An American animated comedy series created by Joe Murray, directed by Sue Mondi and Brian Sheesley.
Anthropomorphic animals are at summer camp. Lazlo the monkey stars with his friends Raj the elephant and Clam the rhinoceros. The scoutmaster is Lumpus the moose. They are always involved in some type of absurd situation.
American animated series of this time period were noticably poor in terms of plot and writing, but this is the exception to that trend. It didn't seem like "stupid kids' stuff", but more universal humor dealing with exaggeration and hyperbole. Some of the elements which entertained me most were the dung beetles (my favorite characters voiced by Steve Little), Lougie Llama and Lazlo's arms making impossible shapes. The animation style is very traditional and cartoony. Creator Jo Murray also made Rocko's Modern Life, an earlier cartoon which I like as well. Carlos Alazraqui voiced Rocko and Lazlo, Tom Kenny voiced Heffer on Rocko's Modern Life, Spongebob on Spongebob Squarepants, Eduardo on Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Scoutmaster Lumpus and Slinkman on Camp Lazlo. Mr. Lawrence voiced Filburt on Rocko's Modern Life, Plankton on Spongebob Squarepants, Edward, Dave, Ping-pong and Nurse Leslie on Camp Lazlo. Jodi Benson voiced Ariel in The Little Mermaid (1989), Tula in Pirates of Dark Water, Patsy, Jane Doe and Almondine in Camp Lazlo. The series was produced in 16:9 aspect ratio and originally aired in 4:3. I watched a 4:3 version and it makes me wonder what got cut out or modified to change the frame shape. I rate this good.
A French Japanese animated adventure directed by Shōjirō Nishimi and Guillaume "Run" Renard.
A character with large eyes lives in a city ghetto with his friend whose head is a flaming skull. He finds that there are "tentacle mafia" guys all around and he is involved with them. The daughter of the tentacle mafia leadeer takes a liking to big eyes and some luchador wrestlers help them.
Amazing! There are very few movies which will prevent me from playing guitar while I watch them. This is among that elite group. My friend, Thomas recommended this, so I have to thank him here. Although this is very unique, I would recommend it if you liked Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010), The Haunted World of El Superbeasto (2009), Bigg Snoop Dogg: Adventures of Tha Blue Carpet Treatment (2008) and The Boondocks (TV series). I rate it best. Watch it!
A Japanese science fiction fantasy anime directed by Keiichi Sato.
Deomons, spirits, kappas and city guardians duke it out in Shinjuku. A police detective is trying to figure out what is going on and there is a young woman wandering around.
Most of this was not so great. The plot was vague and muddy, so I didn't really know what was going on. There were a few fights and good scenes here and there. Then the ending happened. It made it all worthwhile. I'll just say that there is a long fight. The animation style mixed traditional anime with digital editing and really looked cool. I was watching the last 2 episodes, wondering what to write about this and that's all I got. I rate this adequate. You might want to just watch the last 3 episodes.
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An American animated fantasy directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, starring Dom DeLuise, Cloris Leachman and Jonathan Pryce.
A troll is deported from troll land, into New York City because he has been making flowers with his green thumb. He lands in central park and meets a pair of children. It turns out that exiling him is not enough for the troll queen and she arrives to cause more trouble.
Alright, but not great. Pacing was what I noticed first. Everything flies by in a rush. Next was song quality. If Don Bluth wanted any chance of even co-existing with Disney, he needed better songs. At least the instruments and vocals were mixed better than All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989). The animation looked much like the other work of this studio, but not quite as good. It seems like somewhere in the late '80s and early '90s is when the studio stopped producing their best work. If you look at Don Bluth's filmography on Wikipedia, there are 4 columns for credit. I get the feeling that when these are all green (meaning Bluth did it), it's a great movie. He did also animate some Wolfgang Reitherman films for Disney. Something funny that I noticed in this film was the squirrel looking completely thrashed on drugs (image). Why? Then there was the issue with the bottle (baby bottle) and I was thinking that the squirrel probably has a liquor bottle if you need it that badly. I rate this adequate, but would only recommend it if you're into Don Bluth's work. There will be a few more of these coming soon.
An American Disney animated romance directed by Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson and Hamilton Luske, starring Dallas McKennon.
A dog from a rich house and a stray fall in love. There are issues at the rich house because the family has a baby and then leaves on vacation while the aunt and her 2 cats tend the baby.
Not bad, but not so great either. There is not much to write about this one, so I will use this space to discuss frequent topics in Disney films. Frequently, a rich character in a film thinks they are better than anyone else, forbid anyone around them contact with "certain types of people" (A.K.A. anyone who is not them) and jump to erronious conclusions which cause disaster for those around them. This describes my parents, except "rich". My family was poor and my parents acted like this. Another set of topics is destitute poverty and vagrancy. Too often, we see heroes begin the film in this situation: The Tranp, Aladdin, Pete (of dragon fame). That's just broke and homeless beginnings, not counting anything mid-plot or only 1 of those 2 states. I don't know what the point is, but I see these things frequently enough to notice them. If anyone ever read this, I would ask for comments... I rate Lady and the Tramp o.k.
