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THE LOVE BUG (Robert Stevenson, 1969).
THE LOVE BUG (Robert Stevenson, 1969).
Released three years after the death of the its founder, Walt Disney Productions’ The Love Bug continued the tradition of fantasy comedies established by the studio a decade earlier with The Shaggy Dog (Charles Barton, 1959). It introduced Herbie, the anthropomorphic VW Beetle, to cinema audiences and would prove a massive hit for Disney, spawning a franchise which would include four theatrical sequels, a TV series and a made for TV movie.
The movie stars Dean Jones as washed up racing driver Jim Douglas whose fortunes are reversed thanks to the lovable VW Bug. He is pitted against arch rival David Thorndyke, who uses every dirty trick in the book to defeat Douglas in a cross-country race, the stakes of which are ownership of Herbie.
Disney regular Jones and love interest Michelle Lee make for attractive leads and prove themselves adept at light comedy. Less subtle, but just as effective are Buddy Hackett as a kooky new age mechanic and Joe Flynn as Thorndyke’s long suffering assistant. Best of all is the magnificent David Tomlinson as the comically villainous Thorndyke.
Ultimately the star is, of course, the car; brought to life through a combination of impressive stunt work and pre-CGI effects that hold up fine 50 years after release. Herbie has an endearing puppy dog charm and more personality than most humans!
Bill Walsh and Don Da Gradi’s screenplay mixes slapstick humour with some genuinely witty dialogue while Robert Stevenson, arguably the greatest director on the Disney roster, brings his flair for whimsical fantasy to what might be his best work after Mary Poppins (1964).
The Love Bug was to become the highest grossing movie of 1969 and one of the highest earners of all time. It’s easy to see why. With its winning mix of racetrack thrills and good natured laughs, it is a deftly performed, expertly crafted gem.
Check out my blog JINGLE BONES MOVIE TIME for more reviews of vintage Disney classics! Link below.
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tori-vega-kinda-sucked liked this · 5 years ago
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DUMBO (Dir: Ben Sharpsteen, 1941).
Walt Disney’s 4th animated feature is the story of the circus elephant born with oversized ears who uses his disadvantage to his advantage when he discovers his ears enable him to fly.
At 64 minutes it is one of the shortest Disney movies but is a masterclass in storytelling. Not a second of screen time is wasted; in fact its tight narrative and snappy pace make it an advocate for shorter movies!
It is also the most emotionally moving Disney feature. Many a tear has formed in audiences eyes as Dumbo is separated from his mother and ostracised by the other elephants. It is a credit to writers Joe Grant and Dick Huemer that the emotion never descends into false sentiment and there is also much humour to offset the heartache.
The animation too is exemplary, as one incredible animation set piece follows another. Highlights include the shadowy roustabout sequence, the tragicomic disastrous pachyderm pyramid, Dumbo’s inaugural flight and best of all the surrealist Pink Elephants On Parade. The character animation, opting for a more ‘cartoony’ look than in previous features, is also among the studios best as are the beautiful watercolour backgrounds against which the action takes place.
Add to this a fantastic score by Frank Churchill and Oliver Wallace, including the tender Baby Mine and the clever wordplay of When I See An Elephant Fly, and a powerful message of acceptance and the result is one of the greatest movies, animated or otherwise, of all time. In my opinion only rivalled for greatness by Walt Disney’s Pinocchio (B Sharpsteen & Hamilton Luske, 1940). Dumbo is unarguably a masterpiece and a work of art.
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MISSING LINK (Dir: Chris Butler, 2019).
2019 is the year of the animated sequel, with follow-ups to How to Train Your Dragon and The Lego Movie recently leaving cinemas and further instalments of Toy Story, Secret Life of Pets, Shaun the Sheep, The Angry Birds Movie and the mighty Frozen to come. In a market oversaturated with sequels this, the fifth feature from Oregon based animation studio Laika, is a rare treat.
The second Laika production written and directed by Chris Butler, following 2012’s Paranorman, Missing Link is a departure from the dark fantasy of Paranorman and Coraline (Henry Selik, 2009) and finds the studio in decidedly lighthearted mode.
The adventure comedy concerns discredited explorer Sir Nigel Frost (Hugh Jackman) who teams up with a Sasquatch-like creature Mr Link (Zach Galifianakis) on a quest to the Himalayas to unite Link with his Yeti cousins.
As is to be expected from Laika, Missing Link is a beautiful realised stop-motion spectacle. It is easily the funniest Laika movie and the exquisitely detailed, hand-crafted animation is a joy. Galifianakis is a sweet natured, lovable Mr Link and is is supported by a first rate vocal cast which also includes Zoe Saldana, Emma Thompson and Stephen Fry.
