Neil Sharpson's Blog, page 8

The Land Before Time (1988)

You know the thing about the dinosaurs? It’s really, really sad when you think about it.

These beautiful animals lived for millions of years and then one day, literally one day, their world turned into a flaming hell and they died horribly. And they never understood why.

I was thinking about that a lot as I sat down to re-watch Don Bluth’s third film, The Land Before Time, and the last one he made before parting company with Stephen Spielberg. On one level, this is the least personal of Bluth’s early, pre-sellout films and the one that he had the least real affection for. Whereas Secret of Nimh and An American Tail were true collaborations, The Land Before Time seems to have been the point where Spielberg (and new producer George Lucas) really took the reigns and Bluth was more just the guy who animated what the execs wanted. Story-wise at least. Whatever you think about him as a film-maker, Bluth had a tendency to stamp his work very strongly and it does still very much feel like one of his films in terms of atmosphere, if not necessarily subject matter.

This feels like it came from Spielberg. Is that just me?

Bluth’s films are famously dark and melancholy and I think that’s why this one works.

More than any other movie, this one captures the essential truth that any story about dinosaurs is a tragedy.

So, in a land (before time, no less) the Earth has been struck by some kind of mysterious disaster and all the dinosaur herds are searching for food. Right off the bat, I absolutely love the opening of this movie. We start in the depths of the ocean, past mysterious and weird sea creatures before emerging on land and seeing the dinosaurs at their height. The score is by James Horner, one of my absolute favourite composers and one who did truly phenomenal work with Bluth.

The score is just perfect. Moody and elegiac and yet filled with wonder. I love it.

Also, I think this is a surprisingly well written movie. Like many a dark moody fantasy animation it has an opening narration, this one delivered by Pat Hingle:

“Once, upon this same Earth, beneath this same sun, long before you, before the ape and the elephant, as well, before the wolf, the bison, the whale, before the mammoth and the mastodon…was the time of the dinosaurs…Now the dinosaurs were of two kinds. Some had flat teeth, and ate the leaves of trees, and some had sharp teeth for eating meat, and they preyed upon the leaf-eaters. Then it happened that the trees began to die. The mighty beasts who appeared to rule the earth, were, in truth, ruled by the leaf. Desperate for food, some of the dinosaur herds struck out to the west, in search of the Great Valley, a land still lush and green. It was a journey toward life.”

That is a great opening exposition dump. If you need to have one, that’s an example of how you do that sucker right. First of all, it’s relatively short. It’s very easy to follow. It tells you everything you need to know, doesn’t laden you down with a lot of unnecessary lore and it stands up as a piece of writing in its own right. “Upon this same Earth, beneath this same sun”. That’s beautiful, because it captures the true appeal of dinosaurs. They were real. These fantastic monsters from your wildest imagination, these incredible dragons…they walked the same Earth you do. They looked up and saw the same sky and moon and sun.

Okay, before we go any further. Nit?

“Ahoy hoy?”“Take a walk, this movie’s not for you.”

Yeah, if you’re in any way a stickler for accuracy in your depictions of dinosaurs this movie will probably induce a seizure. And I’m not just talking about stuff that wasn’t known in the eighties, like feathers. I mean, this movie just took the entire Mesozoic era and put it in a blender. Let me put it this way, if someone made a movie about a modern human with a pet T-Rex, that would be less anachronistic than some of the species that are shown as being contemporaneous here.

Actually more historically accurate than Land Before Time.

You just gotta roll with it.

So our main character is a baby sauropod (“long neck” in the parlance of the movie) who is the youngest member of his herd which now consists of his mother, his grandmother and his grandmother (“he knew them by sight, by scent and by their love.”)

One criticism Don Bluth often gets is that, as his career went on, he betrayed his dark roots and “went Disney” but that’s incorrect. Disney has always been a huge influence on Bluth’s work (he was, after all, a Disney animator for much of his life) and this influence is probably more pronounced in Land Before Time than any other film. Firstly, let’s not be coy.

This movie is basically The Rite of Spring sequence from Fantasia stretched out to feature length. Everything from the design of the dinosaurs to the moody lighting to the depiction of the Earth as this weird, red rocky purgatory. I could literally put a screencap from one of these two movies up here and you might not be sure which one it was from:

Guess below in the comments. Boost that engagement and why not.

But the other big influence of course is Bambi, which Land Before Time baldly apes…

…up to and including the death of Littlefoot’s Mother, who gets eaten by a T-rex just like Bambi’s Mother.

I think. It’s been a while since I watched Bambi.

But we get ahead of ourselves. Littlefoot’s herd is questing for the Great Valley. Littlefoot ask’s his mother if she’s ever been there and she says “no” and so he, quite reasonaby, asks how she knows it’s even there. She tells him that some things you see with your eyes, and that others you see with your heart. On the way, Littefoot meets Cera, a little triceratops whose father doesn’t want his baby girl playing with filthy long-necks.

Trigger warning: Dinosaur Racism.

Oh! Oh! Oh! Do you know what he’s called?

Daddy Topps.

I swear to God. That’s in the fucking credits.

With one exception, all the dinosaur kids (at least the ones who speak) are voiced by actual children. And while this does result in the bad line read here and there I actually think it ends up helping the movie a great deal. Take Cera, for instance. Cera is, in many ways, just the worst. Rude, abrasive, stubbourn and yes, has inherited her father’s disdain for anyone who isn’t one of the Three-Horned Master Race. But the fact that she’s so clearly a child who doesn’t know any better makes it all a lot more forgivable.

There’s also a very subtle but satisfying moment where Daddy Topps growls that three-horns don’t play with long-necks and then looks up and sees Littlefoot’s mother and takes an involuntary step back because yeah, she could literally step on him.

I guess Daddy don’t always Topp?

Littlefoot asks he can’t play with Cera and his mother tells him that dinosaur segregation has just always been a thing and it’s best not to rock the boat. But later that night, Littlefoot runs off to play with Cera and the two have fun messing around in a swamp.

Well, it’s two characters have a quiet pleasant moment together in a Don Bluth movie, the camera has pulled back and the music had suddenly faded out. You know what that means kids? That’s right! CHILDHOOD TRAUMA!

I think I’d probably rank Sharptooth a respectable third place on my rankings of “Bluth villains who bought my child psychologist a car”, right after Dragon the Cat from NIMH and the LITERAL FUCKING DEVIL from All Dogs Go to Heaven.

The kids are rescued in the nick of time by Littlefoot’s mother who is badly injured battling Sharptooth. On top of everything else, a massive earthquake splits the Earth in two (Mondays, amirite?), Sharptooth falls into a chasm to his no-doubt permanent death and Littlefoot and his mother are stranded.

And then…

Onions. Shut up.

Here’s something I really respect this movie for; how it improves on Bambi.

In that movie, yeah, the death of the mother is shocking. But then it’s “your mother can’t be with you any more” and then smash cut to:

Yeah, not in Land Before Time. No birds chirping happily in the leaves, and not just because the leaves are all dead and the birds are all scaly and weigh as much as a truck.

The movie actually takes its time to show the effect this has on Littlefoot as he goes from grief to anger to crushing depression. And, what’s more, the death of his mother is something that effects Littlefoot’s character for the rest of the movie. It’s why he’s so desperate to look after his new friends, and why he’s willing to put up with Cera’s neverending bullshit because it’s better than her leaving.

Littlefoot meets a kindly older dinosaur named Rooter (voiced wonderfully by Pat Hingle) who tells him that it’s not his fault and that “the great circle of life has begun”. Later, Littlefoot hears his mother calling to him while he looks at his reflection and then sees an image of her in the clouds.

“Remember who you are. You are my son, and the one true king.”

Yeah, forget the Kimba the White Lion allegations, this is where your Lion King plagiarism action is.

Anyway, Littlefoot’s mother tells him how to reach the Great Valley and he sets off. The first dinosaur he meets is Cera, who’s also been seperated from her family and is *checks notes* still a massive tool.

Cera insists on going into the chasm and trying to climb out the other side and rejects Littlefoot’s offer of travelling together. Alone again, Littlefoot is left desolate but soon cheers up when he meets Ducky, a baby Saurolophus.

Jesus, what do I do?

I don’t think I can talk about it.

Sorry.

She’s wonderful. She gives a wonderful performance just so full of life and joy and innocence and it’s not right.

The fact that a part of her will always live on through this beautiful film doesn’t make it alright.

But it’s something. A candle in the dark.

They travel together and immediately you can see the change in Littlefoot. He’s laughing again. Playing again. Healing.

The two then run into Petrie, a baby Pteranodon who talk in skaven speak yes yes and who Mouse really not like, no no.

Probably because this is the only child character voiced by an adult but his schtick just rubs me up the wrong way. No disrespect to Will Ryan, who did a load of voice work for Bluth and also some for Disney (he was the sea-horse in Little Mermaid and voiced Pete in Get A Horse) but this character’s a miss for me. Obviously, we’re doing the Wizard of Oz thing so Petrie joins the other two and their off to the Great Valley.

Meanwhile, Cera is exploring in the chasm and comes across Sharptooth’s body and has the fabulous idea of using it for head-butting practice. This is the scene that forced my parents to sit me down and explain that characters in movies can’t actually hear you and that screaming at the screen doesn’t make them act differently and is a real good way to get taken away and put in the foster system.

Sharptooth wakes up and Cera runs off screaming where she runs into Littlefoot’s herd coming the other way. And don’t ask me how that’s supposed to make sense.

Paleontologists now believe the Triceratops could teleport like a frickin’ TARDIS.

Cera joins the group and quickly wins over Petrie and Ducky with all that girlboss energy. She tells them the Sharptooth’s still alive and Littlefoot’s all “until I put my hoof in the wounds in his side I shall not believe”. They also find a baby Stegosaurous named Spike who provides a little wordless comic relief and not much else.

The gang find some food and sleep in a big cuddle pile but when they wake up they almost get eaten by Sharptooth who is very much not unalive.

After barely escaping, Cera of course, has the class to not rub Littlefoot’s face in the fact that she was right and he was wrong I am of course lying through my teeth she’s a massive prick about it. But! They’re in luck, because they discover a mountain that looks like a long-neck which means that they’re on the right path to the Great Valley. Next up, rivers of boiling lava.

But after climbing over mountains and breathing volcanic ash, the climb the ridge only to discover not so much a Great Valley as a Truly Shitty Valley.

God the backgrounds in this movie just DRIP.

As often happens in times of suffering and deprivation, the dinosaurs start to think “hey, maybe we should put a massive asshole in charge?” and Ducky, Petrie and Spike decide to follow Cera on an easier route and abandon Littlefoot.

“So it’s treason, then?”

This little rebellion doesn’t last long, of course. Cera turns out to be an absolutely terrible leader and almost gets Petrie, Ducky and Spike killed while she herself almost gets head-butted to death by some Pachycephalosaurs.

These things aren’t actually predators. They just decided that Cera had to die. And frankly?

They’re all rescued by Littlefoot and, completely humiliated, Cera slinks away.

Much like Stalin, having purged the party of the enemy within, Littlefoot turns his attention to the enemy without. Sharptooth stands between our heroes and the Great Valley and that means that Littlefoot has to finish what his mother started and murder that punk.

To do this, he sends Ducky as bait to lure Sharptooth out in the open while he and Spike push a giant rock on his head.

This almost fails but at the last moment Cera arrives to help push the rock and Sharptooth is seemingly killed along with Petrie. Yeah, it’s your typical stupid fake-out death but at least they don’t milk it, Petrie’s fine.

And the movie ends with our heroes finally reaching the Great Valley and reuniting with their families. And, as the narrator solemnly tells us; they all grew up together in the valley, generation upon generation, each passing on to the next. The tale of their ancestors’ journey to the valley long ago.

                       ***

I’ve seen most of Don Bluth’s films (I think that if I died without seeing Bartok the Magnificent I could still consider it a life well lived) and I think this may be my favourite. It’s the movie where Bluth’s strengths are most on display and his weaknesses are least in evidence.

Scoring

Animation : 15/20

On the plus side; gorgeous backgrounds and atmospheric visuals and the movie lacks a lot of the flaws of Bluth’s other movies; over-designed characters and sometimes kludgey animation. On the downside, this movie was made as Sullivan Bluth was transferring from Los Angeles to Dublin and there’s definitely signs of, shall we say, inconsistency from one scene to the next. Sharptooth for instance seems to be evolving faster than a Pokémon from scene to scene. Also, some characters just change colour for no reason. On the whole though, a wonderfully animated film.

Main Character : 17/20

Gabriel Damon gives a great performance as Littlefoot. It’s a perfectly standard hero’s journey but executed very well.

Villain: 17/20

He may not be the most layered villain but to this day I can’t here the word “SHARPTOOTH!” without getting a panic attack.

Supporting Characters:  16/20

The decision to have mostly child actors play the child roles really works in the movie’s favour. And sure, the characters may be stock archetypes but archetypes work. Why do you think they were able to get so many sequels out of this. Wait a minute, let me check how many sequels there are OH JESUS CHRIST.

Music:  18/20

Phenomenally atmospheric and deeply moving.

FINAL SCORE:  83%

NEXT UPDATE: 15 February 2024

NEXT TIME: From the highest of highs, to the lowest of lows…

“We burned the forest down.”

Do you want to know how I got these scars into writing about movies?

