS!

2011-12-24T14:38:00.000-08:00

Well, it's Christmas time again, folks! And by way of tradition (as well as an excuse for being lazy), I thought I'd offer up another yuletide quiz challenge in the spirit of the season. You know, something to mull over while you're kicking back, enjoying your egg nog, hangin' with the family, waiting for the big guy and his reindeer to make their annual stop-over...

Speaking of the Big Guy... how well do you know your Santa Claus movies? The Jolly One's been around for about as long as anyone can remember, yet rarely, if ever, does he take center stage of his own story. Below are a handful of Santa-centric titles and a snippet of dialogue from each, spoken by ol' Kris Kringle himself (or, conversely, an imposter thereof). Can you  match them together, for goodness sake? Don't be a Grinch now...

__________

1) "All right. Dooley, make up a list of who is

   naughty and nice. And be careful. I'll be

   checking it twice."

2) "Look, I am lactose intolerant! And I'm just

   about this close to taking all those presents

   back up the chimney."

3) "Oh, Christmas isn't just a day, it's a frame of

   mind... and that's what's been changing. That's

   why I'm glad I'm here, maybe I can do something

   about it."

4) "I never realized. You hate me."

   "I don't hate you, Nick. I just wish you'd never

   been born."

5) "Release me now or you'll have to face the dire

   consequences / The children are expecting me, so

   please come to your senses!"

6) "Max! Help me! I'm FEELING!"

7) "I've been to New York thousands of times."

   "Really? What's it like?"

   "Well, there are some things you should know.

   First off, you see gum on the street, leave it

   there. It isn't free candy."

   "Oh."

   "Second, there are, like, thirty Ray's Pizzas.

   They all claim to be the original. But the real

   one's on 11th."

8) "This bell is a wonderful symbol of the spirit

   of Christmas - as am I. Just remember, the true

   spirit of Christmas lies in your heart."

9) "Well, when Voldar 'accidentally' left us in the

   airlock and then came up here and 'accidentally'

   threw the door switch, we knew we had to get out

   of there in a hurry or that would be the end of

   us."

10) "Hey, can I get another drink down here?"

Titles:

 

A. Bad Santa (2003)

B. Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)

C. Elf (2003)

D. Fred Claus (2007)

E. Miracle On 34th Street (1947)

F. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

G. The Polar Express (2004)

H. The Santa Clause (1994)

I. Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)

J. Santa Claus Vs. The Martians (1964)

Answers:

1) I               6) B 

2) H               7) C 

3) E               8) G 

4) D               9) J 

5) F               10) A

... FOR "FRANCHISE FACE-OFFS (PART 11 - 'RUSH HOUR' EDITION)"

2011-12-20T19:26:00.000-08:00

Brett Ratner is a chameleon. This might explain why the self-promoting, self-aggrandizing director - whose films have amassed a collective $1 billion plus worldwide - has been able to slip into so many franchises without ruffling the feathers of fans. He did it in 2002, with Red Dragon, part three of Dino De Laurentiis' Hannibal Lecter series starring Anthony Hopkins. Then in 2006, he took over the ­X-Men franchise with The Last Stand, the most successful entry in Fox's genre-defining ensemble superhero saga.

(On the non-franchise front, you could view his 2000 holiday hit The Family Man as an unofficial remake of Capra's It's A Wonderful Life, or November's Tower Heist as an attempt to copy the con-artists-as-heroes cool of Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven. The list goes on.)

Whether this qualifies him as an A-list copycat or a B-grade Hollywood hack is up for debate. But the fact is, Ratner copies the style of his predecessors so well, you'd be hard-pressed to tell that they were made by a different director, unless you were acutely aware of the behind-the-scenes dramas that plagued their productions.

Before all that, Ratner directed Rush Hour (1998), the blockbuster action-comedy that brought him international fame (and likely kick-started his reputation as an ace imitator). Rush Hour apes a couple of genres – the Buddy Cop Comedy, which we've previously covered, and the Hong Kong Jackie Chan Stunt Spectacular. Not surprisingly, it's a reasonably satisfactory carbon copy of both.

Screenwriter Ross LaManna initially envisioned Rush Hour as a hard-edged variation on the Buddy Comedy - more 48HRS. than Lethal Weapon. Then Jackie Chan joined the project (looking to score a breakout hit with American audiences), and the script was re- tailored to suit his comic sensibilities. Chris Tucker signed up next, hot off the success of Money Talks (also directed by Ratner), and the tone was set for the movie. It's the Asian-American twist on an age-old formula: Chan, the strong and silent type, versus Tucker, loudmouthed cock of the walk. Together, they'll rescue a kidnapped girl, chase each other all over Los Angeles, bring a mysterious crime lord to justice, sing a chorus of Edwin Starr's "War," and bond over Chinese take-out - not in that order. It's competent yet predictable stuff, your tolerance for which - like many a "Bromantic Comedy" – depends entirely on the chemistry between its two stars.

For my money, Chris Tucker is a bit of mixed bag: he's loud, a little too eager to please, with a voice pitched so high that it rings in your ears (he's like the second coming of Eddie Murphy, only screechier and more bug-eyed). He's got a boundless energy that's unique to the pantheon, though, and partnered with the legendary Jackie Chan, Tucker's over-the-top-ness sort of balances out; he does enough talking for the both of them.

Then again, you don't really go to a Jackie Chan movie for the dialogue. You go for the sheer level of superhuman skill on display, to watch as he bends and twists the laws of physics (and physicality) for the sake of entertainment. Rush Hour may be an Americanized version of Jackie's Hong Kong extravaganzas, but it worked well enough as a full-on introduction to his patented mix of stuntwork and comedy (before this, he'd been little more than a cult figure outside his native China). Critics largely hated it, but audiences lapped it up; the movie grossed an impressive $141 million in U.S. theaters alone, and another $103 million in foreign markets.

Which brings us back to Brett "The Rat" Ratner - master of motion picture mimicry. It's easy enough to make a standard-issue Buddy Comedy; you just take the same old ingredients, add a couple of charismatic lead actors into the mix, then sit back and wait for the magic to happen. Anyone can do that. Trying to copy the awe-inducing thrill of a Chinese chopsocky flick, however - that's hard. No doubt Ratner gorged on a steady diet of Jackie Chan movies prior to filming Rush Hour (maybe even before he directed his first music video). And it seems he learned the most important lesson from the best of them, which is simply to set your camera back, let Jackie do his thing, and make sure you get every bit of that on screen.

Ratner copies yet another important element from his Asian counterparts: the end credit outtake and gag reel. Usually, this is reserved for stunts gone wrong or horrendously bad - broken bones, missed marks, perilous slips and falls. Here, we mostly get outtakes of Chan and Tucker flubbing their lines. Oh, well. Nobody's perfect.

__________

The Original: Rush Hour (Brett Ratner, 1998)

Cast: Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker, Elizabeth Peña, Tom Wilkinson, Philip Baker Hall, Tzi Ma, Ken Leung, Chris Penn

Plot: A Hong Kong police inspector and a brash Los Angeles detective work together to rescue a Chinese diplomat's daughter from gangsters.

How It Set The Tone: Hong Kong superstar Jackie Chan makes his first successful bid to cross over to mainstream Hollywood cinema, with a vehicle that's finally able to mimic the thrills and excitement of his Cantonese-language action-comedy spectaculars. Credit director Brett Ratner, who learned from his Asian counterparts that it's best to step back and just let Jackie do his thing, to capture his fancy fist- and foot-work in all its widescreen glory. The movie itself is your umpteenth variation on the Buddy Cop Comedy genre, pairing Chan with (then) up-and-coming comedian Chris Tucker, and their chemistry is unique to the canon: Chan is so stoic and silent for much of the picture, and Tucker so vocal and over-the-top, that they balance each other out.

Room For Improvement: Tucker is a bit of an acquired taste, I'm afraid; his pitched-to-11 brand of "comedy" will either strike you as incredibly hilarious or downright unbearable. That goes double for the plot, which is so by-the-numbers predictable you wait with bated breath for the next action stunt piece to come along, just to liven things up. Then again, that's the same with just about every Jackie Chan movie ever made.

Grade: B-

Sequel: Rush Hour 2 (Brett Ratner, 2001)

Returning Cast: Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker

New Cast: John Lone, Ziyi Zhang, Roselyn Sanchez, Alan King, Harris Yulin

Plot: A Hong Kong police inspector and a Los Angeles detective find themselves embroiled in a money counterfeiting ring.

How It Compares: It's more cross-cultural hi-jinks for Police Inspector Lee (Jackie Chan) and Detective Carter (Chris Tucker), with a plot that manages to copy the original movie almost beat for beat. Introductory action stunt piece set in exotic Hong Kong? Check. Obligatory racist "jokes" about Chinese/American stereotypes? Check. Opposing U.S. agency types who stand in our heroes' way, and even gets them kicked off the case? Check. Extended fight sequence with Carter and Lee ambushed by half a dozen bad guys? Only this time, dressed in robes? I complain, yet actually I prefer the sequel; the budget's obviously bigger (Tucker gleaned a cool $20 million paycheck for this one, compared to Chan's $15 million), the stunts are better, and the script, despite its repetitiveness, plays fast and loose with genre conventions. Eye roll alert: Don Cheadle gets a wish-fulfillment cameo as an informant who fights Chan to a draw (uh huh), and it's cheating to pit loudmouthed Tucker against quick-limbed Ziyi Zhang during the finale.

Grade: B-

Sequel: Rush Hour 3 (Brett Ratner, 2007)

Returning Cast: Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker, Tzi Ma, Philip Baker Hall

New Cast: Max Von Sydow, Hiroyuki Sanada, Noémie Lenoir, Roman Polanski, Yvan Attal

Plot: Inspector Lee and Detective Carter try to protect a Chinese Ambassador and his daughter from Triad assassins.

How It Compares: To be honest, I couldn't remember much of this one before I started writing about it. I remembered I didn't mind it, especially after the critical drubbing it received while playing in theaters, but other than a few flashes (a fight atop the Eiffel Tower, say, or Chris Tucker grooving to Prince's "Do Me, Baby" while directing LA traffic), the movie hadn't left much of an impression. Watching it again, it's easy to see why: It's a Teflon movie, harmless and generic, in which everyine shows up just to do their thing, collect a paycheck, and maybe take in some sight-seeing between takes. Tucker, more than ever, seems to be channeling his inner Eddie Murphy, while Jackie Chan, showing his age, resorts to using stunt doubles and (gulp) CGI. Guest stars include acclaimed director Roman Polanski as a French police commissioner with an affinity for body cavity searches, and Yvan Attal as a Parisian cab driver obsessed with American pop culture. Because all the Asian/American stereotyping just wasn't enough.

Grade: C

More To Come?: Brett Ratner has been promising a fourth Rush Hour for some time now (possibly sending Tucker and Chan to Russia). Budgetary issues, though, will probably keep that from happening.
 
__________
 
Part 3 of my "Buddy Cop"  retrospective. For Parts 1, 2, and 3 click here, here and here. For all non- Buddy Franchise Face-Offs, click here,  here,  here,  here,  here, here, and here.

... FOR "WALT DISNEY'S ANIMATED FIFTY (PART 32 - 'THE LION KING' EDITION)"

2011-12-10T15:04:00.000-08:00

My continuing foray into Disney's fifty official Animated Classics. As always, don't hesitate to share your thoughts/memories/complaints in the comments section below. Links to previous entries have also been included below.

Title: The Lion King (1994)

The Plot: A lion cub is exiled by his evil uncle, but grows up to reclaim his rightful place as king.

The Songs: "Circle Of Life," "I Just Can't Wait To Be King," "Be Prepared," "Hakuna Matata," "Can You Feel The Love Tonight," "Can You Feel The Love Tonight (End Title)"

A Little History: Roy E. Disney, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Peter Schneider brainstormed ideas for The Lion King in 1988, while promoting Oliver & Company in Europe. Titled King Of The Kalahari, and centered on a battle between lions and baboons in the jungles of Africa, the story was re-tooled by screenwriters Linda Woolverton, Irene Mecchi and Jonathan Roberts, producer Don Hahn, and directors Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff to incorporate coming-of-age themes and story elements from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Most of Disney's staff had abandoned the project to work on Pocahontas instead, which was in pre-production at the same time and deemed the more prestigious of the two pictures. The "B Team" then took their animation duties to heart, travelling to Hell's Gate National Park in Kenya to study animals in their natural habitat. Elton John was actually Tim Rice's second choice to co-write the film's songs, after Benny Andersson (from ABBA) declined the offer. As written, "Circle Of Life" was intended as a dialogue-heavy sequence, until composer Hans Zimmer re-orchestrated the song with African rhythms and percussion. Zimmer's version impressed the filmmakers so much, it set the tone for the rest of the movie. The wildebeest stampede took nearly three years to complete – a complex blending-together of CGI, cel shading, and the CAPS process. Voice actors James Earl Jones (Mufasa) and Madge Sinclair (Serabi) were previously cast as king and queen in Coming To America (1988); both Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella (Timon and Pumbaa) were initially cast as hyenas; and Jeremy Irons (Scar) threw out his voice while singing "Be Prepared," and had to be replaced by Jim Cummings. The Lion King opened in U.S. theaters on June 24th, 1994, and grossed over $772 million worldwide (the biggest moneymaker of its year). It won two Academy Awards, for Best Song ("Can You Feel The Love Tonight") and Best Score (Hans Zimmer). It was later adapted as a Broadway musical.

