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Blabbermouse rips into THE KING AND I
The trailers have filled me with dread. My instant feeling upon witnessing this travesty is.... STRAIGHT TO VIDEO. It wasn't just that I was seeing the trailer with THE PRINCE OF EGYPT... it wasn't the 16 steps backwards style of animation.... It was the terrible voice characterizations, it was the character designs... I decided to not see the film based on the trailer... which is something that very rarely happens with me. NIGHT AT THE ROXBURY being my most recent, "couldn't drag me kicking and screaming to see" movie. But... I figure... let's see what someone who saw the whole film had to say... and well... here it is... And upon reading it I wish Warners would have the good sense to release this straight to video. If it really is this bad, then all it can do is further damage the reputation of WARNER ANIMATION, though they didn't do it, and possibly hurt what seems to be a gigantic animation hit on the horizon... THE IRON GIANT. So please... think this through.
Always wish I had something to share with Aint-It-Cool, & this is probably
it:
The horror, the horror… I went to an advance screening over the weekend of
the
new animated feature not really based on the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical
"The King & I." In all honesty, I was expecting this film to be a
disappointment - but not the jaw-dropping monstrosity I wound up sitting
through. Harry, this film is a compendium of everything that can go wrong &
be
done wrong in a project like this, when the powers-that-be try to ape Disney
without the budget - or talent: ugly character designs coupled with
embarrassingly cheap & rushed-looking animation, characters lacking ANY sort
of personality onscreen, a clunky screenplay constantly pushing them through
hoops for no particular reason except to keep the story in frantic motion,
an
excess of excessively cute animal sidekicks… oh, and a jaw-droppingly racist
caricature of a sidekick, complete with Cholly-Chan dialect, serving as the
Jafar-knockoff villain's inept henchman.
Apart from the decent song performances & orchestrations & the basic premise
of Anna whatsername coming to Siam to teach the King's children, this film
has
NOTHING to do with the original film or Broadway musical. Instead, it's been
rebuilt around a horribly cliched, off the shelf plot about the King's evil
prime minister plotting to seize power, along with a subplot about the
King's
eldest son daring to fall in love with a servant girl.
Be prepared for moment after moment of ghastliness: Anna strutting around
the
deck of a storm-tossed, sea serpent-attacked ship, "whistle(ing) a happy
tune
so no one will suspect" she's afraid (the aghast sailor watching her looks
more terrified by her perkiness than the monster attacking the boat!),
the computer animated elements (demon statues come to stalking life, a British
military ship) that completely fail to mesh into the look or texture of the
rest of the film, meager handfuls of thickly-outlined, blocky &
under-animated
characters not quite-filling sparsely-detailed background scenes, etc. etc.
etc…
The King (never given a name) is introduced almost entirely as an
afterthought
about 15 minutes into the film (after the sea-serpent attack & numerous
scenes
with the villain), & never gets beyond a few posing & strutting moments.
What
might have been interesting - the conflict between his fascination with
modern
technology vs. his desire for his society's ancient traditions to go on
undisturbed - is never explored (having never seen the Yul Brynner movie of
the original musical, I've no idea if they made any more of it); instead,
the
film just switches gears between them as suits its convenience.
The young-love subplot is equally thin; little details - like the servant
girl's name, or the important plot point that she's unaware her boyfriend is
the crown prince - are never underlined early on & as a result seem to come
out of left field when they're resurface later in the film. The supposed
growing romance between the King & Anna is likewise left almost entirely to
the viewer's imagination, with just a few repetitive scenes of them trying
to
one-up each other standing in for their relationship.
The animal sidekicks (li'l mischievous monkey, cute 1-tusk-broken baby
elephant & the King's should-be-cool-but-just-another-wuss black panther)
don't miss an opportunity to pummel the "so-solly" henchman with ripe fruit
at
every appearance, until you wind up sick of them & feeling sorry for this
guy.
