Weekly Assignment #4

Ek, sorry this is in late. My internet was out last night and I've been out all day today....but anyways, here's my assignment for the week. We had to watch a good animated movie and also a bad one and then make 5 comments about it. The good animated movie I watched was "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" and the bad animated movie I'm going to comment on but truthfully I didn't watch within the past week is "All Dogs Go to Heaven".

"Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"

• First off, brilliant editing between live-action and animation. It wasn't like that was entirely new concept (it actually started in the 1919 with Koko the Clown) but somehow, they managed to reinvent that idea and improve upon in and made it convincing. Very hard to do I'm sure.
• Love the use of camera angles and camera, especially when heavily animated(like in the beginning Roger Rabbit cartoon). It's not something that's usually done quite to the extent it was in this movie so it made it even more entertaining and inspiring to watch.
• The idea and story behind this film was genius. It was very clever and I love the fact that it was set during the Golden Age of Animation. And it's pretty awesome that SO many of the studios gave the right to use their characters in this movie. It's great because they are all such iconic characters, but even more entertaining if you know a bit about animation history. ;)
• Animation and character acting was dead on, especially since it all had to be animated on one's (ouch).
  
• Lastly, I'm going to comment on the script. It was a very well written script, something that many generations could enjoy watching. It was well-paced, it knew when to throw the right humor into the story and how to build up suspense. Beautifully put together story. Bravo.

All I can say is if you haven't watched "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?", you have to-it's such a classic that definitely helped bring about the Animation Renaissance of the 1990's. You are missing out if you haven't seen this movie.

"All Dogs Go To Heaven"

Although I do enjoy most Don Bluth films, this one I just didn't like which was too bad because it had animals in it....and that's such a sure-fire way to pull me into a movie. I honestly wish I liked this movie, it has so much potential, but the main reason I didn't like this movie was because of the story. I enjoyed the character designs and color schemes for the most part....but ugh, NONE of that matters if your story is weak! Here's a few things that made the story weak, as well as other reasons why this movie was kind of a flop to me:

• The main character was incredibly unlikeable and didn't change too much. When Charlie died at the end, it felt forced and insincere and I didn't buy it. It was like he changed because he had to and not because he truly was a changed dog.
• Most of the songs were pointless and didn't help push the story along at all. Most just seemed forced and broke the viewer away from the story.
• The story ended really suddenly, I feel like Charlie's time in heaven again could have been give just a little bit more screen time....maybe a bit more dialouge (I think part of this is why I feel like he never really changed whole-heartedly)
• Just some odd scenes that didn't neccesarily have to be in the movie in the first place (ie. alligator scene), made the movie at times feel choppy
  
• Character acting was medioacre. Not good or bad....just okay, especially compared to other Bluth films, not their best animation-wise. A lot of times it felt lifeless.

I'd still say this movie is worth seeing at least once, it is such a cult classic for some people (which is why I think in part why I was just so disappointed with this movie). And it's always good to see something different than just Disney or another majorily popular style of animation. Though if you're going to watch a Bluth film soon, I'd recommend you'd watch another one of his films made in the 1980's over this one.

So that's all. I plan on writing a post about Disney's first 5 films sometime soon. There's something increbily rich about them everytime I watch them that is just absent in other Disney movies, but I have to watch the other Disney movies so I can somewhat figure out what is it exactly that makes those movies so different from other Disney movies. I do so enjoy writing about animation. :)

There shall be some sketchbook art in my next post.

~Lauren