An American Disney animation directed by Jack Kinney, Clyde Geronimi and James Algar, starring Eric Blore and J. Pat O'Malley, Basil Rathbone and Bing Crosby.
A section of The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame 1908) shows Toad getting into and out of his car trouble. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Washington Irving 1820) is shown.
This is alright I guess. The only reason for me to watch it is the Sleepy Hollow section. I read The Wind in the Willows and it was much longer and better than this. The animation takes a few pages of the plot and uses destructive license to change almost everything. Ichabod is a little more entertaining and complete. The plot includes lots of the original, as opposed to a little bit. My old drummer used to call my Adam's Apple an "Ichabod" because mine looks like the animated character's. My favorite part is the song that Brom Bones sings at the party and the short scene afterward of Ichabod being afraid. Somehow I knew this was not by Wolfgang Reitherman. I rate it tolerable because, even talking about just Disney films, there are so many better ones. It is, however, better than any Disney film made after 2000.
An American animated adventure directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, Hamilton Luske and Clyde Geronimi.
A man and his dalmation meet a woman and her dalmation. They all get together and the dogs reproduce. The woman's "friend" wants to buy the puppies to make a fur coat, but is denied. She sends her thieves to steal them and the parent dogs must find their puppies. The woman who wants dog coats has accumulated many dalmations by that point and they try to evade her together.
I count this among the good Disney films. The animation style is very traditional. An interesting casting not is that the maid is voiced by the same woman who voiced Mad Madam Mim in The Sword and the Stone (1963), another Wolfgang Reitherman masterpiece. The video on WRD (Wolfgang Reitherman Disney) films looks (and probably is) Technicolor. In contrast to the super-saturated colors of live action Technicolor, the animated ones have more subdued palettes, with lots of green, brown and grey. They still retain the augmented contrast and "old film" grit as live action. My new revelation recommendation on Disney films is to watch the WRD ones and ignore the rest. Nothing can compare to these. This is originally in 4:3 aspect ratio or close enough to look the same. I rate this good because I will soon be watching and writing about more and better ones. Watch this anyway.
A British American animated musical directed by George Dunning.
A man from a musical world is sent to get help saving his home from Blue Meanies. He recruits the British pop/rock group and they travel to the music world.
This is definitely odd enough for me. I can't say that I like the music very much, but the animation makes up for it. The plot is actually interesting, but the characters seemed shallow. It possibly depended upon a knowledge of The Beatles to know what the characters were like. Unfortunately, The Beatles did not play The Beatles in this. There were plenty of fantasy elements in the journey from London to music land under the sea. In fact, the characters pass through many seas, such as the sea of holes and the sea of green. The hippie-esque moral message of the film is very clear and needs no explanation. I used this image because it goes against the moral message of the film. The real Beatles are showing Satanic hand signals in this photo. I like it and rate it good. For 1968, this was amazing animation.
A Japanese science fiction anime directed by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko.
A reporter from Earth and a motorcycle racer are caught in a war on Venus.
One of the classic anime that I watched on the Science Fiction Channel before it became known as syfy. I remember overplaying the VHS that I recorded from TV. The song, "Shakunestu no Circuit" by Eiko Yamane/Joe Hisaishi still plays in my head when I think of this movie. The single-wheeled motorcycles were a great touch, which carried over into military vehicles. Heroes named Hiro are all too common in anime though. Late '80s / early '90s anime visual and audio style are too divine to express in words. I rate this best. Watch it!
An American Animated comedy adventure directed by Chris Wedge, starring Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Greg Kinnear, Mel Brooks and Robin Williams.
A robot from a small town goes to the big city, hoping to get a job working for a company he has seen on TV. He gets there to find that the company has been taken over by the villain.
I'm pretty sure this is some vapid entertainment. It is entertaining and animated well. Robin Williams was always a great addition to comedy. I think Roger Ebert correctly stated ""Robots delights on a visual level, but the story feels like it came off an assembly line." Tom Waits did the villain's mother's "Underground" song. IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes have scores around 50-60%. I guess I liked it at some point because it's been sitting on my computer for years. I rate it adequate and really wish there was some hidden meaning or symbolism to type about.
An American Disney animated musical fantasy directed by Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson and Hamilton Luske, starring Hans Conried.
A flying boy from a story brings a group of children to his island. The island is shared by Peter Pan's group of boys, mermaids, First Nations people and pirates.
