Coco

Just like the Studio Ghibli films, I’ve fallen behind with Pixar’s movies and can no longer say I’ve seen them all. Not only am I a year late seeing Coco, but there are the likes of Cars 3 and The Good Dinosaur that I have to catch up on at some point. Though I can’t say either of those fill me with enthusiasm.

But Coco I definitely wanted to see. Day of the Dead imagery is always fun, and I like the idea of promoting and supporting Mexican culture at a time where there’s a tendency to look at border controversies and dehumanise people. Which is not to say I support illegal border crossings. Disney also made a pig’s ear of trying to seem culturally sensitive when they attempted to trademark “Día de los Muertos”, which you’d think somebody would have realised was a bad idea before it went public. But Mexican culture is one I have only very superficial knowledge of, so it was nice to see more – even if it took an American studio to lead me there.

The set-up is neat and tidy, the kind of plot you know went through numerous writing rooms and was tightened up until it squealed. Young Miguel is the youngest in a line of shoemakers in a family where music is banned, because his great-great-grandfather abandoned the family to pursue his dreams of being an entertainer. But music is in his blood and Miguel secretly worships Ernesto de la Cruz, seemingly the greatest star Mexico has ever produced.

After a mishap in a mausoleum on the Day of the Dead, young Miguel is cursed and his corporeal form enters the realm of spirits. Only his deceased family’s blessing can take him back to the land of the living, and there’s a problem – his family want him to renounce music. Instead he sets off looking for his great-great-grandfather, and might just uncover some skeletons in the family closet on the way – figuratively speaking.

It’s a really fun adventure that’s given extra scale by the fantastical imagery possible in the afterlife. There’s the brightly-coloured Alebrije creatures, giving a fantastical touch to the world. There’s all the usual animated movie gags with skeletons being able to take off their skulls, independently move detached limbs and suchlike. There’s the piled-up colourful houses and a spectacular party, as well as a very odd but very funny take on Frida Kahlo’s artistic output – pitched perfectly to get in references to the kind of imagery Kahlo put out while still being kid-friendly. Just the right amount of obvious.

I’ll freely admit that a lot of the subtle things went over my head. I know many of the dead guests at the big party were famous in Mexico, but I don’t know who they were. But what’s fun about a film about another culture is that you learn. Now I know what an ofrenda is and something about xolo dogs. I have a new affection for the grito, which is a little different from the kind of grito I know from capoeira songs. Though I do wonder how these beliefs sit alongside Christianity, which is almost wholly absent from this story. Not that I expected a Pxar film to go there.

There were some elements that could have been improved, in my opinion. Miguel himself could have had a bit more of an interesting design, even if he was going to have his face painted for much of the film. The way modern Disney and Pixar films (see Frozen and Moana) tend to push one song with many refrains is usually rewarded with an Oscar – as was this film’s ‘Remember Me’ – but I thought ‘Un Poco Loco’ was a much more interesting and well-performed song. I feel something of a lack of closure not knowing what happened at the end of either music competition (though we at least know who won one of them, though possibly only because Miguel ‘withdrew’), and while wrapping things up with brevity made sense, I thought there might be a little more on just how the family managed to convince the world of the truth Miguel uncovers. And honestly, compared with more iconic films in the Pixar oeuvre, I don’t think this will stand out much more than the likes of Ratatouille or Inside Out.

Nonetheless, this was an expertly-crafted, beautiful, well-written, satisfying and sometimes moving story that does a good job of introducing to kids that sometimes following a dream and staying with a family can be at odds with one another. Very much worth a watch, if not rewatching over and over.

Wreck-It Ralph (plus Paperman)

The gripes about Wreck-It Ralph have been few and far between – a few gamers begrudge them suggesting Zangief was a ‘bad guy’ when that was really only in the movie and he was no more a bad guy than most of the Street Fighter II cast; some overbearing mothers think no kids’ film should have characters from a bloody game like Mortal Kombat in them; and here and there animation fans think that Disney’s CGI films ought to blaze their own path to regain an original voice rather than doing something very easily mistaken for a Pixar film – which sadly I’ve heard far too often, though some amusing jokes have been made about Disney having made Brave and Pixar having made this, and then the two studios deciding to swap credits. But the number one gripe I’ve heard about Wreck-It Ralph has been more or less exclusive to this fair land: how come America got it in October and we don’t even get it til February of the next year? I’ve only managed to see it because I got a preview thanks to the special offer of a cinema chain – general release is still over three weeks away! Isn’t that just encouraging piracy?

Despite this quibble that has nothing to do with the film itself, I can announce myself an instant fan. It was aimed squarely at me and my generation, but it still managed to be far better than I had hoped for, and much more emotionally engaging. This is how it was most like Pixar – not in the perspective, or the visuals, or the pace, but in how it got me to care.

