Disney Daze: Week 48: Bolt

In 2012, this intrepid reporter plans to watch, in chronological order, all of Walt Disney Studios' 52 theatrically-released animated features, one per week.

Like Meet the Robinsons before it, Disney's 2008 release Bolt is a by-product of the regime change at the studio. The initial inklings of the film were devised and shepherded by Lilo & Stitch creator Chris Sanders under the working title American Dog. However, Pixar chief John Lasseter, who had been installed as the new head of feature animation, did not like the direction Sanders' work was going and had him replaced, scrapping much of the completed work on the film. The germ of the idea remained the same throughout the process but the final product feels more sleek than Sanders' initial treatment. The film that became Bolt tells the story of a famed television dog who becomes stranded and must find his way back home, all the while believing that he is still on television. Gone are the offbeat elements included by Sanders like a one-eyed cat and radioactive rabbits, as well as the more idiosyncratic animation style, pieces of which can still be found floating around online. 

Compared to its two predecessors, Chicken Little and Meet the Robinsons, Bolt is a vast improvement in most every respect. First and foremost, the computer-generated animation is a major step forward. This is evident in two different ways in the first two scenes. The film opens with an idyllic prologue showing the young girl Penny picking a puppy out of a litter at an animal shelter. The scene is quiet, with soft golden lighting and some wonderful set design. The texture on the linoleum floor and the tangible presence of a window with reflections and beams of light streaming through it look more fully realized than anything from the last couple of pictures, both of which ascribed the clean, plastic sheen common to CGI to nearly every conceivable surface, be it wood or metal, man-made material or organic. 

The scene following this muted meeting of canine and companion showcases the truly great action work of the animators. After a title card announces the passage of five years, we are thrust abruptly into a segment of the dynamic television show Bolt as if it were truly happening. Penny's father has been kidnapped and she and the dog must race to save him, thwarting helmeted henchmen armed with electric claws and ticking timebombs every step of the way. The sequence is the best action scene of any animated feature this side of Pixar's The Incredibles. It is a bravura achievement that marries evermore hysterical climaxes with fluid editing and a clear sense of space. Now, if the events that transpire in this snippet of the television occurred weekly, Bolt would be the most expensive show in the history of the medium. Helicopters explode, trucks are flipped on their sides, and sonic booms tear across the desert destroying everything in their path. 

The story of how Bolt finds himself alone in the world for the first time, away from the lights and make-up of Hollywood, and how he comes to terms with his ordinariness, is told in a crisp style that flows much more effortlessly than many of its cartoon contemporaries. There are some nice little touches along the way, as we see Bolt learning how to become a regular dog, begging for scraps and enjoying the simple comforts of wind on his face.  His journey back home is punctuated with some more clever action pieces that subvert and contort the tropes seen in the bombastic Hollywood opening. Midway through the film, an escape from an animal shelter also ends with a gigantic fireball but is is achieved by all-together different means than the shameless blockbuster production in the beginning. 

Accompanying Bolt on his cross-country journey are two animal sidekicks, a skeptical, street-smart alley cat named Mittens and a hamster with a severe case of television addiction named Rhino. Mittens is voiced by the comedienne Susie Essman as a bit of a PG-rated version of her character Susie on HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm. Mittens is easily the best character in the film and Essman lends some surprisingly serious emotional weight to the film's most satisfying backstory. It is unfortunate that she and the audience are saddled with Rhino, who cancels out most of Mittens' excellence by being the most annoying character in the entire feature. The character is a brash fanboy who fawns over Bolt and uses the word "awesome" in nearly every sentence. Rhino spends the whole movie so amped up that there is no room in his character for nuance or reflection. It is interesting to note that while the movie hinges on Bolt being reunited with Penny, and Mittens is emotionally scarred from being left behind by her "people" to fend for herself, Rhino has no compunction when he decides to abandon his owner to set off of a two thousand-mile journey that ends with him becoming adopted by Penny. One pictures the poor old woman who lost her hamster crying at night to herself in the trailer park.

The other peripheral characters are tedious as well, with Penny's stereotypically sleazy Hollywood agent vying for vexatious supremacy with a legion of localized pigeons who adopt the most obvious, exaggerated mannerisms of their chosen town, be it New York, Los Angeles, or the South. The sunbaked birds native to Southern California try to pitch Bolt their "original" idea for the show (aliens--which may be a sly commentary on the preponderence of science-fiction elements creeping into so many Disney features over the last decade) and at one point yell the choice phrase "holler back" in their most stoned drawl. These contemporary sign posts littered throughout the script cheapen the story and resign the production to an unfortunate time capsule.

Curiously enough, Bolt contains more product placement than any Disney film since Oliver & Company, coincidentally the studio's last animated film to star a dog. The previous film shilled for Ryder trucks among other things, but the company appears to have switched allegiances to U-Haul sometime in the ensuing decades. Also, a less-than-flattering sign of the then-still-fresh Disney/Pixar merger can be seen in the film's use of the Apple logo on all computer products. Steve Jobs negotiated his upstart company a multi-billion dollar payday and as a bonus got to plaster the logo of his day job anywhere he damn well pleased.