(I have to admit the 5-year olds in the audience seemed to eat up this
slapstick.) Interestingly enough, this guy gets off the film's few funny
lines
(probably ad-libs during the recording sessions, like after his boss pushes
him around for the zillionth time: "oh sure, pick on the funny-looking
little
fat guy!"), if you can overlook the stereotyping. I'm not talking PC versus
non-PC here either, folks; the look & behavior of this guy harkens back to
the
WWII-era "Japanazi rat" villains in the Fleischer Superman cartoons or "Bugs
Bunny Nips the Nips."
The villain's last appearance, with his fed-up henchman stomping on him in a
pile of elephant manure, neatly sums up the film's sense of taste &
subtlety.
Although the film was directed by Disney vet Richard Rich (responsible for
"The Black Cauldron," the studio's post-Walt, pre-Eisner nadir), most of
the
physical animation seems to have taken place in Korea - and India (first
time
I've ever seen a credit for an Indian animation studio - not even on TV
animation), and it looks it, to everyone's discredit. Someone was seriously
deluded - or lying - if they thought this thing was going to be even
remotely
in the same league as Disney's cheapest direct to HV animated features.
Instead of doing something fresh and original with a classic American
musical
score, they've created a classic botch job. As a whole, the film is too
juvenile to hold an adult audience & too inept to keep the kids interested.
(As good as the songs sound, the animation & visual storytelling backing
them
up is simply not particularly interesting; also, somehow I don't think the
"Rugrats" crowd - the only age group that would sit through this thing - is
clamoring to hear 50 year old Broadway show tunes.)
In fact, if there's any reason Disney switched their "Doug" feature from
direct-to-video to a theatrical release later this month (1 week
before/after
"King & I," I forget which), it's probably because they see what a sitting
duck this film is. Wouldn't you know it's coming from Warner Bros, which
seems
determined to keep putting out 4th rate Disney knock-offs ("Quest for
Camelot," anyone?) & shameless merchandising vehicles (Bugs as Michael
Jordan's stooge? Sure, why not?) instead of playing to their (superhero)
strengths. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll watch my video of "Cats
Don't
Dance" again, & remind myself what a REAL Hollywood musical - animated or
otherwise - is supposed to look like...
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+ Expand All
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all I needed to see to keep me far far away from this movie was the buck-toothed fat guy with squinted eyes saying "Ooh, me no like it!" or whatever the hell he says in that slurred accent of his. Man, I thought that animated films were trying to be more PC and not make fun of the ethnic groups they stereotype, guess I was wrong.
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The line that made me decide to not see this movie was the girl's line, "I am object. Like rug given to king." Of course, this movie can't be nearly as bad as JAWBREAKER, so maybe I'll drop $4 into it.
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I saw the trailer for K&I a few weeks ago and, well, you know a move is going to be bad when it can't even manage to stich together two minutes of interesting clips for the trainer. I'd love to see an animated version of K&I done right -- I'm a big fan both of both Broadway musicals and animation -- but this turkey doesn't even look to be worth a rental.
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Nice! I love hearing about how bad Warner Bros. movies are! Let's just hope it bombs. Why does Kubrick work with these idiots? Well, I guess even Warner Bros. knows when to give the God of Cinema his due respect.
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I can't believe Warners would do this to one of the GREAT American musicals. The play has remained successful for forty years because its a touching and entertaining story. I can't believe that Warners would farm this project out to one of their hacks so that he could systematically eliminate everything that makes the play classic. The trailer showed me all I needed to see: that "The King and I" now means a Disneyfied "unlikely romance," a Disneyfied "evil villain," and a slew of Disneyfied "animal sidekicks." Whose boneheaded idea was it to rewrite the script to consist entirely of cliches and stereotypes?
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The King and I is NOT a warner bros production. It was Morgan Creek and Rankin/Bass.
Warners is just distributing the film. WBA HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS TRAVESTY!!!!!!!!!!
Morgan Creek has had a distribution deal with the WB for many years. This was a contractual obligation.
