I don’t think it’s a big secret that Gravity Falls is my favorite series from Disney. Not just animated series, I mean out of everything the channel ever churned out. It was mysterious, funny and occasionally frightening, with deep themes of family and growing up and some of the most well-written television characters to come from the 2010s. When it bowed out after two near-perfect seasons, it left some enormous shoes to fill. What show could possibly live up to the standards it set?
Well, it turns out the answer was one no one asked for, but we’re sure as hell thankful we got anyway.
Hot take for y’all, especially from someone who grew up in the 90’s and enjoyed the hell out of the original DuckTales: the 2017 reboot blows its predecessor out of the water. It takes the fun, creative adventures from the first series, adds a much-needed measure of character arcs and development (Huey, Dewey and Louie have actual distinct personalities now!) and amps it up with a huge dose of heart and enough lore borrowed from the Carl Barks and Don Rosa comics to win over even the most jaded fans. Also, as opposed to his unceremonious draft into the navy in the first series, Donald Duck finally has a part to play in the new adventures! (Well, in 13 out of the 65 of them anyway…way to get my hopes up, Disney.) By the time I was halfway through the first season I thought to myself, “Yes, this is it. This is the successor to Gravity Falls,” (though The Owl House definitely ties with that sentiment as well, and Amphibia isn’t too far behind).
I’m woefully behind on Season 3, but am well aware that they’re bringing in more characters and plots from the other classic Disney Afternoon series that were hinted at since the very start, and I can’t wait to see how they’re re-interpreted. On a similar note, since this episode deals with some major revelations from the tail end of Season One that have ramifications for the rest of the series, I must warn you that this review will have spoilers.
30 years ago today (well, yesterday when I was originally writing this and was meant to go up but couldn’t finish it in time due to carpal tunnel), television history was made…well, for my generation, at least.
You probably already know Cartoon All-Stars To The Rescue from its reputation more than anything else. There’s plenty of online critics who have picked apart this bizarre little PSA before me, and more will with every generation that discovers it. This was an unusual attempt on behalf of the White House, the Ronald McDonald House charity, The Walt Disney Corporation, several powerful television stations, and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences to get kids to say no to drugs. Did they succeed? Probably not. But in order to understand why, we have to go back to the beginning:
In the 1980s, America was gripped by a crippling epidemic of drug users, urban monsters enticing children off the playgrounds into increasingly dangerous and deadly vices such as smoking and drinking – or so they believed. Ronald Reagan and his First Lady Nancy made headlines by declaring drugs to be the number one problem in the country and signed bills and acts into action that cracked down hard on even the most minute offenders. I don’t know, I could have sworn there was a real worldwide health crisis going on at the time that could have used more attention and early action, but maybe that was just my imagination. It wasn’t like this whole drug narrative was a desperate attempt by Ronald to create his own boogeyman that would distract the American public from a disease that predominantly affected an unfairly maligned group that he and Nancy liked to pretend didn’t exist, someone’s gotta think of the children dammit! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!
Never forget them. Never EVER forget them.
As nostalgic as it is to look back on the colorful anti-drug PSAs that plagued the airwaves in my day, learning more about why and how they were made as a result of Reagan’s manipulation leaves a bitter aftertaste. They also present blatantly unrealistic scenarios; never in my life has a shady-looking fellow come up to me and my friends in the schoolyard and offered us marijuana or crack. I didn’t even know these drugs existed until my school got a visit from D.A.R.E. In fact, the whole War On Drugs is downright hypocritical if you know anything about the Contra affair. This self-fabricated war mainly targeted African-American and Latino communities, which only served to inflate Reagan’s ego and fuel his open prejudices against minorities when not steering the country towards bankruptcy and the threat of nuclear war through a combination of greed, bloodlust, and encroaching senility. It makes you wonder, what kind of campaign did this old bastard run that got himself elected in the first place?
“…Either I’m on drugs right now or we’re all trapped in a time loop, and I don’t know which one is worse.”