For all of its growing pains and corporate compromises, Bolt is an entertaining film with its fair share of likable qualities. The often stellar animation and solid story are positive signs for a wayward company trying to find its footing in a new cinematic landscape. The film successfully works a clever conceit around a decently devised emotional core. Like a dog, the film can be amusing and comforting, but loud and obnoxious as well. One can bemoan the lost opportunity and missing charm of a personal, left-field production but sometimes what one needs is simple reassurance. Bolt provides the sort of enjoyments one may look for when seeking out a Disney picture. The film is bereft of surprises but it is a decent, reliable companion. 

Disney Daze: Week 47: Meet the Robinsons

In 2012, this intrepid reporter plans to watch, in chronological order, all of Walt Disney Studios' 52 theatrically-released animated features, one per week.

Between the release of Chicken Little and 2007's Meet the Robinsons, there was a massive overhaul in the upper ranks of Walt Disney Studios. CEO Michael Eisner was ousted and replaced by Bob Iger. Iger immediately set about trying to steer the company back on track in terms of quality family entertainment, a demographic in which Disney was always the undisputed powerhouse. However, in the previous decade, upstarts like DreamWorks and Pixar were frequently outperforming the feature work of the company. Iger decided one of the biggest means of keeping pace with the competition involved simply absorbing it and so in 2006, Walt Disney Studios purchased Pixar Animation for $7.4 billion. In so doing, Iger installed the Emeryville company's head John Lasseter, director of Toy Story and A Bug's Life, as the head of Disney Feature Animation.

Meet the Robinsons became a product of this transitional time and it is apparent in every single frame. The film was partially reworked with Lasseter's involvement and one can see his fingerprints in the film's early going, where we meet orphaned Lewis, a pie-in-the-sky science geek who is constantly dreaming up inventions in his shared room at the orphanage. The film tries valiantly at the outset to build an emotional connection with the audience, showing this boy's longing to find his unknown mother. One can almost see the Lasseter production notes floating by as Lewis sits on the roof, notching another mark in his wooden crate that tallies his failed adoption interviews. The heartstrings are tuned and ready to be plucked.

After a particularly destructive meeting wherein Lewis demonstrates his peanut butter-and-jelly gun to his prospective peanut-allergic parents, he settles on the idea of creating a device that digs into one's brain and uncovers long lost memories, namely the face of his mother, whom he only saw once as an infant when she dropped him off at the orphanage's door. He tinkers away and builds a prototype of the contraption which he plans to unveil at the school science fair. However, a mysterious new boy warns Lewis of a treacherous man in a bowler hat who will try to sabotage the project. Indeed the man succeeds in ruining the science fair and steals the device for his own personal gain. Lewis soon learns that both strangers are from the future. The child, Wilbur Robinson, takes a skeptical Lewis forward in time to prove it. There Lewis meets Wilbur's wacky family and a thunderingly obvious reveal about their relation to the orphan boy lurks around every corner. Meanwhile the behatted villain manages to ruin the future with his chicanery and it is up to Lewis to set things right. Along the way, he learns his worth and finds a surrogate family.

The character design in the film is resoundingly generic, although it is a significant step up from the atrociousness of Chicken Little. Many characters even resemble specific creations from children's entertainment of the past. The character of Wilbur looks like a cross between Japan's Astro Boy and Eddie Munster. Meanwhile the bowler hat guy recalls Dudley Do-Right's nemesis Snidely Whiplash and the tormentor of the Baudelaire orphans, Count Olaf. The animated depiction of the future metropolis is sufficiently sleek and shiny (set to a really great choral pop tune by composer Danny Elfman), while the alternate-timelined dystopia, full of bowler shaped factories and lifeless zombies, is expertly, horrifically conceived. 

By far, the film's worst element is its approach to comedy which is broad and brackish. The filmmakers equate humor with manic energy and they subsequently turn everything up to eleven. The extended Robinson clan, which includes a robot and twins who live in planter boxes, are all completely, irrevocably bonkers. They are quirky to a fault and the middle portion of the film is exhaustingly spent in their crazed company. The goofiness is simply a series of unexpected events designed to substitute for actual jokes. This is best exemplified during a chase scene that involves an octopus being shot out of a cannon at a rampaging dinosaur. You know, just because. In fact, at one point Lewis, who has been disguised in a Carmen Miranda-type fruit hat, comments on yet another daft event by saying, "that was unexpected." Even the characters are non-plussed by the comedic efforts of the filmmakers.