Despite its disappointing box office Missing Link continues the run of excellent animations from Laika, proving them to be the most consistent of all animation studios. The movie is a sweet and humorous adventure, as entertaining for grownups as for children and is almost certainly the most original animation you will catch in cinemas this year.
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WALL•E (Dir: Andrew Stanton, 2008).
Combining futurist sci-fi and robot rom-com with a timely ecological message, this 9th feature film from Pixar Animation Studios released by Walt Disney Pictures opens on post-apocalyptic Earth 700 years after humans mass consumerism and neglectful waste management has made the planet uninhabitable. Here trash compactor robot WALL•E, the last of his kind, stoically continues a clean-up operation. Enter Eve, a reconnaissance bot dispatched from starliner Axiom to recover life forms and asses suitability for a possible return of humans to the planet. On discovering a solitary plant sample Eve is summoned by the Axiom pursued by WALL•E. A burgeoning bot romance ensues on their quest to deliver the sapling to the Axiom’s Captain and initiate a return to Earth.
From its opening scenes of an eerie, trash-strewn abandoned Earth to its awe-inspiring space-scapes, the movie is a visual delight. With a titular character who is largely mute, the screenplay by director Andrew Stanton and Jim Reardon is a masterclass in how to tell a moving, thought provoking story with minimal dialogue. Its comments on consumerism, big business, political corruption and the human destruction of Earth are even more pertinent now than when the movie was released a decade ago.
Despite its serious message WALL•E is an utterly joyful, uplifting viewing experience and is refreshing in the entirety uncynical, optimistic approach to its subject.
In 2016 a poll of international critics conducted by BBC Culture voted WALL•E the 29th greatest film of the 21st Century. With this I would disagree, this modern masterpiece is arguably the greatest movie of the century and one of the greatest movies of all time.
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THE WARE CASE (Robert Stevenson, 1938).
The Ware Case is a creaky crime drama from the early days of the Ealing Studios; the second release from producer and studio head Michael Balcon’s tenure.
It features none of the hallmarks and belongs to none of the genres of filmmaking generally associated with later Ealing. Not a comedy in their classic mould, nor a wartime drama or social-realist piece, and is presumably a holdover from the Basil Dean era.
Based on the play by G P Bancroft, The Ware Case opens with a courtroom sequence set in the Old Bailey where we find society scoundrel Sir Hubert Ware (Clive Brook) on trail for the murder of his brother-in-law, the events leading up to which are subsequently told in flashback.
It’s lighthearted enough and some of the dialogue is humorous but a romp this ain’t. The central character of Ware is an unlikable fellow and the rest of the characters are all a little too one dimensional to really relate to. As an example of embryonic Ealing it certainly has curiosity value but, to be honest, I found the whole thing rather dull.
Robert Stevenson directs with efficiency but shows little of the flair for the fantastic he would display in his later career association with Walt Disney Productions. Responsible for Mary Poppins (1964), The Love Bug (1969) and Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) among others, he would become the most commercially successful film director in Hollywood.
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RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET (Dir: Rich Moore & Phil Johnston, 2018).
A sequel to a Walt Disney Animation Studios feature is a rare beast. While the 1990s and early 2000s were plagued with cheaply made straight-to-video sequels (a few of which did gain cinema release) produced by the television arm DisneyToon Studios, no feature since the 2008 release The Little Mermaid 3: Ariel’s Beginning (Peggy Holmes) has bared this indignity.
Other animation studios such as Pixar, DreamWorks and Blue Sky have regularly released sequels to their biggest hits with varying quality, but I was glad that Disney had abandoned exploiting their product in this way, especially as their last decade has seen a run of exceptional original movies, arguably their best since the Walt-era features. So it was with some trepidation that I viewed Ralph Breaks the Internet, the sequel to the excellent 2012 original Wreck It Ralph and I am happy to report that I was not too disappointed.
Ralph Breaks the Internet sees video game buddies Ralph and Vanellope Von Schweetz leave their respective games in Litwak’s Family Fun Center and Arcade and travel to the internet, initially eBay, in order to retrieve a spare part to repair Vanellope’s Sugar Rush game. On the way they visit the noirish Dark Net and unwittingly unleash a devastating virus but not before a sojourn in hyper-real racing game Slaughter Race and an encounter with the Disney Princesses in a neat cameo via the Oh My Disney website.
Yeah, the plot is slightly convoluted! This is where Ralph 2 suffers most in comparison to the original movie; the simple story of bad guy who wants to be good is simply more appealing, not to mention more streamlined, than what is on offer here. It also has a mildly unsatisfying conclusion and a slightly muddled message, a little at odds with that of the first film.
Still, Ralph Breaks the Internet is a lot of fun and is visually spectacular. While this movie doesn’t quite live up to the original it is certainly well worth 2 hours of anybody’s time and I guess bodes well for the next Disney Animation sequel, due for release in November 2019; a little movie named Frozen 2...
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