The War On Drugs continued into the Bush administration with George Bush himself pushing this special as a huge step forward into saving children from drugs. He and Barbara Bush even filmed an awkward introduction for the VHS release. Cartoon All-Stars was a shockingly big deal at the time, not just for what it was trying to promote but for the fact that so many characters from a number of different studios were coming together all at once for the first and most likely only time. Roy E. Disney, in particular, played an enormous part in getting the special made. He stepped into the role of Executive Producer, ensured characters from some of Disney’s big Saturday morning cartoons like DuckTales and The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh appeared and had the special distributed through Buena Vista Home Video. Disney’s big name drew in more parties, and the use of other characters like Garfield and the Chipmunks got the personal approval from their creators.
Written and animated in the short time of eight weeks (startlingly quick turnaround time for animation), Cartoon All-Stars was part after-school special, part Who Framed Roger Rabbit/Avengers-style crossover, part commercial. The special was simulcast on four different major TV stations, and also freely distributed in video stores, schools, and libraries. I wasn’t born until after Cartoon All-Stars aired, but I spent my early childhood watching the tape fairly frequently. I enjoyed seeing all these cartoon characters I knew together, and admittedly the anti-drug message hit home pretty hard due to my grandfather passing away from lung cancer around that time. That part stuck with me longer than I care to admit. When you’re a four-year-old kid scolding an adult for smoking, it’s cute. When you’re fourteen? Eh, not so much.
In the space of a year and a half, I covered the entirety of Gravity Falls’ television run. It’s been fun sharing what I loved about my favorite show, and it brought in some loyal readers who have stuck around since. Once my Patreon was up and running, I promised that I would review another series the day I reached my goal of making $100.
Today is not that day. I don’t know when it will come, but I know there are better places that extra bit of money could go to right now than in my pocket. So after much deliberation, I’ve decided to return to series reviews – but with a catch.
Much like the first time, what I review will be up to your vote. Some are shows I recommended the first time around being trotted back out for your consideration, and some are newcomers given a chance to prove themselves. Which one will come out on top is anybody’s guess.
“It’s probably going to be Avatar. That’s the one everyone knows and loves the most.”
As for the twist, I’m reinstating Charity Bonus Votes: For every donation of $5 or more to the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund, you get an extra vote. Every little bit means the world right now, so even if you can’t give anything at the moment, please spread the word.
The Rankin-Bass special that even Rankin-Bass fans despise.
Call it a hunch, but I think Charles Dickens really had a thing for Christmas. His most popular novel has the holiday in the title and has been adapted for the screen and stage at least over 200 times. Dickens set a few other tales at Christmastime, no doubt to recapture the magic and spirit of the holiday in the same way A Christmas Carol did, but those were met with less success. Does anyone here remember that classic “The Haunted Man”? That one was a ghost story that also took place at Christmas. Where are the hundreds of versions of that tale? Or “The Chimes” for that matter? Or “The Battle of Life”?
Then there’s today’s tale, “Cricket On the Hearth”, which only received two silent film adaptations (the first directed by D.W. Griffith) and a long-forgotten stage play. For yet-to-be-fathomed reasons, Rankin-Bass deemed it the perfect material to follow up their smash hit Rudolph three years prior. Instead of stop-motion animation, however, we get hand-drawn animation. While that would normally be a plus in my book, I’m not kidding when I say this is some of the cheapest, most unpleasant animation I’ve set my eyes on. It’s heavily recycled, the character designs are unappealing, and it cheats numerous times by just showing long periods of still images with nothing happening. I also had to be careful grabbing screenshots because the far-right side of the video flickered and was several frames off for some reason. And it wasn’t a corrupted file issue either, this is straight from the dvd. They aired this special on national television, how could they not be bothered to fix that?
And those are just the issues I have with the visuals.
