The Lego Batman Movie

I was looking forward to this. The LegoMovie was an unexpected joy, there’s more potential to mix franchises here than anywhere else, and word of mouth was good. But honestly, I don't think this matched up to its predecessor. It lacked the exuberance and anything-goes freewheeling nature of that film, and had more one-note humour. Still, for casual and hardcore fans alike, there was a lot to enjoy here. 

Riffing on the Batman of the first movie, all self-referential boasting, claims of being awesome and deep emotional repression, there were a whole lot of great points here. Having a full roster of Batman villains - and then one-upping them with the big bads of numerous other franchises - was a whole lot of fun. A small scene with the Justice League gave some laughs too. The big action setpieces were great to look at and often very inventive. And the strange thing about comedy is that the more overt, exaggerated and silly you make a character's hang-ups, problems and angst, the more directly you can switch gears to actual pathos and touching character moments. Making the film essentially about how Batman's bravado is all a front for his yearning for family and companionship makes that very easy to do - especially when you pair him with a Joker longing for acceptance, where the joke is that the protagonist-antagonist relationship has a lot of parallels with a romantic relationship. 

So all in all I wanted to enjoy it. I got most of the jokes and references and it often raised a smile. Because it's a comedy it doesn't really matter that loose ends aren't really tied up, like why the Joker didn't have to go back with the rest of the baddies. I loved the little touches like Bane sounding like the movie version and Robin's costume origin. It was also nice to have Barbara Gordon written so strong and capable. 

But in all honesty, it wasn't what I'd hoped it would be. Everything was superficial by design, so I ended up not connecting with anyone on the cast - which wasn't the case with the Lego Movie. There was no way to prevent Gotham getting totally torn apart so it felt like there wasn't much more at stake after that, nor that the characters particularly cared about any of the carnage in any case. And while the Lego Batman character was great as a side-note to a wider story, he wasn't really that fun as a protagonist. 

Not bad by any measure, but just not that fun either. 

Corpse Bride / Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride

After the success of The Nightmare Before Christmas and before his remake of Frankenweenie, Tim Burton had another tale to tell as a feature-length stop-motion animation. Corpse Bride was his first attempt at directing a stop-motion feature, Nightmare having been helmed by James and the Giant Peach and later Coraline director Henry Selick - though Peach stalwart Mike Johnson took a co-director’s credit here and presumably showed Burton the ropes ahead of his solo Frankenweenie.

I have to say, it doesn’t seem like seven years since The Corpse Bride came out, though thinking back I remember seeing cosplay of it at a convention in 2006. I missed it when it was in cinemas and always intended to catch it at some point, but the opportunity didn’t come until today.

And I have to say, it rather deserves the plaudits and minor cult status it has earned. It’s no Nightmare Before Christmas, and doesn’t really tug at the heartstrings enough to really stand out even in the stop-motion animation world, but it was an excellent watch because it does everything right. The songs are done right. The animation is done right. The designs, done right. The script and the pacing – right. And yet it still has that odd B-movie quirkiness Tim Burton does best to give it an edge.

A sheltered young woman of noble stock and a rather wet young man from a nouveau riche family of considerable wealth are betrothed, though they have never met. On the eve of their marriage, young Victor and Victoria finally meet and hit it off, Victoria finding Victor’s piano-playing and diffident nature quite charming. However, an overbearing pastor makes him lose his nerve at a rehearsal for the wedding and he goes into the forest to practice. However, putting his ring onto what he thinks is a branch as he speaks his vows is a ‘grave mistake’ – as the poster jokes – for in a shallow grave is a pretty recently-deceased corpse, and the misunderstanding fuels the rest of the drama. The only slightly dodgy point is the baddie, Lord Bittern, who not only is coincidentally (and very obviously) linked to the Corpse Bride, but for a clearly intelligent conman misses the very transparent reason the aristocratic child of very snobby parents is marrying into a wealthy but middle-class trading family.

It’s a small-scale story that intentionally or not has a nice contrast between the limited cast of the living world – essentially the betrothed, their amusing grotesque parents, their staff, a love rival, the pastor and a town crier – and the exuberant and populous purgatory, where most scenes are crowd scenes and every little creature seems to talk except for the ghost dog right out of Funnybones. The characters in the living world are hilarious caricatures while those in the land of the dead are very quickly-defined bit parts where just about anything is possible. It makes for a grimly comic mood that keeps the pace brisk.

