There’s cheese, then there’s cheese sprinkled with a healthy dose of cinnamon and pure sugar cane. You know, a loony idea that will give you a mind-blow buzz and halt your heart, all in one convenient package.
During the past two decades, as the costs of movie production inflated exponentially, studios became cautious about the types of projects they assembled. Original, unproven scripts became increasingly rare because of financial risk, and producers resorted to sequels, franchises, remakes, literary works, even video games (remember Wing Commander and Doom?).
But that still doesn’t explain Elf Bowling the Movie.
Back a bit before the turn of the century, before Homestar Runner and Weebl and Bob became cottage industries, Flash oddities still were little more than fun time-wasters created by stressed-out programmers slaving away at the dotcom rack. In the Christmas season of 1999, a slightly off-color seasonal game starting making the rounds, featuring a miffed-but-still-jolly Santa using his striking (heh) elf workers as bowling pins. The game was stupidly bemusing, with the elves mooning and taunting Santa, even “cheating” by occasionally moving out of the way of the ball. My stressed-out publishing office loved it, and soon little high-pitched voices yelping “Who’s your daddy?” and “Is that all the balls you got, Santa?” floated daily above the gray cubical walls.
See? Exactly the kind of material on which to construct a Christmas children’s toon.
Even in a cinematic age where few films are truly original and studios are digging out the most obscure properties to develop, a movie based on a 9-year-old, free Flash-in-the-pan game sounds more like a mad movie hoax than an actual project, z-grade level as it may be. That’s because Hollywood isn’t to blame for this one: Fiji is. Yeah, Fiji. The island. Apparently, they have a film industry now. Maybe it makes cottage, too.
It says something about the home video market when a little island country can produce a full-blown animation feature based on barely-remembered game and get it released on DVD by a major Hollywood studio. I’m not sure what, but it says something.
It also says something when said game has produced several sequels that are not remembered much at all. The movie version includes elements from Elf Bowling 3, which introduces Santa’s brother Dingle Kringle and his couch-crashing ways. There’s even a bocce version. Bocce!
Americans’ constant obsession with shiny techno variations of the Pet Rock may speak to an inner child, but with Elf Bowling, static seems to have mangled the transmission. A harmless joke is dragged too far, substituting absurdity for humor. Yet, that common creative error becomes fascinating by itself, and the obsession continues on, slightly mutated. We simply can’t look away, dazzled by disbelief.
Like watching a car wreck. Involving Cool Whip and chickens.
The same day but a couple hours before Scott “I Paid to See Drop Dead Fred” Foy alerted the denizens of the B-Movie Message Board to Elf Bowling the Movie’s existence, I had just rescued my aged Hewlett Packard from the junk room and turned it on for the first time in six years. First the forgotten Michael Whelan painting reclaimed its backdrop spot on the screen, then all the little time-waster icons popped into place, including three little bowling pins. I had completely forgotten it was there.
When synchronicity calls, I can’t ignore it. Yes, I will see Elf Bowling the Movie. But only because I prefer nutmeg on my Muenster.
Showing posts with label animation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label animation. Show all posts
Monday, October 01, 2007
Thursday, September 27, 2007
REVIEW: The Plague Dogs
Martin Rosen’s production of Watership Down is almost as well loved as Richard Adams’ original novel. Rosen, who wrote, directed and produced the 1978 animated movie, was careful about what story elements and characters were changed or removed, resulting in probably the second-best animated adaptation of a novel (the first being The Last Unicorn). The movie became a critical and financial success, thus it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Rosen returned to Adams’ writings for inspiration. Probably because Shardik boasted human characters and unspooled to more than 500 pages, Rosen turned instead to Adams’ third novel, The Plague Dogs. Like Watership Down, Adams told much of the story from the point of his animal characters, in this case two dogs escaped from an animal testing facility.
And that’s where the similarities end.
