Micheal Enright and why I don’t like animated films.
“Newspapers and celebrity talk shows are alerting fans to the summer movies now in release. What fun. My suggestion: Run, pick up the kids and leave town, join a band of roaming mendicant friars, do anything to escape the coming tsunami of Hollywood kitsch. Going to the movies at any time is now like an endless trip to the dentist. The noise, the commercials, the video games, the junk food have turned what used to be a pleasant evening out into a nightmarish night out.
The movies themselves have become, sadly, pieces of merchandise, things to be sold like chesterfield cushions and canned hams.They are made by children for children and incorporate all the characteristics of children’s stories without the sweetness. For the first time in my life, what is on television however bad might be, is better than what is coming out of Hollywood. What is being offered conforms to a simpleminded menu of remakes, sequels, prequels and movies based on children’s toys and c comic books. Big this year, Transformers and the Revenge of the Something or Other. To be followed by a movie based on the GI Joe doll.
This week it was announced that Universal had bought the rights to the game Where’s Waldo and plan to make a movie based on it. It fact we may be coming into a time when movies as we have known them for a century will disappear altogether.To be replaced by cartoons. Or in dressed up language, computer generated animation. This is the hottest area of production in Hollywood these days for a number of reason but all having to do with money and marketing. The cost of making them is coming down as technology improves.
Box offices revenues for these things are up and in fact soaring. They are beloved of a generation raised on video games and video animation that demands the same of their movies. Studio executives love them; they’re cheaper and easier to control than messy complicated human beings. And they are popular. In 2005, there were eight computer generated films. This year there are 14. In 2008, four of the top 10 movies were computer-animated. And that’s what it is all about—-box-office.
Popular yes, but movies they are not. In the first place movies need actors. Voice performers are not actors, they are narrators. Acting means more than voice. Secondly, the technology and the graphics overwhelm whatever story the cartoon is trying to convey. Finally, the characters are incapable of encapsulating and conveying human emotion, which is what real movies are all about, because they are not humans; they are cartoons. Sure I cried when Bambi’s mom died but I was six at the time. Last year, everybody, including critics whose work I admire were rhapsodizing about a cartoon called Wall E. I went to see it. After 15 minutes I started looking for the exit. But I stayed with it hoping to discover the hidden magic. I fell asleep. I saw Kung Fu Panda. Same reaction. Even my young son got bored after awhile. Same thing with Ratatouille. Please God make it stop.
I think we gush over this things because they take us back to Planet Nostalgia and the warm and cozy feeling of Saturday morning cartoons. Everything is familiar; Wall E is Wile E Coyote. Maybe someday somebody will start making movies for grown-ups again. In the meantime, settle in for a summer of discontent with more cartoon movies than a kid’s festival. Come September we can all sit back and enjoy Sony’s epic Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.”
