Are Contemporary Hollywood Animated Flicks Too Chatty?
Author: AF Duncan
March 18th, 2006
Thoughtful piece on modern American animation:
Call them cellphone films: in “Chicken Little,” “Madagascar,” “Hoodwinked” and other recent American animated features, the characters chatter incessantly, as if they’re trying to use up their last 500 minutes from Verizon. The audience isn’t subjected to this barrage of words and jokes because the characters have something to say, but because filmmakers and studio executives are afraid to let them be quiet.
In “Robots,” eager young Rodney Copperbottom, on arriving in Robot City, meets Fender, voiced by Robin Williams. All the wonder the audience should feel as Rodney beholds the Erector-set metropolis of his dreams is crushed under Fender’s nonstop shtick. The characters in “Hoodwinked” natter constantly, even as their unfortunate mouth movements reveal inadequacies in the design of their faces. And if the trailer is any indication, “The Wild,” coming from Disney on April 14, with voices by Kiefer Sutherland and Janeane Garofalo, among others, looks like yet another gabfest.
Unfortunately, the article doesn’t provide any reasons for why people flock to garbage like “Madagascar,” but hey, it’s a start.
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2 Responses to “Are Contemporary Hollywood Animated Flicks Too Chatty?”
March 19th, 2006 at 11:10 am
In the 1980’s, when he took over Disney, Micheal Eisner insisted that all animated films have full screenplays written ( he found the traditional storyboarding techniques hard to understand). That, and the increasing reliance on “celebrity” voices, is probably what’s led to this.(Gendy Tartokovsky- of SAMURAI JACK and CLONE WARS fame- uses the older, “storyboard as screenplay” method, and the difference is palpable)
March 20th, 2006 at 6:18 am
And maybe the worst part is not only are animated films like Madagascar, Chicken Little, Ice Age, etc., too talky, the characters never have anything interesting to say. It’s just a series of tired pop culture references and senseless nattering centered around cultural stereotypes and one-dimensional characters.