Before the film came a short – very Pixar, that – showing a romance almost lost but then saved by inanimate objects. Done in rather lovely cell-shading, with a smart decision to make it monochrome but for red lipstick, it was lovely to behold and sweet, but rather trite and threw away its believability rather too much when paper aeroplanes came to life.

Then the main event, and from the start it was right on the money with what appeals to the tail-end of Generation X and the early years of Generation Y – and those of us born in the transitional period. Iconic Disney logos are presented with 8-bit graphics, and there’s chiptune in the music. We’re introduced to Ralph, who is somewhat like Donkey Kong with a touch of the monsters from Rampage – in his game, he tries to demolish a building that displaced him from his home, while the hero, Fix-it Felix Jr, repairs the damage with his magic hammer. When the damage is all repaired, the occupants hurl Ralph from the roof and Felex is rewarded with a medal. The film opens in the support group for bad guys seen in the trailer, which so delighted 20- and 30-somethings with its iconic group of antagonists from Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Bros, Mortal Kombat, Pac-Man, Altered Beast and more. After announcing he’s sick of his life, Ralph returns to his home, notices a party is happening in the penthouse (my one cringe in the film was when I saw Skrillex was the DJ, but this is a reference that will soon be swallowed by time – whereas surprisingly all the 80s and 90s references will likely last a very long while). He goes up and uses Felix’s crippling need to be an awkward nice guy to get himself invited in, but this only leads to disaster. He leaves vowing he’ll transcend his nature and earn his own medal. In the bar from Tappers, where many famous faces are up on the wall and Ryu is having a quiet drink, he meets a space marine from Hero’s Duty, and winds up climbing a tower after the arcade is shut for the night and getting himself a medal. Unfortunately, he also ends up in an escape pod with a hostile, adaptable alien, and shoots into cutesy Mario Kart clone Sugar Rush. He meets the apparently annoying Vanellope there, but soon finds out that more than he expected is going on under the surface in Sugar Rush. Meanwhile, Felix sets out to find his one-time antagonist, with only the ass-kicking female commando Calhoun from Hero’s Duty – whose backstory is perfect - to help him.

One of the joys of the film is the background details. See Sonic fall and lose his rings, or Chun-li spending some time with the Nintendo princesses. I had been told to look for graffiti, especially ‘Aerith lives!’ and though I missed that one, it was only because I was admiring the Internet-pleasing ‘All Your Base are Belong To Us’. I also got a kick out of (LEROY) ‘JENKINS’, the Konami code and little Pong and Dig Dug cameos. There are plenty of foregrounded references thrown in, from a casual mention of Lara Croft and a nod to DDR to the brilliant scene where all the bad guys leave the Pac-Man world and are represented as small 8-bit sprites, but it’s the fine details that will make me and doubtless many more want a repeat viewing.

Not only is the style at the peak of being in fashion with a crowd big on nostalgia and keen for its own variation on Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, with its easy melding of styles and screen space shared by unlikely costars, there also needed to be a little time gap to prevent any accusations of this being a rip-off of ReBoot, which is after all fairly similar in basic outline. It was interesting to me that the whole thing is set in a single arcade, and thus presumably these are but a few of many, many versions of the same characters, bringing the scale closer to that of Toy Story. The clash between a twee older world and a frenetic, violent, modern game is hilarious, and that the game ends on a Pac-Man-ish kill screen is priceless. The references are also not limited to games, with Star Wars and The Wizard of Oz having sound-based jokes, and even a little poster of Bolt can be seen.

But a million funny references in a bad film would still make a bad film. And this is far from it. There are really three plot arcs – Ralph’s attempts to get a medal and rehabilitate himself, the truth of Sugar Rush and why Vanellope is ostracised, and the escaped alien from Hero’s Duty. All become action-packed because of Ralph, all come together nicely, and all are tied up well. Being the type to aim to spot twists, I put together this one’s but was blindsided until only minutes before the reveal because the one in question was shown to secretly be acting for the benefit of another even though it was hard, and teaching that to Ralph – which led to one of the most touching scenes as well as feel-good reparations. Emotions are actually struck very well, from hopes and dreams being dashed to the thought of having to abandon someone to die – and I never thought I’d be so uplifted by the thought of someone punching mentos into diet coke. The fact is that the characters all became likeable, even the ones who seemed annoying, including the silly king with his old-fashioned Disney performance. Fantastic.

I loved it. I only want to know two things – why Vanellope is on the side of the cabinet yet still glitchy at the end if it wasn’t the antagonist’s doing, and…well, just what happens when the arcade closes down…

Paperman post-Oscars note: well, I can’t say I was greatly moved by Paperman, but it was a weak year. It’s a shame – put it against any of the 2007 nominations I’ve seen and it totally pales. 