How It Broke New Ground: The most successful hand-drawn feature of all time: as of this writing (following its 3D re-issue on September 16, 2011), TLK's final worldwide tally stands at $942,824,912. Though touted as Disney's first Animated Classic not based on existing source material (its Hamlet connection notwithstanding), purists have noted that the film's plot and even specific shots are copied from a 1960s Japanese anime titled Kimba The White Lion, created by Osamu Tezuka. (See comparison frames here.) Disney claims this is purely a coincidence, though to be fair, The Lion King also has roots in Ancient Egyptian mythology (as well as Malinke/West African history).

How It Holds Up Today: Or, Hamlet Bambi Of Africa. To fully appreciate the hype that surrounded The Lion King, you have to consider its timing: After the studio-revitalizing success of Beauty And The Beast and The Little Mermaid, the exhilarating pop Genie-us of Aladdin, plus the "Circle Of Life"- centric teaser trailer that opened months before its release, audiences were primed for something great, and The Lion King delivered. In fact, I'd rank "Circle Of Life" among the most breathtaking and beautiful sequences in all of Disney animation (even though, when you think about it, the entire Serengeti is basically there to worship a creature who'll one day grow up and eat them), and the rest of the movie follows suit, with moments so mythic and powerful, I'm surprised they let it squeak by with a G rating. The comic relief helps take the edge off, of course, as do the anthropomorphized animals who act a lot like humans, and the second string behind-the-scenes team really steps up to the plate and shines. Only the standard-action climax disappoints, which resorts to ridiculous slow- motion footage of two characters pawing at each other in the face. Like the swordfight at the end of Hamlet, it's simply not enough to sustain all the drama that precedes it.

Grade: A-

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Hang on, Disney fans – there's more to come. Need to play catch up? Click on the following for: Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, Fun And Fancy Free, Melody Time, The Adventures Of Ichabod And Mr. Toad, Cinderella, Alice In Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady And The Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, One Hundred And One Dalmatians, The Sword In The Stone, The Jungle Book, The AristoCats, Robin Hood, The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh, The Rescuers, The Fox And The Hound, The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective, Oliver & Company, The Little Mermaid, The Rescuers Down Under, Beauty And The Beast, and Aladdin. Please comment!

... FOR "FRANCHISE FACE-OFFS (PART 10 - 'MEN IN BLACK' EDITION)"

2011-11-30T14:00:00.000-08:00

A quick show of hands - how many people actually realize that 1997's Men In Black is based on a comic book? No doubt you saw the commercials and you bought your ticket and laughed at all the jokes and the witty special effects, and you probably own the VHS or the DVD or the Blu-Ray, but did you ever stop to think that you were, in fact, watching a Comic Book Movie?

Maybe, maybe not. Originally published by Marvel/ Aircel Comics as a three-issue mini-series in 1990, Lowell Cunningham's The Men In Black was optioned by producers Walter F. Parkes and Laurie MacDonald in 1992. The project went through various incarnations (and a director or two) before finally settling at Columbia Pictures, under the tutelage of Barry Sonnenfeld (The Addams Family, Get Shorty) and executive producer Steven Spielberg. When it opened on July 2nd, 1997, it was met with all the fanfare and fervor of your typical summer blockbuster. It grossed $587 million in theaters worldwide (Columbia's highest-grossing movie up to that point), and cemented Will Smith's reputation as a bona fide box office star.

Yet rarely, if ever, will you find MIB counted among the most successful Comic Book Movies ever made. Why is this? Perhaps because of the way it was marketed – as the Next Will Smith-Versus-Aliens Summer Blockbuster (after Independence Day). Or perhaps in the wake of Batman & Robin (released to critical and commercial disdain just two weeks earlier), the filmmakers thought it best to distance themselves from their genre roots as far as possible.

Whatever the case, I think most of us can agree that Men In Black made the jump to big-screen glory with relative ease. There are a few marked differences between the movie and its source material, however. Sonnenfeld's MIB is a colorful tongue-in-cheek twist on the usual aliens-are- among-us scenario. Our heroes, gruff Agent Kay (Tommy Lee Jones) and his rookie partner Jay (Smith) use a variety of ultra-cool government-sanctioned gadgets to police alien activity on Earth. Cunningham's MIB, on the other hand, is drawn in stark black-and-white, is virtually humorless, and its protagonists often resort to violence and murder to maintain the status quo.

In the comics, Jay and Kay are also both Caucasian, while in the movie they most definitely are not. You think this would have lent itself to some obvious jokes about race relations in America (between blacks and whites, or blacks and whites and aliens, or whatever), but the screenplay by Ed Solomon mostly shies away from this sort of thing, save for a running gag in which Kay deliberately misidentifies Jay to witnesses (he calls him "Mr. Black" or "Mr. White").

Instead, Sonnenfeld, Spielberg and company have simpler ideas in mind. Both comic book and movie are essentially Buddy Comedies in disguise - the story of Two Polar Opposites Who Learn To Trust Each Other As Equals. You know the drill: pair two leads, make one of them a by-the-book no-nonsense type, and the other a wet-behind-the-ears, over-confident sort, and bang - instant fireworks. And like any ~~Romantic~~ Buddy Comedy, it isn't so much the destination but the journey it takes to get there: Here, all the usual genre trappings are gussied up with fantastical CGI and crowd-pleasing belly laughs - 48HRS. and Lethal Weapon meet Ghostbusters.

To comic book fans, Men In Black also works as an origin story - explains how our protagonist comes to possess his "superpowers" and finds his place in society. The funniest sequence comes early in the movie, when NYC cop Jay and six uniformed military officers are subjected to a series of psychological tests to determine their employment with the MIB. First, they're seated in egg-shaped chairs and asked to fill out test packets (in pencil) with no flat surface to set them on. (Jay's solution: grab a heavy table from the middle of the tile floor and drag it, screeching, all the way back to his seat.) Then they're escorted into a separate room for target practice, to shoot at crude cardboard cutouts of alien creatures - but Jay only gets off one shot. (His explanation to MIB chief Zed [Rip Torn]: "First, I was going to pop this guy hanging from the streetlight... but I realized he's just working out. How'd I feel if somebody busted me in my a-- while I'm on the treadmill? Then I saw this snarling beast guy, and I noticed he had a tissue in his hand and realized... he's not snarling. He's sneezing. Ain't no real threat there. Then I saw Tiffany. I'm thinking, eight-year-old white girl, middle of the ghetto, with quantum physics books? She's about to start some s---, Zed.")

This hilarious, out-of-the-box type of logic runs all through the movie, so much that it's almost a disappointment when the plot takes over – something about a giant bug/arch-villain (the great Vincent D'Onofrio) bent on triggering an interstellar war. (In MIB's original cut, the plot was even more involved, until preview screenings convinced the filmmakers to tidy things up a bit.) It's comedy borne from character – a quality missing from most of today's blockbusters, which depend too much on crass one-liners or gross-out gags for mass audience appeal.

And at the center of it all stand Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, whose snappy verbal exchanges and star power alone would have been worth the price of a ticket - even without ILM's exemplary FX work or Rick Baker's Oscar-winning makeup designs to back them up. Jones is so dry, and Smith so brash and impulsive, that they complement each other perfectly; even the climax at the New York State Pavillion makes pitch-perfect note of this, with Jay and Kay each solving the movie's central crisis in typical characteristic fashion.

That chemistry, in fact, is all that saves 2002's Men In Black II from total ruin. It's another case of diminishing returns, I'm afraid – the players may be the same, but their hearts just don't seem to be in it, as if they'd been contracted to rehash the same thrills but none of the ingenuity. Still, that does nothing to diminish MIB1 as a singular entertainment experience: its pleasures are so great, it hardly matters that everything you're watching comes from a comic book.

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The Original: Men In Black (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1997)

Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith, Linda Fiorentino, Vincent D’Onofrio, Rip Torn, Tony Shalhoub

Plot: A brash NYC detective is recruited by a covert government agency, assigned to monitor extraterrestrial activity on Earth.

How It Set The Tone: A laugh-a-minute, tongue-in- cheek spoof on everything from Invasion Of The Body Snatchers to Independence Day and all other aliens-among-us extravaganzas in between, plus a wicked spin on the Buddy Cop Comedy formula to boot. Even the most ardent fans of the movie fail to realize that it's based on a comic book, but the snappy dialogue exchanges and nonstop running gags are so entertaining (Look! An entire wall of celebrities who are actually aliens in disguise!) that it hardly matters. Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith are a comedy dream team: Jones's straight-man demeanor is so mockingly dry his skin almost peels, while Smith more than fulfills his promise as a movie star - funny, confident, a wiz with the wisecracks, but never to the point of obnoxiousness. Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, who brings his Addams Family- style irreverence to a premise already ripe for send up, and executive-produced by Steven Spielberg, who knows a thing or two about aliens (and Hollywood blockbusters).

Room For Improvement: Most of the supporting cast reacts with such indifference to the plot's end-of-the-world scenario that it drains the suspense right out of the movie; this may be a conscious comic choice on the filmmakers' part, but it's also paradoxically, dramatically inert. Plus, the jokes come so fast for so long that the monster bug/alien galaxy subplot just gets in the way.

Grade: B+

Sequel: Men In Black II (Barry Sonnenfeld, 2002)

Returning Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith, Rip Torn, Tony Shalhoub

New Cast: Rosario Dawson, Lara Flynn Boyle, Johnny Knoxville

Plot: The MIB are forced to bring Agent K out of retirement, when a bloodthirsty alien plant creature threatens to take over the Earth.

How It Compares: Will Smith gets the three best lines in the movie: "That's the problem with all y'all New Yorkers! 'Oh no, we've seen it all! Oh no, a 600 foot worm! Save us Mr. Black Man!'," and "Back when you was an agent, you used to love gettin' flushed. Every Saturday night, you'd be like, 'Flush me, J! Flush me!' And I'd be like, 'Naw...'," and "Actually it came with a black dude, but he kept getting pulled over." Other than that, MIB2 comes close to sucking the life right out of the franchise. The humor is shrill, the villain is depressingly lightweight (both literally and figuratively; Lara Flynn Boyle looks like she weighs about the same as a cardboard cutout of herself), and the entire movie feels rushed - crassly manufactured at 88 minutes (including credits!) to fit in an extra showing at theaters per day. (And what's the deal with those creepy bug-eyed thingies which populate the lockers at Grand Central Station?) Jones and Smith are still fun, but it's too little, too late: at least the first MIB had some quality laughs to back them up.

Grade: D

More To Come?: Men In Black 3 has actually been in production since November 2010 (in 3D!), with last-minute script re-writes and reports of on-set friction suggesting we might be in for another crushing disappointment. There's hope, though: Collider says here that teaser posters were spotted by theater-goers this past Thanksgiving weekend, which admittedly look pretty cool.

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Part 3 of my "Buddy Cop" retrospective. For Parts 1 and 2, click here and here. For non-Buddy Franchise Face-Offs, click here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

... FOR "WALT DISNEY'S ANIMATED FIFTY (PART 31 - 'ALADDIN' EDITION)"

2011-11-21T23:06:00.000-08:00

Title: Aladdin (1992; based on the Arabian folktale "Aladdin And The Magic Lamp," from One Thousand And One Nights)

The Plot: A street urchin uses a magic lamp to win the heart of a princess.

