Watch this rebranded, darker version of Mickey Mouse before Disney lawyers pull it down (or worse, use it as a pretext for war).
CONTENT WARNING: This film contains strong language and sacrilegious depictions of beloved copyrighted cartoon characters.
One has to wonder about the mindset of studio executives. Disney handed the live-action Dumbo remake over to Tim Burton, who hasn’t made a good movie in twenty years. Then, they assign Aladdin to Guy Ritchie, who has never made a good movie. On top of that, there’s the utter pointlessness of “live action versions” of animated classics. This one is no exception. Unless the original fell short some one way or another, why remake it (except to improve on it)? It’s especially futile when the original was so damned good. Aladdin (2019) is just a piece of crap, and the only actor who survives this embarrassment—and smells like roses, comparatively—is Nasim Pedrad as Dalia, the handmaiden of Jasmine (Naomi Scott). Why does Aladdin (Mena Massoud) prefer the personality-bankrupt Naomi over Nasim? Oh, because that’s in the script. And, Aladdin is a braindead jackass.
The original Aladdin (1992) came at the tail end of a brief Disney resurgence that began with Little Mermaid (1989) followed by Beauty and the Beast (1990). This revival came crashing down with the saccharine, run amok Lion King (1994), which of course has a live-action (sort-of) version in the works. Why does Disney keep doing this? Because fans don’t give a hoot. Aladdin has already made a zillion dollars and the undemanding Disneyphiles, who actually crave more of the same, are singing its praises all over social media.
The changes Ritchie makes are hardly worth mentioning, with two exceptions. First, he manages to solicit a dull performance from Will Smith, which is not an easy task. Understandably, Smith does not attempt to copy the fiery performance of the late Robin Williams, but Ritchie slaps a harness on Smith—which echoes the film itself, because the director sucks every ounce of color and fun out of the original.
Clunky, clumsy, and gray, Aladdin was an endurance test, and likely the briefest Summber blockbuster write-up I’ve given. Instantly vapid and unmemorable, it does not deserve more of my time. It does not deserve yours ether. If you’re craving the story, go back to 1992.
DIRECTED BY: Jerry Rees
FEATURING: Voices of Deanna Oliver, Jon Lovitz, Phil Hartman, Thurl Ravenscroft
PLOT: A forgotten appliance and its fellow overlooked mechanicals set off on a journey to find their long-lost master, and encounter many perils along the way to their surprising reunion.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: The movie has a rough charm that comes from its modern setting, fresh characters, and willingness to flirt with bleakness in its darkest moments. That distinguishes it from what we’ve come to expect from animated films ostensibly aimed at children. But it’s not much different from the purest forms of fable, where danger and derring-do culminate in an important lesson.
COMMENTS: Disney’s rejection of The Brave Little Toaster is the stuff of animation legend: an enthusiastic animator thought Hugo-winner Thomas M. Disch’s “bedtime story for appliances” would be the perfect material for the studio’s first all-CGI feature. However, the cost-conscious House of Mouse had been burned before, taking a bath on the computer-live action hybrid Tron, and the notion of inanimate objects with hope and fears was strange and off-putting to the Disney execs who were about to be overthrown by Michael Eisner. Mere minutes after the animator completed his ambitious pitch, Disney fired him. That luckless wannabe-pioneer’s name? John Lasseter. So that all worked out.
The Brave Little Toaster that did emerge (hand-drawn, produced independently but with Disney financing) is a likeable modern-day fairy tale pitting Toaster and Friends against powerful forces that could easily destroy them, including nature, mass consumerism, and jealousy. Three of the film’s four songs (composed by Van Dyke Parks, none especially catchy) feature our heroes being threatened with destruction. Appliances are broken, electrocuted, submerged in raging rapids, vivisected for their parts, and thrown into a kind of abattoir for machines. At one point, a character’s fear of being short-circuited takes the form of a nightmare vision of a sinister clown firefighter. Toaster pulls no punches, which is bracing and shocking in this day of trigger warnings and safe spaces.
The film is helped immensely by its appealing cast. Beginning with Oliver, who has a good blend of overconfidence that matures into selflessness, the casting is solid all the way through, catching Groundlings veterans Lovitz, Hartman, and Tim Stack right before they would leap into television, presenting voiceover legend Ravenscroft (he’s grrrreat!) in a wholly new context, and even crafting an appealing performance from child actor Timothy E. Day. Toaster also boasts an unusually strong roster of behind-the-scenes figures from the impending Disney renaissance: Kevin Lima (Tarzan and Enchanted), Mark Dindal (The Emperor’s New Groove and Chicken Little), Chris Buck (Tarzan and Frozen), and Rob Minkoff (The Lion King) are all on the payroll. The most important credit is undoubtedly that of screenwriter Joe Ranft, who would go on to become the soul of the early Pixar films. In fact, Lasseter’s interest in the story and Ranft’s role in shaping it point to the biggest problem in judging Toaster on its own merits, and that problem rhymes with Shmoy Shmory.