The characters are one-dimensional tools, the songs are at best forgettable and at worst unbearable, and the story manages to be both devastatingly bleak and disgustingly saccharine while also insulting to its audience. Now, Charles Dickens was a talented writer knew how to properly mix those elements to tell a compelling and resonant story. In his Christmas tales, the sentimentality and darkness complement each other and ring true.
But guess who did such a bang-up job encumbering a song about ableist reindeer with a meandering hour-long plot that he was given free rein over the story?
Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo? Deny thy special and refuse thy Writer’s Guild card. Or if not, throw thyself into the roaring cauldron of the sea and let the sirens peck at thy swollen flesh…sexist pig.
Well, this preamble has gone on long enough. Grab your insect repellent, folks, let’s look at Cricket On The Hearth.
When I first wrote this review, it opened with Cynicism saying “Bad news, Shelf. Since you shat on Rudolph last week, Patreon’s taking money AWAY from you. If you don’t say more nice things about this week’s special, we’re going to have to file for bankruptcy.” Just a fun little way of letting you know today’s post is going to be a bit less harsh than the previous one.
But then I checked my Patreon hours after the Rudolph review went up, and the numbers had shrunk substantially.
It actually happened.
A silly one-off joke I wrote to ease you, the reader, into the review, accidentally came true.
It’s like the universe itself is punishing me for daring to not like Rudolph.
Okay, the truth of the matter is a bit more complicated than that, but nobody actually quit being a patron based on my feelings towards Rudolph, for which I am relieved and grateful for. It’s already been sorted out and I certainly don’t hold this mishap against anyone because of events beyond their control.
Anyway, enough of my rambling. If you can’t already tell, today’s holiday outing is Frosty The Snowman.
Frosty, Frosty, Frosty…yeah, not a big fan of this one either.
“YOU HATE FROSTY TOO, YOU MONSTER?!”
“I didn’t say THAT!”
Frosty, like Rudolph, was another Rankin-Bass special I lost my taste for due to forced overexposure. It’s light on story and character, the animation is nothing to write home over, and we trade a bunch of subpar songs for one song dragged across the entire affair. But I’ll give it this over Rudolph:
It’s shorter. Slashed right down the middle of Rudolph’s runtime, Frosty’s only twenty-five minutes of schmaltzy bland holiday fare instead of nearly an hour.
The only jerk in the special is the clear-cut villain, who’s the most fun character in this thing.
The cheap stop-motion has been replaced by cheap traditional animation. Not much of an exchange, I’ll take any crumbs of hand-drawn goodness I can get these days.
If I may elaborate on the latter, the designs for the characters and backgrounds are kind of interesting. The man behind them is Paul Coker Jr., who also created comics for MAD Magazine, hence why the characters have a bit of a unique geometric aesthetic but are still kind of…weird-looking. Alfred E. Neuman wouldn’t feel out of place among this cast.
Hi! If this is your first time here, I highly recommend checking out my other movie/tv/holiday special reviewsbefore this one, just to get a more positive idea of what to expect from my writing. Usually, I’m not this…well, you clicked on this review, didn’t you?
I suppose I should begin this month with a little bit of Rankin-Bass’ history. It was founded in 1960 by Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass under the name Videocraft International. They began by producing animated television series for children, alternating between stop-motion and traditional cel animation before combining both with a process they called “Animagic” (which sounds more like a fireworks show at Disney World than an actual animation technique if you ask me). All the animation for these shows and the holiday specials and films that they would later branch out into were outsourced to Japan. Throughout the studio’s existence, work rotated between five different Japanese animation houses: MOM Production, Toei Animation, TCJ (Television Corporation of Japan), Mushi Production, and Topcraft. Chances are if you’re into anime, then these names ring a few bells. These studios have produced hit after hit on the big and small screen, with some of them continuing to do so today, and many of Topcraft’s animators went on to bigger and better things at Studio Ghibli.