My college had its own version of “The Onion” where I made my bones writing utterly run-of-the-mill edgy early 2000’s college humour (i.e. the kind of stuff that would get me cancelled today so fast it would break the laws of physics) and my editor asked me if I’d be interested in trying my hand at writing a movie review. And the very first movie I ever reviewed for them (if memory serves) was none other than The Dark Knight. And now you know my gritty origin story. And, if you are old enough to remember my earliest reviews (DON’T GO BACK AND READ THEM DON’T YOU DO IT I SWEAR TO GOD) you’ll remember that this movie was a BIG deal to me and those early reviews are chock full of references to it, even when they weren’t relevant or funny. Which was all the time. I see that now.

So, as you can imagine, I approached this one with a great deal of trepidation. Is it really as good as I remember?

No, actually.

In fact, in many ways, it’s better.

Now, it’s not perfect, by any means. But I was worried that this movie had aged. But, when compared to pretty much the entire superhero genre at the time of writing, TDK has aged like fine wine. For starters, this feels like, y’know, a movie. Not a piece of content. Not an advertisement for a streaming service. This is an actual proper dramatic film with , y’know, good writing. Excellent cinematography. Acting. Editing. Score. Tone. Themes. Aesthetics. WEIGHT. It feels weighty.

There are certainly criticisms you can level at it, as many have since its release. As with any popular piece of work that doesn’t make its political position blatantly clear, people have a tendency to project their own narratives onto it. I definitely think that it caught a lot of flak when, a mere seven years after 9/11, it asked the question:

“Are extraordinary measures ever justified when a democracy is threatened by extraordinary threats?”

and proceeded to give an answer more nuanced than…

That said, I think the critiques of the movie as pro-Neocon or even fascist are overblown in the extreme. Batman may beat the Joker in an interrogation room and, in doing so, loses everything.

It’s only by trusting in the inherent decency of ordinary people that Batman is able, finally, to defeat the clown.

But we get ahead of ourselves.

The movie announces itself with one of the best opening sequences in 21st century American cinema.

When we first see Ledger’s Joker he’s waiting by the side of the road, perfectly, utterly still. Not simply standing but almost…offline. Like a character in a joke, he doesn’t even exist until the joke is told. He gets picked up in a car by two other hoods wearing clown masks and they head off to the bank. Watching it again and knowing the twist makes the scene even better and even more darkly funny. I could gush all day about all the wonderful little details, like how the Joker is wearing a mask based on one used in an episode from, of all things, the sixties show. What we see in this sequence is the World According to Joker. No one can be trusted. Nothing is as it seems. Everything is a lie and everyone is being lied to, including us, the audience. As the clown robbers kill each other one after the other the bank manager (William Fichtner) comes out of his office blasting a shot gun because it turns out this is an eeeevil bank run by criminals.

Whatever joke you thought of, just imagine it here, this is going to be a long review and I don’t have time to go for the low hanging fruit.

Anyway, the bank manager sees the last clown murder his two comrades and laments that criminals used to have respect and a code of honour.

He yells at Joker, asking him what he believes in and Joker responds with the famous line “I believe that what doesn’t kill you makes you…stranger.”

Also, and I can’t believe I didn’t realise this before, but I always thought Joker then kills the bank manager. But instead, he puts a grenade in his mouth and pulls the pin as he drives off, only for the grenade to give off harmless smoke. One last joke.

Okay, so it’s been around a year since Bruce Wayne returned to Gotham and things are actually starting to look up for America’s Shittiest City. There’s a new District Attorney named Harvey Dent who has actually been making headway against the city’s criminals, the Batman is now an established and feared presence in the underworld and Jim Gordon has been put in charge of the Major Crimes Unit or MCU, (yes, yes, it’s very funny, settle down, settle down).

In fact, it’s become rather tough being a criminal in Gotham, which is why mobsters like The Chechen (Ritchie Coster) have to resort to freaks like The Scarecrow to source their drugs. This is something I love about this film; it’s a period piece. What I mean is, it’s a movie that chronicles a very specific moment in Gotham’s fictional history, where the old mobsters (awful but nonetheless with a certain code of conduct) gave way to the “Better Class of Criminal”, the deranged super-freaks that came to dominate its underworld. And it’s not just the villains who are getting crazier. The Chechen’s drug deal gets interrupted by three concerned citizens wearing Batman costumes and wielding shotguns. This little potential bloodbath gets broken up by the real Batman who arrests both the Scarecrow and the vigilantes, one of whom quite reasonably asks why his kind of vigilantism is okay and there’s isn’t. To which Batman growls “I’m not wearing hockey pants.”

Alright, let’s tackly the gravelly voiced elephant in the room.

Yes, the voice is dumb. Distractingly so. “Actively-makes-the-movie-worse” dumb. Which is galling for two reasons. Firstly, because Bale pretty much nailed the voice in Batman Begins and secondly because his Bruce Wayne is absolutely fantastic, really nailing the character’s asshole playboy persona.

At another ransacked bank, Gordon’s starting to get a little concerned about this clown fellow but Batman insists that he’s not the priority because he’s just one man (maybe he’s a symbol, Bruce?). Batman and Gordon have spent the last year planting irradiated dollar bills into the mob’s hands to allow them to identify the banks that the gangsters are using to launder their money. I don’t have proof that this is a reference to the irradiated dollar bills from the forties Batman and Robin but it’s the internet and I’m just going to say it and you’ll have to believe me. They now know the banks and Batman wants to strike. But Gordon says this job is too big for just the MCU and that means they’ll have to bring in the DA. Batman has concerns.

Of course, his suspicions of the new DA may not be entirely unbiased as Harvey is putting a Dent in Bruce’s chances of ever getting into Rachel Dawses’ pants again as they’re in luuuurve.

Harvey is currently prosecuting Sal Maroni who he suspects of running the Gotham Mob (given that he’s played by Eric Roberts, he is of course correct). Dent’s case collapses when his star witness turns hostile and pulls a gun on him in the courtroom so he agrees to meet with Gordon.

Gordon and Dent initially have a strained relationship as Dent investigated most of the MCU for corruption but, as Gordon points out, police corruption in Gotham is less a binary and more a beautiful, diverse spectrum.

Unofrtunately, the bust is a…bust. All the gangsters in Gotham are summoned to a meeting by their accountant, a Mr. Lau, who informs them that the police were going to take all their money but, fortunately for them, he was able to stash it somewhere secret while he am-scrays to Hong Kong where he can’t be extradited. Then we hear…laughter. Sort of.

Okay, so in my last review in this series I put out my stall that Scarecrow actually makes a more logical arch-nemesis for Batman than the Joker. And I do think that makes sense on paper…but…having thought about it some more I don’t think it works in practice. The reason why Joker works better as Batman’s arch-nemesis than any other character is that he’s the only one of the rogues who is as versatile and plastic as Batman himself. The sixties Batman never used Two-Face or Scarecrow because those characters were too dark. The Dark Knight series never used The Riddler or Kite-Man because they were too silly. But the Joker is one of the very, very few bat villains who can always adapt to the tone of the Batman story he’s in.

Heath Ledger’s Joker, apart from being just…a fucking phenomenal performance, demonstrates exactly why this character is such a gift for any actor and why there are honestly very few bad Joker performances (look, I’ll just come out and say it, Suicide Squad is a terrible movie, and Jared Leto is a pretty awful person, but he was a really good Joker). At the time the movie was being made, Nicholson’s Joker was haunting the role (just like Ledger’s haunts it now) and Ledger wanted above all else to create a character who wasn’t just a pale imitation of Jack Napier.

He did that, obviously. But what I think is even more impressive is that this Joker diverges real hard from the comics and still feels perfect. Let’s be clear, this is not a comics’ accurate Joker and the movie wastes no time telling you that.

GAMBOL: You’re crazy.

JOKER: I’m not. No. I’m not.

I mean…case closed. The comics Joker revels in his insanity, luxuriates in it. Ledger also shows why you have to master the rules before you can break them. Everything about his performance, the muttered delivery, the hunched posture, that would all kill any impact if employed by a less confident actor. He reminds me a lot of Tom Hardy, funnily enough, another actor who can be more arresting with a muttered grunt than a shouted monologue. You just…can’t…look…away…he is so fucking good.

Anyway, the Joker offers to kill the Batman in exchange for half of all their money which the mobsters naturally refuse, with one of them, Gambol, instead putting a hit on the Joker.

With Lau in the wind Dent and Gordon turn to Batman to get him back from Hong Kong. Funnily enough, this entire subplot was what convinced Warner Brothers to not even bother trying to get the movie past the Chinese censors which resulted in it becoming one of the most bootlegged movies in China’s history. Lau gets deposited on Gordon’s doorstep. Dent and Rachel offer Lau a deal; full immunity and he gets to keep the mob’s money in exchange for the names of all the mobsters he did business with. You know, in previous Batman reviews this would normally be the point where I’d be saying something like “Doctor Tornado and Mistress Nefaria decide to team up to steal the moon”. This feels more like I’m recapping American Gangster or something.

So with Lau in custody the mobsters get desperate and ask the Joker for help, in one stroke invalidating every single episode of America’s Dumbest Criminals.

Shortly after, Hockey Pads Man shows up dead (I suspect his archenemy, The Puck!). Strapped to the body is a joker card and footage of the Joker torturing the hapless vigilante and threatening to kill people until Batman reveals his identity (fun fact, all the Joker hostage videos were directed and shot by Heath Ledger and they are terrifying.) DNA samples found on the card tell Gordon that the Joker is going to target Harvey Dent, the judge trying the mob money case and Commissioner Loeb.

Bruce is so impressed with Harvey that he decides to throw him a fund-raiser.

And he’s doing that because he believes that Harvey Dent can clean up this stinkhole which means he can stop being Batman which means that he can steal Rachel back from under Harvey’s magnificently chiseled chin.

Bruce lays out what he’s doing to Rachel but she’s iffy. Harvey then proposes to Rachel and she’s iffy about that too. Poor Rachel, being fought over by two incredibly handsome wealthy men like a common YA protagonist. The Joker attacks with his goons looking for Harvey Dent. Bruce saves Harvey by stashing him in his saferoom and then changes into the Batsuit and saves Rachel when Joker pushes her out the window.

Later, in the Own Brand Batcave (if your mansion has burnt down, store-bought is fine) Bruce tries to figure out who this clown is and what are his goals, his hopes, his dreams. Alfred tells him a heart-warming story about propping up brutal dictatorships in South-East Asia (no sarcasm, the line “some friends and I were doing some work for the local government” is perfect in its banal euphemism). Alfred tells him about a bandit leader who was robbing shipments of precious jewels for fun and that some people just be cray, yo.

At Wayne Enterprises Lucius Fox is approached by an employee named Coleman Reese who’s uncovered that Bruce Wayne is Batman and tries to blackmail him. Fox calmly replies that he’s welcome to try if he wants to make an enemy of the most dangerous man on Earth but he does look at Reese’s notes and finds a project that he knew nothing about. When he asks Bruce about this, all Bruce says is that he’s playing this one close to the chest and far from the Bill of Rights.

“I’m sure this is fine.”

So at the commissioner’s funeral, a disguised Joker opens fire and seemingly kills Gordon. Dent, starting to break mentally, abducts one of the Joker’s henchmen and tries to psychologically torture him into giving the Joker up. Batman arrives and tells him that he can’t let the Joker bring him down to his level and tells him instead to call a press conference where Batman will reveal his secret identity.

Future historians will refer to 2008 as The Golden Age of Press Conference Superhero Identity Reveals.

Instead, Harvey decides to reveal that he is The Batman. Watching from Bruce’s penthouse, Rachel is disgusted with Bruce letting Harvey take the fall and gives Alfred a note to give to Bruce later.

Harvey gets transported across town to jail but the convey is attacked by the Joker’s goons in a scene that culminates in one of the most spectacular vehicle stunts of the 21st century.

“Watch me do a tumble Ma! OWWW!”

Joker tries to goad Batman into crashing into him but, oh, that one pesky rule. Batman gets knocked unconscious but is saved at the last minute by Jim Gordon!

Honestly, this is a rare bum note in the movie for me. I hate fake out deaths, and the fact that Gordon apparently sent cops to his wife TO TELL HER HE’D DIED just to make it more convincing kinda makes him look like an absolute asshole.

So the Joker’s been captured…

But neither Harvey Dent nor Rachel Dawes made it home safely.

So, all out of options, Gordon decides that only one man can make the Joker talk.

I know a couple who role-played this on their wedding night. Nothing to do with the movie, I just needed to get that out there.

Some of my absolute favourite scenes in all of Batman media are scenes where Batman and the Joker just sit down and…talk. The last scene of Killing Joke. Batman showing the Joker the Riddler’s file in The Batman. For all that this movie’s Joker is not comics accurate, the relationship these two have absolutely is. This potent mixture of repulsion, fascination and recognition. A hatred that, over eighty years, has become so old and passionate that it feels almost like love. Batman stares at the Joker like a horrific car-crash, not understanding why he can’t look away. And the Joker sees…a project? A chance to not be alone? A mirror image that’s just missing one tiny, thing. A smile.

They talk while Gordon watches, confident that Batman is in control. But Gordon’s made a crucial mistake. The Joker has Rachel, which means it’s not Batman in there. It’s Bruce Wayne. And he’s just a man.