The Songs: "Arabian Nights," "One Jump Ahead," "Friend Like Me," "A Whole New World," "Prince Ali," "Prince Ali (Reprise)" "A Whole New World (End Title)"

A Little History: Ashman originally pitched the idea for a musical version of "Aladdin" while he and composer Alan Menken were busy working on The Little Mermaid. Ashman and Menken wrote several songs for the film, but were approached by Disney to adapt Beauty And The Beast as their follow-up project instead; when Ashman died from AIDS complications in early 1991, lyricist Tim Rice was hired to help finish the project. The movie's first draft (by Beast scribe Linda Woolverton) was re-written by directors Ron Clements and John Musker, and again by screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio. Elliott and Rossio deleted a subplot involving Aladdin's mother and another with Aladdin's three friends (named Babkak, Omar and Kassim), and worked to strengthen the other characters. Aladdin was originally modeled after Michael J. Fox, until Jeffrey Katzenberg decided he wasn't appealing enough, and re-conceived the character as a hunkier, more athletic type. All of the characters are color-coded: "good" characters (Aladdin, Jasmine) wear blue, "evil" characters (Jafar, Iago) wear red, and "neutral" characters dress in yellow. Computer graphics assisted in the creation of the film's more complex sequences and character designs, including the Cave of Wonders and Aladdin's magic carpet. For his role as the Genie, Robin Williams recorded nearly 16 hours of ad-libbed material (and impersonated over 52 separate characters), from which animator Eric Goldberg chose the best gags and matched his drawings to Williams' rapid-fire improvisations. Williams signed onto the film at a union scale rate of $75,000, provided the Genie take up no more than 25% of Disney's marketing campaign. When the studio failed to honor this agreement, Williams withdrew his name from all advertising material. (Jeffrey Katzenberg's eventual replacement, Joe Roth, issued a public apology to Williams in 1994, which impressed the actor so much, he agreed to return for Aladdin's second direct-to-video sequel, The King Of Thieves.) Following its release in U.S. theaters on November 25, 1992, Aladdin took a record eight weeks to reach the top spot at the box office, and grossed $504 million in worldwide ticket sales. It won two Academy Awards, for Best Score and Best Original Song ("A Whole New World"). Many Arab-Americans, however, objected to lyrics in the film's opening number, "Arabian Nights," and the song was later modified for home video.

How It Broke New Ground: Though not the first animated film to feature a major movie star as part of its voice cast (see The Jungle Book or The Rescuers for earlier examples of this), Aladdin is the first to focus almost its entire marketing campaign on the presence of one. It is also the first animated film to gross over $200 million in U.S. theaters.

How It Holds Up Today: It's been called everything from "a hip comic wonder" to "the most elaborate, narcissistic circus act in the history of cinema," and, indeed, how you react to Robin Williams' Genie in Aladdin may very well affect your opinion of the movie itself. To me, Williams' relentless shtick was always better suited for animation anyway, since he's pretty much a walking cartoon to begin with, and he injects new life into the Disney formula, especially after the Broadway-caliber heights of Beauty And The Beast. The songs are fun, and there's a breathless dexterity to the action sequences, but the plot, I'm afraid, is your basic predictable fluff (i.e., Will Aladdin ever get a chance to live the high life? Will Jasmine ever love Aladdin for who he is on the inside? Will the evil Jafar finally get what he deserves?). Then the Genie shows up, and lifts the movie into the stratosphere - with jokes that come at you so fast, it's a miracle the animation is able to keep up. Quibbles about anachronisms and unfair racial stereotyping are beside the point: this is a comedy, after all, and is never meant to be taken seriously. Anyone who thinks otherwise would best follow Genie's example and lighten up.

Grade: A-

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Hang on, Disney fans – there's more to come. Need to play catch up? Click on the following for: Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, Fun And Fancy Free, Melody Time, The Adventures Of Ichabod And Mr. Toad, Cinderella, Alice In Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady And The Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, One Hundred And One Dalmatians, The Sword In The Stone, The Jungle Book, The AristoCats, Robin Hood, The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh, The Rescuers, The Fox And The Hound, The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective, Oliver & Company, The Little Mermaid, The Rescuers Down Under, and Beauty And The Beast. Please comment! Let me know what you think!

... FOR "WALT DISNEY'S ANIMATED FIFTY (PART 30 - 'BEAUTY AND THE BEAST' EDITION)"

2011-11-15T05:34:00.000-08:00

Title: Beauty And The Beast (1991; based on La Belle et la Bête by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont)

The Plot: A young prince, turned into a hideous beast by an enchantress's spell, finds redemption through the love of a beautiful girl.

The Songs: "Belle," "Gaston," "Be Our Guest," "Something There," "Human Again" (Special Edition), "Beauty And The Beast," "The Mob Song," "Beauty And The Beast (End Title)"

A Little History: Fresh off the success of Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937), Walt Disney considered adapting La Belle et la Bête into feature-length format, but couldn't settle on a proper treatment. During the 1950s, a second attempt to turn the fairy tale into a feature film also failed to see the light of day. Then in 1989, Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg decided to resurrect the project in the style of a Broadway musical, à la The Little Mermaid. Katzenberg and CEO Michael Eisner hired Linda Woolverton to write the script, and brought Mermaid co-composers Alan Menken and Howard Ashman on board for song and score duties. First-time directors Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale then worked closely with Woolverton, Menken, Ashman and producer Don Hahn to whip their Beauty into fighting shape. The screenplay borrows several elements from Jean Cocteau's 1946 version of the story, including inanimate objects which spring to life from enchantment, and a preening villain who vies for Beauty's affections; it was Ashman's idea, however, to give each of the castle's residents a distinct personality. The songs were recorded live, with the cast and orchestra performing together, to capture the feel of a full-scale Broadway production. (One song, "Human Again," was dropped due to time constraints but was later reinstated for the 2002 Special Edition.) Beauty And The Beast is Disney's second animated feature to make extensive use of the CAPS system; computer-generated backgrounds were combined with traditional animation to mimic swooping camera movement, most notably during the centerpiece ballroom sequence. Disney premiered a "Work-In-Progress" edition of the movie at the New York Film Festival in September 1991, one-third of which consisted of storyboards, pencil tests and computer animation tests. Even in this unfinished form, the film still drew a standing ovation from audience members. It opened in U.S. theaters on November 22, and became the third highest-grossing movie of the year, behind Terminator 2 and Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves. It is dedicated to Howard Ashman, who died of AIDS complications eight months before the film's release. 

How It Broke New Ground: The first Animated Classic to feature fully-rendered CGI backgrounds in conjunction with traditionally-animated characters. Also the first of Disney's Classics developed from an actual screenplay (rather than a series of storyboards), the first animated movie to cross the $100 million mark in U.S. theaters (final tally: $145,863,363), and the first to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. It lost to Jonathan Demme's The Silence Of The Lambs, but won Oscars for Best Score (Alan Menken) and Best Song ("Beauty And The Beast," music by Menken, lyrics by Howard Ashman).

How It Holds Up Today: "The most beautiful love story ever told," the ads proclaimed, and with that kind of shameless self-promotion, Disney was hard-pressed to deliver on its promises. (This was, after all, the studio's much-heralded return to the musical format, after reverting to formula for The Rescuers Down Under.) Yet an entire generation of fans weaned themselves on this particular version of the story, and no wonder: it's Disney's brightest, freshest, most effervescent concoction in over three decades. Everyone really hit their stride with this one - the plot (credited to ten people!) is so tightly structured it's a model of efficiency, the character design (James Baxter's oblivious-to-her-own-beauty Belle, Glen Keane's loutish-to-lovable Beast, Andreas Deja's dashing-to-despicable Gaston) is at once iconic and thematically rich, and the songs... holy crap, the songs! Has there ever been a lusher, more Broadway- savvy song score in the history of animation? And Belle is the strongest of all Disney heroines - she's smart, she knows what she wants and goes after it, and she's not a pushover like so many Princesses before her. Like the movie itself, she's everything everyone should aspire to. 

Grade: A

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Hang on, Disney  fans – there's more to come. Need to play catch up? Click on the following for:  Snow White And The Seven  Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, Saludos  Amigos, The Three  Caballeros, Make Mine  Music, Fun And Fancy  Free, Melody  Time, The Adventures Of Ichabod  And Mr. Toad, Cinderella, Alice In  Wonderland, Peter  Pan, Lady And The  Tramp, Sleeping  Beauty, One Hundred And One  Dalmatians, The Sword In The  Stone, The Jungle  Book, The  AristoCats, Robin  Hood,  The Many Adventures Of  Winnie The Pooh, The  Rescuers, The Fox  And The Hound, The Black Cauldron,  The Great Mouse  Detective, Oliver  & Company, The Little Mermaid, and The Rescuers Down Under. Please  comment!

... FOR "WALT DISNEY'S ANIMATED FIFTY (PART 29 - 'THE RESCUERS DOWN UNDER' EDITION)"

2011-11-06T00:18:00.000-07:00

Title: The Rescuers Down Under (1990; based on characters created by Margery Sharp)

The Plot: Two mice set off to the Australian outback, to rescue a young boy who's been kidnapped by an evil poacher.

A Little History: The Walt Disney Studio had previously attempted to make a sequel to The Rescuers in the mid-1980s, but couldn't decide on a workable plot (see Oliver & Company). High production costs on The Little Mermaid and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, however, forced the studio to fall back on sequel plans, in hopes that audiences would flock to see already-established characters. Of the 415 team members who worked on the film, five artists travelled to Australia to research and effectively capture the harsh, natural feel of the outback. This was the second Animated Classic - after The Black Cauldron - not to feature any musical numbers, though composer Bruce Broughton does reference the "Rescue Aid Society" theme from Part One. Orville the albatross (voiced by John Candy) replaces brother Wilbur, who figured prominently in the original film; both characters are named after the Wright brothers, famed inventors of the world's first airplane. The Rescuers Down Under grossed only $3.5 million its opening weekend, and finished with $47 million worldwide. It was considered such a disappointment that Disney discouraged all plans for future sequels. In countries where the term "Down Under" has no meaning, the movie's title was changed to Bernard And Bianca In The Land Of The Kangaroos.

How It Broke New Ground: The first animated sequel released by Disney. Also the first animated feature to be completed entirely within the digital realm. Though Disney's The Little Mermaid had utilized Pixar's Academy Award-winning CAPS system for its final sequence, The Rescuers Down Under uses this process exclusively. CAPS (Computer Animation Production System) is a revolutionary technique by which artists' drawings are scanned into a computer and painted digitally, thus eliminating the need for hand-inking. This helped save a great deal on money and time. Once colored, the animation was combined with background paintings and could be programmed to mimic complex camera movement and multiplane effects. The final composite was then scanned back onto film.

How It Holds Up Today: The Rescuers Down Under comes at an odd point in Disney history. Released just one year after the revitalizing success of The Little Mermaid, it also hearkens back to a time when the studio still struggled to find its creative footing in the wake of Walt's death. The original Rescuers is far from a classic – it's ugly, borderline unpleasant, more in tune with the cynical 70s than with Disney's rich and cultured past. I liked the voices, though – Zsa Zsa Gabor as the sweet and sensual Bianca, and Bob Newhart as her high-strung companion Bernard, were bright spots in an otherwise dull and dreary adventure. What a pleasure, then, to report that both characters survive the 13-year gap with their dignity intact, and the change in location from swampland to the Australian outback frees up the animation to all sorts of possibilities. The colors are brighter, the visuals are lush and three-dimensional (the opening 15 minutes play like a sizzle reel for the newly-invented CAPS system), and I really like the humor this time out, including some choice bits of physical comedy. All that's missing is a strong and unifying plot, which seems oddly simple-minded in purpose - here, it's boy goes missing, Rescuers set out to find him, Rescuers find him, and out. On the heels of The Little Mermaid, it's kind of a disappointment.

Grade: B

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Hold tight, Disney fans – there's more to come. Need to play catch up? Click on the following for: Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, Fun And Fancy Free, Melody Time, The Adventures Of Ichabod And Mr. Toad, Cinderella, Alice In Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady And The Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, One Hundred And One Dalmatians, The Sword In The Stone, The Jungle Book, The AristoCats, Robin Hood, The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh, The Rescuers, The Fox And The Hound, The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective, Oliver & Company, and The Little Mermaid. Please comment!

... FOR "FRANCHISE FACE-OFFS (PART 9 - 'PARANORMAL ACTIVITY' EDITION)"

2011-10-31T11:27:00.000-07:00

So The Blair Witch Project made close to a gazillion dollars back in 1999, and suddenly, "found footage" copycats were everywhere. Noroi, Diary Of The Dead, [REC], Cloverfield - everyone wanted a piece of the action. The reasons for this were fairly cut and dry: they were cheap, they were easy to shoot, you could cast relatively unknown actors as your leads and no one would raise a fuss, and better yet, audiences really seemed to enjoy getting the experience, so you had the luxury of making loads of money off of very little. Hollywood, as we've made abundantly clear, is always looking to replicate its own successes.

Granted, Blair Witch was hardly the first "found footage" feature ever made. The Last Broadcast, about a cable-TV crew on the hunt for the mythical Jersey Devil, was released just one year previous, and might have been a direct influence on Blair Witch directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez when creating their own movie. And perhaps the most notorious of these, Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust (1980), was banned in several countries for its graphic depiction of tribal rituals in the Amazon Basin (Deodato was later brought up on murder charges by the Italian government, who believed he'd made an actual "snuff film").