Brave – plus La Luna

Brave doesn’t deserve the harsh appraisals I read before going to see it. It may not have the biggest emotional impacts of all Pixar’s films, but it tells its simple, old-fashioned story well, it looks striking and it does have a good pay-off. It’s not the best Pixar film ever, but it’s far from the worst – I’d rate it with The Incredibles, Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo – better than Ratatouille, A Bug’s Life and the Cars films. Which is a long way from the suggestion that this is part of Pixar’s big downfall – and Cars 2 really wasn’t as bad as is being made out.

Before I say any more about the main feature, though, something must be said about the short film preceding it in the usual Pixar fashion – usually something entertaining but throwaway like the magic show of Presto (with Wall-E) or the silly but somewhat iconic For the Birds (with Monsters, Inc.). This time it was La Luna, and I’m not exaggerating when I say it is absolutely my favourite thing that Pixar have ever done. Yes, over and above all the Toy Story films, above the superb opening of Up, above anything in Brave. I really, really liked it. I liked the simple but highly inventive imagery, the funny characters with what I now realise is a real rarity in Pixar – an incredibly cute child character – and I loved the workers in their olden-days costumes with their generalised European-ish voices. It fully deserved its Oscar nomination last year, and I could have very happily watched a whole feature-length film version..or just the short over and over for the length of Brave. I quite earnestly liked it that much. Enrico Casarosa, you make me more optimistic about The Good Dinosaur.

Anyway, in the wake of Cars 2 has come Brave, one of the few Pixar films – alongside Brad Bird’s films and Up – to have a predominantly human cast. The next Pixar release was to be Newt, but it got scrapped for similarities to Rio. Pixar’s films have a history of coming out coincidentally very close to films that are similar – Antz and A Bug’s Life caused a lot of tension and Dreamworks rushed their film out first, Finding Nemo was quickly followed by Shark Tale and Flushed Away ended up changing its title from Ratopolis to avoid confusion with Ratatouille, despite coming out six months earlier. So it’s understandable that they’d want to avoid yet another clash – and Brave sounds better anyway.

The story of the strong-willed tomboy princess of a vaguely feudal Scottish clan refusing to conform to expectations, causing a rift with her family that reaches a peak with a magical spell, which happily hadn’t been spoiled for me going into the film, despite having at some point long ago heard its working title. It’s a great way of both having a typical Pixar emotional arc and also seeming like a classic story from the period. Though Princess Merida is a good, strong protagonist whose hair makes her instantly recognisable and whose laughter is infectious, probably the main problem with the film is that this just makes her a bit bland. She learns to value those around her, which we’ve seen as the lesson learned too many times before, and it just never feels like she will be in any real danger, or won’t get what she’s hoping for – until the magical contrivance, which really makes the film in every other way, there’s never any real crisis for her, so when it comes it feels just a little artificial – which is enough to tip the balance of the film away from perfection.

The film also just doesn’t look quite as nice as Pixar’s films can. This is not because the backgrounds and textures are anything less than the very cutting edge – but that’s the least we expect from Pixar. The trouble is the character designs just look a bit…well, Dreamworks. And I never really warmed to them, as I did the Incredibles. Pixar is so good at making you care for funny toys, insects, strange little robots…but don’t quite pull it off with stroppy teenagers.

There’s also a little too much plot contrivance. The will-o’-the-wisps weren’t really needed in their first and last appearances, but in the middle one pushed the plot on in a very artificial way. The rival clans are placated a little too easily. And ultimately, it seems like the whole thing could have been resolved with a good sit down and a talk – but then, that’s rather the lesson to be learned by the two stubborn main characters.

With great voice acting, a strong cultural idea of Scotland and lovely modern music with a thin flavouring of traditional Scottish instrumentation, there’s much to admire about this film. It has a brilliant study of animal movement, and a lot of big laughs. It lacks a little spark, true, but that doesn’t stop it being an outstanding film…

Brave post-Oscars note: I have to say I don’t think this deserved its win over any of its competitors – but arguably it is the most Academy-friendly of the films. Wreck-it Ralph is too lowbrow for their pretensions, Frankenweenie and Pirates! too quirky and knowing, and Paranorman too lacking in feel-good schmaltz. Not a deserving winner, but an unsurprising one. 

Rango

I’m not quite sure what I expected from Rango, but it wasn’t this.

The clues were there, really, in the posters and trailers. There was that Hawaiian shirt, and that crick in the neck recalling another famous poster. Then of course, there was Johnny Depp in a cartoon that sounded somewhat surreal. But I definitely didn’t expect another outing for his Hunter S. Thompson impression (ahead of The Rum Diary) and what can only be called Gonzo animation (not animation from Gonzo) – before it settles neatly into a straightforward tribute to Western films. It's one of those neat comedy films that starts out as a parody before settling into relying on the familiar tropes and clichés to evoke the sincere emotions that made the original genres work so well – Shaft do this well, as did Baka to Test.

