| Daffy Duck's Fantastic Island |
[Sep. 5th, 2009|02:04 pm] |
Movie Review:
Daffy Duck's Fantastic Island
This movie SUUUUUUCKS!
Okay, let's rewind to Neil's childhood again, and how I was apparently far more alert than the nincompoops I hung around with. (Hey, I don't keep in touch with any of them, so I can say that.) Remember how it was plainly obvious that cartoons would often reuse the same cels over and over. It was really apparent in Scooby Doo but none was more obvious than the Filmation cartoons. You remember that, right? Do you ALSO remember that you always had a friend that you would point this out to, and he'd never fucking see it? Didn't that bug the shit out of you? Yeah, so we're on the same page.
Now, when I saw THIS movie, again, I was the only person in my peer group who figured out that they were recycling theatrical shorts into a "feature length picture". Even with my young mind, I found it pretty insulting that they'd run this crap on a pay service like Spectrum or ONTV (did I just date myself?) and I could watch the same cartoons by simply turning the channel to WGN.
I don't even understand what's going on in this movie. It starts out simple enough. Daffy's stuck on an otherwise uninhabited desert island with everyone's least favorite Looney Tune, Speedy Gonzales. By the way, just keep that in mind. There is NOBODY ELSE on this island, and it's a desert. That will come into play later.
All of a sudden, these two nitwits notice two ships at war out in the ocean. Cut to the ships, and it's Bugs going one-on-one with Yosemite Sam, except that we're now watching cartoon that's probably thirty years older than the feature it's been pasted into.
This is where the movie begins to show it's schizophrenic nature, because it clearly deviates away from the beginning of the movie so that we can see approximately seven minutes of Bugs Bunny gags. Actually, this probably works to the movie's favor, since this is one of the funniest parts of the whole show. As soon as the pirate battle is over, the "film" goes down hill and never really recovers.
So, Bugs blows up Sam's ship, and the debris falls onto the island, including a map that points to treasure on our completely uninhabited island. Again, just keep that in mind, because it comes into play later.
See? Even the map says that there's nothing but rocks on this uninhabited desert island.
After a couple of really boring gags, the boys discover a well. Daffy's really lost it, because he's actually angry to have found a well with fresh water in it. There's no way someone trapped on an otherwise uninhabited desert island would have any use for a well with fresh water in it. ...oh wait.
But then the well speaks. It's a wishing well! And because Daffy has the map, he is now the sole owner of said well. Seeing the potential in this, Daffy's first wish is to become a super-duck so that he could fly off the island. ...Because ducks don't fly. (...oh wait.)
So, the well grants his wish...Oh snap, no it doesn't! Instead, it starts showing an old Robert McKimson cartoon.
No, I'm not kidding! The well's idea of granting a wish is to show a cartoon at the bottom of the well. How I wish I was making this up. It actually shoots back to Daffy peering into the well from time to time, so we know right off that he's just watching this.
This also brings us to the movie's second. It has way too many Robert McKimson shorts in it and not nearly enough Friz Freling or Chuck Jones cartoons. (Odd, considering that Freling directed this piece of trash.)
Hey! This well gets Boomerang! Awesome.
So Daffy gets the idea to turn the island into a resort and market the well by having people pay $500 to make a single wish. If these were actual wishes, I wouldn't think that was such a bad deal, but if I spent $500 and all I saw was a crappy Bob McKimson cartoon, I'd be pretty fucking pissed!
So, a bunch of Looney Tunes characters show up by plane, and yes, Speedy does the "Da plane" thing, so consider your curiosity quenched. One by one, the characters make a wish and watch the terrible corresponding cartoons in the bottom of the well. Occasionally we get something other than Robert McKimson, so it's not a total waste. Amazingly, they're all fairly satisfied with the results, even though they're watching something that isn't really happening.
Did I mention that I have no idea what is actually going on in this movie?
