There’s this term they got now, “Disney adult.” I’d rather jump in a pool of lava than be called that. I feel that it goes without saying that animation is an artform, that Disney is a historically great animation studio, and that adults can appreciate their films if they want to, so turning it into an identity group is not necessary. I’m not a person who would strut around in a Winnie the Pooh letterman’s jacket like I think I’m Ryan Gosling in DRIVE, I’m just an ordinary respecter of excellence in animation.
Most of my favorites are ones from before I was born, like PINOCCHIO, but I also respect the now-vaunted “renaissance” period of the ‘90s and enjoyed most of them in theaters. I was in my teens or twenties then, so I was never indoctrinated by the clamshell VHS tapes, and maybe my tastes are just weird. I used to rate BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and ALADDIN at the top but to me their greatness has faded a little with time, so I’m afraid I have THE RESCUERS DOWN UNDER, POCAHONTAS and TARZAN at the top. I know millennials love MULAN and I wish I did too, it seems like the subject matter I’d like best, I just think the animation and story are mediocre by their standards.
And, even worse, I never liked THE LION KING (as I confessed when I reviewed its widely derided, $1.664 billion box office grossing 2019 remake). I’ve watched the original several times over its decades of existence, always thinking this is gonna be the time it works for me. Never does. (read the rest of this shit…)
DR. DOLITTLE starts the same way DIRTY WORK did: with Norm MacDonald narrating a wacky story about the main character when he was a kid. But instead of being the main character himself and talking about a dog getting violated by another dog, MacDonald turns out to be voicing a dog named Lucky who later gets violated Jeffrey Tambor. The main character is a live action human played by the voice of the dragon in MULAN, Eddie Murphy.
John Dolittle is a medical doctor with a gorgeous wife named Lisa (Kristen Wilson, who played Robin Givens in TYSON) and cute daughters Maya (Kyla Pratt, LOVE & BASKETBALL) and Charisse (Raven-Symone of later-Cosby-Show fame) and he’s kind of a self-absorbed dick who’s in such denial about having been able to talk to animals when he was a kid that he refuses to even learn what type of animal his daughter’s guinea pig is. It says right there in the title that he’s a doctor, but they still give him the standard issue Workaholic Dad Neglects His Family storyline. His office is working on a Big Merger that would make him rich, and his partner Dr. Weller (Oliver Platt, EXECUTIVE DECISION, also in BULWORTH that summer) is always hassling him because they have to impress Mr. Calloway (Peter Boyle, THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE, had been in SPECIES II in April) into signing The Big Contract after The Big Presentation. (read the rest of this shit…)
“So, will this little pink lunchness fulfill his destiny, nourishmentally speaking?” “We shall see.”
With BABE, writer-producer George Miller (and director Chris Noonan) created a warm little perfectly-told tale of a pig and a farmer finding happiness by violating social norms. (If that sounds gross to you, that’s not what I meant.) For the bigger, darker, weirder sequel, BABE: PIG IN THE CITY, Miller dropped the pure-hearted little pig into that world’s version of a noisy, chaotic metropolis, knowing he’d face the challenge with his head held high and make it out with his spirit intact, brightening lives along the way.
The Hoggett farm in BABE looks straight out of a storybook, but you figure that’s an anomaly. When the family comes over for Christmas, bringing modern attitude and technology, they seem to be visiting from the real world.
Maybe not, it turns out. Esme Hoggett (Magda Szubanski, who was only 37 at the time! Holy shit!) and “the wee pig” get stranded in a major city. They don’t say which one, but it’s whichever city that is where the skyline includes the Hollywood sign, the Sydney Opera House, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Eiffel Tower, among others. (No Space Needle, I’m afraid.) Garish billboards hang above picturesque canals and cobblestone roads. Most of the hotels don’t accept pigs, but they find one secretly housing a bunch of dogs, cats, chimps and an orangutan. (read the rest of this shit…)
Disney’s 1967 animated version of THE JUNGLE BOOK was pretty much a hangout movie. A bunch of animal dudes kickin it in the jungle, occasionally singing songs. Like HOUSE PARTY but with snakes and shit. The tiger Shere Khan plays the part of Full Force.
Now modern Disney and director Jon Favreau (executive producer, GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS) have brought in more of the world and narrative of Rudyard Kipling’s stories for an excellent live action(ish) version that captures plenty of the spirit of the old one while also being totally different. It uses versions of the original songs and even evokes Disney animation with a painted version of the castle logo, but never feels redundant. It’s like putting on glasses and seeing that version in more detail, from the visuals to the story.
I have to admit, after COWBOYS & ALIENS I kinda thought maybe we got too excited about Favreau as a director because of IRON MAN. Clearly I was wrong. This is a movie I can’t imagine many directors pulling off. Like with IRON MAN he finds a perfect balance between nerdy love for the source material and clear vision of how to tell the story in a dramatic way we haven’t quite seen on screen before.
And it can’t be easy competing with the memory of Stephen Sommers’ 1994 version.
Looking back at these movies from the summer of 1995 is really interesting to me, but it doesn’t seem like a very good summer for movies. I mean, DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE was really good. That was at the very beginning.