Rango is a pet chameleon with only the toys and ornaments of his glass cage to serve as his connection to the world – he believes himself an actor and director, and while pondering what he ought to be, an accident in the car results in him losing his family and being left alone by the roadside. After a rather hallucinogenic meeting with an armadillo that couple with Rango’s eccentric, Thompson-derived personality at once makes the film look incredibly drug-addled and creeps out any small kids who’ve been brought to see this ‘cartoon’, he ends up in the Californian/Nevadan desert, notorious for containing Death Valley. After his death is prophesised by some cute, grumpy mariachi owls, he is chased by a huge hawk and meets Beans, who at first seems like a typical southern-belle/redneck caricature with the odd tick of freezing as a ‘survival instinct’. Rango stumbles into the Wild West town of Dirt, and manages to avoid being mocked and possibly murdered by ‘blending in’, acting the part of a rough-talking cowboy and, thanks to some dumb luck typical of the character type and the return of the hawk, not only being believed but becoming the town’s sheriff. But the town is running out of water, and someone’s tampering with the supply, and it’s up to Rango to sort things out. But with the hawk gone, a notorious outlaw might come back to town, one who might be able to see right through Rango’s camouflage.

As I said, the film starts out surreal, bewildering and influenced by Hunter S. Thompson’s freewheeling narrative style, a likeable, intelligent but very clumsy and physically inept character just managing to get out of scrapes through luck or saying the right thing at the right time. But then it bends at just the right angle – through action scenes and clever visual parodies of other well-known action films – to heartfelt cowboy story (nodding back towards the strange with a cameo from a very recognisable figure), ending up with a story arc that has comedic characters you actually come to like and a situation you genuinely want to end well. There wasn’t quite enough closure at the end – I wanted to know what was going to stop the humans simply coming and messing it up for the animals very quickly – but this was a deft move to make and it worked better than I had expected it to. It may not pluck at the heartstring and move you like a direct, sincere story, but it bridges comedy and drama much better than many other animated films that try the same – like most of Dreamworks’ output.

Industrial Light and Magic also lent their CG to this film, and it looks absolutely incredible. This is one of the best CG films I’ve ever seen – and it’s not the characters and their movements and the textures of their faces that is the most stunning, impressive though they are. It’s how perfect water looks, poured into a glass. It’s the way the lens that doesn’t exist is affected by the refraction of light that doesn’t exist when pointed towards a sun that doesn’t exist. It’s glass breaking and the machine gun in a rattlesnake’s tail winding down. It’s the small details. Look for them and you’ll be consistently impressed.

This could have been a near-miss. Happily, it’s a substantial success.

Ratatouille

Ratatouille was a lot of fun. Mark Kermode was on The Culture Show last night saying he didn’t like the film because it was too polished, too perfect, but I disagree. Pixar are still taking risks, still pushing to get a different flavour from the last film, and the one before. Ratatouille was a familiar Pixar premise – underdog fights against adversity, with a little help from friends and family along the way – but taken to extremes. A rat wanting to be a Parisian chef? That’s as underdog as you get.

It bumbled along, checking boxes, having tensions and resolutions just where you expected, although the pacing got a bit wobbly towards the end where what seemed to be the main conflict was cleared up just in time for a new one to take over, but thanks to just the right amount of warmth and humour, it pulled through. Brad Bird’s storytelling voice is also a little different from other Pixar directors’, a little more glib and quirky, which makes for films that on the plus side are less obvious and predictable, but also seem to have a slightly greater distance between audience and storyteller, a small wall to overcome.

I didn’t like everything here – the puppeteering aspect was a bit hard to believe, and the laziest storytelling possible occasionally came out (opening voiceovers, a way to make the main character talk to himself to simplify exposition, institutions represented by individuals etc). Perhaps it’s having seen too many anime like Hikaru no Go and La Corda D’Oro in which a protagonist is given an artificial way to become a great success, only to soon realise how shallow and meaningless that is, leading to a yearning to excel with their own talent – but here we didn’t get that, and Linguini, while soon realising Rémy needed credit where it was due, never showed a desire to learned from his extremely gifted little friend. Quite strange, to see a big Hollywood film saying not, ‘With enough hard work, anyone can succeed,’ but rather, ‘Some have great innate talent, and allowances should be made for them.’

Visually, Pixar are still at the top of their game. It is the duty of animation to put in front of our eyes stories that no other visual medium can express so well, and Ratatouille is full of instances that fulfil this stipulation. Chase scenes between a diminutive man on a moped and a rat, a camera that sweeps through tiny cracks in walls and soars like a bird, a drawing in a book coming to life while always remaining that same illustration even in motion, a room shaped exactly like a coffin – moments of sheer visual excellence. And on smaller scales, too: it is well worth noticing that the depth of field is extremely shallow when the shot is of a rat’s face, as it would be were there truly a camera on something very small. Such a subtle, clever way of replicating a real lens. The Pixar animators are to be applauded.