The film opens with a black screen and a soft voice cooning “I don’t feel no pain no more.” Slowly, we hear first the lapping of water and then the sounds of a dog struggling as the title cards in red lettering begin to roll by onscreen. Once the credits run, we see what we’ve been hearing—a black Labrador vainly struggling to stay afloat in an enclosed tank of water. As two scientists calmly watch above, the dog finally gives up and slowly floats to the bottom of the tank. It doesn’t matter that you’re watching a cartoon. It’s still sickening.
The scientists revive the black dog and put him back in his cage. Later that night, when a man comes by to feed them (and take out the dead body of another dog), the black Lab’s door is accidentally left open. A terrier with a cap taped to his head notices, and tries to wake the Lab. It is thus we learn the names of Rowf and Snitter, and it’s the first we hear them speak, with Rowf, still fighting against the water, on the verge of giving up all together. Snitter finds the wire fencing between their cages loose, and slips through to convince his friend to escape. They do, but barely, and find themselves alone in the rocky crags of England’s Lakeland District.
Where Watership Down was pastoral, The Plague Dogs is bleak. Beautiful watercolors—both naturalistic and abstract—create the backgrounds of Watership Down, but here, Snitter and Rowf climb and fall over roughly-rendered harsh rock and deadwood, all in different shades of gray and brown. Rarely do we see any lively green and blue, and those instances are few, as few as the moments of joy for the two escapees. Even the red fur of the tod, a fox who joins the dogs, is as muted as the landscape in which they live.
The Plague Dogs also is violent. Very violent. If there’s anyone left who thinks that animation, with animals or not, is for kids will be cured of that belief after watching this. Sheep are killed and eaten, dogs piss constantly, a man has his face blown off by a shotgun....heck, at one point the tod tells Rowf, “The way you came over the fell, you’d think your ass was afire.” But Rosen’s animators pull it off with a remarkable restraint. The man holds his hands over his face as blood seeps through for only a few seconds before he drops to the ground. After the sheep are killed, they almost become part of the rock of the landscape, with only their heads and brown blood to reveal the dead body. It’s a haunting touch. Two other scenes in particular stand out—Rowf and Snitter’s first sheep killing and the infamous man-eating scene. In the first, instead of seeing Rowf chase down the ram and fighting it, we see brownish blood flow down rock into a brook, and then Snitter and Rowf with the felled ram. We only learn in the aftermath that the ram nearly battered Rowf to death as the Lab shakily limps back down the crag to rest on safer ground. In the other, a starving Rowf and Snitter watch as a would-be hunter falls to his death. Rowf sits on his haunches and looks at the body. After a brief look at Snitter, he gets up and walks off the screen. Both scenes are effective, because we realize what happened off-screen, and the deletion of both the action—which would have numbed for later, similar scenes—and the gore—which would have revolted the audience—saves the film’s quiet power.
In addition, the animation improved greatly since Rosen’s first effort. Motion of characters is never choppy or stiff, and their rendering is much more consistent than Watership Down. It ain’t anime or even Disney, but you knew that already. Rosen also made the wise decision to focus on the animal (the novel gave equal time to humans), which allows him to avoid big scenes that require full blown human interaction, always a problem for animators (see: Balto). Instead, we see the humans mostly from the dogs’ point of view: legs, torsos, feet, but rarely heads and faces. The only time we see a face is jarring and frightening.
The film is not without faults. The music at times feels completely out of place, especially in the film’s denouement. While the animation is solid, facial expressions are still somewhat limited, especially with the tod. An important subplot from the novel was taken out, evaporating some of the movie’s power. A large problem is the story itself. Once Snitter and Rowf escape the research center, we watch them stumble around the countryside trying to survive. There’s no instant pursuit by the scientists, who just seem content to let their research roam the countryside. Not only that, the possibility that the two dogs may carry the bubonic plague doesn’t surface until an hour into the movie, and then nothing is done with it. It is only after the dogs eat the hunter that any organized action is taken by anybody. In the novel, the media whips the populace up in a frenzy with the notion of “plague dogs” running around in their backyards. In the film, there’s no panic. It’s not until the end of the movie that the dogs actually are pursued. Watership Down meandered from scene to scene as well, but at least it had a direction—first finding a new home, then rescuing the does from Efafra. The Plague Dogs focuses instead on its two main characters and their transformation, which brings us to the film’s greatest fault—Rowf.