Meanwhile, Yosemite Sam and the Tasmanian Devil are looking for the treasure map. Oh, did I mention Tas is in this, too? See, since he wasn't actually in the Captain Hareblower short, his introduction is made in kind of a sloppy way. Anyhoo, they're wandering around this deserted desert island, except that they're finding all of these well-to-do habitats. You know, it's bad enough when the cartoons have bad continuity because it's a compilation, but it's even worse when the bridging sequences don't even have continuity.
Did Friz forget that this is a desert island?
Did I mention that this movie sucks?
Back at the well, all of the less-funny Looney Tunes characters are making wishes that result in crappy cartoons of themselves. And that's another problem. It would be one thing if these were funny shorts with Bugs and Daffy, but those two actually show up the least. Daffy's running the resort and Bugs hasn't been seen since the opening of the movie, so we're getting nothing but "putty tat" cartoons and Foghorn Leghorn. (Fortunately, there are no Speedy Gonzales cartoons in the bunch.) Seriously, there are three separate cartoons with Sylvester in this "movie" and not one bit of continuity between them. Heck, even Spike the bulldog shows up a couple of times.
That leads to the only other really good cartoon in this film, which is Tree For Two. Spike and his little kiss-ass buddy Chester decide to go beat up a cat, who turns out to be Sylvester. Unfortunately for them, there's a black panther on the loose, and every time Spike thinks he has Sylvester cornered, the panther shows up and kicks his ass. And then Chester beats up Sylvester. Comedic gold.
Sooner or later, Sam wanders into Daffy's little scheme and decides to make a wish to have an heir die and leave him lots of money. So he peers into the well and watches a cartoon about it. Outraged that he just sat there watching an old theatrical short and isn't a penny richer, he turns his sword to Daffy and takes the treasure map. Unfortunately, whoever has the map is the owner of the well. The map gets destroyed and all of the amenities that came with the wishes go with it. The island turns back into a desert, even though it has habitable places elsewhere, but who even cares at this point?
Three wishes are left. The first two are really stupid, and the third one is used by Sam to wish for a new pirate ship. The end.
This isn't even a good compilation movie. It's just a string of shit with a couple of moderately decent Friz Freling cartoons here and there. There's a Chuck Jones cartoon, but it's not one of his better ones. And of course, this is pre Cartoon Network, so nobody had figured out yet that Robert McKimson cartoons suck.
There are actually quite a few of these Looney Tune compilation movies, and they're all pretty bad. The only one that kind of works is the first one, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie, because it's all Chuck Jones, and all of the cartoons in it are great. It's a shame, though, because this is what they wasted Mel Blanc's talent on for the last ten years of his life.
Also, they never recorded the voices right. It took me quite a few years to figure out what's wrong with the voices. Back in the 40s and 50s, they would speed up Mel Blanc's voice whenever he did Bugs, Daffy, Tweety, Porky, and various other characters. In these compilation movies, they don't do that, so the voices are inconsistent whenever they go from a short to a bridging sequence. Also, Mel Blanc had gotten pretty old, so he couldn't really do his screaming Yosemite Sam voice anymore.
The animation was really obvious, too. I don't know who they were farming the animation out to at this point, but whoever did not understand how to animate a Warner Bros. cartoon. Going from a classic cartoon to a piece of new animation was quite a jump. They could have just jumped to an episode of Thundercats and the effect would be no less jarring.
And this is largely why I could never understand how I knew so many people who couldn't see what was plainly obvious. These are not movies at all. They're just classic cartoons duct-taped together in a way that almost has a narrative but not quite.
Disney did a few of these, too, although those have been generally swept under the carpet, and I don't think anyone is allowed to see them anymore. Warner should have followed suit, but instead, they're apparently allowing Comcast to showcase them on their OnDemand service. (I always have a problem with saying on OnDemand. It sounds so stupid.)
If any more of these crop up, I'll probably say something about it. Of all of the movies in the compilation series, though, this is probably the worst one. Quackbusters and 1001 Rabbit Tales are actually at least somewhat watchable. (Largely due to the fact that they don't use nearly as many Robert McKimson cartoons!) |
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