Sunday, November 9, 2014

You say you can charm beasts?

The Thief and the Cobbler (Workprint) - 3/5
Taken as single frames, it’s not a beautiful film. It’s got this strange style about it – somewhere between Ralph Bakshi and Walt Disney. Everyone feels like a character from a different movie – no conformity of shape or design. Not pretty as single frames but taken together, as actual animation, it’s beautifully done. Clever, wild. As a series of sequences, it’s a great little movie. Overly done in part. More concerned with how things move than making you care about the characters or the plot. In that way, it’s closer to Looney Tunes. Here’s a sequence, watch it play out. Here’s a character, watch him go. It’s interesting but it’s also unfortunate because the backstory behind the movie is more interesting than the movie manages to be.

No comments: