reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (07/21/85)
Disney's animated films will always, in my view, suffer from
the fact that I compare them with "Pinocchio". No one has ever
made an animated film up to the technical standards of "Pinoc-
chio". Some of the contemporary Disney films came close, and
"The Secret of NIMH" is the nearest modern equivalent, but their
animation just isn't up to "Pinocchio".
Which brings us to "The Black Cauldron". Fool that I was, I
thought that, since Disney's animators had spoken of this film as
a return to the old standards, and since they took about a decade
to make it, "The Black Cauldron" might be in the same technical
ballpark as "Pinocchio". The first shot, an incredibly bad mul-
tiplane camera effect, dispelled that delusion at once. While
most of the other effects animation was of much higher quality,
and "The Black Cauldron" had some very fine moments, it does not
recall the Disney of the forties so much as the Disney of the
early sixties. "The Black Cauldron" looks much more like "The
Sword in the Stone" than "Pinocchio".
Technical matters aside, "The Black Cauldron" is not at all
bad, but neither is it the miraculous rebirth of quality animated
films that the Disney advertising people would have us believe.
The story, drastically compacted into less than 90 minutes from a
four volume children's fantasy by Lloyd Alexander (which was
based on certain themes from Celtic mythology), concerns a young
lad, Taran, and his comrades, who must find and destroy the titu-
lar cauldron before it is discovered by the villainous Horned
King. The cauldron allows its possessor to revivify the dead,
turning them into an army of zombies.
"The Black Cauldron" benefits from some strong points and
suffers from too many weak ones. One of the worst things about
it is that the heroic characters are not very well animated and
are fundamentally dull. Comparison of their facial expressions to
those in Will Vinton's Claymation films shows how poorly they du-
plicate real humans. Another technical point: one can invariably
tell which objects are to be used in a shot and which are merely
background.
A further deficit is a over-commitment to the cute and the
marketable. One of the good guys is Gurgi, a shaggy something.
Gurgi is calculatingly cute, yet I couldn't help liking him, and
the film would have been all right on this count if it had
stopped while it was ahead. However, a bunch of cutesy fairies
appearing later were too saccharine for my tastes. I strongly
suspect that, six months from now, I will have had far more than
I can take of Gurgi dolls and Gurgi lunchboxes and Gurgi pillows
and Gurgi cereal and Gurgi notebooks and Gurgi teeshirts and Gur-
gi toilet paper and an ocean of other Gurgi paraphernalia, much
in the manner of the oversold E.T. Now, unaffected by these
waves of greed, I can appreciate the little sucker.
The compression of the story cut out some characters and re-
duced the roles of others. A bard who accompanies the heros
serves no purpose but comic relief of a very tired sort. Also,
removal of an important character forced the writers (eight or
nine of them - compression isn't easy) into compromising a rather
fundamental point of the saga, greatly softening the resulting
film. The compression wasn't all bad, as the story does move
briskly. Unfortunately, without some of the background material,
certain actions of the heros seem exceptionally foolish. The
core of the story, a good one, remains.
The best thing about the film is the villains. They are su-
perb, especially the Horned King. His nasty retainers and char-
nel house surroundings offer him excellent support, and set the
nightmare schedule of the younger viewers for the next couple of
months. The animators rarely go wrong when they are dealing with
the bad guys.
"The Black Cauldron" is photographed in 70mm, which implies
widescreen. This resulted in a lot of extra work for the anima-
tors, and a couple years of delay. Not surprisingly, the results
are similar to those of most live action films shot in widescreen.
Action and spectacle shots look better, intimate shots involving a
couple of characters talking together suffer from irrelevant borders.
Fortunately, more of the film benefits from the wide format than suffers
form it.
The voices are generally good. Except for a brief prologue
spoken by John Huston, they are not overly familiar, a great
failing of recent Disney animated films. (Eva Gabor as the voice
of Miss Bianca! Really, now!) There are a few well known names
behind the voices. John Hurt isn't a bit recognizable as the
Horned King, but speaks superbly. Freddie Jones does what can be
done with the mediocre lines of the bard. John Byner adds im-
measurably to the character of Gurgi with his vocal interpreta-
tion, almost a textbook example of matching character to voice.
(The order it was actually done, by the way. Record first, draw
later, thus ensuring synchronisation of voice to lips.)
"The Black Cauldron" is a must for animation fans and
parents of not-too-small children, with said little folks in tow.
It figures to be the divorced father movie of the summer. Gen-
eral audiences will probably appreciate it, but are unlikely to
respond with vigorous enthusiasm. Considering its tremendous
cost, the Disney people will probably be releasing it for years
to come before they show a profit on their investment. Do your
bit for the future of animation and see "The Black Cauldron".
--
Peter Reiher
reiher@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU
{...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiherccrse@ucdavis.UUCP (Steve Ehrhardt) (07/24/85)
Having seen TBC at an early preview showing in June, I found my opinions of, and complaints about, the film pretty much summed up by Peter Reiher's recent review in this newsgroup. I would also like to join him in urging others to see this film for themselves. TBC suffers mostly by comparison to what it should/could have been. Taken by itself, it is a good, entertaining film. It simply isn't the masterpiece that Disney had led us to believe it would be. For myself, I found that "TBC's" principal drawback was its over-condensed storyline. The animation, while uneven, was gen- erally at least good, and in places (particularly that of the 'bad guys' and their environs) excellent. Often, however, I kept feeling that things were not being adequately explained, even by implication. *** Some slight spoilers follow *** The most glaring example of this is the group of fairies that the hero and his party encounter at one point. They appear to have been dropped into the story gratuitously, perhaps to increase the 'cuteness factor', with no explanation of who or what they are, or why they are hiding from the outside world. Other points, such as why the Horned King is considered such a menace, the origins of a cer- tain magic sword, etc. remain largely unexplained. A small amount more background information would go a long way towards making the film more enjoyable. "TBC" does move well, perhaps in part because of the con- densation just described. I found that I didn't get tempted to look at my watch once during the showing, which to me is always a good sign. Nevertheless, I still feel that this is one film that would benefit from being lengthened to a full two hours. Despite the film's weak points, I found that I enjoyed it a great deal, and intend to see it again when it opens locally. I par- ticularly enjoyed the "cleavage joke" referred to in a previous review, that being one of the funniest animated sequences I've seen in a long time. While it is perhaps not the best effort produced by Disney, I would definately rate it as being worth seeing.