Finally, after showing just how powerless all Batman’s threats really are, Joker gives a pity confession and tells him where Harvey and Rachel are being held. Batman races off to save Rachel, while Gordon goes to save Harvey, leaving the Joker in the interrogation room. With a single guard. Who’s also in the room with him.

“Uh…sure you don’t wanna put me in a cell?”

Meanwhile, Rachel and Harvey are being held in seperate warehouses but can communicate by radio. Rachel tells Harvey that if one of them is rescued the other will be blown up so she takes the opportunity to tell Harvey that she will marry him. Unfortunately, the Joker lied, which means Batman actually saves Harvey and Rachel is killed. In the explosion, half of Harvey’s face is burned off and this finally drives him over the edge.

Meanwhile, the Joker has escaped (shock! gasps! questions asked in Parliament!) and Gordon realises that (sing it with me) BEING CAPTURED WAS PART OF HIS PLAN ALL ALONG.

And, I swear to God kids, that was actually a cool twist way back before every other movie ran it into the fucking ground.

With the Joker escaped Gotham goes into full on panic. Coleman Reese decides to reveal Batman’s identity on live TV in the hope that this will stop the Joker’s rampage but Mister J has a change of heart and instead announces that he’ll blow up a hospital unless Reese is killed, forcing Bruce to save his life.

Joker visits Harvey in hospital dressed as a nurse (because, what else would you wear to a birth?) and gives Dent the last little push he needs into full on freakdom. Harvey finally embraces the coin, becomes Two-Face, and swears vengeance on the mob and the corrupt cops who love them.

CGI really peaked in the late aughties, didn’t it?

Meanwhile, two ferries leave Gotham. One carrying civilians fleeing the city’s carnage, and the other carrying prisoners deemed too dangerous to leave in the city during the crisis. Both ferries lose power and the Joker reveals his final game; a version of the prisoner’s dilemma. Each ferry has a detonator that will blow up the other and if neither detonator is activated before midnight both bombs will go off. This, as you can imagine, causes quite the stir.

Batman, desperate to find the Joker, shows Lucius that thing he was working on which turns out to be a way to monitor every cellphone in Gotham.

“Oh shit. It wasn’t fine.”

Lucius agrees to help Batman this one last time, but says that after that, he’s done. And yeah, it’s absolutely a little problematic that the movie shows illegal surveillance as the key to victory against terrorism. On the other hand, how many other movies in this genre would even take the time to acknowledge that this raises serious ethical questions? Like, I’m pretty sure if Iron Man had had a scene where he hacks every cellphone on Earth to find Ironmonger, that would have just been accepted as Iron Man doing regular Iron Man shit.

Anyway Batman tracks the Joker to where he’s holding a group of people hostage and has to battle not only the Joker and his goons but Gordon’s SWAT team because they don’t realise that Joker has disguised the hostages as clowns, the clowns as hostages, and himself as Batman, probably.

As the clock ticks down, both the civilians and the prisoners debate whether to blow the other ship up. One prisoner gets the warden to give up the detonator through sheer menace…and then proceeds to throw it out the window.

And I feel again the need to praise the casting in this movie. They didn’t need to get an actor of Tommy Lister Junior’s calibre to play this part. It’s not even a minute of screentime. Three lines tops. But it’s the fact that every single speaking role is cast with a fantastic actor is what makes this movie so special. Every scene has great acting work, it’s just pure quality from start to finish.

The civilians actually come closer to killing the prisoners, but at the last second no one actually has the stomach for murder.

The Joker, for the first time, is genuinely confused. He just can’t fathom that his worldview might be wrong. Batman stops him from blowing up the ships and leaves him dangling in the air. He tells Joker that he’s lost, but Joker counters that once Gotham sees what’s become of their saviour Harvey Dent, they’ll be well on their way to becoming like him. The Joker then muses that he and Batman will never be able to kill each other and that they’re going to be doing this forever.

What I say every day to my list of review requests, oddly enough.

Batman then has to race to the scene where Two-Face has kidnapped Gordon’s wife, son and daughter and is forcing Gordon to choose which one he shoots.

Look, I know this will sound cold but trust me, I’ve read the comics.
CHOOSE THE BOY.

Batman is forced to kill Harvey save Gordon’s son and, realising that Gotham needs the legend of Harvey Dent, decides to take the blame for all of his crimes. Alfred reads Rachel’s note which would have told Bruce that she was choosing Harvey and could never be with him and decides that Bruce has a had a bad enough day and burns it. Lucius shuts down the surveillance network, only to learn that Bruce rigged it to self-destruct so it could never be used or abused again. And the movie ends with Batman going on the run, hunted by the city that he saved.

***

Still, after all these years, probably the super-hero genre’s zenith. Fucking masterful.

The Dark Knight Detective

Though not perfect. This, regrettably, is where Bale’s Batman slips irrevocably into self parody. It should be a fatal weakness but, given how Batman is largely restricted to action scenes where he speaks very little, the movie survives. And this is still probably the best film Bruce Wayne.

His Faithful Manservant

Michael Caine gets some lovely moments here and it feels like he and Bale really found a groove in their scenes together. They feel a lot more like family this time around.

The Clown Prince of Crime

I mean, I don’t think I’m rocking any boats here. But Heath Ledger is quite good.

To put it another way, when he says that they were destined to do this forever, the fact that we never got to see him play this role again causes me deep spiritual pain.

Meet the most bizarre criminal of all time, a twentieth century Jekyll-Hyde!

Oh, what’s this? Not only do we get the best (arguably) screen Joker, we also get the best (FUCKING DEFINITELY) screen Two-Face. I would have liked to see a little more of Harvey’s backstory and some hints that he was grappling with Big Bad Harv’ even before the accident but I get it, the movie’s technically too long as it is. Again, a terrible waste that we never got to see Eckhart play Harvey again. The again, again, as I previously mentioned Two-Face is a character with a very short shelf-life. Once you’ve done the origin there’s not really that much left to do with him.

Fear Incarnate, Fear Walking the streets of Gotham…

“Oh I wish Cillian Murphy wasn’t in that movie” said no one fucking ever. I love that Crane is much more light-hearted and fun-loving in this one. He’s lost all pretences of being a serious, normal person and is just embracing being a scary super villain. It’s great. Really brings home that crime in Gotham hasn’t been killed. It’s just getting stranger.

The Comish

THIS is the Gordon I want to see. Tough, brilliant, badass and heart-breakingly. Oldman’s delivery of “We have to save Dent! I have to save Dent!” still brings a lump to my throat.

Our Plucky Sidekicks

Without question the most stacked supporting cast of any Batman movie. There are no small characters in this. None. Take a character like the Chechen. Incredibly small part, but packed full of great lines and lovely, revealing character moments (his bromance with Maroni is genuinely kinda sweet). Maggie Gyllenhaal will have you asking “Katie Who?”

Batman NEVER kills, except: 

To quote Lady Bracknell, to have one Two-Face fall to his death under suspicious circumstances might be considered misfortune. Two looks like carelessness. Eminently justifiable homicide. Dubious intentionality. But yeah, Batman did kill Harvey Dent. No two (ha!) ways about it.

Where does he get those wonderful toys?: 

As well as a new batsuit that allows Batman to turn his head (which might be useful in a fight) we also get Bat-Sonar, that allows Batman to use sonar to see like a submarine.

It’s the car, right? Chicks dig the car:

In keeping with the tradition that in every second movie of a Batman series the Batmobile dies, the Tumbler buys it, leaving us with the Bat-Pod, which will be Batman’s vehicle of choice for the remainder of the series.

Honestly, I prefer it. Simple, stripped back and actually suited for moving around a city.

FINAL SCORE OUT OF TEN:

NEXT UPDATE: 01 May 2024.

NEXT TIME: Come to me, my ageing millennials. I have nostalgia for you.

“There are the hands that made us. And then there are the hands that guide their hands.”

So, how did we get here?

The MCU fell from grace the way Hemingway’s Mike Campbell went bankrupt, slowly and then all at once.

I think we all felt it, didn’t we? At some point this year, probably in the summer when Barbenheimer was in full swing, there was a moment when all of us who had still not disembarked from the hype train took a look at the MCU and said “nah, I’m done”.

And you probably have your own explanation for why that is. Endgame was the peak and it’s all been downhill since then. Superhero fatigue. Bad writing. Too woke. Not woke enough. Too much CGI. Martin Scorsese dropping truth bombs. The pandemic. Whatever.

But ultimately, I think the real reason was just…time. The studio execs currently running around trying to figure out why audiences aren’t flocking to their superhero movies anymore are like surfers wondering why the tidal wave they were riding faded away into the ocean.

Guys. It was a wave. That’s what they do.

Granted, it was a wave like nothing we’ve ever seen before. Depending on when you consider the modern age of superhero movies to have begun (the first X-Men movie maybe?) we’ve been riding this wave for over twenty years with some of the biggest box-office numbers of all time. But, it really was just a bigger version of every other Hollywood trend, be that “make everything like the Matrix” or “make everything like Transformers” or (if you want to go old school) “make everything a Western”. And trends never last. That’s why they’re called “trends”.

And I’ve been burned enough times before to know not to make any big predictions. Maybe these last two years were just a brief blip in an unbroken streak of cinematic dominance that will stretch on to the death of the universe. But, right now, in the waning hours of 2023 it sure feels like the MCU is done. And I’m okay with that. And I don’t regret my time with it as long as I can pretend Thor 4 doesn’t exist.

Because, even if we got nothing else of value from this series of films, James Gunn got to make the Guardians trilogy, and I wouldn’t deny him that for the world.

Okay, so who here’s seen the Christmas special? Yeah, me neither. Alright, here’s what we need to get caught up on. Quill’s still super depressed because Gamora came back to life entirely uninterested in his human penis. Mantis and Quill are now treating each other as brother and sister because, well, yeah, I guess they are. The Guardians are now operating from Knowhere, they have a new larger spaceship called the Bowie and Kraglin and Cosmo the Psychic Soviet Dog are now full members of the Guardians.

Now read on.

After a brief flashback where we see a baby Rocket being grabbed by a mysterious hand, we find ourselves in Knowhere where Rocket is listening to Creep by Radiohead on Peter’s Zune. This is what happens in the opening scene, are you ready? Rocket walks around Knowhere listening to Creep, he sees Nebula putting up a sign and Mantis trying to get Drax to dance with her. Rocket walks into a bar where Peter is drunk off his ass. Peter yells at Rocket for taking his zune and then keels over. Nebula comes and gently carries Peter out of the bar while the other Guardians look on in concern. Title.

That’s it. That’s how this big budget space action movie opens. And I wouldn’t trade these two minutes for the entire Ant-Man trilogy. And it’s not even the best sequence of the movie! It just shows what’s been missing from so many of the other MCU films. Atmosphere. Pacing. Heart. Versimilitude. The sets and costumes look great, the CGI is flawless as usual (I don’t know how the same studio that gave us Rocket Racoon also gave us MODOK). And it’s just good. FILM GOOD.

The Guardians put Peter to bed and have to figure out what to do about the fact that their leader is spending all his time crying tears that could double as Polish vodka. Suddenly, Knowhere is attacked by Adam Fucking Warlock. Okay, this guy, this guy.

First introduced in Fantastic Four as a perfect being created to rule the world by a group of mad scientists, he was later spun off in his own series which was…the story of Jesus Christ but IN SPAAAAAACE!!! I haven’t read it (somehow!) but it sounds seventies as fuck. It also makes the character utterly redundant in my eyes. There are plenty of cosmic superheroes and the Marvel universe doesn’t need a new Jesus because the Jesus of the Marvel universe is Jesus (while I absolutely love that because Marvel used to publish religious comics Jesus has his own page on the Marvel wiki, I am extremely disappointed that it doesn’t answer the pressing theological question as to whether he could one-shot Galactus. I say he could, post-resurrection and with prep-time).

Anyway, the Adam Warlock of the MCU is actually an alien created by the Sovereign (those gold assholes from Guardians 2). Despite being a complete dork, Adam is a fucking powerhouse who tears through all of the Guardians before finally being stabbed by Nebula and having to flee. But it’s too late for Rocket who’s been shot in the chest. Quill tries to use a med-pack on Rocket which triggers a kill switch buried in the little critter because it turns out he was created by a dude called the High Evolutionary who likes people fixing his creations about as much as Apple does.

“If you don’t buy a new one, you’re basically stealing from us. You’re a dirty criminal”.

They manage to stabilise Rocket, but without a way to kill the kill switch his little fuzzy ass is on borrowed time. We now see Rocket’s early life in flashback. He was experimented on by the High Evolutionary and spent most of his time in a cage with three other cybernetically enhanced animals, an otter named Lylla, a Walrus named Teef and a bunny rabbit named Floor who looks like he was created by Sid from Toy Story. They bond, and dream of the beautiful world they’ll go to when the High Evolutionary finishes his project, with wide open skies forever.

Now, the easiest way to get me to absolutely loathe a film is emotional manipulation and I honestly don’t know how James Gunn gets away with this here. We basically have a little found family of adorable animal creatures who’ve been subjected to horrendous experiments and yet find love and joy with each other. On paper, it just sounds so fucking manipulative and yet…it works? I don’t know, it just feels so sincere and raw. I think a big part of that is how well the High Evolutionary works as a villain.