I found it interesting to see how the writers set the film in France, yet relied so much on English-language puns and wordplay that will be hard to translate. I wonder how these elements were rendered in other regions.

On the whole, then, a clever and enjoyable film, visually stunning, but with some storytelling issues that prevent it from being quite up there with Pixar’s – and Bird’s – best. Oh, and I must say one more thing: Peter O’Toole is awesome.

(expanded from impressions, 15.10.07)

The Incredibles

When I saw it back in 2005, I found The Incredibles quite brilliant. It was, I wrote, easy, silly fluff based on a great idea – after all, what’s more modern and ironic than a world where superheroes have been totally suppressed by lawyers? It was cute, visually stunning, had some classic moments and the kids were just adorable. I loved the fun, snappy storytelling that came with a grounded, ironic vein that I often don’t overly enjoy, but here found charming. The story clearly took its cues from Watchmen, with the idea of outlawed superheroes yearning for the old days. But it never felt like a rip-off, only like a tribute, and an exploration of the concept in a different direction.

This film is really Brad Bird’s baby – and he was definitely a great addition to Pixar, even if arguably he brought with him a short period where the studio’s popularity started to wane, until Wall-E brought it all back. The film is what brought him to Pixar, and broke the Pixar mould by centring on a cast of real humans. Well, superhumans, but still fundamentally human beings. The film had been destined to be an traditionally-animated feature for Warner Bros before their theatrical animation division shut down – and it was really thanks to the fact Bird had gone to college with John Lasseter, with a little help from the artistic merits of The Iron Giant, that the move to Pixar happened. Bird also provides the voice of the scene-stealing Edna Mode, one of the film’s best characters, and was very visible in the DVD extras, and for whatever reason I felt the need when I saw these to observe he looked extremely like a grown-up Haley Joel Osment.

Bird is a bit of wild card in the current Pixar. They’ve got their first critical disappointment on their hands with Cars 2, and Bird is busily making a live-action film about the 1906 earthquake that will be the biggest change in mode for Pixar yet. I’m not sure what Pixar’s future will be, but their place in history is assured and I’m eager to see Brave.

Up

Up was, I think, a new triumph for Pixar. Now that they’ve moved on from making novel objects talk (toys, bugs, cars, fish, rats) and begun to focus their attentions on heartwarming stories, I think that they might enter a new era of sorts, which I, not yet tired of the house style, find an appealing prospect indeed.

The film centres on an old man who in order to fulfil a childhood dream decides to make his house fly, his life story told in an expository segment so that we are on his side from the start. His story is not exactly tragic, but he finds himself alone with strong links to the past, and so he takes action. The physics, fanciful contraptions and unlikely coincidences that follow as the old man meets new characters and strange creatures and gains a new sense of purpose, are not what is important beside the spectacle, the affectionate characterisation and the sheer fun of the scenario. There is much to make the audience laugh, make them sad, make them cheer and make them care. And the sheer beauty of the film, particularly when it comes to landscapes, is another layer of pleasure.

Not everything is perfect: I felt like there should have been more resolution for the family unit at the end of the film, less of a feeling that a father figure can simply sweep in, but generally everything I was unsure about, from talking dogs to men isolated for long decades failing to accomplish their goal, eventually turned out to be a positive aspect of the film and I was most impressed. It may not endure quite like Toy Story or Wall-E, but it was great stuff.

(originally written 15.10.09)

Wall-E

Considering I didn’t like the trailer, finding Wall-E’s Johnny 5-derived design bland and the premise dull, I was very pleasantly surprised by the uplifting experience of seeing the film. This is what Pixar should have been doing instead of Cars. This is their first film since Finding Nemo that feels innocent and good-hearted - The Incredibles is great but it’s smart and sassy. Wall-E is unashamedly cutesy and sentimental, as if John Lasseter and co took that thank-you from Ghibli to heart and started trying to make films like Totoro.

Balancing the Pixar strengths of fondness for the underdog and high-octane slapstick, it encapsulates all that they do best. The intro film about a magician reminds us that Pixar is great at expressive silent comedy, and most of the first act of the film reinforces that, and Wall-E himself is undeniably extremely cute. The second half has a darker tint, although it’s worth remembering that the reason given for the characters’ lifestyle is low gravity rather than laziness or escapism (not a hugely original idea): the effects of this sedentary way of living are not nearly as permanent as they ought to be, so in many ways the uplifting ending rang slightly false. But mankind is not central to this story, robots are - and bleakness has little place here. Pixar's small-scale story painted on an immense canvas cannot fail to charm.

Obvious and familiar, but then, it’s telling time-honoured stories in strange new hues that Pixar does best.

(originally written 21.7.08)

Happy Feet

I’m going to agree with what most reviewers have said – for the first half, perhaps the first three quarters of this movie, it feels like it could be an instant classic, possibly even the best animated comedy ever. And then it all gets spoilt at the end.

