The Tune

Year: 1992
Country: United States
Director: Bill Plympton
Watched through: Netflix

The scenario: Songwriter Del is given 47 minutes to write a hit tune, or else. However, on his way to present his material, Del gets caught up in the surreal town of Flooby Nooby, where he learns some lessons about life and music. He then presents his songs to his boss and wins the girl of his dreams.

First impressions: This was both Bill Plympton’s first feature-length film and my first exposure to his work, but after seeing it, I’m not exactly eager to rush out and see his other stuff. First and foremost, the story is barely there, so what fills in the running time is lengthy and unfunny visual gags. In fact, these gags have so little to do with each other that the film seems like a slapdash collection of shorts, rather than a film with a single narrative.

Plot and story: I wish I could say that my “scenario” up there is just a bare-bones synopsis, but that is literally everything that happens. And yet, the film is more than an hour long. The barely-there story is padded with musical numbers and overlong visual gags; the former sometimes advance the plot, but the latter never do, and thus come off as a desperate attempt to extend the film’s running time. In the end, when the story is boiled down to its essential elements, it is surprisingly paint-by-numbers and isn’t the least bit interesting. 5/20

Characters: Again, due to the distractions of the pointless visual gags and elaborate transformation sequences that dominate the film’s running time, we spend very little time actually getting to know the characters, and they are barely more than one-dimensional. The only characters that get significant screen time are Del, his love interest, and his boss; they all go through some slight changes over the course of the plot, but are never made particularly relatable or even likeable. 8/20

Voices: No famous voices here, and I can’t say that the voices used manage to elevate the one-note characters. None of them are bad, however, so I’ll give them a middle of the road score. 10/20

Music: Without an interesting plot or developed characters, the musical numbers become the centerpiece of the film, and they are nothing if not surreal. The lyrics and subject matter are bizarre (one song is about a man without a nose), and each song is done in a different musical style, including blues, folk, country, and even surf rock. These songs work well on their own level, but they aren’t really strong enough to save the film and they aren’t catchy enough to make me want to listen to them again. 13/20

Visuals: Being an independent animator, Plympton can’t very well replicate the style of big-budget Hollywood animations; fortunately, he doesn’t try to. His films seem to be a study in economy, with only six to eight frames comprising every second of film (most animation uses at least twelve frames per second). He also makes careful use of still frames and repeated movements, presumably to save time. The simple, “sketchy” style of this film is reminiscent of a crayon drawing, as is the pastel color scheme, and the economized visuals serve as a reminder that cheaper animation doesn’t necessarily look worse than its big-budget counterparts. However, the creative animation in this film (particularly in the surreal transformations mentioned above) is posited as being dominant to the story, when the visuals aren’t actually strong enough to carry the entire film. Thus, while I can imagine that this film was a labor of love for everyone involved, it’s flawed enough that I can only recommend it with reservations. 13/20

Overall grade: 49/100 (C)

The Sword in the Stone

Year: 1963
Country: United States
Director: Wolfgang Reitherman
Watched through: library DVD

The scenario: A powerful but rather bumbling Merlin tries to educate a young page named “Wart,” who eventually becomes King Arthur.

First impressions: This is one of several Disney features to be directed by Wolfgang “Woolie” Reitherman, and it has two things in common with his other work: the plot is noticeably episodic, and detailed stories take a backseat to character-based humor. The latter is not necessarily a weakness, but the former certainly is. Reitherman has been called un-ambitious in his storytelling by animation historians, and while his films are not without charm, they are definitely not as strong as some of the studio’s other productions.

Plot and story: The problems with this movie start off right away, as we are dropped into a scene with Merlin the wizard; he has predicted that some boy will come dropping through his roof, and he is prematurely obsessed with educating this unknown boy. Little Arthur arrives just as predicted, and he goes along with Merlin’s propagations in a kind of passive bewilderment that doesn’t make for a very gripping introduction. The rest of the movie consists of Merlin’s hare-brained attempts to better the young page so he can “amount to something.” The main sequences that make up the plot can be called choppy at best and nonsensically disjointed at worst, as none of the three major “learning” scenes have any sort of effect on the central story (the last is particularly pointless). The final sequence, in which Arthur pulls the sword from the anvil and is declared king, has no thematic or story-based connections to anything that has happened previously in the film, and the film ends very suddenly with everything fine and dandy but no lessons learned by anyone. Was this film being written as it was being made, or did the writers just not care? 10/20

Characters: This is the film’s main strength. The plot may be poorly thought out, but most of the characters have great appeal. The best parts of the film are the biting dialogue plays between Merlin and Archimedes, the highly educated talking owl. Merlin is intelligent, but is also rather inept and gets flustered frequently. Archimedes, on the other hand, is critical and curmudgeonly, but shows a friendlier side as the film progresses. Even without a strong story, it is very funny to see Merlin get his beard caught in doors and have trouble remembering his own spells. By comparison, the rest of the cast is kind of dull. Arthur is very passive and rather bland for a hero. Kay and his father Sir Ector have one-note personalities, as do the rest of the minor characters. The villain, Mad Madame Mim, is granted some personality, being delightfully macabre and humorous neurotic, but she is not very threatening. While these characters are fun to watch, it is both disappointing and rather baffling to see that not a single character is given a whit of development; everyone is just the same at the end as they were at the beginning. 14/20

Voices: One thing that bothered me while watching this film is that Arthur’s voice sounds different almost every time he appears; sometimes it was even different within the same scene. At first I was willing to chalk this up to his actor going through a vocal change, but the cast list on iMDB reveals that he was actually voiced by three different people. Um, why? Also, why did the sound editors feel the need to use the exact same, “whoa, what, whoa” exclamation seven times during the film? It doesn’t sound good even the first time. Anyway, the rest of the cast is good, but Merlin’s voice is the best by far. A fair job on voices overall. 15/20

Music: This film is a musical, but it doesn’t have any of the same spectacle as the Disney films before or after it. The songs are sung by a narrator, by Merlin, and by Madame Mim. The songs sung by Merlin are somewhat pedantic affairs with lyrics that relate to the lesson he is trying to teach, Madame Mim sings a jolly song about how evil she is, and the narrator sings the backstory in the film’s opening. These songs get passing marks for being pleasant and sometimes funny, but they are neither catchy nor memorable. The instrumental score is even more forgettable. 13/20

Visuals: Since this film was made in the wake of an expensive failure for the studio (Sleeping Beauty), it had to be relatively cheap to produce. And the difference really shows. The characters are more static, the animation is less smooth, and the colors and backgrounds seem somewhat slapdash. The palette has a distinctly 60s vibe—lots of blue and orange—that makes the film look dated, and the physical animation is not up to snuff with the studio’s better films. It’s not horrible, but the visuals (along with all the other aspects of the film) compare very unfavorably when stacked up against Disney’s better-known productions. Though is has many loyal fans and is bound to remain a nostalgic classic, this film shouldn’t be confused with the Disney Masterpieces. 14/20

Overall grade: 66/100 (B-)