Most of Rankin-Bass’ Christmas specials, particularly the ones I’ll be looking at, follow a simple formula – take a well-known holiday song and build a story around it. It’s not a bad concept if a bit overutilized. Their first outing, and most beloved in the eyes of many, is Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, based on the tune of the same name written by Johnny Marks (who would also write the other songs in the special) and popularized by Gene Autry in 1949. The song itself was taken from a children’s book created a decade prior to promote the Montgomery Ward department store, and the special was sponsored by General Electric, who, by a stunning coincidence, were selling Christmas lights that holiday season which happened to resemble Rudolph’s nose.
In short, this special originated as a commercial, and always was one through and through.
In spite of its original intent, Rudolph has become a holiday staple and icon as big as Santa Claus himself. And if you are one of the millions of people on this planet who loves this special, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from doing so, and you are not wrong for enjoying it. After all, this is just one person expressing their opinion. If this person’s opinion differs from yours, that doesn’t invalidate how you feel nor should you feel as if you absolutely must agree with them –
“Hey…you’re making it sound like you’re about to say something bad about Rudolph!”
“Well, I-“
“Nobody dislikes Rudolph! Everyone in the entire world loves it! It’s a classic! The perfect Christmas special! You like Rudolph too, right? RIGHT?!”
Well, I’ve been anticipating/dreading this, but I went ahead and got Disney+. I’m in the middle of the trial period and I confess I haven’t had the time to watch everything yet – not just because there’s so freaking much but I’m in the middle of writing the Rankin-Bass reviews. As of now I’ve finished the first two, am 75% done with the third, and have touched upon the last two (Surprise! There’s going to be FIVE reviews in December! Even if you already know what the original four were, I’m not going to spoil them or what the additional one will be.)
From what I have seen of Disney+, however, I’m impressed. Both new and classic DuckTales and Mickey Mouse shorts coexisting? Legend of the Three Caballeros legally available in the states at last? A place to finally binge watch shows I vaguely remembered like Gargoyles, Darkwing Duck and Tron Uprising? Virtually the entire catalogue of the incredibly cheesy “What Walt Would Have Done” era comedies like The Barefoot Executive and Million Dollar Duck for people who actually remember those? Star Wars’ first live-action series? In-depth documentaries that’ll make any Disney-phile drool? The Black Cauldron, Darby O’Gill and Return to Oz finally getting some recognition? Over a years’ worth of Disney Afternoons you can cram in a week?! They really went all out to entice people into this service!
And yet…
One of my favorite Disney shows as a kid was The Little Mermaid series. I was particularly eager to return under the sea and let that wave of nostalgia wash over me. It was the very first thing I searched for once it was all set up.
But then I clicked on it, and immediately noticed something was missing – the very first episode.
Don’t be fooled by the numbers. I grew up with this series and I’ll have you know the very first episode of The Little Mermaid is “Whale of a Tale”, aka the one with the heartwrenching opening where a baby orca gets orphaned by whalers and Ariel rescues him while Jodi Benson sings a song about how every creature deserves a loving family and is a punch to the gut every time I hear it!
What could have happened to make the people in charge of getting this series up on Disney+ forget the episode that started it all and is featured the most in the series intro for goodness sakes! I know the first few minutes are a tad…emotional, but it’s a great beginning to a fine addition to one of my favorite Disney movies. This series may not be high up on anyone’s priority, but I still can’t wrap my head around how they made this kind of error.
On a similar note, I see the original Mickey Mouse Club and Spin & Marty there (awesome), and they have The Sign of Zorro, but not the Zorro series itself? Disney’s Zorro was great! Hilarious, swashbuckling, great acting and that classic Walt Disney feel? If all the Herbie movies and Star Wars prequels can get some time in the spotlight, why not this one?
Of course, I can’t forget the Fox in the room. The timing of Disney+’s release with their acquisition of 20th Century Fox is a bit too coincidental..and very problematic in the long run, but that’s a thought for another time. My cable provider didn’t support FXX’s streaming at the time so I had to rely on my trusty worn 480p dvds to get my Springfield kicks. But for better or for worse, the entirety of one of my favorite shows of all time is available to stream in glorious 4K HD…but it’s been badly cropped to fit widescreen TVs, resulting in awkwardly cramped scenes and visual gags cut off by the black. Boo.