There are two refrains repeated throughout Meet the Robinsons that seem to sum up the picture quite succinctly. The first is uttered by a series of animals mind-controlled by the villain, "I'm not sure how well this plan was thought through." This phrase rings in a viewers head after each increasingly wacky non-sequitur or abrupt tonal shift. The second phrase is Keep Moving Forward, which is the story's message, and could serve as a proxy rallying cry for the picture's production. If that previous joke or plot thread didn't work out, ignore it, something else will come along to distract the audience. In the movie, the slogan is hammered home so many times that the filmmakers even end up making fun of it in a bombastic fireworks-laden show-stopping production number. This sloganeering saturation does nothing more than dilute a truly important life lesson. This is a shame because the movie ends with a lovely quote which reveals the motto originated with Walt Disney himself:

"Around here, however, we don't look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we're curious...and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths."

Unfortunately, Meet the Robinsons does none of the maverick things a visionary of Walt Disney's caliber would strive for. The film assimilates its 3-D effects as nothing more than the gimmick it most always is. It throws gags at the screen with no rhyme, reason or wit. And the personalities onscreen are braying, brackish buffoons, shouting and jostling one another for a modicum of screentime. The film, like its protagonist, shows the glimmers of promise but fails many times before it achieves any sort of success.

Disney Daze: Week 46: Chicken Little

In 2012, this intrepid reporter plans to watch, in chronological order, all of Walt Disney Studios' 52 theatrically-released animated features, one per week.

Chicken Little begins with indecisive narration trying to find the best way to introduce the story of a child who raised a panic by declaring that the sky was falling. Unlike Woody Allen's iconic introduction to Manhattan which uses a similar conceit to transcendent effect, Chicken Little just wants to show us how hip and cool it is in comparison to your classic Disney features. In succession, star Zach Braff briefly entertains before throwing out the ideas of starting with "once upon a time", the epic savanna hymn of The Lion King, and the fabled storybook opening familiar from Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. Then, instead of finding the perfect artistic solution to his creative conundrum, he basically just gives up and lets the movie play out.

This opening sequence is a perfect synthesis of the problems running rampant throughout Chicken Little. The film wants to avoid any attempts at looking staid or conventional but instead of actually attempting anything new, it just throws crap at the screen, hoping to distract us from its lack of ideas. For example, after Chicken Little is shamed by the town's people for his hysteria, a cottage industry grows up, making a quick buck retelling the tale of the crazy chicken in audiobooks and an advertised forthcoming movie. Chicken Little's father, a widower who was a local athlete and the popular inverse of his awkward child, comments on the ridiculousness of turning the paper-thin story into a feature-length film. Of course, this is intended as a winking nod to the audience, who have themselves purchased a ticket to said story, but it also feels like an omission of guilt. The filmmakers are working with the most innocuous germ of an idea. At one point, Chicken's friend Abby consoles him about the feature film, suggesting that if he's lucky it will just go straight to video.

Padding the film out are a nauseous mix of terrible thematic tunes by the likes of Barenaked Ladies and Five for Fighting, and every obvious, lazy pop song a children's film could hope for. Besides the requisite C + C Music Factory command for everyone to dance now, we get a Spice Girls karaoke party and an alien invasion cued to R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World as We Know It". Worst of all, Chicken's portly, priggish, Porky Piggish friend Runt has a nasty habit of calming himself in times of trouble by singing empowering seventies anthems like "Stayin' Alive", "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and "I Will Survive". At times the film feels like a veiled infomercial for a Time/Life boxed set containing all of the AM hits you know and loathe.

Meanwhile, the hucksters in the Yucks Department must have misunderstood their bureau's stated aim. For instead of trying to make us laugh, they choose most consistently to simply gross us out. As the rotund Runt bounces down a hill, he is accompanied by an orchestra's worth of belches, of every octave and timbre one could ever hope for. Later, we get the great privilege of listening in as Abby and Runt think up every conceivable synonym for "urine" their poetic minds can dream up. It is an outright travesty that this film was not even nominated for Best Original Screenplay. The best material the screenwriters can come up with is having a P.E. coach separate a dodgeball game into the popular and unpopular kids.

Yes, the music is horrible, the story threadbare, and the dialogue insulting, but these elements pale in contemptible comparison to the abysmal, appalling animation. Animation, the vanguard of the Disney legacy, an elegant, evocative medium of ink and paint and ones and zeroes, responsible for such masterful moments as Bambi ice skating and Figaro the cat swinging from an open window, is put to use in Chicken Little to create the largest rogues' gallery of ill-shapen, unpleasant looking creations the eye has ever seen. It is a testament to the film's drunken drive for disfigurement that the character of Abby, a buck-toothed version of the fabled Ugly Duckling, does not stand out from the crowd. She looks quite normal next to this community of monstrosities.

The film follows Chicken's path as he tries to redeem himself in the eyes of the town and more importantly, his father. When far-flung aliens arrive he finds his opportunity. In trying to return a three-eyed alien child--that in keeping with the film's dedication to the uninspired, looks like a rough-draft rejected from Pixar's Monsters, Inc.--to its mechanized, rampaging parents, Chicken proves his mettle. The apocalyptic alien attack brings father and son together as Chicken Little becomes a resourceful, fearless hero. The town forgives Chicken and surprise, a dance number ensues.