Chukwudi Iwuji is absolutely incredible in the part, preening ego and superficial charm masking volcanic, furious rage and poisonous resentment. But this is also a fantastically conceived villain on the writing level, a narcissistic, abusive parent as a cosmic god. Of course, that was also what Ego was. And Thanos too. It’s almost like this trilogy has a theme. But I think this is by far the most successful version of this Gunn has done. The interactions between the Evolutionary and Rocket all have a deeply upsetting air of authenticity. The scene where the Evolutionary staggers into Rocket’s cell, delirious and ranting after his “medical treatment” went wrong and starts yelling at the cowering racoon…strip out all the sci-fi trappings, yeah, you know what’s really going on there.

In the present, the Guardians learn that some of Rocket’s parts were built by a company called Orgocorp and start planning a raid and Nebula calls in a favour from the Ravagers, whose number now includes Gamora. This, as you can imagine, is no fun for anyone. Gamora has to deal with the fact that this guy she doesn’t know at all is still utterly heartbroken and pining for her, and the Guardians in general and Quill in particular have to deal with the fact that classic Gamora had, ahem, a bold personality.

The team infiltrate the Orgosphere, a massive gooey meatball in space. Honestly, the whole Orgosphere sequence should be a massive drag, it’s basically just there to pad out the run time because the team can’t just roll up at the High Evolutionary’s door at the start of the second act but it gets by on awesome character moments and sheer visual style.

There’s so much to love about this, Nathan Fillion’s cameo as a security guard, the kinder, gentler Guardians having to deal with Gamora’s more “Thanosy” approach to problem solving, Peter FINALLY getting to demonstrate that he’s actually a canny and intelligent hero and not the COLOSSAL idiot he was in Infinity War. Also, this:

I know it couldn’t happen. I know Peter realising he has to stop leaping from one woman to another like the world’s horniest frog is the entire point of his arc. I know it would have been terrible but…I really do love this pairing. I was never invested in Peter and Gamora but this I am here for. Plus, you know the sex would be amazing. For Peter.

While the gang get the information they need to find the High Evolutionary’s base, we get more flashbacks to Rocket’s childhood. The High Evolutionary discovered that Rocket had a genius level intellect and encouraged with love and affection. But then, once Rocket was able to fix a problem with his “Humanimals” (animal-human hybrids he was designing to be his “perfect” society) he coldly discarded him and told Rocket he would harvest his brain and euthanise all his friends.

So the reason the high Evolutionary is obsessed with Rocket is that he’s the only one of his creations who demonstrated true unique thinking rather than rote memorisation. This lends itself to an absolutely irresistable reading of the High Evolutionary as Disney and Rocket as James Gunn (or any actually creative person in their employ), with the Evolutionary trying and failing over and over again to mass produce genuine artistic creation and just not getting why it doesn’t work that way.

You know, I still haven’t seen it yet. Probably should stop dunking on it in case it turns out I love it. Hey, I liked Chicken Little. Weirder things have happened.

So Rocket planned a prison break which ended with Lylla, Teef and Floor getting shot right in front of his eyes.

This shot tears my fucking heart out, the starkness of it.

Rocket snaps and mauls the High Evolutionary’s face to puree and then steals a ship and flies off.

In the present, the Guardians arrive at Counter-Earth, the High Evolutionary’s latest attempt to create paradise which is basically if you asked an AI to create 1980s American suburbia and populated it with bat people.

It all looks normal until you start noticing weird little details that are just ever so slightly off (why do they have those weird little grassy verges between the road and the foot path? What’s that thing that looks like a cross between a sundial and a bird-bath? What’s with the weird buttons on the car doors?).

Peter, Groot and Nebula are able to get a steer to the High Evolutionary’s base while Mantis, Drax and Gamora stay behind to guard Rocket. Meanwhile Adam and his mother Ayesha (remember her from Guardians 2?) follow the Guardians to Counter-Earth because the Sovereign were also created by the High Evolutionary which, honestly, is one of the few things about this movie that I don’t like. If the High Evolutionary can create the Sovereign, a space-faring empire capable of creating super-beings like Adam, why the hell is he still tinkering around with the eighties bat-people? It just feels like a clunky way of linking the Evolutionary and the Sovereign which could probably have been done a bit more elegantly.

Anyway, on the drive over Peter, Groot and Gamora see that Counter-Earth is a failing society. They reach the HE’s HQ and Gamora has to stay outside because she’s carrying more firearms than the entire West Coast rap scene in the early nineties. Peter and Groot are brought into the Evolutionary’s presence and he explains that he once visited Earth and decided that it would make a great society if it weren’t for all the shittiness. Peter, who has heard enough supervillain monologues to last a lifetime and is so checked out, asks the HE if he really thinks Counter-Earth is perfect and he admits that no, obviously it isn’t. That’s why he’s blowing it up and starting again.

Back at the Bowie, Gamora has to defend the still unconscious Rocket from Adam Warlock but their battle is interrupted when the planet starts blowing up, which kills Ayesha, much to Adam’s grief. The High Evolutionary launches his headquarters into space, with Nebula, Drax and Mantis breaking in before take off to rescue Quill and Groot. BUT Quill and Groot have already shot their way out having gotten the code they need to deactivate Rocket’s kill switch so it’s just a mess and each group thinks the other is dead.

On the Bowie, Rocket dies and sees Lylla in the afterlife and, oh yeah, I pretty much start crying from this point and don’t stop until the credits. Bradley Cooper as Rocket in this scene, where he breaks down in tears over his guilt at letting her die…umpf. Lylla softly tells him that the sky is beautiful and it is forever. He asks if he can come with her, and she says yes. But not yet. He still has a purpose. He asks how can that be, as he was made to be thrown away.

“There are the hands that make us” she says. “And there are the hands that guide the hands.”

Fuck, I need a minute.

On the Evolutionary’s ship, Nebula, Drax and Mantis have a huge fight because Drax was supposed to stay with the ship and dragged Mantis along and now they’re all probably going to die because Drax is an idiot and Mantis is an idiot-enabler. But they then encounter the HE’s next experiments, an army of little mice-children and Drax is able to communicate with them because he’s really good with kids. Because, there are different kinds of intellifence.

Rocket returns to life and Nebula is able to get back in contact with them. But the High Evolutionary hijacks the signal and warns Peter to return Rocket to him his ASAP. Peter puts in a call to Kraglin who attacks the Evolutionary’s ship with Knowhere and we get an all out war. This gives us one of the best (and quite possibly last) truly great fight scenes of the MCU with a corridor battle between all of the Guardians and the HE’s goons that is just jaw-droppingly awesome.

While exploring the ship, Rocket discovers a lab full of Earth animals and realises that he is, in fact, a racoon after all. He gets ambushed by the High Evolutionary but the Guardians have Rocket’s back and proceed to administer the most satisfying villain beatdown in this 32 film cycle.

The others ask Rocket if he’s going to kill the now defeated Evolutionary and he says no, because he’s a Guardian of the Galaxy and they don’t kill. Apparently.

All these guys are just resting. In pieces.

The Guardians proceed to rescue everyone still trapped on the ship, not just the people but the animals too. Quill doesn’t make it off the ship in time and is left stranded in the vacuum of space and and freezes solid (this is the second time he’s done that and most doctors would recommend less than once). But, at the last moment he’s rescued by Adam Warlock who realised that the High Evolutionary was a bad one after he killed his mother.

If you think this imagery is unsubtle, you should read the original comics.

With the day saved, Peter decides to take his sister’s advice and to stop expecting the women in his life to make him whole. He announces that he’s leaving the Guardians to return home to Earth. There, he tearfully reunites with his grandfather, Jason Quill.

The movie ends with Rocket and the other Guardians sitting in Knowhere listening to Peter’s Zune. For the first time, he moves past Peter’s old music and picks something from the 2000’s, The Dog Days are Over by Florence and the Machine.

As the music plays over the speakers the people of Knowhere dance. Joyously. Ecstatically.

These characters, all of them, have been haunted by the past. Chained down by it. Lessened by it. Made crueller and meaner by it.

And now, at last, they’re free.

The dog days are over. The dog days are done.

***

Spouse of Mouse checked out of this series of movies a long time ago, but I was able to convince her to watch this one with me. After it was over she turned to me and said.

“Wow. That was the first good MCU movie I’ve seen in a long time.”

“Honey” I replied. “That may be the LAST good MCU movie you see in a long time.”

It may be. But it was worth it.

Scoring

Adaptation: 24/25

“Adaptation” is really the wrong word. The cosmos Gunn’s created in these movies is so much his own that any resemblance to the Marvel cosmic universe is often In Name Only. Who cares? This trilogy is the best space opera not named “Star Wars” and I’m not sure it’s not the best space opera period.

Our Heroic Heroes: 25/25

My GOD I will miss these guys.

Our Nefarious Villain: 25/25

Hey Marvel, now that Majors is out maybe take a look at what you got here?

Our Plucky Sidekicks: 24/25

I haven’t even mentioned the B story between Kraglin and Cosmo after he calls her a “Bad Dog”. I haven’t even mentioned a fraction of the weird kooky side-characters that populate this thing. An embarassment of riches, this movie.

The Stinger

On a distant planet we meet a new team of Guardians consisting of Rocket, Groot, Kraglin, Cosmo, Adam and one of the rescued children who is called *checks notes* oh holy shit, she’s Phyla Vell, apparently. Neat. Anyway, they leap into action to protect a village of aliens from attack. And the adventure continues.

And the audience went…

Yeah, I have about as much interest in seeing a James Gunn-less Guardians movie as I have in the exciting world of bear-baiting. Let it end, guys. There is literally nothing you could show me now that would pique my interest.

The Second Stinger

Peter and his grandfather have breakfast and bitch about Jason’s neighbour not mowing the lawn.

And the audience went…

I DEMAND to know the resolution of this plotline.

FINAL SCORE: 98%

NEXT UPDATE: Really sorry, I know I was late with this one but I have a shit ton of writing to catch up with so we’ll meet back here 18th January 2024.

NEXT TIME: Oh God, I hope it’s held up…

The summer of the soul in December

I swear to God, I wrote the end of year wrap up for 2022 last week, time is going too fast make it stop make it stop…

Ahem. Sorry about that. Anyway, how are you all? How’s every little thing? Merry Christmas.

2023 was…a year. Ups and downs. Highs and lows. Swings and roundabouts.

October saw the release of my second book, Knock Knock, Open Wide to polite, restrained acclaim. I must take the opportunity now to thank Alex Grecian and Brian Evenson for kindly providing blurbs, and oh my God, BIG thanks to Clay McLeod Chapman who was an absolute LEGEND promoting the book online. You should check out his novel What Kind of Mother, it’s a heartbreaking story of loss set in the backwoods of Virginia with terrifying yet symbolic crabs. Mouse recommends.

And, of course, if you were kind enough to support me by picking up a copy, you have my eternal thanks.

Anyway, this year’s reviews:

In 2023 I reviewed 1 Canon Disney movie, 3 MCU movies with another to follow before year end, 1 animé, 2 live action movies (I’m counting Dark Crystal as live action and not animation because it is), 4 non-Disney canon animated features, 1 TV series, 1 Bats versus Bolts (it lives again!), 6 Batman movies plus the Gotham Knight series of short films and one weird essay that was supposed to be a review of Inherit the Wind but turned into me having an existential breakdown over the impossibility of knowing objective truth.

This was definitely a year when I pulled back from my usual staples of the MCU and Disney Canon but…Jesus, can you blame me? Not a hot take, I know, but whenever I have a bad year I will remind myself that at least it wasn’t as bad as Disney’s 2023. Holy shit what a dumpster fire. And we’re not done yet.

You were supposed to be the Chosen One!

So, as a Disney reviewer and fan am I disheartened or saddened by this sudden, catastrophic reversal of the company’s fortunes? No, not at all. It’s a massive, rapacious corporation that doesn’t care in the slightest about any of us and thinking it’s your friend will get you eaten alive like that dude in Grizzly Man. If you do find yourself feeling sympathy, watch the Oh My Disney! sequence from Wreck It Ralph 2  to remind yourself of the rather sickening hubris that brought them to this point. Or, indeed, just watch any of their recent output. But the other reason why I’m not worried is because we have been here before. The canon always goes through highs and lows. They’ll course correct and come back stronger than ever. Happened after the second world war. Happened after the death of Walt, happened after the end of the Renaissance. Sunrise, sunset.

Anyway, my never-ending quest to clear my review backlog has reached some of the weirder and grungier items on the menu and this, combined with the aforementioned pant-shitting of two of my regular series, meant I honestly did not review that many good films this year. Best film?

Well spoilers, but yeah, it’s going to be Guardians 3. 

Worst film?

Holy moly, spoiled for choice. This year had no less than FOUR new entries into the Hall of Shame which I think may be a record? And while a fair man might say that Freddie as FR07  was the worst film I’ve seen this year, I am neither fair, nor a man. I fucking hate Thor: Love and Thunder and I want to get one more kick in the goolies before New Year.

And on that happy note, thanks so much for reading and commenting. You guys are, as always, the best.

Nollaig shona daoibh go léir,

Mouse.

 

Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure (1977)

What was it about the seventies anyway?

I’ve reviewed a few animated films from this decade by this point and they are all (with the exception of the Disneys) weird as balls.