While Snitter has enough back story and problems to fill an entire novel by himself, Rowf is a cipher. He’s a laboratory dog. He’s afraid of water, a fact of which we’re constantly reminded. He hates men, or as he calls them, “whitecoats.” That’s it. Without knowing where he came from, how he ended up at the research center, how long he’s been there....well, it’s just hard to become emotionally attached. The tod has more life and character than Rowf, and the fox is in the story only half of the time. Rowf seems simply there to play off of Snitter, and with no strong plot to help out, that gets tiresome after a while.
It’s ironic then that Rowf dominates the movie’s most powerful scenes: the opening and ending, the sight of Rowf howling in his loneliness, the aforementioned man-eating. It’s a tribute to Rosen and his crew that these scenes are still affecting and disturbing even with Rowf as their catalyst. And when all is said and done, that’s what they’ve accomplished as a whole. With all of its problems, The Plague Dogs is still a powerful story. There’s so much I haven’t mentioned—the way the movie starts and ends in water; how the dogs’ dark adventure is like Rowf’s water tank; how the humans’ dialog is spoken over scenes of the dogs struggling from crag to crag, adding to their isolation; how Snitter’s view of masters changes…the list goes on and on. If you can find it, rent it, buy it. Watch it more than once, because for all its darkness the movie demands you discover it on your own. And you won’t realize until you try to sleep at night that the image of Rowf struggling against the water is still dancing before your eyes.
---
Film Information
Year Released: 1982
Director: Martin Rosen
Main Cast (voices): John Hurt, Christopher Benjamin, James Bolam, Nigel Hawthorne
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUDzklWlvho
And that’s where the similarities end.
The film opens with a black screen and a soft voice cooning “I don’t feel no pain no more.” Slowly, we hear first the lapping of water and then the sounds of a dog struggling as the title cards in red lettering begin to roll by onscreen. Once the credits run, we see what we’ve been hearing—a black Labrador vainly struggling to stay afloat in an enclosed tank of water. As two scientists calmly watch above, the dog finally gives up and slowly floats to the bottom of the tank. It doesn’t matter that you’re watching a cartoon. It’s still sickening.
The scientists revive the black dog and put him back in his cage. Later that night, when a man comes by to feed them (and take out the dead body of another dog), the black Lab’s door is accidentally left open. A terrier with a cap taped to his head notices, and tries to wake the Lab. It is thus we learn the names of Rowf and Snitter, and it’s the first we hear them speak, with Rowf, still fighting against the water, on the verge of giving up all together. Snitter finds the wire fencing between their cages loose, and slips through to convince his friend to escape. They do, but barely, and find themselves alone in the rocky crags of England’s Lakeland District.
Where Watership Down was pastoral, The Plague Dogs is bleak. Beautiful watercolors—both naturalistic and abstract—create the backgrounds of Watership Down, but here, Snitter and Rowf climb and fall over roughly-rendered harsh rock and deadwood, all in different shades of gray and brown. Rarely do we see any lively green and blue, and those instances are few, as few as the moments of joy for the two escapees. Even the red fur of the tod, a fox who joins the dogs, is as muted as the landscape in which they live.
