I’ve covered one animated movie so far in my Sunday “Bad”
Movie escapades. That was back near the
beginning when I watched a little movie called A Car’s Life which was released
to capitalize on the popularity of the Pixar film Cars. Since then, the blog has been live action
films. That is, until now. I have watched a second animated film. More specifically, I have watched a second
animated film cashing in on a known film.
This movie is Tappy Toes, a by-product of Happy Feet’s success.
I could go on, once again, about movies that pull their idea
from other movies to cash in on any success, but I won’t. Instead, I want to discuss why I feel that
Tappy Toes was a successful addition to the movie landscape, rather than a
waste of space. This will happen through
a comparison to A Car’s Life, since I feel like that was an unsuccessful
attempt at entertainment.
The most important aspect of an animated movie, first and
foremost, is the animation itself. The
people behind the movies need to immerse the viewer into the world that they
are looking at, or at least make it into a believable world. Tappy Toes is able to do that. Every aspect from the characters to the
landscape to the random objects has enough detail to make for a convincingly
built world. The movements of these
different aspects of the world have a natural flow to them, albeit natural to
an animated world and not the real world.
This is more apparent when seen in comparison to A Car’s Life. A Car’s Life is very minimalistic in its animation. Though there are details within the animation
of the characters, the landscape is very sparse and mostly looks the same
wherever the characters are. This is
much less appealing to the eye and deteriorates the overall experience of
watching the movie.
Another big component of an animated film is the voice
acting. Tappy Toes has voice acting by
professional actors who know how to portray characters. With an accomplished voice actor, such as
Katie Leigh who has done voice work since the 80s, the characters feel more
realized and it helps invest the viewer in the story. Having professional voice actors rather than
amateurs makes the movie feel less amateur.
A Car’s Life feels amateur. Half
of the voice cast are the family of the director. The lack of control in the voices of some of
the voice actors takes away from the connection between the movie and the
audience, and ultimately hurts the final product.
The final piece of an animated movie that I feel is
important is the story. Like any movie,
the goal should be to give the audience a captivating tale that they can sink
their teeth into. Tappy Toes succeeds in
this area. I would get into the story,
but I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who wants to see the movie. It’s only about 45 minutes long and it’s a
pretty easy watch. The story makes it
easy. A Car’s Life, which I think is
about the same length, feels much, much longer.
This is due to the fact that it revolves around a child car that is
acting out in outrageously sanitized ways.
That story isn’t captivating at all.
These three aspects within an animated movie combine to help
make it good or bad. Were either of
these movies outright good? No, I
wouldn’t say that. However, Tappy Toes
was able to make the best of a bad situation by actually trying. I’ll give it that. I enjoyed Tappy Toes. That’s all I ask of a movie. Knock-off, sequel, remake, original...I don’t
care. Just give me something to enjoy
and I’ll be happy.
There are some notes to make:
- A Car’s Life was the second movie written about in the Sunday “Bad” Movie blog posts.
- If you have any suggestions for bad movies, feel free to leave a comment. Or you could always message me on Twitter. That works too.
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