Now all the sudden it’s August and this G-rated Australian talking animal movie comes out. There were signs that it might be interesting for that sort of thing: It had a nice storybook look to it, and a new idea of digitally animating mouth movements and expressions on animals instead of just feeding them peanut butter.
But you guys, BABE is more than just better than expected, and ended up being a phenomenon. Even though it’s seen as a kid’s movie, it’s one of such precise, economical storytelling, such unique vision and such sweet sincerity that it ended up with 7 well deserved Oscar noms (short for nominations): Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (James Cromwell supporting a bunch of farm animals!), Best Art Direction, Best Editing and Best Visual Effects (which it won – take that, only other nominee APOLLO 13).
And that was not just Oscar silliness, or the world getting swept up in some crazy 1995 shit. I just watched it again and 20 years later BABE is still a perfect movie.
For some reason I am reviewing THE ARISTOCATS. You gotta fuck around and try out different shit sometimes, as my dear grandmother used to say.
THE ARISTOCATS is not one of the better Walt Disney pictures in my opinion. It was the first one they made after Disney’s death, although he’d approved it before he died. It seems to rehash parts of LADY AND THE TRAMP and 101 DALMATIONS without being as good as either. At the beginning a nice old rich lady in Paris is drawing up her will and since she has no living relatives she wants to leave it all to her cat Duchess (Eva Gabor, the same voice as Miss Bianca in THE RESCUERS) and her three kittens. This is upsetting to her human butler, who responds by giving the cats date rape drugs and abandoning them out in the country.
For a second I was thinking I’d already seen this, it was so familiar, but then I realized I was thinking of GARFIELD: A TALE OF TWO KITTIES, which had almost the same plot. But great minds think alike, you know. (read the rest of this shit…)
When last I saw Garfield and friends, I was in a Bush-re-election-induced mania, the type that would cause a man to watch the movie GARFIELD. Now I decided to watch part 2 as part of our nation’s celebration of the comic strip going on in San Diego. That shows you how tolerant we, as a society, have grown toward Garfield. It’s like the whole thing about a lobster in a pot and the burner turns on and it gets slowly hotter and the fuckin thing doesn’t notice ’til it’s too late because it’s so gradual. Somehow I went from being horrified by the bizarre digital abomination that stars in this movie to not really being that bothered by it when I choose to watch part 2 of my own free will. (read the rest of this shit…)
With THE AVENGERS still going around punching the shit out of every box office record stupid enough to make eye contact with it maybe it’s time to take a look at the other important Marvel Comics films. Obviously we’ve already gone over the most culturally and historically significant ones (BLADE, BLADE II, THE PUNISHER, THE PUNISHER, and THE PUNISHER’S WAR ZONE), but one that we have not addressed is 1986’s HOWARD THE DUCK, from the creators of STAR WARS and AMERICAN GRAFFITI. I don’t see how this one could wrong. (read the rest of this shit…)
The most philosophically ambitious of the 3 PG-rated movies I watched is the one that’ll probly get the least credit for it, George Motherfuckin Two Men Enter One Man Leaves Miller’s HAPPY FEET TWO. And first of all I want to give them credit for spelling out the number in their sequel title and not misspelling it for a pun. I’m sure it’s not the first spelled out non-homonym sequel title in history, but I couldn’t name you another one. (read the rest of this shit…)
In order to truly understand how OWL 300 is the talking bird movie for our times, one must also explore the quintessential talking bird movies of other eras. And the one that came to mind when I thought about that was the one from 1974, JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL. I don’t know if you guys remember this one, but it was a huge book at the time, but not a kids book like all movies are based on now. It was seen as this inspirational, philosophical type of deal. (read the rest of this shit…)
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June 24, 1994
June 26, 1998
John Dolittle is a medical doctor with a gorgeous wife named Lisa (Kristen Wilson, who played Robin Givens in 
“So, will this little pink lunchness fulfill his destiny, nourishmentally speaking?”
Disney’s 1967 animated version of THE JUNGLE BOOK was pretty much a hangout movie. A bunch of animal dudes kickin it in the jungle, occasionally singing songs. Like 
For some reason I am reviewing THE ARISTOCATS. You gotta fuck around and try out different shit sometimes, as my dear grandmother used to say.
With THE AVENGERS still going around punching the shit out of every box office record stupid enough to make eye contact with it maybe it’s time to take a look at the other important Marvel Comics films. Obviously we’ve already gone over the most culturally and historically significant ones (BLADE, 
The most philosophically ambitious of the 3 PG-rated movies I watched is the one that’ll probly get the least credit for it, George Motherfuckin Two Men Enter One Man Leaves Miller’s HAPPY FEET TWO. And first of all I want to give them credit for spelling out the number in their sequel title and not misspelling it for a pun. I’m sure it’s not the first spelled out non-homonym sequel title in history, but I couldn’t name you another one.
In order to truly understand how OWL 300 is the talking bird movie for our times, one must also explore the quintessential talking bird movies of other eras. And the one that came to mind when I thought about that was the one from 1974, JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL. I don’t know if you guys remember this one, but it was a huge book at the time, but not a kids book like all movies are based on now. It was seen as this inspirational, philosophical type of deal. 