What The Blair Witch got absolutely right, which its predecessors only hinted at, was the way it tickled our deepest, darkest fancies - and invaded our pop culture consciousness. First came the legendary marketing campaign, which started on the Internet and then quietly gathered word of mouth at the Sundance Film Festival and in various college towns; a Sci-Fi Channel TV special, which aired just prior to the film's release; and finally, a limited-screen engagement that became the see-it- or-be-square event of the decade. Then came the movie itself, sold as the real thing, so you felt like an active part of the film's mythology. It was a con, a hoax, and audiences ate it up, hook, line and sinker.

Of all the copycats that followed, few have tapped into the pop cultural zeitgeist in exactly the same way. A few of these I've already mentioned (both 2005's Noroi, from Japan, and 2007's zombie-centric [REC] made my "Best Of" list for last decade), but even they remain relatively unknown. Some call this a good thing – by skirting the edge of public awareness, they maintain an eerie, urban legend- type quality that the genre inherently implies. The appeal of any great Horror title, though, is audience participation – gathering together with a group of peers, sharing in our collective inner desire (whether you accept this or not) to have the pants scared off us. And no other "found footage" franchise of the past decade has captured the public's imagination like Paranormal Activity, Oren Peli's minimalist, ingeniously creepy take on the haunted house movie.

The premise for Paranormal Activity is relatively simple. A young couple, fearing their home is under attack from a malevolent, demon-like entity, sets up a video camera to record the mysterious goings- on in their bedroom at night. I'd heard whisperings of the movie's existence in late 2007, when it debuted at the Screamfest Film Festival in Los Angeles, but even then I remember falling head over heels for the idea: it had the potential not just for pure, unadulterated shocks but also to serve as Blair Witch's rightful successor to the throne.

As it turned out, Activity's two-year trek from undiscovered horror gem to bona fide box office phenomenon rivaled even The Blair Witch Project for sheer media chutzpa. The Screamfest screening caught the attention of the Creative Artists Agency, who shopped DVD copies around to studios until they finally settled at DreamWorks, where Steven Spielberg planned to remake the movie on a larger budget. After the original version was shown to audiences, however, Paramount/DreamWorks dropped the remake idea and snatched up the domestic rights to Peli's movie instead. The studio then re-cut it and shot a new ending (suggested by Spielberg), and screened the film in randomly-selected college towns across the U.S. The overwhelming response to these showings led to a social media campaign at Eventful.com, which allowed film-goers across the country to "demand" screenings in cities close to their homes. This marked the first time that audiences not only determined a movie's success at the box office, but where it opened as well, and on October 10, 2009, Paranormal Activity hit a record one million votes on the site. Paramount rolled out a national release the following weekend. The film grossed $19.6 million – not enough to finish first at the box office – but over the weekend of October 23rd it rose to #1, beating out the expected champion, Saw VI, by $6 million. And it only snowballed from there. Paranormal Activity's final worldwide tally wound up at $193,355,800 – not bad for the little movie that could.

Like The Blair Witch, it was an event - an experience best enjoyed in the dark, with a crowd full of like-minded Horror junkies. Like The Blair Witch, it's a terror-drenched, gore-free entertainment, more invested in character (recognizably human and occasionally grating as those characters may be) and good old-fashioned scares than tacky CGI and gut-churning makeup effects. (It follows my definition of a genuinely scary Horror picture, meaning what you don't see is always scarier than what you actually do see.) Unlike The Blair Witch, the makers of Paranormal Activity never once attempted to dupe its audience into believing they were watching an actual, true- life thing; going in, you knew exactly what you were in for, and that, I think, is a big part of its appeal.

I'm not about to convince you that the movie is art; either you like this sort of thing or you don't. But as a ruthless, slow-burn scare machine it works, and works beautifully. As for the actors, stars Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat (playing versions of themselves) seem naturalistic and real; they improvised all of their dialogue, from Peli's extensive script notes, and have an easy chemistry that comes through on screen. (Mark Fredrichs' stilted line delivery, as a psychic consulted by Katie and Micah, tips us off early on that the movie's a fake, for those who didn't realize that already.) We sympathize with these characters, and fret for them, because they fear what we all fear - fear of the dark, fear of those things that go bump in the night, of being caught in a situation beyond our control.

The movie's resounding success, on the other hand, was something very much within our control - a cinematic social networking experience unlike anything we'd seen before. Then, of course, came the inevitable sequels. This time, it seems, we only have ourselves to blame.

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The Original: Paranormal Activity (Oren Peli, 2007)

Cast: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat, Mark Fredrichs

Plot: A San Diego couple, fearing their home is haunted by a malevolent, unseen entity, sets up a video camera to record mysterious activity in their bedroom at night.

How It Set The Tone: An efficient, slow-burn scare machine, made on a budget of $11,000 and guaranteed to give you the heebie jeebies at least half a dozen times during its 90-minute running time. Writer-director Oren Peli shot the film in his own house over a self-imposed seven-day schedule, and let his actors (Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat, playing themselves) improvise all their dialogue; as a result, the film has an intimate, this-could- really-be-happening kind of vibe, though it was never marketed as such. The structure is ingenious: During the day, our protagonists jabber on about their worries and fears and generally go about their business, and you let our guard down. But at night as they sleep, when they're most vulnerable, you lean forward in your seat, giddy with anticipation, because you just know something's about to come along and jolt you. (Never have the words "Night # 17" conjured up instant feelings of dread like they do here.) Tack on a brilliant, cutting-edge social media campaign, and you've got a worthy successor to the Blair Witch throne.

Room For Improvement: The acting gets a little one- note, and the "plot," as it were, keeps chugging along until it simply runs out of steam, coming to an all-too abrupt stop. (Steven Spielberg suggested the movie's re-shot ending, and though I can see his point - the original finale felt a little anti- climactic - it cheats by giving the audience a cheap CGI send-off.) As a "found footage" feature, it also shares many flaws inherent to the genre (queasy-on-the-stomach hand-held camerawork, nattering personality types, and a protagonist who refuses to put the camera down, no matter the situation). Still, it's tough to beat the movie's unrelenting scare quotient, including an eerie scene with a Ouija board, and a shock-tastic gag exactly one hour and four minutes in (theatrical version).

Grade: B+

Sequel: Paranormal Activity 2 (Tod Williams, 2010)

Returning Cast: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat

New Cast: Sprague Grayden, Brian Boland, Molly Ephraim

Plot: A young mother believes that her home is under attack from a demon-like entity, though her husband and teenage step-daughter refuse to believe her.

How It Compares: The novelty might have worn off, but this follow-up to the worldwide box office phenomenon plays tricks with the audience that must be seen to be believed. Actually, it's more of a prequel/sequel hybrid, the majority of which takes place (SPOILER) a full two months before the events of PA1. Our protagonist this time is Kristi Rey (Sprague Grayden), Katie's younger sister, who brings her newborn son home from the hospital and is almost immediately beset by otherworldly household occurrences. Following an apparent break- in, husband Dan (Brian Boland) sets up a security camera in almost every room - a neat visual nod to the first movie, and an improvement on it too, since the shocks now come from anywhere and everywhere, at any time. Most of the scares, in fact, are just souped-up variations on the same old thing - slamming doors, disembodied footsteps, Ouija boards, characters dragged by unseen entities across the floor, with a dog and a baby tossed in for good measure - but they come at such a jittery, nerve-racking pace I doubt you'd even care.

Grade: B

Sequel: Paranormal Activity 3 (Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost, 2011)

Returning Cast: Katie Featherston, Sprague Grayden, Brian Boland, Molly Ephraim

New Cast: Christopher Nicholas Smith, Lauren Bittner, Chloe Csengery, Jessica Tyler Brown, Dustin Ingram, Hallie Foote

Plot: Eighteen years prior to the events of Paranormal Activity, young Katie and Kristi Featherston unwittingly invite a malevolent spirit into their home.

How It Compares: There's a scene from the teaser trailer to PA3, in which two little girls record themselves playing a game of "Bloody Mary" in a bathroom mirror. It's something most of us played as kids - turn out the lights, repeat the name three times in the dark, and wait - and as the game commenced, I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck ("Here it comes... here it comes... I don't really want to see this, do I?"). That scene isn't in the movie - well, not exactly - but it's a perfect example of what gives this series such a wicked, shivery charge: it's hard-wired into our innermost childhood fears. For a while at least, directors Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost goose their audience with fine-tuned precision - there's an early gag involving a mask and a closet, another with a ghoul in a bed sheet, and a masterfully-conceived, recurrent camera shot, mounted on top of an oscillating fan to capture the action between two rooms. Then comes the overwrought 15-minute climax, which manages to rip off The Blair Witch Project, The Ring, and Rosemary's Baby all at once. Worse, it bends (ahem) the mythology in some deeply unsettling ways. Time to hang up the camera, guys, before the formula officially runs its course.

Grade: B-

More To Come?: Pretty much a foregone conclusion. PA3 grossed a record-breaking (for a Horror film) $54 million when it was released just two weekends ago, so expect a press release for PA4 any day now. [UPDATE - Deadline announced here that PA4 is scheduled for October 19, 2012.] As long as they keep finding new ways to tweak our expectations, I'm fine with that.

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Happy Halloween, everybody! Hungry for more Franchise Face-Offs? No problem! Click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

... FOR "WALT DISNEY'S ANIMATED FIFTY (PART 28 - 'THE LITTLE MERMAID' EDITION)"

2011-10-26T21:04:00.000-07:00

Title: The Little Mermaid (1989; based on the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen)

The Plot: A mermaid dreams of becoming human, but she's outwitted by an evil sea witch.

The Songs: "Fathoms Below," "Daughters Of Triton," "Part Of Your World," "Under The Sea," "Poor Unfortunate Souls," "Les Poissons," "Kiss The Girl," "Vanessa's Song"

A Little History: Disney had originally planned to adapt The Little Mermaid as one of their Silly Symphonies shorts in the 1930s; Danish illustrator Kay Nielsen even drew up several story sketches for the proposed project, which would later serve as inspiration for the final film. In 1985, Ron Clements (who shared co-director credit on The Great Mouse Detective) again brought the fairy tale to Disney's attention, but Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg nixed the idea, as it was too similar to a Splash sequel in development at the studio. Katzenberg soon changed his mind and greenlit Mermaid for development, though it was placed on the backburner while they concentrated on higher-profile "boy" pictures like Oliver & Company and Who Framed Roger Rabbit instead. The film finally began to pick up steam in 1987, when lyricist Howard Ashman joined the project after contributing to Oliver. It was Ashman's idea to change a side character (an English-butler crab named Clarence) to a Jamaican Rastafarian crab named Sebastian, which lent itself to greater musical possibilities. Ashman also brought in Alan Menken, co-composer on their Off-Broadway musical Little Shop Of Horrors, to write the music for the film. For the first time in years, live actors were used as reference for the animators' drawings; coincidentally, Little Mermaid marks the last time that animators painted cels by hand, as the newly-invented CAPS system rendered the practice obsolete (see below). Directors Clements and John Musker insisted that every bubble in the film be hand-drawn; such a massive undertaking required the help of a separate animation firm, Pacific Rim Productions, which was based out of China. Cameo alert: During King Triton's entrance at the start of the movie, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy can be spotted in the crowd, awaiting his arrival (likewise, the king and the duke from Cinderella appear as guests at Vanessa and Eric's wedding). The Little Mermaid grossed over $84 million in theaters, outperforming Oliver & Company by $32 million. It later won two Academy Awards, for Best Song ("Under The Sea") and Best Musical Score (Alan Menken) - Disney's first Oscar win since Bedknobs And Broomsticks (1971).

How It Broke New Ground: The first Disney film to employ the CAPS system (invented by Pixar), which painted the animators' drawings digitally and thus eliminated the need for hand-inking. (This was also the last of Disney's animated titles to feature cels painted by hand.) Eight months after its theatrical run, Disney released The Little Mermaid on VHS and laserdisc - a somewhat controversial move for the studio, as it was common practice to reissue each of their Animated Classics to theaters every seven years, and executives feared an early home video release would diminish their profits. Despite this, Mermaid went on to become the biggest seller of 1990, with over 7 million copies sold during its thirty days.

How It Holds Up Today: Irresistible. People often cite The Little Mermaid as the film that rescued Disney Animation from commercial and creative disaster, and for once, they aren't exaggerating: Watch any two frames of this thing, and your eyes will pop at the obvious bump in quality over their last dozen films or so. Better yet, it looks and sounds like an actual cartoon, as opposed to the quasi-realistic design of anything since One Hundred And One Dalmatians. The animation is beautiful and bold, the plot is refreshingly, classically structured, and the music score is iconic – so rich and Broadway-centric, it set the standard for everything that came after it. Like Cinderella, Mermaid is fairy-tale simple in its design, with some fairly predictable beats, but it's the songs and all the lovable (and some not- so-lovable) side characters that really sell it. And so what if it's considered a "girls' picture"? There's enough to captivate even the most jaded critic, from this Disney Renaissance and beyond.

