post #2900
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 comedy directed by Mel Brooks, starring Dom Deluise and Cloris Leachman.
Short skits show important times in history: stone age, old testament, roman empire, Spanish inquisition & French revolution.
Mel Brooks is great at comedy. Some of my favorite scenes include the first art critic, Roman signs in the street scene, the Shim-Sham Sand Dance, detecting the non-eunuch, street crawling with Roman soldiers and ending the revolution meeting on a high note. The humor is pretty universal, or at least has a wide audience. Video and audio were recorded and edited well. I'm not going too deep on these "catch up" reviews. I rate it adequate. You might want to watch it.
An Irish British American animated musical directed by Don Bluth, starring Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise.
A German Shepherd and his Dachshund friend break out of the pound and return to the life of gambling that they had left behind. A Bulldog is now running the casino and has a human girl hidden in the back room who talks to rats and determines winners in their races. The escaped convicts rescue the girl and proceed to exploit her animal communication skills in exactly the same manner as the Bulldog.
Bad music! Don Bluth directed The Secret of NIMH, which was not a musical and was much better. I think the songs only hurt this film. He also directed Pete's Dragon with good music. Ralph Burns did the music for ADGTH and Irwin Kostal did the music for PD, so that explains the difference. Much of the music problem was in audio mixing, with the vocals too loud and instruments too quiet. On an interesting note, the girl star of this film, Judith Barsi, was abused and eventually murdered by her father before he shot himself. Wikipedia reports that she had begun plucking her eyelashes and her cat's whiskers because of the trauma. I thought the plot of this film reminded me of a combination of Oliver Twist and Paper Moon. The innocent child is thrown into a life of crime and her "guardian" is not qualified to take care of her. I think I saw this in the theater when it was originally released. I rate it o.k., but it would have gotten a much better rating without the songs.