But I get ahead of myself. I’m going to let you in on a little behind the scenes secret. Ever since this mouse escaped the rat race and started writing full time, I’ve actually had less time to devote to this blog with work starting on most posts a mere few days before they’re scheduled to go live. This can be a problem when I starkly under-estimate just how much there is to research on a given movie and go plummeting down rabbit-holes

And my oh my, Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure is less a field full of rabbit holes than a giant hole with occasional bits of field clinging to the edges. But okay, a little background.

So waaaaay back in the 1910s an American named Johnny Gruelle patented a doll that he named Raggedy Ann and then wrote a series of stories starring her, which were such a success that Raggedy Ann became possibly the first bona-fide modern American toy fad. And, of course, as Jane Austen herself once said “it is a truth universally acknowledged that a toy franchise in possession of a fortune must be in want of an animated tie-in.” And boy howdy, did Raggedy Ann manage to get some impressive talent over the decades. For starters, there was a short series of Fleischer cartoons that were (naturally) as charming and well made as they were horrifying.

No context for you. None.

There were also two television specials produced in the seventies by Chuck Mofawkin Jones. But, without a doubt, Raggedy Ann’s most famous foray into the world of animation was 1977’s Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure which is…well, it’s something.

Here’s what it’s like. Imagine Hasbro want a new Transformers movie. And the director they initially tap dies and so they bring in a replacement; David Lynch. And now Optimus Prime is dancing with a backwards talking midget in the red lodge. That’s kind of what happened here.

Lynch in this instance was Richard Williams, who we’ve had our dealings with in the past. One of the best animators to ever work in the medium, period, Williams was shanghaid into making a glorified toy commerical and decided to use that opportunity to have the time of his life. This film is basically Williams and some of his most talented animator friends (Betty Boop co-creator Grim Natwick, future Genie animator Eric Goldberg and Art “I created Goofy and sued Walt Disney for unfair labour practices, took him all the way to the Supreme Court and lived to tell of it” Babbitt to name a few) having a ball on the dime of the good folks at the Bobbs-Merril publishing company.

But is it a good movie? Well…

This movie’s Wikipedia page boasts that it’s “the first feature-length animated musical comedy film produced in the United States” and, despite the suspiciously specific wording I feel confident in hbomberguying Wikipedia on that and calling BULLSHIT. Off the top of my head, Snow White and Pinocchio precede this movie by decades. Of course, both of those movies are described by Wikipedia as “animated musical fantasy” rather than “animated musical comedy” but I have no frickin’ idea how Raggedy Ann constitutes a comedy but Pinocchio doesn’t. For one, Pinocchio actually makes me laugh.

I suppose the only argument that could be made is that it’s the first “animated musical” anything is that it was originally intended to be a stage musical, and then a live action stage TV special and then finally an animated feature. Oh, they did eventually make the stage musical complete with a poster that looks like what would happen if you told an AI to imagine an Indiana Jones/Strawberry Shortcake crossover as directed by Ingmar Bergman.

“What is this I see on the horizon? It is death.”

Oh, and holy fuck, this is how the play opens: Little Marcella (Raggedy Ann’s owner and a staple character of the books) is dying from a broken heart after her mother abandoned her father for another man which drove him to alcoholism. And then her dog tried to eat her bird which resulted in them both dying.

That’s not even the worst part! Marcella Gruelle, as well as appearing in the Raggedy Ann books was Johnny Gruelle’s real life daughter who died at the age of 13 from an unsterilised vaccination needle which is how Raggedy Ann got co-opted as a symbol of the anti-vax movement…gah!

Sorry! You see what I mean about rabbit holes! Okay. The movie. The movie!

So in a live action sequence we see little Marcella returning home from school with her favourite toy, Raggedy Ann. Because Ann sees more of the world outside the nursery, she’s become the de facto leader of Marcella’s other toys; Mr Potato Head, Rex the Dinosaur, Slinky Dog…*checks notes*

Sorry, wrong film. The toys are…the toys are bizarre nightmares quite frankly. I don’t even understand what half of these things are supposed to be:

What? What! WHAT?!

Anyway, we now transition to animation and, after introducing the real heroes of this whole endeavour in font that’s so incongrously wacky it’s gotta be taking the piss…

This is the text equivalent of your manager coming to work dressed as Spongebob Squarepants.

…we get the opening credits, which may be unique in the history of animation. I’ve certainly never seen their like. For you see, every character is introduced with the name of the artist who animated them. And I love this. You ever see the Key and Peele sketch where teachers are treated like pro athletes? This is like a movie from an alternate universe where the credit actually goes to where it belongs; the animators.

In the toy room, Ann tells the other toys that it’s Marcella’s birthday and that means she’s going to be getting some new presents. The first one has already arrived, and it’s crushed Ann’s brother Andy like a common witch.

“And he’s not only faaairly dead! He’s really very, very dead!”

They rescue Andy who sings a song about how he’s absolutely not a girl’s toy you guys, he’s a tough boy toy who does toy boy things.

Oh yeah, I should mention the songs. After all, this is the first feature-length animated musical comedy film produced in the United States*******. The songbook was written by Joe Raposo, who was responsible for some of the catchiest theme tunes of your childhood, including Sesame Street, Madeline and The Smoggies. He also wrote Sing which was covered by The Carpenters. So the dude has a very respectable pedigree which I hope will soften the blow when I say I think the songs are Raggedy Ann’s weakest element. And there are a lot of songs in this thing, 20 squeezed into an 85 minute film and they just grind all forward momentum to a halt.

The toys climb up the new box to meet the new toy who is revealed to be a space ranger Babette, a fancy French bisque doll.

Babette is none too happy of having to share a nursery with these American plebs, and wants nothing more than to return to Paris. Babette catches the eye of another toy, the pirate Captain Contagious who kidnaps her to be his bride.

This is the main plot, by the way. Raggedy Ann and Andy have to go on a quest to rescue Babette from Captain Contagious and his old-fashioned ideas of romance and this comes around 25 minutes into the run time. See what I mean about the songs slowing everything down?

So Ann and Andy climb through the nursery window and find themselves in the Deep Dark Wood where they meet the Camel with Wrinkled Knees, a blue stuffed camel who’s desperately trying to rejoin his caravan of camels. Who he sees floating in the sky like Pink Elephants on an Absinthe Bender.

Ann and Andy offer to let the Camel come back and live in their playroom after they find Babette and he agrees to let them ride him. Unfortunately, he starts seeing camels in the sky and races off a cliff to join them, and all three toys plummet into a giant canyon full of taffy.

What was it about the seventies? What was it about this decade that made people say “hey let’s just spend a year of our lives animating a bunch of random shit, just random nonsensical shit without rhyme or reason, one whole year of our lives doing that”? I mean, I’m not saying our current era of micro-managed, suffocated, corporatized animation production is better necessarily but I still don’t understand the thought process. In the taffy pit, Ann, Andy and the Camel meet The Greedy, a massive living goo monster that’s constantly devouring itself. This is probably the most famous sequence in the entire movie because it is:

a) Astonishingly animated.

b) Utterly baffling and terrifying.

And so basically functions as a microcosm of the movie itself.

The Greedy tells them that he eats so much because he’s lonely and desperately wants “a sweetheart”. Of course, Raggedy Ann lets slip that she has a heart made of candy which results in the Greedy trying to eat all three toys.

They escape, and come next to Looney Land where they meet Sir Leonard Looney who is just soooooo wacky!

I’m sure somebody finds this amusing but not I. Not Mouse.

Looney takes them to meet King Koo Koo, a tiny little monarch who can only get bigger by laughing at other people. Koo Koo wants to keep Ann, Andy and the Camel prisoner but they escape in a Looney Land ship presumably on loan from the Pepperland navy.

“We all live on a yellow…thing. A yellow…thing. A yellow…thing.”

They see Captain Contagious’ ship on the horizon and prepare to board her to rescue Babette, only to discover that Contagious has been overthrown and that the new captain is…Babette. She has used her feminine wiles to take command of the ship and now rules over her adoring crew with ruthless discipline and a whip.

Okay, someone was working through some kinks.

Ann tells Babette that she’s come to rescue her and bring her back to the play room and Babette is all “uh, no bitch, Babette’s going home” and has them tied to the mast while she sets sail for Paris.

King Koo Koo then attacks the ship with a giant monster named Gazooks who’s a big green blob. I mean, they could have just brought The Greedy back, it’s basically the same thing…whatever. Koo Koo orders the Gazooks to tickle them all. Laughing at their misfortune causes Koo Koo to grow to massive proportions. Andy realises that Koo Koo’s really just full of hot air and gets the captain’s parrot to peck him which causes him to explode.

In the real world, Marcella finds the toys outside in the garden and brings them back inside. The Camel is welcomed into the playroom and Babette apologises for selfishly seeking freedom from a life of being someone else’s plaything and even forgives Captain Contagious, calling him “a very romantic man”

“I see now you knew what was best for me.”

***

There are fans of animation and fans of animated films and I think this really is more for the former group than the latter. If you like your feature length animation served with a strong script and a satisfying narrative structure then, well, this movie will be about as good a time for as another Robert Williams animation.

But, if you like the idea of watching one of the most high powered animation teams ever assembled just going hog fucking wild on someone else’s dime, I can definitely recommend.

Animation: 17/20:

The problem with an animation showcase like this is that, while none of the sequences are bad at all, there are definitely some that are stronger than others and the incongruity of it all can get very distracting. Also, while the animation is frequently very technically impressive it’s not what I’d call charming. Many of the characters are frankly a little unsettling. I admire the movie’s animation more than I love it.

Leads: 06/20

I know it was the seventies and all, but it is still kinda galling that Raggedy Ann does essentially nothing in the climax of her own movie.

Villain: 09/20

Marty Brill gives a pretty fun performance as King Koo Koo.

Supporting Characters: 05/20

I feel like these characters were designed more to be interesting for the artist’s to draw and animate than for the audience to engage with.

Music: 06/20

No disrespect to Joe Raposco but this is a pretty terrible musical.

FINAL SCORE: 43%

NEXT UPDATE: 28th December 2023

NEXT TIME: What is Christmas, if not a time to reconnect with old friends?

Disney(ish) reviews with the Unshaved Mouse: Planes

Well. That was anti-climactic.

I feel like a knight who’s been on a quest to slay a terrible dragon for a decade only to arrive at the top of the mountain and find the dragon’s around the size of a chicken and died several years ago from old age.

In the early days of this blog I built up Planes as a personal bete noir, a movie I would never, ever review because it represented the worst of crass, merchandise driven movie-making for both Disney in particular and animation in general.

Oh my. How innocent I was. How innocent we all were.

But after years of the absolute garbage I have had to sit through for you people (love you all) it is with a heavy heart that I must report that Planes is…fine?

I mean, it is aggressively mediocre, don’t get me wrong. But, given the state of Disney’s output at present, there’s something refreshing about a movie that manages to hit a solid C.

In fact, I would say it was one of the most safely boring movies I’ve seen all year were it not for the fact that it’s set in the Cars universe and therefore is, as all movies in that benighted franchise are, weird as fuck.

WHAT KIND OF LIFE DOES THIS POOR CREATURE HAVE?!

The movie begins with two Air Force jets flying over the ocean and talking about Dusty Crophopper, the greatest flyer known to man weird anthropomorphised vehicle, with the kind of  gushing, on-the nose-dialogue that tells you this is just a dream Dusty’s having from, like, the very second you hear it.

Sure enough, Dusty’s boss Leadbottom wakes him from his reverie and tells him to get back to work. See, Dusty Crophopper is a crop-duster (his parents wanted to name him Trismegistus Carruthers but you now how set in their ways people are). But, would you believe this rural small-town boy stuck in a dead end job has dreams of something greater? Of course you would, but that’s because you are savvy media-literate folks who’ve seen one, maybe even two, films. Nothing wrong with formula, I guess, but I’m kinda surprised Disney didn’t just forget the planes and crank out a crossover with Star Wars about a plucky X-Wing who goes off to fight the Empire.

The scene where he had to kill his new best friend was surprisingly heart-rending.

So Dusty wants to be a racer even though he’s not built for that and it’s actually damaging him when he exceeds his recommended maximum speed, something that is pointed out to him by his friend Dottie who is one of the little forklift people from the first two movies.

We need to talk about the forklift people because, well, there’s literally nothing else of interest to talk about this movie other than the utterly bizarre world-building. What are you expecting here? The Unshaved Mouse’s Analysis of Planes through the lens of Radical Queery Theory? It’s fucking Planes. Of course I’m going to talk about about the weird forklift people.

Ask yourself, how many forklifts have you seen today? Probably one or less, right? Unless you work in a forklift adjacent profession? Pretty specialised piece of equipment?

Well in the world of Planes, the forklifts have fucking taken over. They’re everywhere. I think there was an invasion and the old car-led order was violently overthrown. Spouse of Mouse pointed out that all the forklift people seem to be a labour class. I pointed out that they also seem to be running the military and also all the cars and planes are basically beasts of burden in this world and we can’t agree on who’s oppressing who (bit like our marriage, if I’m honest). If there had been this many of them in the first movie it would have to have been called Forklifts (And there are also a few cars for some reason). I can only imagine it’s because the animators decided that forklifts have arms and are closer to human proportions so it slightly explains why these living vehicles created a world that is very obviously designed for the human body.