The parallels between Toaster and the adventures of Woody and Buzz accumulate quickly: the young master whom the appliances revere, the tension between old-but-functional and new-and-shiny technology, the bespectacled nerd who exploits the heroes for financial gain, the terrifying climax in a junkyard, even the protagonist’s redemption and sacrifice for friends and cohorts—the echoes are strong, and perplexing to anyone who doesn’t know which one came first.
Disney may have been terrified of talking kitchen implements then (a fear they overcame with the enchanted accoutrements of Beauty and the Beast), but audiences proved quite capable of handling that particular level of strangeness, leaving us with a small but charming film that deserves at least a little light, sitting as it does in the shadow of what-might-have-been.
Besides, if you’re looking for true off-the-wall, WTF weirdness, may I direct your attention to one of this movie’s direct-to-video sequels, The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars, in which the gang journeys to the titular Red Planet to rescue a baby from the clutches of a fascist refrigerator (voiced by Alan King!) Along the way, they meet a cluster of balloons who were let go by children and now float aimlessly through space, a group of appliances purposely designed poorly to further a planned-obsolescence scheme and who now harbor visions of an anti-human jihad, and the Viking I lander (voiced by DeForest Kelley!!!), who has a codependent relationship with a Christmas tree angel. How can a mere clown firefighter even hope to compete?
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by Jess Harnell, who said, “The film features mental illness, conspiracy theories, mutilation, suicide, murder, terrifying nightmares, desecration, fatalism and the nature of mortality, all done in a children’s film about talking appliances.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here).
Escape from Tomorrow has been promoted to the List. Comments are closed on this preliminary review; please visit the official entry.
We received an unprecedented three separate reviews of Randy Moore’s controversial surrealist satire Escape from Tomorrow, the independent feature which was shot guerrilla-style at Disney World and which many originally supposed would be unreleasable thanks to Disney’s notoriously aggressive legal department. We have decided to compile these three individual takes into one giant mega-post for your enjoyment and edification. So here’s everything you need to know about Escape from Tomorrow, at least for now…
DIRECTED BY: Randy Moore
FEATURING: Roy Abramsohn, Elena Schuber, Katelynn Rodriguez, Jack Dalton, Danielle Safady, Annet Manhendru, Allison Lees-Taylor, Lee Armstrong, Stass Klassen
PLOT: A day in the life of an American family vacationing at Disneyland… or Walt Disney World… or at least some Disney related theme park. Only the day starts out with Jim (Roy Abramsohn) getting a call from his boss, who tells him that there’s no job for him to return to. Things can only go downhill from there, but everything is filtered through a cheerful veneer. From a spreading cat-flu epidemic, to stalking teen-age girls, brainwashing by Park cyborgs, it just goes to show that “bad things happen everywhere”… even in the Happiest Place On Earth. (synopsis by L. Rob Hubbard)
Troubled family man Jim White and his family try to enjoy their final day in Disney World, but he becomes distracted by a pair of pretty French teenagers, blackouts, and visions of sinister happenings in the idyllic theme park. As the intensity of White’s visions grow, so too do tensions between him and his family, and soon it seems he might lose them and himself altogether to the weird power of Disney World. Would he really miss them, though, or does Disney offer him something better? (synopsis by Ben Sunde)
A middle-aged man (who looks an awful lot like a husky Tom Cruise) gets promptly fired via telephone amidst a family vacation to Disneyworld, and proceeds to break down mentally and physically with his family while he covertly follows two barely-legal Parisian teenagers during his waltz through the happiest place on earth. (synopsis by Ryan Aarset)
1. L. Rob Hubbard
WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST: Aside from the accomplishment of actually shooting on Disney property completely in plain sight, the film’s subversive commentary on Disney’s hold on the collective imagination has a solid bite that has not been previously approached as directly as it is here.
COMMENTS: “Jim, listen to me. Don’t let your imagination run wild. It’s a transitional period.”