The vocal performances here are excellent – while Tim Burton’s usual stars Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter provide mostly functional performances that nonetheless are immediately sympathetic, as does Emily Watson, a cast of British comic and horror talents are clearly having an excellent time here. Christopher Lee’s gruff pastor has all the expected gravitas, and Albert Finny tries hard to out-gruff him. Harry Enfield and Fast Show fixture Paul Whitehouse (who Depp has expressed great admiration for) plays multiple roles, and Jane Horrocks crops up as a spider. The late Michael Gough, another Hammer actor and the Alfred in Burton’s Batman films, has a charming wise man role, and Richard E. Grant is his usual wonderful snarling posh bad guy. But stealing the show every time she speaks is Joanna Lumley, with a rich voice like no other. 

Then there’s Danny Elfman singing, and sounding like he’s having more fun than anyone else.  

I have to say, I was also probably more impressed by the stop-motion animation here than in any other Burton film. It wasn’t the spectacle – it was the small details. If that fabric rippling in the wind was done frame-by-frame, it was done by consummate masters of their craft. It looks fantastic. Spiders’ legs can’t be easy to do in this sort of medium, but they look great. And that pleasant creepy-but-still-soft aesthetic that persists in Frankenweenie looks rather nice here.

In some ways I feel like this is the purest form of Tim Burton’s style – everything is his vision, and hung on a good, classic, B-movie premise without the need to make it in some way metatextual or ironic. And it’s entertaining to boot. Great stuff.

Teen Titans

Teen Titans was probably the first cartoon I came into contact with that was tarred with the ‘anime rip-off’ brush, as I had steered clear of the hideous Totally Spies! and 80s cartoons after all are often a lot harder to distinguish from the other Japanese animations the same studios were creating. Teen Titans found itself in a middle ground that was often quite annoying: it didn’t really look like anime, even when directly imitating it. Its references were by and large extremely dated. And it was far, far better leaving that gimmick behind and presenting itself as a straightforward Western cartoon. Having finally seen the movie that marked the series’ swansong after its cancellation, it’s time to write down my impressions.

The basis of the story is, of course, deeply Western, drawn from the DC comics series of the same name that has run since the 60s, and a success story since the 80s, and sat well amongst the in-house shows on Cartoon Network. Probably wisely, the cartoon incarnation takes only one of the sidekick characters – Robin of Batman fame – and for the rest ignores the likes of Kid Flash and Superboy to fill the cast with the relatively obscure Titans who were the team’s first original additions in the comics – Starfire, Raven, Cyborg and Beast Boy, also known as Changeling, who was previously a member of the Doom Patrol.

These five, joined for a few episodes by Terra and with guest appearances from a secondary group, Titans East, as well as various ‘honorary Titans’, fight off various baddies from the comics with nefarious comic-book plots. Some of these are extremely annoying comic relief baddies, like the poor excuse to let animators play with psychedelia, Mad Mod – who not even Malcolm McDowell can make formidable – or the insipid Thunder and Lightning. On the other hand, there was some very rich tension in the comics to draw from, and plot arcs featuring Raven’s father, the downfall of Terra and Slade’s brilliant toying with Robin’s mind made for serious, clever and extremely compelling episodes.

This is why Teen Titans was good: when it got things right, it got them very right. It also did an excellent job of endearing characters to the audience, not just the main heroes, whose dynamics made for great comedy, but the minor players too: the likes of H.I.V.E. seemed pathetic when they appeared, but then through repeated appearances, humanisation and redemption became much more interesting.

The problem was that in between these came the unfunny comedy episodes, or the exaggerated semi-satirical, self-referential concepts that just seemed like the writers were trying much too hard and not managing to do what they were attempting. And the fact is that the anime influence was much to the detriment of everything beyond the cute character designs. The cutesy opening intro was fun and played very much into perceptions of Japanese music in the West, but sounds nothing like any anime intro I ever heard. The anime-style eyes sometimes didn’t look quite right on faces, especially Raven’s. But these were very minor beside the real problem: an attempt at anime styles of humour.