Happy Feet has a clever and charming basis. Our anthropomorphic Emperor Penguins attract the loves of their lives by singing their ‘heart songs’. Taking cues from Moulin Rouge, the film’s soundtrack is a delightfully tongue-in-cheek mash-up of popular tunes, with numbers from The Beatles, Queen and The Beach Boys as well as cheekier nods to more hip-hop-flavoured tracks like Grandmaster Flash’s ‘The Message’ (obviously, just the refrain); at one point, a penguin throws in, ‘Let’s talk about eggs, baby / Let’s talk about you and me.’ While it’s all fantastically silly (all I could have hoped for was a few more real tap-dancing-era numbers; a brief My Way snippet in Spanish didn’t cut it), it’s also quite uplifting, and the opening scene is done perfectly: Nicole Kidman, pretending to be Marilyn Monroe, sings Prince’s ‘Kiss’, only to be joined by Hugh Jackman’s best Elvis impression. ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ joins the medley, and we know the two of them are meant to be. The peerless CG on an iMAX screen, coupled with the superlative sound, make for a breathtaking spectacle.

Jackman’s character, the subtly-named Memphis, drops the couple's egg during a long, cold night, and when little Mumble hatches, it’s clear he is a little bit different. He can’t sing a note, but he can dance. Dancing, however, is taboo. ‘It’s just not penguin’, his father tells him, and by the time Mumble is grown (albeit not having lost his downy grey feathers like all his peers), voiced now by Elijah Wood in a suitably obvious, harmless way, he is an outcast, indulged only by his mother (even more subtly named Norma Jean) - as well as his childhood friend and love interest Gloria, huskily voiced by Brittney Murphy. Even the latter can’t help hurting his feelings when his tone-deaf squawks ruin her spirited performance of ‘Somebody to Love’, and Mumble’s undignified exit leads to his being chased by a leopard seal in one of several brilliantly-realised underwater sequences, and ends up meeting a gaggle of funny little Adelie penguins, who speak with broad Latino accents. Adelies place less emphasis on singing, so Mumbo fits in and starts learning to be proud of himself as he is – Hakuna Matata and all that.

It’s a very typical kiddie plot. In their first full movie, Sydney-based CG effects studio Animal Logic are playing the Pixar game – giving us a very familiar plot, overlaying it with a clever and appealing gimmick and then treating it with warmth, humour and respect – and actually beating them at it. Even Robin Williams, who plays two roles and does them both with silly accents (he’s the lead Latino, and also a prognosticating penguin with a silly soul voice a la Barry White), doesn’t go too far and ruin the humour. He’s fairly subdued (for him, anyway) and it works well. This is when the Ugly Duckling goes back and wins everyone over with the power of dance, when Rudolf shows that despite growing up as an outcast, he can do something no-one else can, and they all live happily ever after, right? Well, yes and no.

While this inevitable plot conclusion begins, religious fundamentalists (led by a crooked old thing with another silly accent – this time Hugo Weaving as a raving Scotsman), unable to accept any deviation, blame the shortage of fish on Mumble, and he sets off on a quest to appeal to the strange beings who are eating all their fish – human beings. After a disjointed trek, Mumble ends up following a fishing boat and ends up in a zoo, where he begins to lose his mind (especially since he’s surrounded by other penguins who talk like HAL. Explicitly. Even calling him ‘Dave’), until he tap-dances for a girl. They let him go back to the wild with a tracking device, and the young penguins are easily persuaded to dance, while the elders condemn them. Then the humans show up in a helicopter and the elders decide that’s proof enough that their god doesn’t exist (see, this is why tackling theological debates in your penguin movie isn’t gonna be THAT hard-hitting) and dance too. The world sees this dance and as a result, decide to fish the Antarctic waters less. I blink at the screen, stunned.

I understand Babe director George Miller wanting to make things a little more ambitious. I understand wanting an ecological message. I understand the need for a bit of a serious quest aspect to the film. I even understand a stab at the religious right. But this? This deus ex machina? This guilt-trip? This total oversimplification of how food chains and habitats work? This implication that humanity cares about cute things that dance, but is totally indifferent if they don’t, or if they’re ugly sea elephants? This idea that the ostracised will find acceptance just because they overwhelm their peers with things they haven’t seen? Okay, looking on the plus side, it was all so rushed that I doubt kids will really take it in or care, and will love the film anyway, but I take even films about tap-dancing penguins seriously in story terms, and this was a real shame.

Take the tried-and-tested route, and a tried-and-tested climax is advised – although a brave sad ending in the zoo would have won points from me, though doubtless never have gotten past screening audiences. As it is, yes, the film was brilliant fun, clever, warm and witty. But we don’t have a penguin’s ability to open our throats; we won’t swallow whatever you chuck at us, as long as it looks about right. What a shame, since even with its flaws the film remains very good indeed.