Grade: B+

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Hold tight, Disney fans – there's more to come. Need to play catch up? Click on the following for: Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, Fun And Fancy Free, Melody Time, The Adventures Of Ichabod And Mr. Toad, Cinderella, Alice In Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady And The Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, One Hundred And One Dalmatians, The Sword In The Stone, The Jungle Book, The AristoCats, Robin Hood, The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh, The Rescuers, The Fox And The Hound, The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective, and Oliver & Company. Please comment! Let me know what you think!

... FOR "FRANCHISE FACE-OFFS (PART 8 - 'LETHAL WEAPON' EDITION)"

2011-10-22T18:15:00.000-07:00

In almost every movie romance, there's a thing called the "meet cute," in which a boy and a girl are brought together in some deliberate comic fashion - often the result of an awkward social mishap or hilarious misunderstanding. This is, of course, just their first step toward falling in love: both characters usually come from opposite sides of the tracks, and will spend the rest of the plot bickering and flirting and generally getting on each other's nerves – until finally, at the end, they realize they are Made For Each Other.

Some noteworthy examples of this. In Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934), runaway heiress Claudette Colbert meets down-on-his-luck reporter Clark Gable while arguing over a seat on a bus. In Disney's One Hundred And One Dalmatians (1969), Pongo the dog "arranges" a meeting between humans Roger and Anita at the park (they argue for about two seconds before falling into a pond together). In Grease (1978), John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John's "meet cute" doesn't actually occur on screen, but is recounted during a musical number instead ("She swam by me, she got a cramp / He went by me, got my suit damp"). And in 1993's Sleepless In Seattle, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan don't officially "meet cute" until movie's end, but meet they do – on top of the Empire State Building, no less, on Valentine's Day.

When it comes to the Buddy Film – which, you will recall, follows the same basic plot structure as the Romantic Comedy, minus the romance – the concept of "meet cute" still applies. Oh, the end result may turn out different, but the function of it is the same: to unite two characters with conflicting personalities in some fateful, memorable way, thus setting them at odds with each other for the rest of the movie. (This is otherwise known as "conflict.")

The "meet cute" in Richard Donner's Lethal Weapon (1987) comes about 20 minutes into the movie. It's Christmas in L.A., and we've already met LAPD Detective Sergeant Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover), a 50-year-old father of three who's battling the onset of a crippling mid-life crisis. His wife, his kids, even his pals at Homicide have been chiding him about his age, and now, as he stands in his office discussing the facts of his latest case (the apparent suicide of a drug addict and sometime prostitute who jumped from her posh high-rise apartment), you can practically feel the weight of the world on Roger's shoulders. He's also been assigned a new partner today, and just as we're processing this, Roger spots a disheveled man in a baseball cap being led into the squad room.

This is Sergeant Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson), and we've met him before, too – first at an undercover drug bust where he almost gets himself killed, and later at home, with a picture of his dead wife in his lap and a gun in his mouth. Riggs' reckless/ suicidal behavior has earned him a transfer to Homicide, where a more seasoned detective will be able to keep an eye on him. To Roger, though, Riggs looks more like a homeless person – unshaven, dressed in his gnarly jacket and cowboy boots, eyes darting nervously about the room. Roger watches, as suddenly, Riggs reaches behind his back and pulls out his gun. And perhaps as a knee-jerk reaction to the events of the day, Roger springs into action. Shouts a warning and charges at Riggs. Riggs sees him coming and reacts, flipping the older man over his shoulder and pinning him to the floor with lightning speed. As Roger lies on his back, dazed, another detective leans down and informs him, helpfully: "Rog, meet your new partner."

And with that, our dynamic is set for the rest of the movie: Riggs, the irascible wild card, partnered with responsible family man Murtaugh. They'll bicker, they'll fight, they'll save each other's lives on more than one occasion, and by the end, they'll turn out to be best pals – lifelong platonic partners, if you will. It's a match made in box office heaven.

Actually, three components help Lethal Weapon stand proud and apart from its "buddy cop" brethren: Richard Donner's energetic direction, the screenplay by (then) 23-year-old Shane Black, and the chemistry between its two stars.

After a string of megahits including The Omen (1976), Superman: The Movie (1978), and The Goonies (1985), Donner brings a singular verve to Weapon, and keeps the plot rolling along at a frantic, crackerjack pace, so that you're hardly aware of the genre trappings on display. The same goes for Black's quippy, propulsive dialogue, which helps to offset the movie's darker edges. ("Torture, kidnap[ping], drugs, suicides," said Mel Gibson in a recent interview. "And yet it was hilarious!")

As for Gibson and Glover, it's strange to think that neither actor was particularly well-known to audiences at the time of the movie's release. Glover had earned critical acclaim for supporting roles in Places In The Heart and The Color Purple; Gibson had starred in Gallipoli and The Year Of Living Dangerously, and gained a cult following from George Miller's Mad Max trilogy. For their Lethal screen tests, Gibson and Glover got along so well that Donner practically cast them on the spot, and what resulted not only turned the actors into household names, it kicked off a legacy that other "buddy cop" comedies could only aspire to.

There's an urgency to the action, a sweetness to the movie's quieter moments (Murtaugh's wife and children feel like actual people, rather than sitcom caricatures), and I think you really buy into the idea that our protagonists need each other, care for each other, and balance each other out. Mel and Danny are so much fun, it's almost tempting to forgive the inanities of the series' later installments. Almost. Still, at a combined gross of $900 million, it's hard to dispute the franchise's viability at the box office.

And to think it all started with a "meet cute" - one man mistaking another for a degenerate. Funny how life works itself out sometimes.

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The Original: Lethal Weapon (Richard Donner, 1987)

Cast: Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Gary Busey, Mitchell Ryan, Tom Atkins, Darlene Love

Plot: Two L.A. police detectives – one a loose cannon reeling from the death of his wife, the other a responsible family man – stumble onto a drug smuggling operation.

How It Set The Tone: The start of a beautiful friendship. Mel Gibson and Danny Glover have such an easy rapport, and the script by first-timer Shane Black gives them so many choice one-liners to work with, it's easy to see why audiences fell head over heels for them in the first place. They're the quintessential buddy cops: Riggs' reckless impulsiveness brings the buttoned-down Murtaugh out of his shell, and vice versa - Murtaugh's traditional values and by-the-book personality grounds Riggs, and gives him something to live for. Director Richard Donner keeps the action coming at a breakneck pace, and the villains (including Gary Busey as Gibson's dark double) are menacing and memorable.

Room For Improvement: Even for an 80's picture, this is pretty hard-edged stuff: the opening sequence, scored to Bobby Helms' "Jingle Bell Rock," stars a half-naked woman who sniffs a line of cocaine off a mirrored table and then promptly jumps to her death. Merry Christmas! Also, the plot could have used an extra twist or two - even I lose track of how it all ties together, probably because my brain thinks there's more going on than there actually is. Still, this is Gibson and Glover's show, and they walk away with the movie, bruised, battered and ready for their next adventure. (DVD alert: The 117-minute director's cut cheats by adding a trio of superfluous introductory scenes to the movie's first act. You're better off finding the original 110-minute version, which doesn't feel the need to repeat itself.)

Grade: B+

Sequel: Lethal Weapon 2 (Richard Donner, 1989)

Returning Cast: Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Darlene Love

New Cast: Joe Pesci, Joss Ackland, Derrick O'Connor, Patsy Kensit

Plot: Two cops, while on assignment to protect a federal witness, encounter a team of South African drug smugglers hiding behind diplomatic immunity.

How It Compares: A textbook example of how to pull off a successful sequel: Give your audience the thrills they expect, send your protagonists off on new adventures with only an occasional reference to the original, and toss new characters into the mix, for variety. The script by Jeffery Boam (with co- story credit from Shane Black and Warren Murphy) is a natural progression of the first movie: Riggs has lost his suicidal streak but none of his manic playfulness, Murtaugh is still the exasperated straight-man to Riggs' antics, and the movie is lighter and friskier for all that. Some of this is silly (an early gag with a strait-jacket has an obvious pay off later on), but the set pieces are terrific, including a now-classic bomb-under-the- toilet sequence, and a late-in-the-game twist that forces Gibson's character to revert to his lethal, destructive self. The sequel's real stroke of genius, though, is Joe Pesci's lovable pipsqueak Leo Getz, whose loud-mouthed line delivery is the funniest thing in the movie.

Grade: B+

Sequel: Lethal Weapon 3 (Richard Donner, 1992)

Returning Cast: Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci, Darlene Love

New Cast: Rene Russo, Stuart Wilson

Plot: Two police detectives run afoul of a crooked cop turned illegal arms dealer.

How It Compares: A textbook example of what not to do in a sequel: the jokes are lazy, the writing is tired, and by now it feels like the entire cast and crew have settled into formula, confident that we'll lap up whatever they throw at us. (They were right: LW3 scored $144.7 million in U.S. theaters, just $3 million shy of LW2's box office take.) The plot, this time, centers around Murtaugh's impending retirement, and a sexy newcomer (Rene Russo) who turns out to be Riggs' equal in more ways than one. Yet all of that goodwill is stunted by the movie's lame-brained insistence on recalling the series' past events - even Joe Pesci's return as the diminutive Leo Getz is a constant reminder of that, though he's mostly on hand for redundant comic relief. The whole movie is redundant - an easy-enough way to pass a couple of hours but lacking the freshness of everything that's come before it.

Grade: C+

Sequel: Lethal Weapon 4 (Richard Donner, 1998)

Returning Cast: Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci, Rene Russo, Darlene Love

New Cast: Chris Rock, Jet Li

Plot: On the verge of fatherhood (and grandfather- hood, respectively), LAPD Detectives Riggs and Murtaugh do battle with vicious Chinese Triads.

How It Compares: The Lethal Weapon series finally descends into parody, with so many scenes of forced action and comedy, it plays like an outtake reel from the first three movies. The whole thing reeks of desperation, from its cops-versus- flamethrowered-vigilante opening sequence, to the "jokes" about pregnancy and Chinese immigrants (don't ask), to its bare-bones idea for a plot, which exists merely as an excuse to show off Jet Li's lightning-quick karate moves. Chris Rock also joins the cast, and like everything else in the movie, the narrative simply halts in its tracks to let him do his thing; I counted at least three times when he's allowed to break into his usual stand-up routine, while the cast just sits there, waiting for him to shut up. As for Gibson and Glover, they're both past the point of "getting too old for this s---." This isn't Lethal Weapon any more. It's more like Grumpy Old Men.

Grade: D

More To Come?: For years now, there's been talk of getting a fifth Lethal Weapon off the ground. Though Gibson, Glover and Donner have all shown disinterest in the project, Entertainment Weekly reported on January 20, 2011, that writer Will Beall had been hired to pen a reboot of the franchise. Joy.

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Part 2 of my "Buddy Cop" retrospective. Hungry for more Franchise Face-Offs? No problem! Click here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

... FOR "CINEMA'S MOST NONSENSICAL SEQUELS"

2011-10-16T16:56:00.000-07:00

My six-year-old daughter currently has three obsessions in life: her Littlest Pet Shop toys, these elaborate arts and crafts projects she likes to do all over the house (more specifically, she'll sit at the kitchen table with her scissors and crayons for hours on end, and it's the discarded pieces of trash that we find all over the house), and Disney's Princesses. The first two have only become part of her daily regimen within the last few years or so. The Princess thing, though... that's been ingrained since birth. It's a girl thing, I suppose – this fascination with tiaras and magic wands and big poofy dresses. And we're more than happy to indulge her, as long as Prince Charming keeps his distance.

So it wasn't a shock to find her glued to one of those Disney Princess Enchanted Tales on TV the other day. This one featured Aurora, Sleeping Beauty herself, who'd been left alone to govern the kingdom while the prince and the king went off to a weekend seminar or something. It didn't take long for Aurora to break into a musical number, a semi- elaborate bit called "Keys To The Kingdom," and as I listened, a thought entered my head: "Funny. This doesn't sound like Tchaikovsky at all."

No doubt you're familiar with the Tchaikovsky/ Disney connection by now. Walt Disney used the ballet as a musical backdrop for his 16th animated classic, so you'll forgive me if "Keys To The Kingdom" felt just a bit out of place. The look of that 1959 masterpiece, based on European paintings and medieval architecture, was also conspicuously absent - replaced by the softer lines and computer- aided backgrounds of so many Disney titles since.

I know, I know - it's a simple kids' entertainment, produced cheaply and quickly and meant to distract the young'uns for twenty minutes at a time. Still, as a die-hard fan of the movie, I couldn't help feeling a little betrayed by this. Sleeping Beauty, after all, was meant as a one-off, an experiment, an attempt to broaden the boundaries of Disney animation as we knew it. Surely, from their entire catalog of films, it was not one that cried out for a sequel.