Chicken Little concludes with the town gathered at the cinema to watch Hollywood's adaptation of the preceding events. The film within the film is an overblown action extravaganza with a tall, muscular Chicken Little and a sexy Abby. The joke is that Hollywood will always mess up the heart of a story by throwing in explosive bells and titillating whistles. But it seems as though the filmmakers do not realize that they are guilty of the exact same shenanigans. Instead of focusing on the emotional story of a father accepting his awkward son, they decided to populate their film with the laziest pop culture references and overplayed pop hits of the 1970s. Chicken Little is just as generic as the films it winkingly nods at. It is a complete and utter failure of a picture, an eighty-minute audio/visual babysitter that condescends to even its most juvenile demographics. This piece of animated pablum serves no artistic purpose. It is a big, bold bruise on the Disney canon. Now would be a good time to panic. 

Disney Daze: Week 45: Home on the Range

In 2012, this intrepid reporter plans to watch, in chronological order, all of Walt Disney Studios' 52 theatrically-released animated features, one per week.

Home on the Range may be the most curious production ever released by Walt Disney Feature Animation. The perplexities are myriad but they truly boil down to two niggling inquiries: how and why was this film made? It is easy to see how the high concepts of films like Treasure Planet and Atlantis: The Lost Empire secured their respective productions the coveted greenlight, but how were the studio brass of the early 2000s adequately convinced of the box office prospects of a musical Western starring a cow voiced by Roseanne Barr? The final film is an anachronistic jumble of down-home, simple pleasures and brash, in-your-face hijinks. It is decidedly the product of a studio that had, for all intents and purposes, lost its way. Admittedly, this confusion occasionally resulted in some great left-field work, notably Lilo & Stitch, but that charming film was easily the diamond in the rough. 

The screenplay to Home on the Range unfolds like it was hastily scribbled out over the weekend. It is as if the filmmakers came up with a title and then wrote down the first ideas that popped into their heads, never bothering to refine or question their work. The film stars three cows, voiced by Judi Dench, Jennifer Tilly, and the aforementioned Roseanne. One of the cows is a stuck-up society woman, another a beatific airhead, and the last a brash, loudmouth. Try and guess who is who. The cows are faced with eviction from their peaceful little farm by a villainous cattle thief whose reward bounty happens to be the exact price needed to save their property. The cows decide to track the thief down themselves and they set off across the vast, unknown prairie. The script contains two modes of humor, the first being the inappropriate release of bodily functions, with Roseanne's heifer Maggie starting up an impromptu belching contest with three little piggies. She also works blue, telling some ogling farm animals that her mammoth udders are in fact, real. The second brand of humor is the dreaded pun, with the characters checking off every lazy bon mot that could be haphazardly stretched to the farm setting. These include such choice turns of phrase as, "phony express", "wake up and smell the alfalfa", and "what does she specialize in, sour cream?" the latter referring to Dame Judi Dench's haughty behavior.

To its credit, Home on the Range does possess a handful of positive attributes. First and foremost is the animation style, which is chock full of exaggerated line work, very different than any design usually associated with Disney. The style also feels like a throwback, looking more like it was made for a fast-and-loose short from the forties or fifties, not the sleek designs of the new millennium. The character designs never reach the level of the truly iconic, like the inspired design of say, Cruella de Vil, but they are often quite fun to look at. The best might be the weasly Wesley, who is drawn like a diminutive hybrid of Gomez Addams and the character's voice actor, Steve Buscemi. 

There a quite a few bits of eye-popping animation interspersed throughout the film as well, including a brief transition from a flat frame to the widescreen format, a juxtaposition that works a hundred times better than the same effect when it appeared in the previous Brother Bear. Here it is kinetically added to an action-packed daydream created by the energetic sheriff's horse, Buck, who envisions himself singlehandedly fighting off a posse of bandits. Later, the filmmakers pull off a thrilling action climax that combines some truly energizing point-of-view shots on a roller coaster mine train ride and a sparkling, high-powered explosion courtesy of some brake sparks and a whole lot of TNT.  

Despite the animation's strengths, the best work in the film is reserved for the paint department, who frequently find the brightest, boldest colors to populate the prairie, with pink sunsets and blue-capped rock formations. Their tour-de-force however is saved for a vibrant, psychedlic musical number, reminiscent once again of the unparalleled "Pink Elephants on Parade" sequence in Dumbo. In the film's strangest plot point, it turns out that the cattle thief, Alameda Slim, manages to nab all of his bovine by hypnotzing them with his yodeling prowess. This leads to a herd of neon-colored cows marching through a swirling void of nothingness and into Slim's clutches. 