(originally written 10.12.06. Happy Feet 2 here)

Старик и море and Моя любовь / The Old Man and the Sea and My Love

Aleksandr Petrov is quite unique in the modern animation scene, perhaps in the whole history of the art, not for conceiving of his way of creating moving pictures, but for actually doing it. A student of Yuri Norstein, he starts from a similar basis but his methodology is at once simpler and far more artistically challenging. Petrov uses just one pane of glass and paints upon it with oil, and for the changes between frames, he adjusts the paint where possible, and where larger changes are needed, he repaints. In other words, every single frame of this animation is an oil painting, quite literally.

I discovered Petrov through the twin prongs of Ghibli’s support of him, helping to release his work and including it in their museum library, and his contribution to the Winter Days project, where his aesthetic was unique.

The Old Man and the Sea is his most lauded work, and in my experience the best. It won the Oscar for best short animation and perfectly balances artistry, innovation and a compelling, classic story. Based on the Hemmingway novella, it is the simple tale of an old fisherman who is considered washed up by his community, having failed to catch anything in 84 days. Even his young apprentice is told to find a new boat to fish with, and has to comply despite his loyalty. The old man goes out alone and so begins a battle with a huge fish that threatens to overcome his fading strength. It’s not a novel story but it allows for powerful moments and for an impressive showcase of Petrov’s painting skills, bringing with it as it does chances to paint not just people but shifting water, grand skies and most impressive of all, the fish down in the murky deep.

My Love feels almost resentful, as a follow-up. It feels as though The Old Man and the Sea was a very sincere effort to gain worldwide fame and renown, and the recognition was not enough. Petrov returns to Russian dialogue – The Old Man and the Sea being released in English and French – which is welcome, but the art style is much more impressionistic and less realist, and while the possibilities of the medium are better-explored – the light in an open door becomes the pages of a book, the characters transform to classical lovers and poets, the ground rushes up to become a wave – it all feels forced and contrived. The plot, based on a story by Shmelyov, revolves around a 15-year-old boy coming of age and initiating a romance with two possible love interests, treating them with typical – even shocking – immaturity, could function well for this kind of animation, but it just doesn’t feel like Petrov is interested. I know this is mostly speculative, but I was gratified to learn that Petrov’s contemporaries, including Norstein, found this film to be soulless and more of a technical showcase than a sincere animation. For a story about love, it seems so distant from its characters and almost disdaining. Of course, the technical side would have stunned me but for seeing it done more to my personal tastes in The Old Man and the Sea, which strikes the right balance between painterly and realistic both for animation and for my preferences in oils.

I want Petrov to be given a real chance. I want to see this incredible art form given a feature-length film release and to be amongst the most beautiful pieces of cinema ever seen. But story comes first – and the sincerity and love with which it is told. The Old Man and the Sea was perfect for a short film. It is that side of his art I’d love to see Petrov develop.

千と千尋の神隠し/ Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi / Spirited Away

‘I cannot stress enough how much I enjoyed Spirited Away – so gloriously bizarre yet so completely feasible in its own terms! Like Alice in Wonderland on a considerably greater scale, the characters, setpieces and concepts showed an astounding creativity, and the madness contrasts so well with the epic Mononoke-hime. The characters were wonderful – if we were to imagine Sen/Chihiro to have been acted by a real person, that little girl would be a sublime mime artist; Haku was so beautiful in the way all Miyazaki’s youths are beautiful; Yubaba was such an awesome presence when filling the screen, like some twisted Margaret Thatcher caricature…and all the sweet minor characters were brilliantly conceived. If Jeunet chose to direct a Disney film, he couldn’t hope for better results. And I needn’t mention the Freudian implications abounding throughout the film – riding on a serpent god indeed!’

Those were my impressions almost a decade ago, on October 24, 2002, shortly before Ghibli’s popularity exploded over around the world and certainly before I had much experience of the studio’s work. But even now, it’s one of my favourite animated films of all time, so full of flights of the imagination, superlative imagery and even subtle touches: how many of us notice that tiny glint of a hairband that indicates that the whole thing truly did happen and wasn’t just a dream at the end on a first viewing? I know I didn’t.

To date Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi is the only anime film to win the Best Animation Oscar, although perhaps it is notable that it was in a year no Pixar film was nominated. It brought Ghibli to a much larger audience and with Mononoke-hime, represents the pinnacle of Miyazaki’s filmmaking. Yes, I love Totoro, but the scale, tone and technical qualities of those two films, especially complementing and contrasting one another, are in my esteem amongst the greatest achievements of any director. Much as I think Takahata is the greater maker in that particular partnership, he has yet to produce two great films in such close proximity.