(EDIT: I’ve been informed that Disney+ will broadcast The Simpsons in its original 4:3 aspect ratio starting in 2020. Whether “Stark Raving Dad” will be added to the lineup at that time remains to be seen, but considering the controversy surrounding it, it’s best not to hold your breath.)
One issue I worried about was how much of Disney’s, ah, “questionable content” from the Walt era would be included. A notorious rumor that floated around for a while was that movies like Dumbo would be completely re-edited to remove the stereotypical racial characters like the Crows or the Siamese Cats from Lady and the Tramp. While I can’t pretend I don’t see why people would get in an uproar over their inclusion today, hacking these classic films for the sake of political correctness would have been a travesty. My fears were put to rest, however, when those movies were not only left fully in tact, but came with a small content warning in the vein of Warner Brothers’ unedited cartoon releases. Very good, Disney, you’re learning…but that doesn’t excuse unleashing all of those terrible direct-to-video sequels side-by-side with the superior originals! Any poor child could accidentally expose themselves to them! Won’t somebody please think of the children?!
Like I said, nearly every Mickey Mouse short is here as well as many of the Silly Symphonies among others. I wish they could have been grouped together to make them easier to find and watch all at once, but who knows? Maybe they’ll do that in the future.
“Hang on, I’m getting to my point.”
I know this post looks like me complaining, but I’m genuinely excited for almost everything Disney+ has to offer and can’t wait to revisit some of my favorite series and discover new ones. But this service can still do better. There’s some notable flaws that I hope they fix in due time, and even more I’d like to see that I hope they get around to including.
In short, Disney+ isn’t perfect, the “everyone’s here” tag line isn’t quite accurate, and their iron grip on how much of the Fox film catalogue goes in and out of the vault is worrisome, but I have high hopes that they’ll improve as it goes along and I’m thrilled to see what they come out with next.
Besides, what could other streaming services have that this doesn’t?
“New…hand-drawn…animated…I’M COMING NETFLIX! DON’T START WITHOUT ME!!”
Thank you for reading! Have you gotten Disney+ yet? Do you have any recommendations? Let me know in the comments and I’ll see you soon!
…Also if we can make #WheresWhaleOfATaleDisney+ a thing I will be eternally grateful to you all.
Please consider supporting me on Patreon if you’re able. Patreon supporters receive great perks such as extra votes for movie reviews, movie requests, early sneak-peeks and more! If I can hit my goal of $100 a month, I can go back to weekly tv series reviews. As of now, I’m only $20 away! Special thanks to Amelia Jones, Gordhan Rajani and Sam Minden for their contributions!
Hi all, I’ve been doing some thinking about Patreon lately and I feel like I’m not doing enough. I’m grateful to my loyal patrons but it isn’t easy creating bonus content or early access for blog posts as it is videos.
That’s why from now on, for $5 or more, you can access excerpts from upcoming reviews. Join today and you can get a sneak peek at a bit of the Rudolph review, which won’t be out until December 1st. Thanks, and I’ll see you soon!
Well lookee here, I’m participating in another blogathon! This time it’s 18cinemalane’s Siskel & Ebert At The Blogathon, which honors the iconic film critic duo of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. For my part, I decided to look at something Siskel & Ebert-related that doesn’t get as much attention as their reviews.
For those of you who are unaware, The Critic was a short-lived but popular animated series by The Simpsons writers Al Jean and Mike Reiss. It aired on ABC in 1994 before moving to Fox for its second and final season in 1995. It centers on Jay Sherman, the titular film critic (played by Jon Lovitz) and his life, focusing mainly on the colorful cast of friends, family and coworkers, and the many, many bad movies he’s stuck reviewing.