This is the first full sentence of Escape from Tomorrow, and it’s a key—if not the key—to understanding exactly what writer/director Randy Moore is up to in this groundbreaking film. Thanks to its impressive and unique origins, Escape from Tomorrow now occupies a spot analogous to that The Blair Witch Project held over a decade ago (leaving aside the latter film’s massive box office) in independent film. And, like Blair Witch, Escape is starting to encounter backlash in reaction to the hype that accompanied its debut at Sundance as “the best film that you may never get a chance to see.” Most of that backlash centers around a perceived lack of bite in the satire, and to criticism of the acting and filmmaking as “amateurish” and “just plain awful.” To each his own, but since most of the initial discussion centered around the film as a cause célèbre when it appeared to be waiting to be crushed by Disney’s corporate paw, now that it has been released with very little reaction from The Mouse House, some are feeling cheated that perhaps the film didn’t go as far as it could taking on Disney… that it’s a missed opportunity.
Those who hoped for a harsh slash and burn attack on Disney and its park practices will need to seek satisfaction elsewhere, but those who feel that the satire is too soft and too on the surface are missing the point entirely. Escape from Tomorrow is a comic nightmare of the subconscious: “Lynchian” has been used many times in descriptions of the film. But Moore isn’t a David Lynch-style surrealist; his take in presenting the paranoia and sexual tension that lurks in the corners of The Happiest Place On Earth is closer to the work of Luis Buñuel.
“Imagination” is a word that is repeated throughout Escape from Tomorrow, and it is the coin of this realm. After all, the whole function of amusement parks such as Disney World is to provide a playland. What could be better than having your playland already thought out for you—characters, scenarios, every little thing? Disney may not have been at it the longest, but they have certainly been very thorough in “imagineering” characters and places that have Continue reading THREE TAKES ON ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW (2013)
DIRECTED BY: Tim Burton
FEATURING: Barrett Oliver, Shelley Duvall, Daniel Stern
PLOT: A young boy reanimates his recently deceased dog, but the undead pet is not a hit with
the neighbors.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It’s not weird; in fact, it’s an extremely conventional, if awfully charming, Frankenstein parody.
COMMENTS: Tim Burton’s second effort is a surprisingly fluid and assured bit of storytelling that attracted some remarkable talent for a short film, most notably a post-Shining Shelley Duvall (who had some sort of sixth sense for locating and working for offbeat auteurs) as Mom Frankenstein. Dad Daniel Stern was an established thespian who would go on to greater fame as a voice actor. Actor/director Paul Bartel (Death Race 2000) appears briefly as the science teacher who puts the idea of resurrecting the dog in young Victor Frankenstein’s mind when he demonstrates how to make an ex-frog’s legs jump by applying electrodes. Despite the ability Burton demonstrated here to attract and manage top talent, Disney famously dropped the ball and fired him after seeing Frankenweenie, without letting him try his hand at a feature, complaining that the film was too scary and a waste of resources. In hindsight, it’s difficult to see why shortsighted Disney execs thought that Burton was too weird and dark to work for the Mouse. It’s hard to imagine anyone thought this childhood farce would give any but the most overprotected weenie kid nightmares. (More likely, the studio believed that anyone who would voluntarily shoot a featurette in black and white was not to be trusted). The subject matter is only mildly offbeat—it’s a cute, clockwork parody of Frankenstein, a acknowledged classic. There are laughs that are mildly morbid—when stitched-together Sparky springs a leak the first time he laps from his water bowl, or when Dad Frankenstein muses, “I guess we can’t punish Victor for bringing Sparky back from the dead,” but nothing alienatingly weird. The directorial style is utterly traditional: the musical cues come at the expected moments, and when you see Victor playing fetch with his dog Sparky by rolling a ball out onto the suburban street, you almost groan at the pedestrian foreshadowing. That’s not to say the movie is bad; in fact, it’s charming in its familiarity. Kids enjoy it, but not half as much as boomer grownups nostalgic for their “monster kid” days when they used to stay up late on weekends and watch Zacherley or Ghoulardi host a Frankenstein marathon. It’s a droll adult view of a child’s eye view of a James Whale nightmare.
Burton has been promising to remake the short as a full-length, stop-motion animated feature for years. A release date is tentatively set for 2012 but the project doesn’t appear to have progressed beyond the planning stages. In the meantime the original short is available, together with the short Vincent, on the Nightmare Before Christmas DVD.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
“Frankenweenie captures perfectly the spirit of whimsy mixed with the grotesque that typifies the Burton oeuvre.”–Deeky Wentworth, Surfin’ Dead (DVD)
(This movie was nominated for review by reader “Maxwell Stewart.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)