I may type lots about subliminal messages, predictive programming and Illuminati symbolism in Disney animations, but that does not mean that I dislike them. In fact, it makes a "harmless children's cartoon" into something interesting. What I see in Peter Pan is repeated throughout the Disney catalog: blatant racism. "What Made the Red Man Red?" is a song whose mere title hints at the racist remarks within. Native Americans/First Nations people spoke a language different from that of colonial Europeans. We took their land and did not learn their language. They saved the colonists from starvation AND learned our language. Who are the stupid savages now? I'm sure that I should mention perpetual boyhood. Peter offers the boys a life free from cares, worries and adulthood, where they can fly. No boy would refuse. However, there is more to life than that, even an ideal one. Just for a modern comparison, mainstream rap is dominated by boy and dog wording, with prefixes like "lil": lil Bow Wow is a prime example. I have yet to fully analyze and decode what this means, but one result is less "men" to be leaders and more "boys" dependent upon others. A quick point I want to bring up is to question whether the absence of white European society and aurthority figures makes a place "other" or foreign, uncivilized? Captain Hook is the closest to Euro-man on the island and even he is a pirate, not part of "normal" society. He is, however, the only authority figure on the island who is obeyed because of employment, fear or responsibility. Pan may lead the boys, but they do not obey him to avoid consequences of not doing so. He is also one of them and tells them to do things that they would have wanted to do anyway. Smee doesn't seem eager to do the things ordered of him. After this academic analysis, I rate Peter Pan adequate. It gave me something to type about, but there are many better Disney films.
An American animated musical comedy by Rob Zombie, starring Paul Giamatti and Rosario Dawson.
A luchador wrestler witnesses a beautiful woman being abducted by a gorilla. While tracking them down, he calls in the aid of his female co-worker and her robot.
This is pretty goofy for Rob Zombie, but I understand how it makes sense. The fictional world of the film is populated by characters from fantasy and horror settings as well as shapely women. The plot was very cartoony and the characters were a little shallow. Actually, the villain was most developed of all of them. There was plenty of nudity and profanity. The animation style reminded me of old Ren & Stimpy cartoons in the way that movements were exaggerated. I could hear all of the dialogue and there were good subtitles. The music sounded like maybe there was some Brad Neely influence, but he did not make it. I think this makes a great contrast to the dark and bloody bulk of my Rob Zombie film collection. I rate it adequate. You might want to check it out.
A Japanese animated musical fantasy directed by Taiji Yabushita and Daisaku Shirakawa.
The "Journey to the West" story. Goku commits a transgression in heaven, is punished and journeys with his friends to earn honor.
Proto-Dragon Ball! I know it's a traditional Japanese story, but the similarities to the modern anime series are too many to ignore. That's Goku with the power pole and flying Nimbus (image) and Oolong wants to marry a girl, but Goku saves her and takes Oolong with him. It's listed as one of the 50 worst films of all time by someone, but I've seen that list and their taste in movies sucks. I've also seen "best movies" lists filled with worthless crap though. I thought the animation was a little standard, even for the time it was made. Disney was doing cell animations in the 1930s and that's what this was. Obviously, I liked the plot and characters. It's not a traditional Japanese story just arbitrarily. A story has to be good to last a few hundred years. The music mostly sounded too Americanized to me, but it wasn't bad. I watched the version with subtitles and original Japanese audio. There is an American release version with English speaking voice actors and different music. I say it's a perfectly fine movie because it was entertaining, held my attention and made me think of Dragon Ball. I rate it good.
An American animated musical directed by Abe Levitow, starring Judy Garland, Red Buttons and Paul Frees.
A female cat living at a farm overhears exaggerated praise of city life in Paris and travels there. She is followed by a male with a crush on her and his sidekick. In Paris, she is taken in by a criminal and his sister in hopes of sending her to America for money. The crush male and his sidekick take a side trip to Alaska before returning to rescue the female from the criminals.
What really stood out to me about this was art history references. The late 1800s and early 1900s was a time of many "ism"s and multiple art movements. Most of these were referenced in dialogue as well as visually. The female cat was shown in paintings of the styles as the criminal talked about the artists. Most of the backgrounds had a Van Gogh look to them and there were posters in the style of that time period as well. Next point was Judy Garland's voice. I really like her singing. Other than that, it was a very standard animated musical. The animation was done in Disney style cell animation and the music would be easily mistaken for Disney material. I rate it adequate because it was fun to watch once.
A French animation directed by Jean-Francois Laguionie, starring Michel Robin.
A girl (Gwen) is adopted by a nomadic desert tribe. They live in a desert where a sky god drops items during the full moon. Gwen befriend a boy, but he is taken away by the sky god. Gwen and an old woman journey to rescue him and find a town civilization who worship a catalog.