The soundtrack is the best to come from either Disney or Alan Menken in a good long while. Working with the cowboy setting, Menken churns out a batch of Western songs, the best being the title track, which plays twice in the feature and is reminscent of the popular balladeers, The Sons of the Pioneers, who along with their lead singer, Roy Rogers, appeared way back in 1948's Melody Time. Home on the Range's tunes are sung by a cavalcade of capable contemporary country crooners, including k.d. lang, Bonnie Raitt, and Tim McGraw. Even the ballad this time around, "Will the Sun Ever Shine Again" passes by with a modicum of decency. Of course, the plot mechanics unspooling underneath the song's melodies are the most bland, forced attempts at sentimentality one could muster, which completely undermines the attempted effect.   

Home on the Range was a failure in every sense of the word. It was a modest film burdened with much too large a budget, one it could never hope to recoup from ticket sales. In fact, the film made less than half of its production cost back in American cinemas. Pixar Animation Studios' release from the same year, Brad Bird's The Incredibles, made fifty percent more than Home on the Range's entire box office haul in its opening weekend alone. Disney announced before the film's release that Home on the Range would be the last traditional, hand-drawn animated feature the studio would produce. Henceforth, the company would focus on computer-generated cartoons exclusively, as if the outdatedness of Home on the Range was the fault of its look. Happily, there was a regime change brewing at the studio and before the end of the following year the people responsible for turning their back on the work that was the studio's foundation would be gone. That would not stop the march of progress or save the company from making inferior products, but it was a vote of confidence for an artform that still had a lot of life to give. If only they would give it a chance.

Disney Daze: Week 44: Brother Bear

In 2012, this intrepid reporter plans to watch, in chronological order, all of Walt Disney Studios' 52 theatrically-released animated features, one per week.

After three features with decidedly futuristic sci-fi tones, Disney chose to return to a more traditional narrative with Brother Bear, focussing on the bonds of family in an idealized natural setting. It would also give them the opportunity to incorporate talking animals, something we have not seen since the petulant Kuzco unwittingly turned into a llama three years prior in The Emperor's New Groove. In fact, the basic plot elements of Brother Bear are almost identical to that previous feature, although the tone is decidedly less snarky and more majestic.

Brother Bear takes place in the upper reaches of North America shortly after the Ice Age. The film begins with the story of three Inuit brothers; the wise elder Sitka, the teasing middle child Denahi, and the immature slacker Kenai. It is the day of Kenai's ceremonial graduation to manhood and he is tasked with securing some celebratory salmon high in a tree so that bears cannot get to it. He does a slapdash job and following the ceremony, the family discovers the fish are gone. Attempting to make right, Kenai tracks the thieving bear as his brothers follow but he and Denahi become endangered on a glacier and Sitka gallantly sacrifices himself to save them. Kenai blames the bear for Sitka's death and against Denahi's objections, vows vengeance.  Atop the tribe's mystical mountain, Kenai does manage to kill the bear, but the spirit of Sitka intervenes and turns his brother into a grizzly to teach him a lesson in humility and responsibility.

The film makes a number of odd visual choices. The strangest being the decision to change the film's aspect ratio after Kenai transforms from a human to a bear. The first third of the picture is framed in a squarish 1.66:1, before switching to a widescreen scope frame of 2.35:1 for the last hour. The color palette of the film also changes from a more washed out grey look in the prologue to a vibrant, popping colorful world when seen from the bear's perspective. This changing of format has been done before in a number of pictures, most effectively in the great science-fiction homage Galaxy Quest, but its use in Brother Bear is not handled particularly well. For one, the change does not occur instantly with Kenai's transformation, it happens the next morning when he awakens. The screen cuts to black and then suddenly everything is widescreen but there is no dramatic orienting shot of say, a mountain vista, just a point-of-view shot of a bear looking up at some leaves. If one wasn't paying close attention, this fluorish could be rather easily missed.

Some more subtle, but better integrated, visual tricks are interspersed throughout the film. During the tribe's funeral for Sitka, the screen freezes and blacks out with evocative mystical imagery. Also early on in the picture we do get a grand shot of the forest scenery and the animators include a lens flare as if their handpainted sun was affecting the camera's perception. This is an anachronistic--but unconsciously effective--means of establishing the grandeur of the surroundings, and is a testament to how cinematic shorthand has permeated our understanding of the world. Two movies made after Brother Bear, the digital science fiction wonders WALL*E and Star Trek, do similar flaring techniques.

As Kenai comes to terms with his newfound fur and claws, his brother Denahi is tracking him because he mistakenly believes Kenai is the bear that killed both of his brothers. Kenai meanwhile befriends an energetic little cub named Koda and the two head off in search of the salmon stream, which conveniently rests adjacent to the mountain where Kenai can change back into a man. Along their journey, the duo meet all manner of wild creatures including mammoths, goats, and the film's best supporting characters, a pair of moose named Rutt and Tuke, voiced by Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis as an overt homage to their immortal creations, the brothers Bob and Doug Mackenzie of Strange Brew fame. The two have a fantastic interplay between each other, honed from years of collaboration, and even though they're straightjacked by the family friendly film, they do manage one gloriously subtle nudge to their characters' origins by looking for, "a pile of delicious barley and amberweed on a cool bed of malted hops, eh." The film would be Moranis's last theatrical role before his retirement.