The highest compliment I can give The Critic is that it combines the best of The Simpsons (no big surprise there) and the best of Family Guy; its humor bounces between hilarious parodies of contemporary and classic films, playful dialogue, and zany surreal moments that you can only get away with in animation. Its characters are just as good as the casts from either of the aforementioned shows, and there’s barely a stinker in the entire series’ run. But perhaps the most fondly remembered episode is Season 2’s “Siskel & Ebert & Jay & Alice”, aka, the one that stars Siskel and Ebert playing themselves.
Siskel and Ebert are not the first recognized film critics to be featured in this series; Rex Reed and Gene Shallit also appeared multiple times. They even have a few lines in this very episode. As a matter of fact, Siskel and Ebert reviewed the first few episodes of The Critic on their show – and gave it a thumbs down. This isn’t a reflection of the series or their judgement, however. The problem is ABC aired the episodes out of order. After the pilot was supposed to come the official second episode “Miserable”, a humorous take on Stephen King’s Misery, but for whatever reason they showed the less interesting “Marty’s First Date” instead. It affected Siskel and Ebert’s view of the show overall despite their high praise for the movie spoof segments. But how does their premiere in the world of prime-time animated television hold up?
What’s up, fellow readers? It took longer than I anticipated, but the Pinocchio review is finally out. And thankfully I’ve got at least a week before March’s review is due so that should be plenty of time to finish –
Oh. Right. Shortest month of the year. Duh.
See, normally I’d go into overtime to get it done as close to the due date as possible, but I’ve got to prepare for my cousin’s wedding next week. That normally wouldn’t be a big deal except for the fact my cousin is getting married IN ARGENTINA.
Like, WOW.
It’s not mind blowing enough that the first of my generation’s kin is partaking in holy matrimony, but it’s a major destination wedding. I’ve never left the country to visit a completely new one before. It’s an experience I’m eagerly looking forward to.
On top of that, Argentinian weddings aren’t your average sit-down dinners punctuated with dancing to Top 40 hits like here in the states, no no no no. Argentina weddings are FUCKING BACCHANALIAS. They literally, and I mean LITERALLY last the entire night, with more and more varieties of delicious barbecued sustenance and desserts added by the hour. So not only will I be very busy preparing for this trip, I will most likely be in a giant food coma for some time after, thus unfit to complete a review in time for April. All this to say I’ll be focusing on March’s review any time I can spare, and when it’s done I’m taking a break. Voting for May’s Movie Review will resume April 1st.
That’s not to say I’ll be leaving you with nothing that whole time, however. I’d like to take the opportunity to announce a new series I’ve been tossing around since I was writing the Snow White review.
While listening to the music of Snow White, I was reminded of just how many covers of its songs there are. I was introduced to a number of them through a website I used to frequent called Covering The Mouse, a veritable musical encyclopedia of Disney song covers. Here’s how it looked back in the day:
And here’s what it looks like now:
“Um…WHAT?!”
So, a site that rescued hundreds of songs from obscurity is now replaced a fifty-year old woman posting updates about her favorite Mickey plushie. The fuck happened in the eight years I was gone?! The Wayback Machine hasn’t been a big help as it only captured the home page and not much else; a real shame since the site had categories belonging to specific Disney movies, shows, attractions, and songs. They’re on social media but one, they haven’t updated in ages, two, their Tumblr links are virtually dead, and three, I am NOT wasting time scrolling through all their Facebook posts.
But as a wise crab once said, “If you want something done, you’ve got to do it yourself.” So I present to you By The Cover, a look at what I consider the best (and some of the worst) covers of tunes from musicals I’ve looked at in the past and will in the future, Disney and otherwise. Unlike my movie reviews there’s no set schedule, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say I’ll try post one every couple of weeks starting this month.
By The Cover will also be my first early access series, meaning Patreon supporters will get to read it a few days before it’s made public. If you want to sign up, it’s only $2 minimum and you’ll get plenty of other perks in the bargain.