Very strange. Imagine mixing Kirikou and the Sorceress (1998) with Chronopolis (1983). I can't really say anything about the plot because it was so sparse. The characters were shallow too. Usually, that would be bad. The animation looked amazing and the combinations of sparse images with sparse sounds reflected the post-apocalyptic desert setting very well. I don't know if the viewer is supposed to really think lots about this or take it at face value, just as a thing of beauty. It's so weird that it's hard to rate. I have to give it strange pink rating.
A Czech animated fantasy directed by Karel Zeman.
Sinbad the sailor has many adventures as he sails from kingdom to kingdom and outwits danger after danger.
I really liked this. The animation style was unique, somewhere between Lotte Reiniger's paper cutouts and "standard" hand drawn cell animation. The plot seemed like a series of vignettes because it was originally released as a series of shorts, each including a single adventure. There were some inconsistencies, like calling birds that look the same doves and then seagulls later, but I don't really want to get into that here. I just want to say how good it was. The pacing was dynamic and the characters and backgrounds all looked amazing. I would recommend it if you don't mind fast paced subtitles, not as fast as Night is Short, Walk On Girl (2017), but be ready to read pretty quickly. I rate this awesome.
An American animation by Bill Plympton.
A man who hangs out at a bar grows wings.
If you know and like Plymptoons as much as I do, you know that the plot cannot be expressed in a few simple sentences, but that the premise spins off into many ideas and sub-plots. As much as I like Plympton and as good as this was, it just was not as good as his other stuff. It was a little more serious and lacked some of the absurd exaggerations which make his other films so enjoyable. The animation was cleaner, like Cheatin' (2013) instead of rough and sketchy like The Tune (1992). The music was also similar to Cheatin', but featured less classical pieces. Also like Cheatin', it had no dialogue. Having seen 6/7 Bill Plympton films, I would say that the animation cleaned up over time, but the humor decreased. I rate this good. Watch it if you like strange animation, just know that all of his other stuff is stranger.
An American animation directed by Bill Plympton.
A man and woman fall in love at a bumper car fair ride. While clothes shopping, the saleswoman takes a suggestive photo of the woman surrounded by male mannequins. Seeing the photo and thinking that his wife is cheating on him, the man begins having affairs with many women. The woman hires a hitman to kill her husband and also finds a man with a "soul transfer" machine so she can be inside the women her husband is sneaking around with.
There are few filmmakers who can do no wrong and Bill Plympton is one of them. His style is consistent, but improves with time. The sketchy art style is exactly what I like most. He also does these exaggerated and abstracted sequences that I find bizarrely wonderful. A good example in this film would be the hitman taking weapons out of his drawers. He pulls out a really long bullet belt, a really long gun, atomic bombs, a rubber dildo and a flower bouquet, among other items. What marks this film as different from other Plympton films I've seen is lack of dialogue. It was all done visually, with sound effects and music. I have to rate this best. If you're looking for wild animation, here it is.
An American Disney animated mystery directed by Ron Clements, Burny Mattinson, Dave Michener and John Musker, starring Vincent Price and Frank Welker.
A rat criminal overlord has abducted the mechanic father of a small mouse child. A mouse man returning from a journey finds the child and they meet up with a Sherlock Holmes style detective. As the case unravels, it turns out that the rat is using the child's father to build a machine which will kill the detective and a robotic replacement for the mouse queen so he can rule the city.
This is the best and most coherent detective film I have ever seen. Maybe my brain works in a different way from live action detective films. The only one that made sense to me was Sin City (2005). I liked that the animation was classic Disney style and there were only 3 musical style songs, none of which were the "heartstring" style. There was an equal amount of humor and suspense. I'm rating this awesome because when it finished, I wanted to reset and watch it again.
An American Disney animated adventure musical directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, starring George Sanders, Sterling Holloway and J. Pat O'Malley.
A human child is found in the jungles of India, raised by wolves and becomes friends with a panther and a bear. His survival is threatened by a tiger.
Inaccurate. I read the book a while ago and the only things that Disney got right were the basic premise and main characters. Everything else in the plot was fabricated and sugar-coated. Derisive comments complete, I actually like this. It was made way back when Disney made movies worth watching. The very traditional animation style was similar to their other works from this time period, but that is good. There was comedy added that was not in the book and (although inaccurate) I liked that. It doesn't hurt review points that I watched this when I was very young on VHS. Mowgli's voice sounded very much like Arthur from The Sword in the Stone (1963), but Arthur was Rickie Sorensen, Richard Reitherman and Robert Reitherman and Mowgli was Bruce Reitherman. When He fell from the branch at the end, I was expecting "woah what woah", young Arthur's oft-repeated line. I rate this awesome for sentimental value and irreplacability.