Tarzan songwriter and famed casual dresser Phil Collins returns to the composer's chair for Brother Bear. His presence is much more predominant here, with a series of overblown ballads that the filmmakers use for narrative shorthand in nearly a half dozen montages throughout the film. Even during the picture's most supposedly emotional moment, when Kenai informs Koda that his mother is dead, the soundtrack is highjacked by Collins's belting and we are only allowed to hear snippets of the two bears' dialogue. To its ultimate disservice, histrionics substitute for emotion time and again in Brother Bear.  

However, this "story of a boy who became a man by becoming a bear" ends with a tenderly composed reunion of both families. While the beats that got us there were well worn and wholly unsurprising, there is still a satisfying emotional closure by the climactic homecoming. Kenai embracing his Inuit brothers while Koda reaches out for the spectral presence of his dead mother does a much better job of illustrating the circle of life than another bombastic song. There is little to distinguish Brother Bear's narrative from any number of stories before it (as well as a few that came after, including Pixar's recent Brave) but like the traditions passed down through the Inuit tribes, there can be comfort in that familiar journey.

Cinematic Capsules: November 2012

The Rare Breed (1966)

Curious, minor Western starring late period Jimmy Stewart as a rough-and-tumble cowboy who falls in with a cultured English widow (Maureen O'Hara) and her daughter as they bring the expensive bovine of the title from St. Louis to Texas. Once a particularly harsh winter hits, O'Hara must fend off the advances of the ranch owner, a distractingly bewigged Scot, played by Brian Keith. Meanwhile Stewart becomes nearly as obsessed with finding the recently blizzard-bound bull as John Wayne was of tracking his niece in The Searchers. Director Andrew V. McLagen does little to distinguish himself outside of a surprisingly harrowing stampede sequence. The script's humor falls entirely flat but the picture becomes occasionally charming as it wanders along, thanks in part to the performance of Vindicator, the star cow.

The Prestige (2006)

Yet another Christopher Nolan picture that is not nearly as clever at it thinks it is. Based upon the novel by Christopher Priest and adapted by Nolan and his brother Jonathan, The Prestige tracks the bitter lifelong rivalry between two magicians at the dawn of the electric age. The film itself tries to be a magic trick but handles the task as clumsily as an eight-year old with his first store-bought illusion. The narrative hinges on two big "reveals" at the end of the picture that unfortunately are telegraphed so far in advance that the entire last hour is spent checking off each inelegant and unsubtle allusion to the twist. The supporting performances run the gamut from inspired (David Bowie as Nikola Tesla) to embarrassingly miscast (Scarlett Johansson attempting a British accent). Meanwhile Michael Caine plays the exact same role he has in the last five Nolan films, while Hugh Jackman alternates between restrained and horribly hammy, and Christian Bale gets intense...again. Ho-hum.

Wagon Master (1950)

Thoroughly entertaining John Ford Western about a group of migrating Mormons who pick up some horse traders, a medicine show, and unwittingly, a family of bandits, on their way to the San Juan Valley. In that way, it resembles Ford's earlier Stagecoach, with a much larger ensemble of disparate personalities. The film starts with a rare cold open for a film from the classic era, an invigorating prologue showing the evil Clegg brothers robbing a bank and ruthlessly killing a clerk. Only after the brutality do we get the familiar titles, accompanied by one of the many great cowboy songs written by Stan Jones and performed by the Sons of the Pioneers for the picture. Once again, Ford finds glorious ways of including the unique topography of Monument Valley into most every shot. One of the director's regulars, the rough-and-tough Ward Bond, gives the film's greatest performance as the leader of the Mormons, a man whose temper betrays his pre-spiritual life, as he is constantly being reprimanded for swearing. Some of the humor falls flat and the film does not possess any of the depth or intensity of something like The Searchers, but it is a solid, enjoyable picture.

George Harrison: Living in the Material World (2011)

Martin Scorsese's three-hour documentary on the dark horse of the Beatles is another smooth, expertly edited feature in the vein of his Dylan picture, No Direction Home. Living in the Material World views most of the events in George's life through the lens of his relentless quest for spiritual enlightenment. The picture is split into two parts, roughly between the Beatles years and post-breakup solo life. Scorsese wisely assumes viewers know the basics of the Beatles' story and therefore spends no time rehashing elements that have been dissected exhaustively elsewhere, most famously in the Beatles Anthology series and book. For example, a section on the band's life in Hamburg takes no time to explain what brought them there, or even where there is. The city is never mentioned by name. The talking heads are all of the usual suspects: Eric Clapton, Patty Boyd, Olivia Harrison, George Martin, Tom Petty, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Yoko Ono, and Paul McCartney. As usual, Ringo steals the show in his interview segments. His final anecdote, recalling his last moments with George before his passing, is the highlight and heart of the film.