Anyway, the plot, such as it is. Dusty spends his days crop-dusting by day and training by night for the qualifiers for the Wings Around the Globe Rally with his friend Chug, who’s a fuel truck. Chug suggests that Dusty gets some pointers from Skipper Riley, an old warplane who’s a World War 2 veteran.

World War 2 happened in the Cars universe?

I…

I have so many questions.

What kind of car was Hitler?

Obvious, in retrospect.

But Skipper turns Dusty down cold and the young crop duster has to race in the qualifiers without his guidance.

Anyway, we’re right at the point of this checklist masquerading as a screenplay where we’re supposed to meet our cocky douchebag antagonist. This is Ripslinger.

And I’m not saying he’s an obvious rip-off of Chick Hicks from Cars. I don’t need to. The frickin’ Disney wiki did it for me.

Sayin’ the quiet part loud, eh wiki?

Fuck’s sake Disney, not even going to give him a different colour?

Dusty competes and gives it his all, but, wouldn’t ya know it? He just fails to make the cut and doesn’t qualify. Well, I guess the movie’s over. But what’s this? One of the other planes was disqualified for using illegal fuel, which means Dusty qualifies by default right before the second act. Good job, Scriptotron 3000.

BEEP BOOP. SCRIPT PROGRESS AT 30%

I kid, but you know what? There’s some solid writing here. There’s a nice scene where Dusty starts to realise just how dangerous a flight around the world will be for a crop-duster. Skipper shows up and tries to talk him out of the race but Dusty insists on going saying that he’s sick of flying around the same field and “flying thousands of miles and never going anywhere”.

Impressed by his moxie, Skipper agrees to train this rookie and discovers the reason why Dusty always flies so low to the ground; he’s a plane who’s scared of heights.

Regardless, Skipper works with Dusty to improve his speed as a low-flying aircraft. Dottie buffs his engine and also offer to remove his duster to reduce drag, something the movie makes very clear is the equivalent of Dusty losing “the boys”. That’s not a joke.

Dusty travels to New York and lands at JFK Airport…FUCKING WHAT? JFK EXISTED IN THE CARS UNIVERSE AND (PRESUMABLY) WAS ASSASSINATED WHICH LED TO IDLEWILD BEING RENAMED WHAT?!? HOW DID LEE HARVEY OSWALD HOLD A RIFLE?! HOW DID HE GET UP THE STAIRS TO THE BOOK DESPOSITORY?! 

Sorry. He lands at JFK Airport and meets his designated comedy sidekick (a Mexican plane named El Chupacabra) his designated love interest (an Indian plane named Ishani) and a stuffy British plane voiced by John Cleese in full “just put the money on the dresser and have your way with me” mode. Hell, even the designated comedy sidekick gets a designated love interest as El Chupacabra falls for Rochelle, a French-Canadian plane. Sorry I mean Carolina. Wait, no, Heidi. I mean Azurra. Sakura?

So one of the weirdest parts of this movie…no, I can’t justify that. One of the top fifty weirdest things in this movie is the character of Rochelle who was re-coloured, re-named and re-nationalised for a whopping 11 different internationalised releases. So she’s Australian in the Australian release, Brazilian in the Brazilian one and so on. And they did this because…I have no goddamned clue. Maybe Disneytoons just had a dream that every nation would get to see themselves represented as an overly sexualised plane. I know that’s my dream.

“Imagine aaaaaaall the people…”

The race begins and Dusty’s inability to fly high soon has him trailing the other racers but he starts to win them over with his unassuming do-right nature. As the race proceeds through India, Ishani takes Dusty on a tour of the Taj Mahal.

It has flight towers to show that planes built it even though it was probably built by cars even thought it would make no sense for them to build it and this entire world is like a nightmare I can’t wake up from.

Dusty tells Ishani that he’s worried about going over the Himalayas because of his fear of heights and she advises him to follow the train tracks instead. During the race, he follows the tracks only to find them lead to a tunnel. Unable to give up and unable to fly over the mountain, he does the sensible thing and just flies through the tunnel.

This ends up putting him ahead of the other racers and now he’s in the lead. But Dusty realises that Ishani set him up to fail and confronts her. He notices she’s sporting a shiny new propellor of a kind that only Ripslinger’s team uses and puts two and two together.

As the race continues, Dusty becomes a hero to vehicles all over the world who don’t just want to do what they were built for BY WHO?!?! FUCKING EXPLAIN HOW THIS WORLD WORKS YOU PIECE OF…

Sorry, sorry.

Ripsligner decides that he’s not losing to no stinking crop-duster and has two of his lackies clip Dusty’s navigating attenae while they’re flying over the Pacific. Dusty gets lost and is rescued by the USS Dwight D. Flysenhower and the various forklifts and planes that infest him like parasites on the hide of a whale.

On the Flysenhower Dusty is shocked to learn that his mentor Skipper only ever flew one mission during the war. Feeling betrayed and desperate to get back in the race, he leaves the ship, gets caught in a storm and crashes in the Pacific Ocean.

Dusty gets salvaged and as he recovers Skipper arrives and tells him the truth about the only mission he ever flew.

So, you know Thomas the Tank Engine? Did you know Thomas the Tank Engine could get incredibly dark? Like, there’s one episode where a train escapes the mass-scrapping of steam engines in England and it’s pretty much played like the dude escaped a concentration camp? Well, Planes now gives us a scene where we see Skipper’s entire squadron getting massacred by Japanese gunboats. Living, sentient planes just falling out of the sky in flaming ruins. It’s brutal and shocking and…honestly the best scene in this entire franchise. Although, keep in mind, I do loathe this franchise and that might be colouring my opinion somewhat.

Ha ha! Yes! Die! Die!

Dusty and Skipper reconcile and all the other planes chip in to donate parts to fix Dusty like he’s the Six Million Dollar Man, including Ishani who gives Dusty the fancy propellor she got in exchange for betraying him.

Dusty re-enters the race and starts to gain ground on Ripslinger. And, as always, you can probably predict all of the story beats right down to the photo-finish but I’ll say this in the movie’s defence; it’s a racing movie with good racing. The animation is lovely and the aerobatics are exciting to look at and you do get a real sense of speed. I mean, it’s not coming anywhere near my favourite animated racing movie but there’s an enjoyable competence to it all. Ripslinger and his goons try to hobble Dusty one more time but Skipper arrives in the nick of time to help Dusty escape them. Ripslinger and Dusty race for the finish line, Dusty wins, Ripslinger crashes into some portable toilets (if you recall, Cars 2 established that these vehicles piss oil) and the movie ends with all our couples paired up and a lucrative new stream of merchandising opportunities opened up for Disney and its affiliates and shareholders.

Don’t you just love a happy ending?

***

Scoring

How butt ugly is the animation? Is it as ugly as a butt?: 12/20

Cars has never been the gold standard for Pixar animation but, fair’s fair, it’s still Pixar. Disneytoons, the animated sweatshop that produced so much janky, direct-to-video garbage in the nineties actually acquit themselves very admirably. Judging on the animation alone, you’d think Pixar made this film and very few animation studios outside of the top-tier could achieve that.

Are the main characters jerks? I bet they’re jerks: 07/20

Dane Cook isn’t bad. I actually think I like him a little better than Own Wilson as Lightning McQueen. Absolute generic nothing of a part, but there’s no point where I felt he was actively bad.

Bet the villain’s a real shitpile, character wise: 04/20

Ripslinger is an actual villain, unlike Chick who was mostly just a douche. Not at all a memorable or charismatic villain but…reviewing this movie feels like reviewing a components based on the individual components. It’s like: the keyboard is not missing any keys. It is satisfactory.

Oh what’s this? Supporting characters? Fuck you supporting characters!: 04/20

Here’s where the movie does start to be actively annoying. When it tries for comedic relief, you just want to press a pillow down on its face and put it out of its misery.

Man, fuck the music. I hope it dies: 09/20

You know what, there’s parts of the score that are clearly aping Kenny Loggin’s Danger Zone and I’ll give points for that.

FINAL SCORE: 36%

NEXT UPDATE: 14th December 2023.

NEXT TIME: Yeah, I get pretty raggedy around this time of year too.

(Not a review of) Inherit the Wind (1960)

This map is wrong:

That’s not to say it’s bad.

It’s very useful.

It’s informative.

It is even, when you take a step back and consider it, quite beautiful. But it’s wrong.

The continents aren’t that size relative to each other. Not even close. Of course, you could use a different projection that shows them the correct relative size, something like this:

But now all the continents’ shapes are distorted nearly to the point of being unrecognisable.

Every 2 dimensional map of the world is wrong because, obviously, the world is not flat (I swear to God if anyone starts shit in the comments…). Ultimately, any attempt to render a three dimensional sphere as a 2 dimensional rectangle is, well, a lie. It’s an attempt to simplify that will always lead to distortion one way or another.

I love historical films. I hate historical films.

This was going to be a review of Inherit the Wind.

It became something else.

Okay, here’s a bold, contrarian take for ya. People today are probably more historically literate now than ever before. Your average Westerner today knows more about world history than a professional historian would have a hundred and fifty years ago.

And some of that, sure, is better education and the internet and the ubiquity of the printed word. But a huge chunk of the credit actually needs to go to the medium of film. I mean, take even a film that is notoriously bad history like, say, Pocahontas. There is still a wealth of genuine historical data to be absorbed by watching that film. The colony was called Jamestown. The name of the tribe was the Powhatan. John Radcliffe was the governor. The story is a mixture of myth and pure Hollywood invention but you do learn truths. Of course, you don’t just learn truths.

This is something I’ve been chewing over in my mind for a long time now. Do historical movies have to be accurate?

Well, on the one hand, no. Absolutely not. Asking a historical film to be true to history is like expecting a two dimensional map to be true to a three dimensional world. Merely by making it a film you must flatten. You must distort. You must shrink. You must make the complex simple enough to understand.

Okay, but how much distortion can you accept? I mean, if every map is wrong, is there even such a thing as a bad map?

“You gotta something to say to me, Mouse?”

Relax, it’s a metaphor. Genre matters, of course. One of my favourite movies is Death of Stalin, a comedy based around the power struggle in the Kremlin after the death of the titular tyrant. And, like with Pocahontas, you will learn quite a bit about that period in history. But there’re also scenes like this:

Which I’m pretty confident in saying never happened.

But, that’s a comedy. The rules are different. It’s when movies start expecting to be taken seriously (a dangerous pastime, LeFou) that I think you need to take out the red pen and start marking down for inaccuracy.

Let’s start with the good. No, let’s start with the great.

Fucking hell Downfall is so good. It’s the closest thing to time travel. Every detail, every performance was sweated over. In the the pantheon of great Hitler performances (and there have been some great Hitler performances) Bruno Ganz will never be touched. It’s a movie that gives me hope for the genre as a force of good and enlightenment in the world. It makes you believe that you can actually have a flat map of a round Earth.

Maybe it’s the setting. Maybe it’s the importance of getting this particular period right (or rather the potentially disastrous results of getting it wrong) that makes them really sweat the details. Another one that I think does a phenomenal job (and, maybe even more impressively, does it with an English script):

If I ever teach a writing course, this movie will be one of the key texts. Conspiracy is a dramatisation of the minutes of the Wannasee conference, the meeting where the arch-fiends of the Nazi regime met to decide just what form the Final Solution would take (in actuality, it was the meeting where the SS gathered the other interested parties in a room and said “This is what we’ve been doing. You’re all complicit now. Cool? Cool”).

It has what is to this day, the single most terrifying line of dialogue I have ever heard, the initial results of the use of Zyklon B blandly delivered by Stanley Tucci in the tone of a middle manager announcing the quarter’s earnings:

EICHMANN: And the the results are…well I have figures.

We’re at the demarcation point. This is murder on a scale that words can no longer render, and we must instead turn to mathematics.

Then there are movies that are not rigorously accurate but are still…good enough? Maybe?

“Game’s over Harry. Lost again.”

This scene is from the opening of Michael Collins. Michael Collins (Liam Neeson), Eamon DeValera (Alan Rickman) and Harry Boland (Aidan Quinn) stand outside the burned out wreckage of the GPO in the aftermath of the Easter Rising, waiting to be taken into custody by the British.

Now, this scene never happened. Collins and Boland escaped and were only arrested days after the Rising and DeValera wasn’t even at the GPO, instead commanding troops at a grain mill on the other side of the river. But I can forgive this because it’s good, efficient story-telling. It introduces three of our main characters. It explains the Rising and the men behind it and how its failure shaped Collins’ worldview and development as a military tactician. It lies about little things, to tell the truth about big things. And for the most part, I’m on board with it. For the most part.

Take for example, this scene:

Now, did this happen?

Yes…no. Yes?

There was a massacre of Irish civilians during a Gaelic Football game. It was called Bloody Sunday (not that one. Or that one. Or that one. Rough fucking century.)

British troops locked down the stadium, searching for Republican militants. Here, the stories diverge. The British troops claim they came under fire, the Irish civilians in the crowd claim that the soldiers opened fire without provocation (this happens a lot in Irish history. And Indian history. And African history. I wonder what the common denominator is).

Now, the movie obviously has to choose one account to dramatise and, after all, the film is called Michael Collins and not General Sir Cecil Frederick Nevil Macready.

Of course he had a moustache. Of course he did.

So, what’s the problem?