Teen Titans characters turn SD, appear at different sizes on the screen to play with ideas of space, get blown up slapstick-style and pull ridiculous simplified faces. But it just is not done right: it’s not so much the slightly-off art or the performances, it’s the pacing. Things happen at the wrong times, too fast or too slow, without the right transitions that make this sort of thing work so well in the likes of Azumanga Daioh. The only anime I’ve seen that paces things so oddly and jarringly was Fushigi Yuugi, where I think the creators got their cues from – and that fell flat too. Everything felt like it was trying to be an early 90s anime, and the most recent reference seemed to be Furi Kuri. Add to that the often borderline offensive Trouble in Tokyo movie, in which the Titans battle Astro Boy clones and catgirls while pursued by squealing schoolgirls, some of whom seem to have slitty eyes and big teeth, and you wonder how sincere this tribute to anime is. They also manage to write 楽wrong on signs and slip in a rather eye-roll-inducing tribute to Akira, another sign of how dated the frame of reference is.

Teen Titans was in many ways great for American cartoons. It had good characters and possibly the best voice acting I’ve heard on American TV, including the guy from Boy Hits Car, Scott Menville. It was on the serious side, and showed anime styles were viable in US cartoons, which may have paved the way for Avatar and was the one reason I’m grateful for the attempt. But the show would have been better without the SD and weird faces, the poor attempts at cutesy aesthetics. Or, more specifically, it would have been better doing them right.

The Polar Express

Really, The Polar Express was released at the wrong time. It had the script of one of those timeless animations repeated over and over again at Christmastime. Tom Hanks in multiple roles genuinely seemed to care about his performance, often a rarity in animated films with film stars of his stature, and the imagery was iconic.

But the visuals just don’t match their ambition, and the result is the film I feel fairly sure is the most often-cited as an example of the ‘uncanny valley’ concept. The models simply end up looking dead-eyed and puppet-like. Presumably what the collective of studios producing this film for Warner Brothers thought was that realism would help them stand out beside Pixar – whose vastly superior The Incredibles was released in the same week as this – but with 2004’s technology: back then not even the best CG films could make convincing human beings. Certainly not for a full film.

Combined with a story that unfortunately doesn’t allow enough of a connection with its characters and some very odd Riefenstahl-like visuals towards the end, The Polar Express is sadly nowhere near what it could have been.

The Magic Sword: The Quest for Camelot

I don’t really have a very good reason for watching lacklustre 90s animated features, but I got hold of a glut of them on a whim a few months ago. Today’s box office flop of choice was The Magic Sword: Quest for Camelot, which Warner Brothers released in the shadow of Disney’s more successful but still rather poor Mulan.

Managing to be both very much of-the-moment and also very formulaic, it takes familiar tropes of Arthurian legend but puts a feisty female protagonist at its centre. The plot centres on the need to return Excalibur to King Arthur in order to protect Camelot from the aggression of a traitorous knight. On paper, this may well have worked. The plot is simple but many of the best ones are, and the way the baddy is foist on his own pitar was satisfying; however, without characters to really care for and with way too many annoying comic relief characters, it falls flat.

The cast is stellar, featuring several big Hollywood names as well as a Python and a few lines from a bona-fide Shakespearean stage legend, not to mention singing voices provided by some very impressive names; however, those with serious roles sound bored with their insipid characters (Pierce Brosnan’s King Arthur is not only wet and ineffective but sounds like he’s falling asleep) while those with comedy roles get lame, shoehorned-in pop culture references that seem like they were included because some board deemed them fashionable rather than because, y’know, they were actually funny. There are far too many comedy roles here, all of them charmless and irritating. Gary Oldman’s campy eccentricities somehow work when he’s onscreen himself, but his disembodied voice was fey and pantomimic, making for a hopelessly ineffective bad guy. The music is sung well but composed lazily, the with the lyrics far too tied to the narrative, when if Disney have shown anything with their modern style, it’s that more general themes for songs work better.

Unsatisfying, cheap-looking and suffering from extremely bland characters, it’s one to miss. Oh well.

(originally written 13.1.09)

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

“I grew up watching ‘Who framed Roger Rabbit’. It’s easy to underestimate it, to expect silly slapstick rather than the clever pastiche of hardboiled noir detective fiction that you get – mixed up with numerous clever cartoon references. It’s a wonderful film with a great central story, but real laughs are still to be had seeing Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny sharing the screen (in an excessively equal way that has become somewhat notorious). The Donald vs. Daffy piano duel is still comedy gold…even if they’ll never convince me Donald says ‘nitwit’.” - Dec 9 2003.