Finding Nemo

‘Finding Nemo was a joy to watch, if not on a par with the Toy Story films (graphic effects excluded). Another charming, escapist buddy movie with some incredibly entertaining voice actors – the girl from Ellen as Dory was endlessly loveable, Geoffrey Rush and Dame Edna’s against-type roles hilarious and Willem DaFoe spot-on. At the forefront, though, as ever with Pixar, were charm, humour and simple but uplifting emotions.’ - Oct 16, 2003.

Those were my impressions upon seeing Nemo at the cinema, a surprisingly long time ago. Please forgive the naivety of 'The girl from Ellen'!

It has endured as one of the best of Pixar’s films – pretty high praise – and won the Oscar for best animated film, beating out The Triplets of Belleville. It started a trend for buying tropical fish, which was a little tragic for animal lovers because far fewer people than wanted to look after clownfish were very capable of looking after clownfish.

But Finding Nemo is iconic. It’s a simple idea, but all of Pixar’s best tend to be just that. Talking fish are nothing new, but the way their world looks here, and the inspired choices of species that will now forever be associated with the personality quirks they have here, this will most likely forever be the definitive underwater animated film.

Toy Story 3

It’s incredible to me that Toy Story came out in 1995. I know people who weren’t even born then. I’m probably one of very few in my London friendship group who actually remembers going to the cinema to see it on the big screen. That to me seems quite bizarre, although I’m sure there are people a little older than I am who find it just as strange that I wasn’t born for early-80s films.

In many ways, though, this film was for my age group. Not to downplay the significance of the film to younger people, but as something of a farewell to a franchise, as a film fundamentally about the changes that come about when you grow older, it works best for people around my age who were just old enough to appreciate Toy Story’s wry layer of adult-oriented gags and references at the time…and, thinking about it, perhaps even more for those just a few years younger than me, who were entirely caught up in the magic of that first excursion.

Toy Story 3 finds us back in Andy’s house when he is no longer a child. He is 17 now, and off to college. He doesn’t play with his toys any more, and clearing out his room means that it is time to put away childish things in a more definitive way than putting them in the toy box. What will happen to the toys now? Will they be donated to a daycare centre? Put in the trash? Stored away in the attic to quietly stagnate in the hopes that one day Andy will have kids of his own to give them to?
What actually happens in the film is not necessarily what Andy intended, but pretty much all of the different possibilities get explored to some degree. And Pixar as ever capitalise on their magnificent ability to give a film heart, to imbue every situation with high-octane adventure as well as characters that are highly sympathetic.

The remarkable thing about Toy Story, though, is how is well-thought-out everything is. It’s not simply something that comes of working for hundreds of hours on every beautiful frame: that is to simplify the story-writing process and to misrepresent how much work goes into a good live-action film. Pixar simply do not let their stories get sloppy. Coincidences are few and far between and palatable when they do arrive: the one who finds Woody, for example, not only being a girl who lives near the place he must return to, but also having taken home the doll who can give him information that proves invaluable later on. The baddie is more than two-dimensional, and has a fitting fate!

I left the cinema with the impression that not only had the writers thought of what would make a good, emotionally rich story, but they also thought of the impact this story would have on an impressionable young audience. Making a story in which we must feel sympathetic for toys getting thrown away could have influenced a whole generation to be hoarders of vast amounts of toys, but instead the message ends up being that it is better to give them to someone who will really value them. The film came close to making it seem like donating toys will only get them smashed up and abused, but averted that at the last minute.

But the real achievement remains the ability to encourage an audience to be emotionally invested. Betrayal, indignation, exultant relief…the sad beauty of being resigned to what seems an inevitable fate but facing it together with your friends – these are the kind of emotional points that more live-action films ought to embrace.

Pixar films are always beautiful, so I wanted to see it in the best possible way. Was slightly disappointed, then, to find that unlike Waterloo’s immense screen, the IMAX at Greenwich is about half the size, and certainly not able to fill the entire field of vision. It was simply a large and very crisp screen with a good sound system. However, once the film got going I realized I was actually getting a better experience than many I have in the full-sized IMAX. The 3D glasses worked the best of any I’ve used since polarizing methods were introduced save in the Taiwan aquarium, and I got no ghosting or blur at all, for a change. Everything was lovely and crisp and fluid. As for the size of the screen, well, sometimes in the full IMAX it’s a nuisance knowing you’re not seeing every detail, but you never are in any film in any case, and I have to say I do prefer it as large as possible!

But it is well worth seeing the film in the best possible visual format. It’s beautiful to look at: action sequences are choreographed with genius, sight gags are timed to perfection, and the pastiches of different film styles are, as ever, note-perfect, from the harsh light of a crime film police interview on Buzz’s face to Ken’s brilliant fashion parade.

My generation will undoubtedly have less prejudice against animation than any before it, and it is increasingly being taken seriously as an art form. Pixar are never going to produce something shockingly mature and adult, but that does not detract from the fact that they create some of the most important films of any currently in production. All reinforced, to my mind, by special thanks to Ghibli staff members and the surprisingly prominent role for Totoro.