Well, the armoured car is the problem. That never happened. It’s a spectacular image. It’s a scene everyone remembers. But it’s not real. And…it does change things, doesn’t it? You can at least imagine unprotected foot soldiers, nervy and jumpy after a wave of assassinations just that morning (and, let’s be honest, PTSD’d to fuck from their WW1 service) thinking they’ve heard a shot and panicking. It’s quite another thing to watch that big green Dalek on wheels serenely mowing down fleeing men, women and children. Only a monster could do that.

Then again, you could argue (as director Neil Jordan did) that the reality was even worse. At least in the film, people were able to run. In reality, the gates were shut when the shooting started. There was nowhere to run.

Does it matter? I don’t know.

I do think that if you know nothing of the Irish War of Independence you can watch this film and come away with a good basis for learning more. There’s a reason it’s shown in Irish history classes. It gives you the broad strokes and I think it does more good than harm to the overall understanding of the period.

An entire generation of Irish people growing up thinking Mick was killed on Snape’s orders notwithstanding.

I don’t think I could ever write historical fiction. I’m terrified of getting the details wrong. Hell, the entire reason I became a science fiction writer was because I didn’t trust myself with history. There’s so much power. It can do so much harm. I know this from personal experience.

This. Fucking. Movie.

This thing turned me into a weird, conspiracy-addled, paranoid little shit. Because I didn’t understand that a movie this well made, this well acted, this well-scored, this well edited (and oh my God this may be the best edited movie ever made)….just this good. Could lie to me.

I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that so many talented people could work this hard on a lie.

This film is to conspiracism what Triumph of the Will was to Nazism.

It’s not simply bad history. It’s history in a funhouse mirror.

Behold, Lee Harvey Oswald. A hateful, wife-beating , utter failure of a human being? No! A tragic hero, framed by the Deep State to cover their own crimes. Jim Garrison, a crank and charlatan who claimed that Kennedy was killed by a gay cabal as a “homosexual thrill killing”? Well here he is being played by Kevin Costner channelling the ghost of frickin Jimmy Stewart!

Ain’t. We. Just.

And I know, I know. It’s just a movie. And even thought I want to blame this one film for…well, for everything that came after. Pizza-gate. Nine Eleven Truthers. Q-Anon. January 16th…

I know that’s just how it feels like to me, because I drank this Kool Aid.

And whatever damage this movie did, time eventually will heal it, right? The truth will out, real history will assert itself eventually?

I’m not so sure.

Alright, let’s talk about Inherit the Wind.

The first thing that people think they know about Inherit the Wind, that it’s a re-telling of the Scopes Monkey Trial, is wrong.

How people got that idea, who can say?

The movie is a fictional story that draws very, very loosely on the actual trial. But none of the real historical personages appear. Clarence Darrow does not appear in this movie. Ditto HL Mencken. Oh sure, there’s a Darrow figure, and a Mencken figure. But the names, location and actual events are so far removed from what actually happened that it might as well take place in the MCU.

And yet, I think when most people think of the Scopes Monkey Trial, they picture this:

If, when you hear the phrase “Scopes Monkey Trial” you picture a principled teacher heroically smuggling copies of The Origin of Species into his Bible Belt classroom and then put on trial in a climactic battle of science and reason pitted against medieval superstition…yeah, you fell for it.

The trial was, in actuality, a cynical publicity stunt by the town of Dayton to get some national attention. Scopes may not even have taught evolution in his class, and if he did it was from a state sanctioned text book (which, as well as a brief description on evolution also instructed students on the importance of eugenics, racial hygiene and why Caucasians are just the tops). It was all rather sordid, is what I’m saying.

But that doesn’t make a good story. People need their stories. Their myths. Their simple parables.

Probably some irony there that I just can’t see.

And so, this is history now. The Earth has been made flat.

And look, it’s certainly not the worst film in its genre. It’s obnoxious, simplistic pap but it’s not like it’s hateful or malicious.

But ultimately, I didn’t review Inherit the Wind because, frankly, this movie terrifies me. It’s the ultimate expression of the awesome power of its genre. The ability to not just distort history, or mis-teach it, but to flat-out replace it.

We have seen, we see and we will see what happens when we start to think history is just a tool for our side to beat their side. History is the foundation of the present. If it fragments, it all comes down.

Inherit the Wind takes its title from Proverbs 11:29.

A better verse for this movie, a better verse for anyone who seeks to impart history through the medium of film might be James 3:1:

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers,

For you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.

NEXT UPDATE: 30 November 2023

NEXT TIME: You know, there was a time when this seemed like the worst movie I could possibly review. How innocent I was, once.

Bats Versus Bolts: Movies that had virtually nothing to do with Andy Warhol

These movies are terrible. I’m so glad I watched them.

Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula are in many ways the best candidate for a Bats versus Bolts  that I’ve done yet. Not only are they by the same director and share many of the same cast, but they were made practically concurrently by the same crew.

Also, when I lie to myself and pretend that there’s some kind of high-minded artistic goal behind this series beyond me getting to talk about vampires and monsters, I like to think that each BvB pair says something about the time they were created in. That is absolutely the case with these two films which are not only seventies movies, but some of the most seventies movies I have ever seen.

These films were directed and written by Paul Morrissey, one of the more fascinating film-makers I’ve come across doing this blog. A member of Andy Warhol’s inner circle (we’ll get to that) he had a front row seat to the drug-soaked bacchanal that was the sixties New York arts scene. Morrissey is fascinating to try to pin down in terms of his politics. A self described right-wing conservative and staunch Catholic…who was also something of a trailblazer in terms of trans representation in film and a body of work that lends itself quite easily to Marxist readings with a consistent portrayal of the aristocracy as a shower of evil degenerate parasites. Like I say: interesting guy. 

Note, I did not say maker of good films.

Anyway, Morrissey claims that the whole idea to make monster movies came about, appropriately enough, from meeting Roman Polanski. Polanski apparently suggested that Morrissey would be the perfect person to make a 3D Frankenstein movie, which honestly I would take as an insult. Morrissey didn’t, however, and arranged a shoot in Italy, filming both Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula back to back. Or, as they were known in the U.S.; Andy Warhol’s Dracula and Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein. Why were they called that? Oh, that’s very simple.

Lies.

It was just a marketing tactic. Warhol let his friend put his name of the movies to boost the alogorithim. They actually used the same trick for the Italian releases, putting a famous Italian director’s name on them to claim Italian residency which actually got the production in serious legal trouble in Italy.

The resulting movies are Morrissey’s critique of the sticky, shame-filled, bitter and angry come down from the Free Love era that was the early seventies.

That makes them sound a lot more classy and high brow than they actually are.

The Adaptations

Are these movies accurate to their source material? Let me put it this way. In the nineteen twenties, Florence Stoker sued FW Murnau for plagiarism of her husband’s novel despite the fact that Murnau had changed all the names in Nosferatu. If Morrissey had tried the same trick with Blood for Dracula, I think he would have gotten away with it. Both these movies veer hard, not only from their source material but from virtually every screen version before or since.

To begin;

In Serbia (?) sometime in the 19th century, the Baron Frankenstein (Udo Kier) lives in a rambling castle with his wife/sister (it’s that kind of movie) Katrin and their two children/niece and nephew. Herr Baron is obsessed with restoring the racial purity of the Serbian race. He works day and night with his assistant Otto (Arno Juerging) robbing graves and assembling a male and female body for his new master race. And the music the director chooses to score these scenes to wouldn’t be out of place in a montage of two men slowly realising their feelings for each other while restoring an orchard together. The Baroness, for her part, spends the day wandering the Frankenstein estate, presumably looking for her eyebrows.

Instead, she finds filthy, filthy peasants, fucking in the bushes. This happens constantly. Finally realising that, if everyone you meet is a fornicating peasant, you might be a fornicating peasant, she takes one of these peasants as a lover, a man named Nicholas played by seventies model/gay icon Joe Dallesandro. The interests of the two Frankensteins collide when the Baron and Otto go looking for a head for their male monster. Frankenstein wants the head of a horny sex maniac (don’t we all?) with a perfect Serbian nose. Now, Nicholas’ friend Sacha wants to joint a monastery, so Nicholas takes him to a brothel for softcore seventies shenanigans despite the fact that Sacha is clearly joining a monastery for a very good reason.  A lizard gets loose in the brothel which causes some of the girls to run outside naked and screaming which leads Frankenstein and Otto (who have been skulking outside) to believe that Sacha must be some kind of sexual god. I mean, if that was the case then surely they would have been running towards him and not away from him but whatever. Frankenstein decapitates Sacha and attaches the head to the male monster and has both monsters join him and his family for dinner, where Sacha is seen by Nicholas who has been hired by the Baroness as her servant.

After some extremely unpleasant business that got this movie banned in the UK and which I shall not discuss here, Frankenstein tries to get the monsters to breed but, like a pair of depressed pandas, it just ain’t happening. Nicholas breaks into the lab to try and rescue Sascha but is betrayed by Katrin, who Frankenstein her with the use of Sascha as her own personal sex toy.

“Sweet mystery of life, at last I found youuuu!”

Instead, the monster snaps her like a Kit Kat. Otto tries to rape the female monster and ends up killing her and the male monster returns, and kills Frankenstein. Nicholas, who’s been trussed up like a chicken in the middle of the lab, begs the monster to free him. The monster instead just pulls out his own guts and dies (it’s that kind of movie), leaving Nicholas at the mercy of the Frankenstein children who, it is strongly implied, will dissect him for their own enjoyment.

Meanwhile, in Italy.

The mysterious, sickly Count Dracula (Udo Kier), escorted by his servant Anton (Arno Juerging) has arrived looking for a bride. He inveigles an invitation into the home of Il Marchese di Fiore on the pretext of wooing one of his four daughters for marriage. The four daughters, in order of age, are Esmerelda, Saphiria, Rubinia and Pearla. Esmerelda was once engaged but it didn’t work out and now, although still a virgin, she’s considered too old and plain to marry. Saphiria and Rubinia are both beautiful but are, in the words of one character “filthy, filthy hoors”, fucking everything that moves (including each other because it is, again, that kind of movie) which means that every time Dracula tries to feed on them, because he needs the blood of virgins, he reacts like a vegan who’s just realised that burger isn’t actually beetroot. There’s a lot of puking up blood. Is it a fun time for you, the viewer? It is not. Oh, and lastly there’s Perla, who is only 14 which really should put her off limits for everyone, shouldn’t it? Sigh.

Complicating matters further for Dracula is Mario (played, again, by Joe Dallesandro), the socialist farmhand who is doing his bit for the revolution by fucking the aristocracy. And I mean that literally. Realising that Dracula is a vampire and is on the hunt for virgins, he rapes Perla to protect her from him (what. a. champ.) and then proceeds to have the MOST ONE SIDED BATTLE AGAINST DRACULA IN THE HISTORY OF FILM by chopping off Dracula’s limbs one by one with an axe.

Pretty much.

WINNER: BOLTS 

The Monsters

I never thought I would see a performance that would make me appreciate the range, depth and comedic timing of Tommy Wiseau, but Srdjan Zelenovic as Sacha/The Monster made me realise that there is always further to fall.

I’ve been able to find next to nothing on this actor. I don’t even know his country of origin. Other than this movie, IMDB only credits him with a single other short so I’m guessing he didn’t continue on in acting and…yeah, that’s probably for the best.

I do want to give a shout out to Dalila Di Lazarro who plays the bride, the only time in a film I’m aware of  where the bride is created before the monster. She does fantastic work with a wordless part and is absolutely mesmerising.

Udo Kier as Dracula is…you know what, I would love to have seen him play a more traditional take on the character because he has so much going for him. Those pale arresting eyes and an undeniable presence. But he’s playing this Dracula, and this Dracula is absolutely pathetic. I have to admit, the central joke does get a chuckle out of me; that in these liberated times any vampire who can only feed on virgins is fucked. But it does mean we get possibly the least threatening Dracula in all of film outside of the Hotel Transylvania series (and shit, at least that Dracula has actual powers). By the end, when he’s running around screaming and getting trimmed like a privet hedge you just feel sorry for the guy.

WINNER: BATS

The Scientists

So Morrissey initially wanted all the dialogue in Flesh for Frankenstein to be improvised. Bold move. But, given that almost his entire cast did not speak English as a first language, you can see why he quickly dropped that idea. Udo Kier is a fantastic actor. He’s had a long and storied career in film and if you watch this film you will instantly see why. He is a physically beautiful, elegant and captivating performer. Unfortunately, at this stage of his career, his fluency in English is roughly on par with a 90’s SNES cutscene and he’s clearly learned his lines phonetically.

“Chentlemen I must een-seest you giff me excess to ze lavatory. I must chreeate my Zerbian master race off zombees…”

“You…mean the “laboratory” right? RIGHT?!”

“Good Lord! Someone left a dilly of a mess in the ol’ como-diddly-ode!”

“WHY DO THEY KEEP GETTING WORSE!?”

This section is usually where I discuss Van Helsing or his equivalent but Blood for Dracula doesn’t really have one except for Mario who does fulfil the traditional Van Helsing role by actually figuring out the Dracula is a vampire. But, he’s really more of a Dashing Young Man so we’ll cover him in the next section.

Unfortunately.