Please don't blame Warner Bros. for this film.
eric l. -
When Is Iron Giant suppost to be released? heah yeah I too saw the trailer for this piece of crap (it was ironic that it aired RIGHT AFTER the Tarzan trailer which completely blew my mind!!) the first comment that someone noticed was "I wonder if the King will look like--ohmeeGawd, it looks like Yul Brener!!" Its too bad that Warner Brothers is releasing their Anamaniacs movie direct to video, but at least they are making halfway decent Batman animated movies. Warner Brothers animation MOVIES always have insulted my intelligence. ugh.
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I thought Doug was being released via Paramount though their Nickaloden stuidos. although I will admit that the POS and the fact that the Rugrats movie did so well at the BO is the reason that it's being release theatrically insteod of DTV. On a side note I was watching a recent video release(I think it was RONIN)and it had a a trailer for the Doug movie as Stright To Video this spring. That was last week when the video had JUST been released
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Mar 03, 1999 10:18:39 PM CST
WB pushes the Animaniacs movie DTV and backs up this? God help
by neuracnu
I believe what we're seeing here could be the same effect that Supernova (that James Spader / Angella Battet Sci-fi pic) is having. Studio plugged a bunch of money into it, hoping for a decent product, but ended up spewing out 90 minutes of crap. The studio decided to cut it's losses but, rather than canning the film, decided to wrap it up, do a minimal advertising campaign just put the whole ordeal behind them. Think about it... have you seen any ads for this picture outside trailers with PEO shows and possibly a cardboard prop in the theater lobby? I know I sure haven't. I heard that WB had themselves a great film in the Animaniacs movie that they just finished working up, but were afraid that they couldn't make up the $12 million in promotions to make the film lucrative, so decide to make it direct to video. But instead, they put this film out front. Sorry WBA; 'Quest for Camelot' was strike one. 'King & I' looks to be a sure-fire strike two. I'm really looking forward to seeing 'Iron Giant'.
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Hey, I resent these negative comments. I personally worked on every one of the 52 frames of animation that appear in TK&I. Do you guys think it's easy to animate that many frames on a tight budget? Well it isn't friends. When our crew was told we had 3 days to throw together a piece of shit movie that would make South Park look like Disney we didn't ever believe it could be done. Well you know what, 5 days later and only $20.00 over budget we had a completed film. Just try to have a little more respect for the art of animation. Thanks.
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Yeah, its story was lame as hell, but Quest For Camelot had some gorgeous visuals, far above the obvious claptrap that is King and I. It's clear that Quest is a big budget production. Artistically, I think they could have worked on the look of the heroine a lot more. And the characters aren't as well rendered or animated as top Disney flicks, but hey, it was their first full-length animated feature (discounting Space Jam) so cut them some slack. I saw parts of Little Mermaid again the other day, and surprisingly, it clearly looked a lot rougher than more recent Disney flicks, so hopefully Warner will show the same improvement. Quest's background art is absolutely stunning though. There are many truly beautiful images used for those sweeping vistas and various other beautiful terrain. The use of colour in the movie is quite nice too. And I've seen the portfolio requirements WBA... they're not hiring hacks.
Here's hoping Iron Giant lives up and surpasses the hype it's getting from Harry... -
Why didn't WB release Wakko's Wakko Wish in theaters and this King & I crap on video?
The previews for King & I look TERRIBLE and this article just makes it sound worse.
I think it would be cool to see Animaniacs in theaters because I missed it when I'm Mad was in theaters. -
Whose lamebrained idea was it to make a King&I cartoon in the first place? duh... I dont know any kids who'd want to see this, and any adult would be completely uninterested in a cartoon version of this musical. Even POE had trouble drawing enough audience, and it at least had a story that could appeal to kids and adults too. This thing cant appeal to eitther.
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Richard Rich's the Swan Princess was pretty good, but other I basically concur with all of you. Mwwuahaha! I have the max 10k stocks in Iron Giant at 1 buck each at hsx.com. I will vanquish all!
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I think it is an awful shame that "Wakko's Wakko Wish" was not released, and this was. From what I have read "the King And I" have gotten very bad reviews, and they will probably loose more at the box office than they could have gained with the release of "wakko's Wakko Wish".
Wakkas
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