There’s not really a whole lot more to say about Roger Rabbit, the 1988 milestone for comedy animation. It may seem commonplace to reimagine childish things in a serious way these days, but Roger Rabbit’s cynical and gritty melding of two very different worlds is pure brilliance – and executed superbly. Not only did it treat cartoons in a way that was at once affectionate and mocking, it helped Disney revive from its major slump and produce the string of hit films of my childhood. It has also proved enduringly iconic: the Jessica Rabbit character is instantly recognisable to, I suspect, almost the whole of the English-speaking world, and considerably further than that too.

Somehow, it also gives me quite a thrill that Disney did all the animation here – albeit mostly hired hands in Elstree rather than the core American teams (for more on that point, see my entry on The Thief and the Cobbler). The idea of Disney artists animating Warner’s Buggs and Daffy, or Max Fleischer’s Betty Boop somehow makes an animation fan like me strangely pleased. Very nearly every major Golden Age cartoon character appears (although there is a gaping lacuna where Tom and Jerry ought to be, whose animators after all pioneered the whole ‘animation and live action’ thing…well, not counting the Alice Comedies and various other early shorts…), but probably the best thing about it is that at its centre, it is not a cartoon, it’s a silly detective mystery with Bob Hoskins at the centre of it somehow making a great American private eye, and the cartoons just happen to be the gimmick that fills out the edges.

Nothing is quite like Roger Rabbit, but nothing needs to be. We already have Roger Rabbit, so what more would we need?

The Iron Giant

Brad Bird has had an interesting career. The first of his works as a director I can remember seeing would be the video for the rather embarrassing and naïve ‘Do The Bartman’ rap - the one Michael Jackson wrote for Matt Groening. It was huge when I was a small boy, and I still remember the first verse, even though without Sky it was a few years before I actually saw The Simpsons. Bird, who prior to that had a brief stint with Disney and had been involved with The Simpsons from the start, came to popular attention with this feature film and went on to be the second big name of Pixar after John Lasseter, directing (and providing the best voice in) The Incredibles and later the less memorable Ratatouille, both of which won Best Animation Oscars.

At least as interesting is the story of The Iron Giant, which started out in 1968 as Ted Hughes’ The Iron Man. Back then, Ted Hughes was a known poet and the drama with Sylvia Plath was already behind him, but Crow had not yet made him the sensation he would become. The Iron Man was seemingly a rather odd story of a giant robot at first assumed to be malevolent, but then fighting off a space creature to save mankind after being befriended by a boy, and seeking to make a rock opera with the stature of Tommy, Pete Townshend chose this text for one of his solo projects. Townshend had for years been working at Faber and Faber, so knew Hughes personally. A rather terrible stop-motion video was made for the singles, as well as a stage performance; the spectre of the former can be seen in Bird’s 1999 film: there are some similarities in the robot designs, and…well, I can’t help but thing the animated Hogarth’s ears owe something to those of his live-action predecessor.

Bird’s decision to transpose the story to 1950s America, replete with big ice creams, beatniks, hilarious parodies of the ‘Duck and Cover’ films and the shadow of the Cold War, works brilliantly, but I have the feeling this director and this cast would have made something equally brilliant with any setting. The story is neat and effective, and while I wasn’t sure at first, I actually rather like that there is no indication where this childlike robot came from. The ending is predictable but moving, and the animation is very American in just the right way – not pretty but technically impressive, bold and often hilarious.

But what sets this above so many animated films is its cast. I wasn’t sure about it at first. Rachel from Friends? The guy who I mostly remember for singing about a turtle from space (‘Admittedly, the cross is mine’ is embedded in my memory of one roommate from school)? Vin Diesel? But the voice performances are actually superb. Even the government agent character who serves as antagonist ends up so nuanced and varied in his performance that it’s great. Simple lines like ‘I said I’m hip’ are just delivered with hilarious timing even by the kid, who does his job really well. Anniston is warm and loving in the mother role and Connick Jr ought to have a successful voice acting career. And Vin Diesel? Well, his limited role is note-perfect.

I don’t think that, even in Pixar’s catalogue, there is a more perfect balance between action and humour. Superb film.