WINNER: BOLTS

The Dashing Young Men

It’s been a while since we’ve had an actor going up against himself in Bats versus Bolts and I hope all you Joe Dallesandro fans won’t take it personally if I say he’s no Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee. It’s honestly a little embarrassing how many other actors in these movies out-act him despite the fact that he’s the only native English speaker in either main cast. And what English! The accent is pure Grade A Noo Yawk and he isn’t even trying to hide it. Anyway, Dallesandro plays two very similar characters in both movies, the slab of peasant beefsteak who all the creepy aristocrat women want to bone.

In both movies Dallesandro’s an almost impressively limited performer but I actually think Morrissey finds a better use for him in Blood for Dracula. 

Nicholas is a big old void, but Mario is actually an interesting, if aggressively repellant character, someone who espouses revolutionary ideals of equality while exhibiting deep, ocean-like reserves of misogyny to every woman unfortunate enough to cross his path. And if, as I believe is the case, this was Morrissey’s intentional critique of the free love movement I think it lands a palpable hit.

I also have to mention Arno Juerging who plays both Frankenstein’s assistant Otto and Dracula’s valet Anton and manages to be the best thing in both movies. Like Kier, he’s clearly struggling with the English dialogue but he makes up with it with some phenomenal comic facial acting.

He’s like a German Jim Carrey.

There’s a scene where Frankenstein and Otto are trying to get the monsters to mate and Frankenstein keeps yelling “Kiss him!” to the bride and Otto keeps looking down at the monster’s crotch to see if there’s any action and it is honestly hilarious.

WINNER: BATS

The Perpetually Imperilled Ladies

Look, points for novelty alone.

Having the Baroness Frankenstein be a scheming, incestuous viper is so out of left field I’m tempted to award this to Bats on that alone. It also doesn’t hurt that Belgian actress Monique Von Vooren is making up what she lacks in English fluency with enthusiasm.

By contrast, the actresses playing the daughters of di Fiore are pretty terrible across the board, with the exception of Milena Vukotic who plays the eldest daughter and actually has a very nice scene with Dracula where they discuss the paths their lives have taken. The other sisters somehow manage to make being in an incestuous lesbian vampire coven seem dull.

WINNER: BOLTS

Are either of these movies actually, y’know, scary?

Gross and uncomfortable, certainly. But, not scary. Flesh for Frankenstein does have that cool moment at the end with the Frankenstein children about to play doctor with Nicholas so I guess that gives it the edge. Oh, because there isn’t really anywhere else to put it in, both the child actors who play the kids are genuinely, unironically fantastic.

WINNER: BOLTS.

Best Dialogue:

Flesh for Frankenstein has:

“To know death, Otto, you have to fuck life… in the gall bladder!”

I don’t feel comfortable giving you the context.

But there can be no rivalling poor poisoned Dracula weeping:

“Ze blahd of zese hoors is killink me!

WINNER: BATS.

FINAL SCORE: Bats 3, Bolts 4

NEXT UPDATE: November 16th 2023

NEXT TIME: Yes. This is on brand for me.

New review and Podcast Interview

Howdy folks,

Here is a lovely four and a half star review from HorrorDna.com for Knock Knock Open Wide and an interview I did discussing the book for the Turn the Page Podcast.

Enjoy!

Frankenweenie (2012)

In 1984 Disney took a punt and gave one of their young animators, a skinny pale young-feller-milad named Tim Burton some money to make a live action short and recoiled, in horror, at what he wrought by tampering in God’s domain. It’s a truly terrifying film, and even looking at the poster has driven me quite mad. Oh yes!

It’s called”Frankenweenie” but he’s not a weenie dog he’s a bull terrier and no one ever mentions that am I MAD I MUST BE MAD HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Seriously, it’s a rather charming if ludicrously cheap and cheerful little short about a boy named Victor Frankenstein who uses lightning to bring his beloved dog back to life. And Disney took one look at it and said “Dark? Weird? GOTHIC?! We never expected this of YOU, Tim Burton!” and fired his ass.

Fortunately, the short brought him to the attention of Paul “Pee-Wee” Reubens and Burton’s career was off to the races. Flashforward a few decades and Disney have finally realised that they quite like this Tim Burton character and he’s settled into a groove as one of the most reliable nipples from which they milk their never-ending stream of content. And what better way to mend fences than for Disney to pony up the money for a lavish, stop-motion, feature length do-over of Frankenweenie?

Do you need me to send you a picture of a weenie dog or are you assholes trolling me?

Now, I’m a pretty big Burton fan all things considered but his late period collaborations with Disney have been the absolute nadir of his career. But, can this return to his roots shoot a few volts into his long dead artistic drive?

So in one of those perfect, faintly menacing white picket fence 50s towns there lives a little boy named Victor Frankenstein. Victor is a quiet introverted boy with a real knack for science and a love of film-making and spends his days making home sci-fi movies starring his beloved dog, Sparky. Victor’s parents are a little worried that their son doesn’t seem to have any friends and is a little weird. Which is nonsense, because every child in this town is a goddamned freakshow and Victor is by far the most normal and well adjusted of all of them.

So how exactly do you space out a short little thing like Frankenweenie into a full length feature? Well, one option is to broaden the scope of the parody. If the original short was just the 1931 Frankenstein by way of Normal Rockwell, Frankenweenie 2012 is an homage to basically every horror movie Universal made in the mid-century with The Invisible Man, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Mummy, the Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolfman all getting referenced . Plus a bit of kaijiu. Plus a bit of Village of the Damned of all things. Also some Hammer. Basically, if there’s an old-timey horror movie you can think of Tim Burton probably managed to sneak in a reference at some point. So Victor’s class has a new science teacher, Mr. Rzykruski, who’s basically Nikolai Tesla as played by Vincent Prince as played by Martin Landrau.

This is not really pertinent to whether or not Frankenweenie is a good movie or not, but I want to say it anyway because teachers never get enough credit. Mr. Rzykruski is a fantastic teacher. This is not a joke, he genuinely is phenomenally good at his job. I would have his scenes taught in teacher training courses (although probably not the scene where he tells the kids’ parents that they all idiotic monkey people). He explains complex concepts using narrative and theatricality and his passion for the subject is positively crackling. If I had had this guy as my teacher in school, I probably wouldn’t have succumbed to the siren call of the arts.

So, Mr Rzykruski tells the kids that there’s going to be a science fair with a big shiny trophy going to the winner and all the children want to get their mitts on it. Victor is approached by a weird girl in his class who is literally called “Weird Girl” and she shows him a turd that her cat, Mr Whiskers, laid that morning in the shape of a V, and tells him that something big is going to happen to him soon. Good point right here to talk about the character designs.

They are, frankly, the fucking tops.

Victor asks his dad if he can do the science fair, and his dad says that he can as long as he also joins the baseball team. During the game, Victor hits the base ball with the base ball stick and Sparky chases after it and gets him but a car which, if my knowledge of baseball is as good as a I think it is, allows Victor to steal base.

Well, it’s sad his dog is dead. But at least he won baseball today.

Victor is heartbroken but, when Mr Rzykruski demonstrates how to make a dead frog dance using electricity and that gives Vitor an idea…

No, he’s just going to bring the dog back to life.

So after some grave robbing and a scene in the attic that rather marvellously recreates James Whale’s original Frankenstein, Victor succeeds in re-animating Sparky. Sparky seems more or less okay despite being stitched together by an eleven year old. He hides the dog when his mother comes up to ask him if he wants waffles or French toast and he chooses waffles because why stop with one abomination against nature?

So here’s where the story deviates from the original short in order to fill out that runtime. Sparky breaks out of the attic and gets into all kinds of shenanigans, including wrecking the garden of Mr Burgermeister, the mean neighbour who also happens to be the mayor of the town. Sparky is seen by Edgar E. Gore, a classmate of Victor’s who realises that Victor has been doing stuff.

Edgar Blackmails Victor into bringing back his deal goldfish which has a weird side effect of turning the fish invisible. Victor swears Edgar to secrecy. And, I mean, if a weird little hunchback boy desperate for the approval and attention of his peers can’t be trusted with a really cool secret who can be?

Real “I’ll steal my mother’s underwear for you if you’ll pretend to be my friend” vibes from this one.

Worried that they’re going to lose the Science Fair to an invisible fish, two students named Toshiaki and Bob shelve their Sea Monkeys and begin working on a rocket powered by soda (fun fact, the space race started exactly the same way). But Bob is injured when he’s launched off the roof and the town’s parents angrily demand that Mr. Ryzkruski is fired for bringing the menace of science to their fair town. Also, this scene has a weird line about Pluto not being considered a planet anymore. I mean, it’s not explicitly stated when this movie is set, but I do not get a “2006” vibe from this scene.

Look at these people. They know nothing of the Black Eyed Peas! They know aught of Nickelback!

Mr. Rzykruski takes to the stage and tries to explain to the parents that they’re just ignorant so he gets fired because there are different kinds of intelligence and having one doesn’t mean you have all the others.

Meanwhile, Edgar’s invisible fish has vanished. I mean, it’s gone. Not…you know what I mean. Victor asks Mr. Ryzkruski why the experiment didn’t work the second time and he tells Victor that science depends on what’s in the heart of the scientist and, no, I’m pretty sure he’s confusing science with the Care Bear Stare.

Honestly just putting this here to have a little colour in this review.

Edgar lets slip that it was actually Victor who made his fish invisible and that he’s brought Sparky to life. Intrigued, the other children try to resurrect their own dead pets with lightning. Nassor, who is designed to resemble Boris Karloff, resurrects his dead chinchilla Colossus, wrapped in mummy-like bandages. Bob creates Creature from the Black Lagoon-esque sea monkeys. Weird Girl’s dead bat gets fused with her cat creating a vampire kitty. Edgar makes a were-rat. And Toshiaki’s dead turtle gets transformed into a fifty foot Gamera.

Know what I find hilarious/vaguely offensive? Toshiaki almost certainly bought that turtle in America.

The lightning just somehow knew he was Japanese and made his pet a kajiu.

That is some racist lightning.

Meanwhile, Victor’s parents discover Sparky in the attic and freak out. The dog runs off but when they confront Victor he explains that he just really wanted his dog back and they’re okay with it. Apparently. Like, why else would he bring the dog back? Were you concerned he was building an army of zombie dogs to conquer the world. Because, yeah, in this town, probably a legitimate concern, forget I said anything.

They find Sparky in the graveyard and everyone’s cool but then the kids come running up to tell Victor that their creations are running amuck and attacking the town. The kids have to work together to defeat the monsters, and weirdly enough, it’s not the frickin’ kaijiu that turns out to be the biggest problem. Victor and Sparky get trapped in a burning windmill by Weird Girl’s vampiric cat. Sparky is killed saving Victor’s life from Mr Whiskers who is then brutally impaled. Which…damn. I really thought Mr Whiskers was going to be changed back. But no. He gets fucking got.

Guess Tim Burton’s a dog person.

Touched by Sparky’s heroism, the townspeople rally around and use their car batteries to restore Sparky to life

After Victor finds Sparky at the town’s pet cemetery, Bob and Toshiaki find him and ask for his help. They go to the fair, where the Sea-Monkeys explode after eating salted popcorn, Colossus is stepped on by Shelley, and the wererat and Shelley both return to their original, deceased forms after getting electrocuted. During the chaos, Persephone, Elsa’s pet poodle, is grabbed by Mr. Whiskers and carried to the town windmill, with Elsa and Victor giving pursuit. The townsfolk blame Sparky for Elsa’s disappearance and chase him to the windmill, which Elsa’s uncle accidentally ignites with his torch. Victor and Sparky enter the burning windmill and rescue Elsa and Persephone. However, Victor ends up being trapped inside. Sparky rescues Victor, only to be dragged back inside by Mr. Whiskers, who is fatally impaled by a flaming piece of wood just before the windmill collapses, killing Sparky again.

To reward him for his bravery, the townsfolk gather and revive Sparky with their car batteries. Persephone runs to Sparky and they touch noses, producing a spark.

***

Frankenweenie was one of those movies that came out, got a ton of critical love and then just vanished into the ether. Maybe it was the fact that 2012 was something of a banner year for 3D animated horror movies aimed at children, with Frankenweenie going up against ParaNorman and Hotel Transylvania. For the record, none of those three films are bad but ParaNorman probably has the edge in terms of animation and Hotel Transylvania is definitely a safer bet for the “Just keep my damn kids quiet for ninety goddamn minutes, please” demographic. And, while the decision to keep the movie entirely in Black and White was definitely the right one artistically, I can’t help but feel that might have hurt it at the box office.

Scoring

Animation: 19/20

Call it 19.5. At one point I had to stop and google that this movie wasn’t actually CGI because the stop motion is just so gorgeously fluid.

Leads: 10/20

Victor is a sympathetic enough lead (what am I going to say, “who cares about this small boy grieving the loss of his dead dog”) but he’s nothing special.

Villain: 13/20

Mayor Burgermeister seems like he’s being set up as the main antagonist but doesn’t really effect the story in any meaningful way. In the end, all he has going for him is a menacing, gravelly vocal performance by…holy shit, really? Martin Short? Well damn. Also, great design.

Supporting Characters: 16/20

It can come across as a Muppet Babies version of the Universal Horror monsters but these characters are a lot of fun.

Music: 07/20

Danny Elfman on complete autopilot here.

FINAL SCORE: 65%

NEXT UPDATE: 31 October 2023

NEXT TIME: You thought you were safe! You thought it was over! But it returns from the grave! Bat versus Bolts is back, and it’s here to fuck you in the gall bladder!