The Invisible Man (1933)

James Whale's lean adaptation of H.G. Wells's classic science-fiction novel witnesses the American film introduction to one of the greatest screen actors of all time, Mr. Claude Rains. It is amazing what a distinct impression Rains manages to make solely through his voice, as we only see his face in the film's final frame. He plays a scientist who develops a serum that makes his entire body disappear. The side effects also cause him to become a megalomaniacal psychopath. The film shares many qualities with the other classic horror films Universal released in the thirties, including Whale's two Frankenstein pictures. The Invisible Man doesn't live up to either of those Boris Karloff creep shows, but it is an entertaining and astoundingly inventive picture. Whale devises several interesting scenes that incorporate the interaction of a floating shirt or wandering pair of pants, as well as fluid shots of doors opening by themselves, chairs being dragged, and books floating through the air. The film isn't scary in the least, it's more of a thriller, especially once Rains goes on an anarchic spree, killing trainloads of people, robbing banks, and holding people hostage. In many ways, The Invisible Man would work well in a double feature paired with Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. Both films star villains with maniacal laughs who thrive on absolute chaos.

Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

James Cagney stars in this rah-rah rousing biopic of patriotic songsmith George M. Cohan, writer of such iconic American melodies as "Over There" and "Give My Regards to Broadway". The film, by director Michael Curtiz, is a show-stopping extravaganza charting the rise of Cohan and his family from the unheralded houses of vaudeville to the grand theatres of Broadway. The film rests firmly on the capable shoulders of Cagney who sheds his gangster persona here so efficiently and effectively; tap-dancing, singing and charming nearly everyone in his path. He also brings a nuanced emotional resonance to the role, especially in two great, later scenes with his father (played by Walter Huston). The best sequence in the film however isn't a character moment but instead a clever montage showing the passage of time on Broadway with billboards and marquees marking the bygone years as a medley of Cohan tunes plays through. There are a few conceits however that do not work, particularly the framing device of Cohan telling his life story to Franklin Roosevelt alone in the Oval Office. The film is wrapped so tightly in an American flag that the filmgoers who saw it less than a year into the country's entrance into World War II must have left the theatre and headed straight for the recruiting office.

Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid (1942)

A hilarious Merrie Melodie pitting Bugs against a dullard of a buzzard named Beaky, presumably based on Edgar Bergen's moronic puppet Mortimer Snerd. The buzzard is tasked by its domineering (Russian?) mother with going out and catching a rabbit for supper. The languid bird settles on Bugs, who gives him the run around like he has for Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam before him. As usual from the works of the Termite Terrace gang, there a number of breathless gags executed with a flair and wit that has never been surpassed. Bugs and the buzzard tussle for a moment before fluidly and hysterically turning it into an impassioned swing dance. There are some truly terrific character moments as well, with Bugs escaping from the flying buzzard's clutches and falling back down to earth, where his body is submerged beneath a pile of cow bones. Mel Blanc does a grand job of turning a wail Bugs emits after thinking he has died into a maniacal laugh when he realizes he will live to taunt another day.

Cloverfield (2008)

Director Matt Reeves, producer J.J. Abrams, and screenwriter Drew Goddard giddily team up for the thrilling, terrifying and wildly entertaining Cloverfield, a thoroughly successful update of the rampaging monster genre, transplanted to post-9/11 New York City. The film is framed as a handheld documentary of the unfolding disaster, which transpires on the night of a going-away party for a fashionable Manhattan twenty-something (who is coincidentally leaving for a job in Japan, birthplace of Godzilla). The conceit of the Blair Witch-style cinematography is intelligently done and never feels like a gimmick. It lends an immediacy to the proceedings and allows the filmmakers to more cleverly obscure the digital seams of their monster and the havoc it wreaks. Goddard's grasp of the horror genre and his ingenious ways of upping the ante are nearly equal to his similar accomplishments in his directoral debut, The Cabin in the Woods. Cloverfield is not afraid to put everyone in death's destructive path. It is a rollicking fright of a good time.

Disney Daze: Week 43: Treasure Planet

In 2012, this intrepid reporter plans to watch, in chronological order, all of Walt Disney Studios' 52 theatrically-released animated features, one per week.

Ron Clements and John Musker were two of the more successful men behind the decade-long Disney renaissance in the nineties. The pair, who scripted and directed both The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, two of the most successful films in Hollywood history, were the golden boys at Disney. While their last picture, Hercules, was less rapturously received by the public, it did little damage to their vaunted status. That is why when the duo once again pitched their idea of a science-fiction version of Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island, a story that had been floating around since The Little Mermaid, they were given the green light. Working with another creative tag-team, screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, who would shortly begin scripting their own pirate story (this one based not on a book but a ride at Disneyland) the team began melding the sea-faring adventures of Stevenson with the cosmic grandeur of the universe. 

