You know, I haven't done a "Technically" in a while. The last time I did that was looking at the 1960s Christmas classic, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. A "Technically" is a review where the movie is less than an hour long, but is more than 40 minutes. 40 Minutes is the minimum time required by both the American and British Film Institute for a film to be considered "Feature Length", so it's the minimum requirement I use for these blogs. I tend not to review these movies often because, well they're usually more television specials, but sometimes, they're just to much of a curiosity to pass up. Case in point, this adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame from 1986. Literally I just found the DVD in a sales bin and thought, "This looks like it would be an interesting watch.", and then I bought it. The question is, if you find the DVD somewhere, is it worth it?
I'm actually very unfamiliar with the source material since, unlike the last review, this is my first exposure to the hunchback story, I never read the book, and I never saw the Disney adaptation from 1996. So I am not going to comment on this as an adaptation, though I personally doubt that being a good adaptation would really change matters.
I really couldn't tell you the plot of this movie, but I'll try. Frollo is an archdeacon at Notre Dame who becomes infatuated with the... hmm... well in less PC times we would have said Gypsy, Esmerelda. He sends the hunchback bell ringer, Quasimodo, to kidnap her I think, which gets him arrested by the guard Phoebus, and most of the movie is focused on Esmerelda and Phoebus's relationship. Esmerelda gets put on trial for the murder of Phoebus and Quasimodo has to save her, honestly I do not really care. This movie is super boring. Overall I guess the plot doesn't flow too badly, but that doesn't really mean anything when the viewer is nodding off every couple of minutes.
The characters are not very deep. I mean it would be very tough for this movie to copy the deep and complex character of Disney's Frollo, especially in the 1980s, but at least do something a bit more than make him a lying jerk. His ultimate plan is to have Esmerelda in the cathedral to purify her, which I guess could be metaphor, but this Frollo is so flat that I do believe he just wants to convert her to Catholicism. They try to flesh him out by giving him the interest in alchemy, but it doesn't really amount to much. Quasimodo is your basic henchman good guy, Esmerelda is your basic pretty girl damsel, Phoebus is your basic good looking good guy. Yeah, this was probably made for TV in the late 80s, but it isn't like cartoon characters of the 80s were devoid of personality and quirks. I found myself not really caring about these characters.
Although, the voice work might have also played a part in that. The voice actors for Quasimodo and Frollo put on these really annoying voices, and the voice actress for Esmerelda was kind of dry and emotionless, just kind of "Reading the lines" sort of feel to the performance. Every other voice is mostly just a generic sounding voice, so it really doesn't sound like the actors are giving this their A game.
The art style in this movie is, legit, not that bad. It looks detailed and gothic, but not in that German Expressionist sort of way, like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and a lot of that is helped thanks to the duller and more muted colour palette, which really does add to the visuals. That being said, the visual quality of the movie is pretty bad, and I have no clue as to why, no seriously I am baffled because I have never encountered this problem before. See, I watched the DVD release from Genius Entertainment and the quality looked on par with a typical VHS tape. I'm not kidding, it even has that white noise sound that most VHS tapes have. I have no idea why this is the case, my best guess is that the master reel was lost and they resorted to a back-up or recording of the program, and that is my most generous guess, I haven't ruled out the possibility that the original master was junked (For those of you who don't know, "junking" is why a lot of classic Dr. Who episodes are completely lost) or even that the original master was this low quality in the first place. The one thing the movie had going for it, and it's still ruined by something.
Yeah, I kind of just phoned this review in. Really, this movie is just really boring, with poor voice work, bland characters, a rather generic musical score, and it's also just really unfunny, and it tried to be funny. While the art style is really good, it really is not enough to save this movie. If you do end up finding it in a discount bin somewhere, I say leave it be, I can not recommend this film at all, and I'd say it's so boring, that you might as well just avoid it all together.
Well, it's my fiftieth proper review next month, I should do something special for the occasion.
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