And that got me to thinking, as it usually does, about the long, sad history of films intended to stand on their own, but given the obligatory sequel treatment instead. The problem is, these inferior follow-ups were apparently concocted by folks who never saw a single frame of the original movies. They simply took the initial concept, put their own "spin" on the material, and bam! - saddled us with a movie that completely missed the point of the original. (Picture a slapstick comedy sequel to Casablanca, with Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains teamed with the Marx Brothers to thwart Nazis all over Europe, and you'll get the idea.)

Here's a list of several wrong-headed sequels that stick out in history like a cinematic sore thumb. Again, please keep in mind this list is not at all comprehensive:

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Title: Staying Alive (Sylvester Stallone, 1983)

Sequel To: Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977)

Why It Didn't Work: A box-office behemoth that spoke to an entire generation of fans is updated as a sweaty, mind-meltingly chauvinistic, music-video mess of a movie. Director Sylvester Stallone (yes, that Sylvester Stallone) shifts his sequel's focus to John Travolta's glistening abs instead - and while I suppose there's a certain demographic for that kind of thing, Staying Alive is like a kick in the pants to everything Fever fans hold dear. Tony Manero is now a preening man-whore sleeping his way through New York, he's apparently left all his friends in the dust, and worse, he's traded his disco dreams for a soul-crushing stint on Broadway. Also, dig that final, "triumphant" musical number, which looks like it cost the filmmakers a fortune in Vaseline and kitschy light-show effects.

Oh, By The Way: Screenwriter Norman Wexler's initial drafts for the movie picked up immediately after the events of Saturday Night Fever, showing Tony's continued attempts to make it in Manhattan. Stallone re-wrote the script once he came on board, eliminating virtually every character from the original film.

Title: 2010 (Peter Hyams, 1984)

Sequel To: 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)

Why It Didn't Work: Stanley Kubrick's seminal sci-fi masterwork is the antithesis of any movie with decent pacing, relatable human characters, or an actual plot. It's more of a critics' darling than an audience favorite (unless you count yourself among the hippie-drug culture of the 1960s), but it built up enough of a cult following to warrant this 1984 sequel, which chronicles a joint effort between Russian and American space programs to uncover the mystery behind Discovery One's failed mission to Jupiter. The plotting, this time, is remarkably straight-forward, with a few nutso touches thrown in for good measure (HAL returns, as does Keir Dullea as a ghost/spirit version of his character from 2001). It isn't terrible but it's still pretty dull, in a generic, connect-the-dots sort of way. Kubrick's movie is a two-hour, twenty-minute think-piece on the wonders of technology and humankind's propensity for violence; you can hate on that all you want, but its mysteries were better left unexplained.

Oh, By The Way: During pre-production on 2010, writer-director Peter Hyams was able to communicate with the book's author, Arthur C. Clarke, via a primitive form of e-mail. Clarke offered ideas on how to adapt the novel's plot for the big screen; he later compiled these e-mails into a book, The Odyssey File.

Title: Return To Oz (Walter Murch, 1985)

Sequel To: The Wizard Of Oz (Victor Fleming plus uncredited others, 1939)

Why It Didn't Work: Admittedly, this is just about the only title on this list I'm actually kinda fond of, as I like the concept if not the execution. Everything about it goes against the grain: It was released (by Disney) a whopping 46 years after the original; it's the only directorial effort from renowned film editor/sound designer Walter Murch (The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, The English Patient); there are no musical numbers; and it plays like a hallucinatory nightmare compared to Wizard's Technicolor day-glo fantasy world. It's about as far left field as you can possibly get, yet there's something to be said for all the whacked-out, surrealist characters on display (Nome Kings and Wheelers and headless witches – oh my!), which still haunt me to this day.

Oh, By The Way: Based on Frank L. Baum's sequel novels, The Marvelous Land Of Oz (1904) and Ozma Of Oz (1907). Director Walter Murch never intended his film to be a follow-up to MGM's original classic, but Disney marketed it that way anyway. Because if this (perhaps), Return To Oz grossed a paltry $11 million at the box office.

Title: RoboCop 2 (Irvin Kershner, 1990)

Sequel To: RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987)

Why It Didn't Work: Paul Verhoeven's wicked-sharp RoboCop is a satire disguised as a slam-bang sci-fi actioner. My cousin and I snuck into the theater and wound up seeing it twice in the same afternoon - because that's what any thrill-hungry pre-teen's brain actually craves: unadulterated, ultra-violent excitement. As an adult, RoboCop's subtextual commentary on Reaganism, privatization, and the evils of corporate capitalism have more of a bite - and elevate the movie to something of a classic. So how, exactly, do you make a sequel to this sort of thing? You drop the satire and amp up the violence, of course, to cover up the fact that you've got nothing important to say. Robo 2 sends our titular hero after the drug dealers plaguing his city's streets - which is a pleasant-enough idea, I guess, but now there's a sadistic streak to the violence, and the original's subversive sense of humor is nowhere in sight. An abomination - and from the director of The Empire Strikes Back, no less.

Oh, By The Way: Believe it or not, 1993's RoboCop 3 is even worse - a PG-13-rated monstrosity in which Robo rebels against his superiors, flies around with a jetpack, and fights a pair of evil Japanese samurai cyborgs (I am not making this up).

Title: Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (Joe Berlinger, 2000)

Sequel To: The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, 1999)

Why It Didn't Work: No matter what you think of the movie itself, The Blair Witch Project is still a masterpiece of marketing and, until My Big Fat Greek Wedding three years later, was the most successful independent film of all time. It also set the standard for all "found footage" films that followed, from its shaky-cam first-person point of view, to its increasingly-hysterical protagonists whose actions defy all common sense. So it's no surprise that the makers of Blair Witch 2 would try to duplicate that success... with this dreadful meta-sequel featuring obvious scares, psychic characters, and virtually no first-person digital camerawork at all. You have to give 'em props for trying something a little different, but the novelty's worn off: Sequels don't often get any more desperate than this.

Oh, By The Way: Blair Witch directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez had little involvement with the sequel, rushed to theaters by Artisan Entertainment to cash in on the popularity of the original.

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As usual, here's the part where I ask you, avid reader, to add any other title I've neglected to mention above. This list barely even scratches the surface, people... I'd love to hear your thoughts!

... FOR "WALT DISNEY'S ANIMATED FIFTY (PART 27 - 'OLIVER & COMPANY' EDITION)"

2011-10-10T09:18:00.000-07:00

My continuing foray into Disney's fifty official Animated Classics. As always, don't hesitate to share your thoughts/memories/complaints in the comments section below. Links to previous entries have also been included below.

Title: Oliver & Company (1988; based on Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens)

The Plot: An orphaned kitten joins a gang of wild dogs and learns to survive on the streets of New York City; they run afoul of a vicious loan shark.

The Songs: "Once Upon A Time In New York City," "Why Should I Worry," "Streets Of Gold," "Perfect Isn't Easy," "Good Company"

A Little History: Oliver & Company originally started production as a sequel to The Rescuers (1977), until the producers realized they didn't have enough story to sustain a feature film. They scrapped the idea and started from scratch, ultimately deciding on a loose adaptation of Dickens' Oliver Twist. This was the final Disney Classic to use cel overlay, a process which matched the animated backgrounds to xeroxed characters in the foreground. CGI was used extensively to animate the backgrounds and cityscapes, and other objects such as cars, buses, a piano, trains, and staircases. Marlon Brando turned down the role of Sykes, despite a personal offer from Michael Eisner himself. Peg, Trusty and Jock (from Lady And The Tramp) and Pongo (from One Hundred And One Dalmatians) make cameo appearances during "Why Should I Worry"; among the photographs of Georgette's many admirers are Professor Ratigan (The Great Mouse Detective) and Scooby Doo. The film opened in U.S. theaters on November 18, 1988 - the same day as Don Bluth's The Land Before Time - and grossed over $74 million worldwide. Its success convinced Peter Schneider, Disney's senior VP of animation, to announce plans to release a single animated film per year. It was not, however, made available on home video until 1996.

How It Broke New Ground: The first Disney title with its own department devoted solely to computer-generated animation. Foley artists recorded many new sound effects for the film, to replace many Disney mainstays including the Goofy holler and castle thunder. Also the first animated Disney classic to feature extensive product placement (for "realism," the filmmakers claimed), with Coca-Cola, USA Today, Ryder Truck Rental, and even Kellogg's Cocoa Krispies given obligatory screen time.

How It Holds Up Today: It makes perfect sense, actually. Following the glut of creative disappointments that helped to define its late 70s/ early 80s output, Disney rebounded with The Great Mouse Detective, a bright and bouncy take on a literary classic and their first successful bid to recapture that old studio magic in over a decade. So it's only fitting that, somehow, they'd manage to take every bit of that goodwill and trounce it completely. Oliver & Company is Disney at its absolute worst: a heartless, shameless, cynical mess, with a demoralizing tone that (for once) can't be disguised by its cast of furry animal characters. The backgrounds are dingy, the CG animation sticks out like a sore thumb, and we're supposed to cheer along as our "heroes" cheat, scheme and steal, a little girl is kidnapped and ransomed, and the villain and his two Doberman Pinschers are obliterated on the city subway tracks. (Yes, yes, I get this is "only a cartoon," but aren't you tired of making excuses for this type of thing?) Even the much-heralded song-and- dance numbers sound desperate and dated - a virtual who's who of 80's pop stars (Huey Lewis! Billy Joel! Bette Midler! Ruth Pointer of The Pointer Sisters!) and not a single memorable tune between them. I could go on, but you probably get the point. Hands down the ugliest and most depressing of all Disney movies - and to think it comes only one year before The Little Mermaid!

Grade: F

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Hold tight, Disney fans – there's more to come. Need to play catch up? Click  on the following for: Snow White And The Seven  Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, Saludos  Amigos, The Three  Caballeros, Make Mine  Music, Fun And Fancy  Free, Melody  Time, The Adventures Of Ichabod  And Mr. Toad, Cinderella, Alice In  Wonderland, Peter  Pan, Lady And The  Tramp, Sleeping  Beauty, One Hundred And One  Dalmatians, The Sword In The  Stone, The Jungle  Book, The  AristoCats, Robin  Hood, The Many Adventures Of  Winnie The Pooh, The  Rescuers, The Fox  And The Hound, The Black Cauldron, and The Great Mouse Detective. Please  comment!

... FOR "WALT DISNEY'S ANIMATED FIFTY (PART 26 - 'THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE' EDITION)"

2011-10-03T21:17:00.000-07:00

Title: The Great Mouse Detective (1986; based on the book series Basil Of Baker Street by Eve Titus and Paul Galdone)

The Plot: In Victorian London, a mouse with renowned deductive skills battles his arch-nemesis, a sewer rat intent on kidnapping the Queen.

The Songs: "The World's Greatest Criminal Mind," "Let Me Be Good To You," "Goodbye So Soon"

A Little History: Co-directors John Musker and Ron Clements hoped to adapt Eve Titus' Basil Of Baker Street as their debut picture at Disney, but The Black Cauldron's beleaguered production landed the project in doubt. Newly-appointed chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg agreed to fund The Great Mouse Detective on the condition that Musker and Clements finish the film under-schedule and under-budget. They did so, at a budget of $14 million, and the movie's initial $25 million run at the box office bolstered Katzenberg's faith in Disney Animation (and helped pave the way for the Disney Renaissance three years later). A voice cameo from the actual Sherlock Holmes is taken from a 1966 recording of "The Adventure Of The Red-Headed League" – performed by none other than Basil Rathbone, who played Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic creation in a series of films from 1939 to 1946. Characters and plot elements are also taken from previous stories written by Doyle, including Toby the dog ("The Sign Of Four"), and the death of Professor Ratigan/Moriarty ("The Final Solution"). Disney also repeats itself: In a second-act sequence set inside a toy shop, Dumbo makes a cameo as one of the toys; the lizard in Ratigan's gang returns from Alice In Wonderland (1951); and a horse-drawn carriage appearing late in the movie is recycled from Lady And The Tramp (1955). In 1992, the film was re-released as The Adventures Of The Great Mouse Detective; it would retain this title until 2010, when it was changed back to The Great Mouse Detective.

How It Broke New Ground: Though Disney's The Black Cauldron is credited as the first feature-length animated title to use CGI animation, The Great Mouse Detective's climactic sequence (set within the bowels of Big Ben) is the first to place traditionally-animated characters inside a computer-generated environment. The clock gears were created as wire-frame graphics on a computer, then traced and painted onto animated cels.