Treasure Planet possesses more overt allusions to films past than any other Disney feature in memory. There is a line lifted from Jaws and the home of the robot B.E.N. recalls the landscape of René Laloux's singular Fantastic Planet. But the film that Treasure Planet is Star Wars. The references are there from the film's opening shot which shows a hulking space ship entering the frame and being shot at by mercenaries. Switching the ship's direction and having the pursued be larger than the pursuer cannot hide the similarity. Meanwhile, a creature seen briefly in the film's early going emits a shriek that sounds as if it was lifted directly from the cries of a Tusken raider. Even Jim's awkwardly "hip" haircut, which features shaved sides and a ponytail, evokes nothing more than the Jedi-hazing Padawan coif.

The character designs in the film are incredibly erratic in quality. As mentioned, Jim's slightly edgy look relegates the character to the dustbin of millenial fashion conceptions. There are a plethora of aliens that populate the ship from the gelatinous, mutable puff known as Morph to the straightlaced feline Captain Amelia. The stumbling physicist Doctor Doppler, who convinces Jim's mother to allow the two to embark on the treasure hunt, is an anachronistic anthroporphized dog, akin to the species of Goofy or a mild-mannered resident of Duckburg. The best design in the film is reserved for the bulbous, exagerrated linework and cyborg circuitry hybridized into the scheming pirate, John Silver. The blend of the computer-generated and hand-drawn is elegantly achieved, as his glinting robotic eye hides within the organic flesh of a hard-living man. 

The secondary characters make little impression, except when they're annoying, which unfortunately, they frequently are. The picture's most egregious offender is the crew member who literally only speaks in fart sounds. The filmmakers run with the flatulent conceit, having Doctor Doppler attempt communication with the creature, placing his cupped hand under his armpit and wasting everyone's time, the audience's most of all. The worst character in the movie however is the silly sidekick robot, B.E.N., voiced by Martin Short at his most irratatingly energetic. B.E.N. has had his memory taken out and this leads him to constantly worry and repeat information. The best thing that can be said about B.E.N. is that he does not appear in the film until the last half hour. Moments after meeting him, Jim instructs B.E.N. that, "if you're going to come along, you need to stop talking." The filmmakers here needed to heed their own advice. 

The greatest element contained in Treasure Planet is the animation itself. The filmmakers pushed the envelope in terms of blending the computer-generated and hand-drawn, as evidenced in John Silver's design. The revolutionary Deep Canvas technology introduced in Tarzan is used to stunning effect here, creating a stunningly vivid three-dimensional landscape. The camerawork is surprisingly fluid, showing some swooping tracking shots onboard the ship, as well as a phenomenally rendered 3-D point-of-view shot as Jim scours the mess hall. The first shot of the space port where Jim and Doppler board their ship is also cleverly executed. From his home planet, Jim looks out into the night sky at the sliver of a moon. As the camera draws closer it is discovered that the moon is in fact a bustling way station with vehicles taking off and landing and all manner of odd-looking creatures milling about. Aside from matters of oxygen supply and other logistical necessities that remain unexplained, the imagery of wooden pirate ships floating through the vastness of space is a delight. The greatest visual sequence in Treasure Planet comes when the treasure-seeking vessel is careening towards a star that unexpectedly goes supernova before turning itself into an energy-sucking blackhole. There is a brief moment of darkness and silence before the ship comes hurtling out of the void, propelled by a great fiery explosion of stunning orange and yellow. 

Meanwhile the writing leaves plenty to be desired. The crucial elements of Stevenson's story are touched upon but there is little embellishment or time for deeper understanding. The segment that might have had the best emotional impact, a montage juxtaposing the memories of Jim's distant father with his newfound relationship with the conflicted pirate Silver, is completely undone by the overwrought balladeering of the Goo Goo Dolls' frontman John Rzeznik, who pens one of the absolute worst pieces of music ever to find its way into a Disney picture, the trite and terrible "I'm Still Here". Rzeznik's other contribution to the soundtrack, the equally abysmal "Always Know Where You Are" (notice any lyrical patterns here?) is quarantined to the closing credits. 

Treasure Planet was a complete failure at the box office. The film cost an astronomical sum to produce and only returned a fraction of it in the United States. The film was received with at best tepid admiration from critics. It didn't help that less than six months earlier the Walt Disney Studios had released another animated film with sci-fi undertones, the charming, witty, and thoroughly heartwarming Lilo & Stitch. Both films were nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar in the category's second year of existence. However they both lost to a film made halfway around the globe at a smaller studio in Japan. The winning feature told the story of a young girl whose parents turned into pigs as she was forced into service at a magical bathhouse for wandering spirits. The film was called Spirited Away and would become one of the best examples of animation's uniquely transformative powers. These films did not need to rely on proven properties or aggressively pander to their audiences. They could be majestic and idiosyncratic, finding their narrative way through intuition and dream logic, instead of beats from screenwriting 101. Spirited Away showed that the real treasure lay in the imagination and conviction of its creators who pushed the boundaries of art and storytelling in ways no one had done before.