The Plague Dogs also is violent. Very violent. If there’s anyone left who thinks that animation, with animals or not, is for kids will be cured of that belief after watching this. Sheep are killed and eaten, dogs piss constantly, a man has his face blown off by a shotgun....heck, at one point the tod tells Rowf, “The way you came over the fell, you’d think your ass was afire.” But Rosen’s animators pull it off with a remarkable restraint. The man holds his hands over his face as blood seeps through for only a few seconds before he drops to the ground. After the sheep are killed, they almost become part of the rock of the landscape, with only their heads and brown blood to reveal the dead body. It’s a haunting touch. Two other scenes in particular stand out—Rowf and Snitter’s first sheep killing and the infamous man-eating scene. In the first, instead of seeing Rowf chase down the ram and fighting it, we see brownish blood flow down rock into a brook, and then Snitter and Rowf with the felled ram. We only learn in the aftermath that the ram nearly battered Rowf to death as the Lab shakily limps back down the crag to rest on safer ground. In the other, a starving Rowf and Snitter watch as a would-be hunter falls to his death. Rowf sits on his haunches and looks at the body. After a brief look at Snitter, he gets up and walks off the screen. Both scenes are effective, because we realize what happened off-screen, and the deletion of both the action—which would have numbed for later, similar scenes—and the gore—which would have revolted the audience—saves the film’s quiet power.
In addition, the animation improved greatly since Rosen’s first effort. Motion of characters is never choppy or stiff, and their rendering is much more consistent than Watership Down. It ain’t anime or even Disney, but you knew that already. Rosen also made the wise decision to focus on the animal (the novel gave equal time to humans), which allows him to avoid big scenes that require full blown human interaction, always a problem for animators (see: Balto). Instead, we see the humans mostly from the dogs’ point of view: legs, torsos, feet, but rarely heads and faces. The only time we see a face is jarring and frightening.
The film is not without faults. The music at times feels completely out of place, especially in the film’s denouement. While the animation is solid, facial expressions are still somewhat limited, especially with the tod. An important subplot from the novel was taken out, evaporating some of the movie’s power. A large problem is the story itself. Once Snitter and Rowf escape the research center, we watch them stumble around the countryside trying to survive. There’s no instant pursuit by the scientists, who just seem content to let their research roam the countryside. Not only that, the possibility that the two dogs may carry the bubonic plague doesn’t surface until an hour into the movie, and then nothing is done with it. It is only after the dogs eat the hunter that any organized action is taken by anybody. In the novel, the media whips the populace up in a frenzy with the notion of “plague dogs” running around in their backyards. In the film, there’s no panic. It’s not until the end of the movie that the dogs actually are pursued. Watership Down meandered from scene to scene as well, but at least it had a direction—first finding a new home, then rescuing the does from Efafra. The Plague Dogs focuses instead on its two main characters and their transformation, which brings us to the film’s greatest fault—Rowf.
While Snitter has enough back story and problems to fill an entire novel by himself, Rowf is a cipher. He’s a laboratory dog. He’s afraid of water, a fact of which we’re constantly reminded. He hates men, or as he calls them, “whitecoats.” That’s it. Without knowing where he came from, how he ended up at the research center, how long he’s been there....well, it’s just hard to become emotionally attached. The tod has more life and character than Rowf, and the fox is in the story only half of the time. Rowf seems simply there to play off of Snitter, and with no strong plot to help out, that gets tiresome after a while.
It’s ironic then that Rowf dominates the movie’s most powerful scenes: the opening and ending, the sight of Rowf howling in his loneliness, the aforementioned man-eating. It’s a tribute to Rosen and his crew that these scenes are still affecting and disturbing even with Rowf as their catalyst. And when all is said and done, that’s what they’ve accomplished as a whole. With all of its problems, The Plague Dogs is still a powerful story. There’s so much I haven’t mentioned—the way the movie starts and ends in water; how the dogs’ dark adventure is like Rowf’s water tank; how the humans’ dialog is spoken over scenes of the dogs struggling from crag to crag, adding to their isolation; how Snitter’s view of masters changes…the list goes on and on. If you can find it, rent it, buy it. Watch it more than once, because for all its darkness the movie demands you discover it on your own. And you won’t realize until you try to sleep at night that the image of Rowf struggling against the water is still dancing before your eyes.
---
Film Information
Year Released: 1982
Director: Martin Rosen
Main Cast (voices): John Hurt, Christopher Benjamin, James Bolam, Nigel Hawthorne
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUDzklWlvho
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