How It Holds Up Today: I don't have a problem with this one, personally – it's energetic and smart, it's reasonably well plotted, and the animation's a definite improvement on The Rescuers and Fox And The Hound, despite the appropriately dreary and fog-bound London setting. I also like that it plays out against an actual Sherlock Holmes adventure, and Vincent Price's Professor Ratigan is splendidly flamboyant and scary. In retrospect, though, The Great Mouse Detective feels like a stepping stone to bigger and better things - the songs (two by Henry Mancini of Pink Panther fame, the other by Melissa Manchester) are robustly performed but don't have much of a bite, and the colors bear too many signs of de-saturation and smudging when seen in close up. (It would take another three years for Disney to reach the meteoric heights of The Little Mermaid, also directed by Musker and Clements). Together with The Black Cauldron, Detective caps what is possibly the most significant one-two punch in studio history: an unmitigated commercial disaster followed by a sudden, corrective step in the right direction. For a moment there, it seemed as if Disney's animation renaissance was clearly afoot.

Grade: B

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Hold tight, Disney fans – there's more to come. Need to play catch up? Click on the following for: Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, Fun And Fancy Free, Melody Time, The Adventures Of Ichabod And Mr. Toad, Cinderella, Alice In Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady And The Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, One Hundred And One Dalmatians, The Sword In The Stone, The Jungle Book, The AristoCats, Robin Hood, The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh, The Rescuers, The Fox And The Hound, and The Black Cauldron. Please comment! Let me know you're following along!

... FOR "WALT DISNEY'S ANIMATED FIFTY (PART 25 - 'THE BLACK CAULDRON' EDITION)"

2011-09-28T18:20:00.000-07:00

Title: The Black Cauldron (1985; based on the five-part series The Chronicles Of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander)

The Plot: An assistant pig-keeper in medieval times races to find the mystical Black Cauldron, before evil-doers can use its unlimited powers to create an army of the undead.

The Songs: None (!)

A Little History: Disney optioned the rights to Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles Of Prydain series in 1971. Wolfgang Reitherman and original "Nine Old Men" members Ollie Johnston, Frank Thomas and Milt Kahl started work on the project, but studio chief Ron Miller delayed production, feeling that his staff wasn't prepared for such a large-scale assignment. The film was finally given a greenlight in 1981, in hopes that its sword-and-sorcery subject matter would lure teenagers back into theaters. It was the first Disney title since Sleeping Beauty to be shot in 70mm widescreen format, and the first to use multi-plane cameras since The Jungle Book. Plans for a special holographic effects sequence were scrapped when production went over budget (The Black Cauldron ultimately cost $25 million). In 1984, Michael Eisner replaced Miller as Disney's CEO, and selected Jeffrey Katzenberg as chairman of the company. Katzenberg disliked the 90-minute version of the film and ordered producer Joe Hale to cut 10 minutes from the finished product; much of the "Cauldron Born" sequence was removed, including violent footage that would have garnered a PG-13 rating. The Black Cauldron flopped at the box office, grossing only $21 million in U.S. theaters. Because of this - and because Eisner and Katzenberg seemed to have little faith in the future of Disney animation - the entire animation division was uprooted from its Burbank, CA, offices and moved to a warehouse in Glendale, where the focus shifted to faster, cheaper projects.

How It Broke New Ground: The first animated Disney film to receive a PG rating. It was also the first animated Disney title co-produced by Silver Screen Partners II, the first to use computer-generated imagery, and the first to employ the newly-developed Animation Photo Transfer process. APT allowed artists' drawings to be transferred photographically onto cels; unlike xerography, which only had the ability to copy a limited number of colored lines to cels, APT could transfer multiple colors, and was faster and more cost-effective.

How It Holds Up Today: A quick show of hands: How many people out there actually, thoroughly enjoy The Black Cauldron? Aside from Disney's "package films" of the 1940s, it's the one title I hear little about. Maybe that's because Disney fans have no idea what to do with it: You can tell the filmmakers were trying to copy any number of things – Star Wars, Bakshi's Lord Of The Rings, Dungeons & Dragons – yet the storytelling feels oddly inert, as if they completely misunderstood what made the best fantasy adventures work so well in the first place. Our "hero," Taran the assistant pig-keeper, is a reactionary protagonist at best – it takes him a full 45 minutes to make the fateful decision to "Destroy that cauldron!", and even when he attempts to solve the central problem at the end, a different character steps in and solves it for him! (Imagine if Princess Leia had taken Luke Skywalker's place at the climax of Star Wars, and you'd have the same type of narrative-killing effect.) The structure's lame too, introducing characters of great "importance" only trade them away – including Hen Wen the psychic pig, a magic sword with its own theme music, and a weird little monkey creature with Geppetto's face. 14 years of production, on and off, and this is what we get? It's further proof that in those darkest days at Disney, its reach extended fully beyond its grasp.

Grade: D+

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And with that, it's 25 down, 25 to go. Be sure to check back often - we're coming up on the legendary "Disney Renaissance" of 1989-1999, which should be fun. In the meantime, click on the following for numbers 1-24: Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, Fun And Fancy Free, Melody Time, The Adventures Of Ichabod And Mr. Toad, Cinderella, Alice In Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady And The Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, One Hundred And One Dalmatians, The Sword In The Stone, The Jungle Book, The AristoCats, Robin Hood, The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh, The Rescuers, and The Fox And The Hound. Please comment!

... FOR "WALT DISNEY'S ANIMATED FIFTY (PART 24 - 'THE FOX AND THE HOUND' EDITION)"

2011-09-22T20:14:00.000-07:00

My continuing foray into Disney's fifty official Animated Classics. As always, don't hesitate to share your thoughts/memories/complaints in the comments section below. Links to previous entries have also been included below.

Title: The Fox And The Hound (1981; based on the novel by Daniel P. Mannix)

The Plot: An adopted fox cub and a coonhound puppy become fast friends, but their upbringing forces them to become natural enemies.

The Songs: "Best Of Friends," "Lack Of Education," "A Huntin' Man," "Appreciate The Lady," "Goodbye May Seem Forever"

A Little History: This was the last Animated Classic to showcase the talents of Disney's Nine Old Men. Both Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas retired soon after working on preliminary designs for the characters, and were replaced by a younger team of animators – including Don Bluth, Ron Clements, John Musker, and Glen Keane – who stepped in to finish the film. Production actually began in 1977, but creative differences between the old guard and the new kept the project in turnaround. Producer Wolfgang Reitherman's initial designs were rejected by team members who supported directors Ted Berman, Richard Rich, and Art Stevens instead. Then in 1979, a disgruntled Don Bluth quit the studio to form his own company, taking 11 others along with him; Bluth's sudden departure forced the executives at Disney to scrap Fox And The Hound's targeted 1980 Christmas release date while they searched for new talent. By the time production finally wrapped, over 180 people had worked on the film, and yielded 110,000 painted cels and 1,100 painted backgrounds, at a cost of $12 million. Glen Keane storyboarded the climactic bear attack all on his own; many of the film's animators would go on to lead successful careers, such as Tim Burton (Batman, Edward Scissorhands), John Lasseter (Toy Story, future chief creative officer at Pixar and Disney Animation Studios), and Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles). The movie's plot differs greatly from Daniel Mannix's original novel: in the book, Tod and Copper are never friends, Chief is killed by the train while chasing Tod, Tod dies from exhaustion while being chased by Copper, and the animals never speak. Chief was also supposed to be killed during the film, but Art Stevens balked at the idea, deciding it would frighten young children (see also Lady And The Tramp).

How It Broke New Ground: The first animated feature released in Dolby Stereo.

How It Holds Up Today: Another attempt by Disney to recapture the charm and wonder of their earlier films, this one a parable on social norms and how they shape our personalities. It owes a lot to Bambi, as a matter of fact: both tell stories set (mostly) in the forest, with animals forced to experience Life's Hard Truths and a Fall From Innocence; both feature protagonists whose mothers are shot and killed by hunters; and both star loveable side characters as a counterpoint to the main action. But where Bambi utilized multi-plane cameras to give the backgrounds an illusion of depth, the makers of Fox And The Hound rely on a flat, two-dimensional style that robs the story of its intended beauty (it's certainly more colorful than The Rescuers, but the animation itself - how the characters look, how they move - is still just as dull). Fans of the film tend to be divided in two - those who find the movie's first half cloying and sticky-sweet (or vice versa), and those who enjoy the complexities and suspense of its latter stages. You can guess which camp I fall into, though it must be said that the climactic grizzly encounter offers an exciting preview of Disney's greatness to come (animator Glen Keane would go on to supervise the designs for Ariel, the Beast, and Rapunzel in 2010's Tangled). If only the rest of the movie had struggled as hard to keep up.

Grade: B-

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Hold tight,  Disney fans – there's more to come. Need to play catch up? Click on the  following for: Snow  White And The Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, Saludos  Amigos, The Three  Caballeros, Make Mine  Music, Fun And  Fancy Free, Melody  Time,  The  Adventures Of Ichabod And Mr. Toad, Cinderella, Alice In  Wonderland, Peter  Pan,  Lady And  The Tramp, Sleeping  Beauty, One  Hundred And One Dalmatians, The Sword  In The Stone, The  Jungle Book, The  AristoCats, Robin  Hood,  The Many Adventures Of Winnie The  Pooh, and The Rescuers. Please comment! Let me know what you think!

... FOR "WALT DISNEY'S ANIMATED FIFTY (PART 23 - 'THE RESCUERS' EDITION)"

2011-09-17T16:39:00.000-07:00

Title: The Rescuers (1977; based on the novels The Rescuers and Miss Bianca by Margery Sharp)

The Plot: Two mice, members of the International Rescue Aid Society, embark on a mission to save an orphan girl kidnapped by treasure hunters.

The Songs: "The Journey," "Rescue Aid Society," "Tomorrow is Another Day," "Someone's Waiting For You"

A Little History: Veteran animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston consider The Rescuers to be their finest work since Walt Disney's death - a return to the dramatic and heartfelt storytelling of Disney's golden age rather than the comedy-driven larks of the 60s and 70s. Production took four years to complete, and utilized over 40 animators, 750 backgrounds, and 330,000 cel drawings. Cruella De Vil was originally set to return as the villain, until the studio decided against it; her replacement, the flamboyant Madame Medusa, was the last to be animated by Milt Kahl, who reportedly modeled the character after his ex-wife. Look closely during the first Rescue Aid Society meeting, and you'll spot a Mickey Mouse watch hanging from the main wall; later, Bambi and his mother appear during "Someone's Waiting For You," eating grass in Devil's Bayou. The Rescuers grossed over $48 million in the U.S. - Disney's most successful title to date - and even outsold Star Wars in France and Germany. In 1999, its VHS re-release sparked some controversy when it was discovered that a photo of a topless woman appeared in two of the film's 110,000 frames. The Walt Disney Company issued a recall for 3.4 million copies and apologized for the incident, asking that parents continue to "trust and rely on the Disney brand to provide the finest in family entertainment."

How It Broke New Ground: Advances in Xeroxing technology finally permitted the use of medium-gray and purple toner for the outlines on the characters; previously, only black toner had been available, which gave the animation its sketchy, unfinished look. This was also the first Disney film to feature a prologue before the opening titles, and the first to be animated in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio (most were shot in a 1.37:1 ratio, but formatted to 1.75:1 for theaters). The Rescuers is a passing of the torch, so to speak, from the original Nine Old Men (including Ollie Johnston, Frank Thomas and Milt Kahl) to a new roster of animators (Glen Keane, Andy Gaskill and Ron Clements among them), who would eventually lead the Disney Renaissance of '89-'99.

How It Holds Up Today: And so begins the ugliest phase in Disney animated history: The studio seemed to veer away from the stylized "cartoon" look of their past features and settled on a more hyper-realistic approach, with ambient sound, grimy-grainy backgrounds, and soft-focus photography typical of 70s cinema. The colors are drab, as if shot through a muddy filter, and despite all the hoopla surrounding the "new and improved" Xeroxing process, some of the character work is positively atrocious (check out the villainess Medusa, who's got all the weight and dexterity of an ink blot when she isn't seen in close-up). The movie's single saving grace is its plot, which moves at a decent-enough clip as the characters scurry about their assorted goals; but even then the tone is uncertain, mixing unequal parts comedy and schmaltziness (I don't know which is supposed to be funnier - Bob Newhart's trademark, stop-and-start line readings as Bernard the mouse, or that gooey Carpenters-style song score). This is the dullest of all the Animated Classics so far, an attempt by the animators to merge contemporary elements with classical Disney story structure. It's a concoction that, for me at least, never quite gels.

Grade: C-

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Hold tight, Disney fans – there's more to come. Need to play catch up? Click on the following for: Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, Fun And Fancy Free, Melody Time, The Adventures Of Ichabod And Mr. Toad, Cinderella, Alice In Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady And The Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, One Hundred And One Dalmatians, The Sword In The Stone, The Jungle Book, The AristoCats, Robin Hood, and The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh. Please comment! Let me know what you think!

... FOR "FRANCHISE FACE-OFFS (PART 7 - '48HRS.' EDITION)"

2011-09-09T21:14:00.000-07:00

When casting any movie, chemistry is key. Nothing sinks a star vehicle more quickly and efficiently than actors who clearly do not get along – see Marilyn Monroe and Sir Laurence Olivier in 1957's The Prince And The Showgirl for the most notorious example of this, or, more recently, Ben Affleck with basically anyone. Good chemistry, on the other hand, can be like catching lightning in a bottle – can turn even the most routine and cliché-ridden screenplay into something electric, transcendent, sparkling and true.

This is especially important for two genres in particular. First and foremost is the Romantic Comedy, in which an audience is expected to buy into the notion that two characters are destined for each other in all matters of life and love, and that external forces either will not or cannot stand in between them. For this idea to actually stick, the viewer must believe that both actors are fully and truly attracted to each other; otherwise, what is there to root for? Successful examples of this throughout history include Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn (acerbic banter at its best), Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (whose passion for each other often caused them to break out into elaborate dance numbers), and Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman (I'm kidding).

The other genre which relies heavily on the chemistry of its co-stars is the Buddy Film, in which two characters from contrasting backgrounds are begrudgingly partnered together to face a common goal. At first they bicker and fight, as all people with conflicting personalities tend to do, but eventually they come to respect one another and even learn to embrace the differences between them. (It's the non-romantic equivalent of the Romantic Comedy.) The most famous of these big-screen pairings date all the way back to Laurel & Hardy and Abbott & Costello, and then trickle down through the decades, from The Odd Couple to Midnight Run to Thelma & Louise to The Shawshank Redemption.

For the "buddy cop" type of film, one of these men (or both) is, naturally, a police officer. And the movie most often credited with starting this trend is the Lawrence Gordon/Joel Silver-produced, Walter Hill-directed 48HRS. from 1982, starring Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy. While that may be giving it too much credit (Norman Jewison's In The Heat Of The Night, after all, had already won the Academy Award for Best Picture fifteen years before), 48HRS. certainly helped set the template for all "buddy cop" films that came after it. The volatile back- and-forth banter, the nagging neglected girlfriend, the flustered police chief/captain who keeps warning the hero that he'd better straighten up and fly right or "it's your badge!" – it's all here. But these oft-repeated clichés have been copied and recycled so many times since, 48HRS. might seem a little old-hat to modern-day audiences.

Walter Hill, best known for his pared-down, laconic style of filmmaking (see 1975's The Driver or his 1980 Western The Long Riders for the best examples of this), plays it equally straight this time. There are zero directorial flourishes, the point-and-shoot photography by Ric Waite rarely calls attention to itself (there's an early, three-minute tracking shot through a squad room that is so matter-of-fact it's virtually unnoticeable), and there are no explosions – other than the deafening boom of gunfire on the soundtrack. And the movie itself is a fairly straight-forward police procedural for the most part, with Nick Nolte as grizzled police detective Jack Cates, on the trail of a brutal killer named Ganz (James Remar) who's just escaped from the chain gang. Then Eddie Murphy shows up on screen and the movie catches fire.

Murphy plays Reggie Hammond, a fast-talking con man serving a three-year prison sentence for armed robbery. He's sitting in his jail cell when we first meet him, in sunglasses and warbling The Police's "Roxanne" in a slightly off-tune falsetto. Hammond had partnered with Ganz on a previous job, so Cates is forced to sign Reggie out for a two-day stint to help track the killer down. The friction between the two of them is instantaneous: Reggie doesn't trust cops (for obvious reasons), and Cates is slowly but surely revealed as a racist with a short fuse for anyone in his orbit, especially this hotshot black convict released under his care. (Cates: "Now, get this. We ain't partners, we ain't brothers, and we ain't friends. I'm putting you down and keeping you down until Ganz is locked up or dead. And if Ganz gets away, you're gonna be sorry you ever met me!" Reggie: "I'm already sorry.")

This escalating racial tension is what gives 48HRS. much of its edge today. Considering how Cates spends roughly half the movie calling Reggie names like "watermelon" and "nigger," I doubt you'd find anything like it getting a green light from a major studio in our current PC climate. (Even the more popular copycat extravaganzas of recent years, including the Lethal Weapon and Rush Hour series, feature bi-racial partnerships but make little mention of it.) Yet the screenplay by Roger Spottiswoode, Hill, Larry Gross and Steven E. de Souza never shies away from the topic, so that later, when Cates apologizes for his actions (he blames it on his job), Reggie's logical response is, "Yeah, well, doing your job don't explain everything, Jack."

The most famous scene in the movie - in which Reggie, on a wager from Cates, shakes down a crowded redneck bar for information on Ganz - is the apotheosis of this theme. It's not the rip- roaring laugh riot you probably expect - Reggie simply wades in through a sea of bigoted white faces, smashes a shot glass through the mirror behind the bar when he isn't shown the proper respect, and then proceeds to intimidate every man and woman in the place, until he gets what he's looking for. The scene is justly celebrated, I think, not because of how funny it is (it's not, really), but because of the way it showcased Eddie Murphy's innate ability to charge into a room and command immediate respect. That he's a fish out of water gives the viewer a little something extra to root for; it's refreshing, after so much verbal abuse from Nolte, to see the guy come out on top.

And so Eddie Murphy, Movie Star, announced himself to the world. There's a real sense of discovery here, an electricity to Murphy's performance, that, sadly, would never be equaled again. Though his follow-up films (Trading Places and Beverly Hills Cop) were hits, the general consensus is that Eddie became too cool for the room - too busy being "Eddie Murphy" to take on projects that really mattered.

48HRS. matters, for the trends that it started, for the candid, non-jokey approach to its subject matter, and for the way it helped bridge the gap between blacks and whites in America. The chemistry between Nolte and Murphy is important too: like everything else in the movie, their prickly partnership set the tone for all buddy cop formulas that followed, though few have been quite as audacious or racially-tinged.

Let that be the lesson here: When pairing any two actors together, as buddies or romantic partners or what have you, make sure the differences between them are eclectic enough that they actually have something worth arguing about. And if you're lucky enough to bring those characters back for a sequel, please make absolutely sure that those differences are still relevant today.

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The Original: 48HRS. (Walter Hill, 1982)

Cast: Nick Nolte, Eddie Murphy, James Remar, Sonny Landham, Annette O'Toole, David Patrick Kelly, Frank McRae, Brion James

Plot: A San Francisco police detective partners with a fast-talking criminal hustler to track down a brutal killer.

How It Set The Tone: A straight-forward police procedural for the most part, with little flash or show-off camera trickery from director Walter Hill. Then Eddie Murphy shows up (in his feature film debut), and elevates it to something higher. His volatile, racially-charged byplay with grizzled detective Nick Nolte gives the movie its edge, which may seem a bit dated to modern-day audiences. The film is also notable for introducing many plot elements of the "buddy cop" genre (bickering stars, neglected girlfriends, flustered police chiefs) which have long since become cliché.

Room For Improvement: If you haven't seen the movie yet, watch out: it's unapologetically smarmy and racist and profane, even by today's standards. A little more conscious style might have helped (and some conscious humor too), though the no-frills approach is typical of Hill's pared-to-the-bones iconography. And the Chinatown alley climax feels more like an afterthought, as if the screenwriters, like the characters themselves, were literally backed into a corner with no place else to go.

Grade: B

Sequel: Another 48 HRS. (Walter Hill, 1990)

Returning Cast: Eddie Murphy, Nick Nolte, Brion James

New Cast: Kevin Tighe, Ed O'Ross

Plot: A cop and an ex-convict are forced to team up again, after they've been targeted by a mysterious criminal mastermind known only as "The Ice-Man."

How It Compares: Not much has changed in the interim between the first movie and this – Murphy's name comes before Nolte's in the titles now, but that's about it. In fact, almost all of Another 48 plays like a remake rather than a sequel – entire sequences are lifted from the '82 version, with added "twists" for, you know, variety: Eddie warbles James Brown instead of The Police, there's a bus chase with motorcycles in place of Nolte's beat-up sky-blue Cadillac, Eddie shakes down another bar for information but winds up shooting someone in the leg, and there's a standoff at the end with Eddie used (again) as a human shield (though Cates's aim is a bit off the mark this time). Also, the violence is so comically over the top, it borders on the ridiculous; I actually lost count of how many characters flew backwards through large panes of glass, after they'd been riddled with gunfire. As for the chemistry between Murphy and Nolte, the edge is gone. Their bickering back- and-forth defines the entire movie: empty, shrill and shallow, a poor mirror of the original.

Grade: C-

More To Come?: There had been whispers of a third 48, after the second movie grossed over $80 million in U.S. box office sales. But Jack Cates and Reggie Hammond, for better or worse, would never partner together again. There's always hope, though, for the almighty remake or reboot.

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Hungry for more Franchise Face-Offs? No problem! Click here, here, here, here, here, and here. This is, by the way, Part One of a Buddy Cop Face-Off - a sub-series leading up to Warner Bros.' Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows, due this December.

... FOR "WALT DISNEY'S ANIMATED FIFTY (PART 22 - 'THE MANY ADVENTURES OF WINNIE THE POOH' EDITION)

2011-09-06T21:19:00.000-07:00

Title: The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh (1977; based on the books by A.A. Milne)

The Plot: In the Hundred Acre Wood, a honey-loving bear cavorts with friends Piglet, Rabbit, Eeyore, Owl, Kanga, Roo, and Tigger too.

The Songs: "Winnie The Pooh," "Up, Down And Touch The Ground," "Rumbly In My Tumbly," "Little Black Rain Cloud," "Mind Over Matter," "A Rather Blustery Day," "The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers," "Heffalumps And Woozles," "When The Rain Rain Rain Came Down," "Hip Hip Pooh-Ray!"

A Little History: Winnie the Pooh began as a series of popular children's books by English author Alan Alexander Milne. Milne named the character after a teddy bear owned by his son, Christopher Robin, which in turn had taken its name from a bear cub serving as mascot for the Second Canadian Infantry Brigade during WWII. Walt Disney's daughters were fans of the books and he purchased the film rights in 1961. However, because American audiences were not yet familiar with the characters, Disney decided to release a trio of Winnie the Pooh featurettes instead (tacked to the front of live- action features), with plans to combine them into feature-length format later on. The first of these, Winnie The Pooh And The Honey Tree, was released in 1966 and shown in front of The Ugly Dachshund; the second, Winnie The Pooh And The Blustery Day, was released in 1968 with The Horse In The Gray Flannel Suit, and won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film; and Winnie The Pooh And Tigger Too opened in 1974 with The Island At The Top Of The World. New material was created to link all three stories together in 1977, including a final segment called "We Say Good-Bye," based on sketches from House On Pooh Corner. Disney animators outlined their backgrounds in ink to mimic the original 1920s drawings by Ernest Shepard. Songs were written again by the Sherman Brothers; as an homage to Sergei Prokofiev's Peter And The Wolf, score composer Buddy Black assigned each character a different musical instrument, including a baritone horn (Pooh), clarinet (Rabbit), bass clarinet (Eeyore), flute (Kanga), piccolo (Roo), and oboe (Piglet).

How It Broke New Ground: Not much to speak of, unless you count Disney's plan ahead of time to combine all three Winnie the Pooh short subjects into one film as particularly groundbreaking.

How It Holds Up Today: While technically a "package" film – à la Fun And Fancy Free and The Three Caballeros – The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh works better as a full-length feature than you'd probably expect. For one thing, Milne's stories were fairly episodic by nature, moving without flash or fanfare from one adventure to the next – so the combined effort, I would say, is an adequate representation of the books. For another, the tone of each piece is pretty much the same across the board, so that it's easier to re-adjust between segments. The movie itself is a charmer from the very start (though Winnie The Pooh And Tigger Too is a bit of a slog), with characters that rightfully earned their place in the hearts of moviegoers worldwide. Pooh and his pals are cuddlier, obviously, and more colorful than their literary counterparts, but for once the Xeroxing feels appropriate, and compliments the low-key abstractness of the ink-painted backgrounds. I like the subtle humor too – this is easily the most laid-back of all the Disney films, but it's warmer and wiser for all that. If only the songs by the Sherman brothers held together so well; though "Rumbly In My Tumbly" and "The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers" are recognizable to this day, "Heffalumps And Woozles" is an obvious rip-off of the pink elephant song from Dumbo (with some of the same lyrics, no less!).

Grade: B+

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Hold tight, Disney fans – there's more to come. Need to play catch up? Click on the following for: Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, Fun And Fancy Free, Melody Time, The Adventures Of Ichabod And Mr. Toad, Cinderella, Alice In Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady And The Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, One Hundred And One Dalmatians, The Sword In The Stone, The Jungle Book, The AristoCats, and Robin Hood. Please comment! Let me know what you think!