First Impressions; Garfield, Thelma and FoodFight!

2024 has been a... slow year for animated movies so far, and frankly it's also been an uneventful one. Like I can't think of any releases that I think everyone is going to talk about in years to come. Like, say what you want about Wish, we'll be talking about that movie forever. April has been completely dead for any major animated releases, but now that Summer is almost here, we're going to start seeing some more releases, so hopefully this slow start will actually build to something. It's telling when one of the more notable releases in this stretch of time is a documentary about a movie from 2012. That all being said, what were my initial impressions of the new releases?

The Garfield Movie
Released: May 24th, 2024
Portion Written: May 26th, 2024

From the trailers, I assumed the worst part about The Garfield Movie would be Chris Pratt as Garfield, he just doesn't have the same kind of inflection as Lorenzo Music did, or even Bill Murray did. Little did I know, that the movie would actually be one of the biggest disappointments of the year. Honestly, the movie isn't "bad" per se, it has some good elements, but nothing that really made me think "Yes, I will absolutely watch this movie again".

The biggest problem with Garfield is that, by the standards of Garfield, this movie is pretty weak. I think back to all those specials from the 80s, and think about things like in the Christmas special, Garfield at the Arbuckle farm and listening to Grandma talk about her late husband, or Here Comes Garfield where he remembers good memories before Odie is taken to be euthanized, or in Garfield on the Town where he says goodbye to his mother, those were emotional gut punches, and Garfield looking at the tree his father watched him in and realizing he was always there, it just didn't hit as hard.

I should also bring up the fact that there are repeated flashing light sequences in this movie, so yeah, be warned if you have photosensitive epilepsy or have any light sensitivities.

Overall, while this movie does have good moments, as a whole I just don't think it really works the best. I can slightly recommend this one because, it isn't awful, and it's still Garfield, but as a whole I just don't think it really worked.

Thelma the Unicorn
Released: May 17, 2024
Portion Written: May 27, 2024

Sometimes a movie or something comes out that I just have to ask myself... "Am I becoming a jaded grump?" It always the kind of movie that I watch the first few minutes of and can guess what the plot is going to be and what the theme and message is. I guess there isn't anything really... wrong with movies like this, or Wish Dragon, or Next Gen, it's just that I don't really want to watch them. I had the same issue with Klaus, that I found that I knew exactly where the story was going, what arcs the characters were going to have, and what the theme of the movie was going to be. I guess ultimately there is nothing wrong with this movie or it's message, I just wasn't as into this one. Do I recommend it? Eh, I guess... again I don't think it's really harmful or insulting, just milquetoast and average.

Rotten: Behind the Foodfight
Released: May 2, 2024
Portion Written: May 29, 2024

Any animation fan who has been on the internet for the past ten years should know about the movie Foodfight. It is infamous for all of the reasons, and to list them all would be to review the entire movie... It's on my list. Sometimes, you have to wonder, how does a movie end up becoming so disastrously bad?

This documentary, uploaded onto YouTube by user Ok So..., discusses the history of the infamous animated flesh wound, as well as dispelling some rumours, and frankly... it kinda just seems like this movie was actively sabotaged, I don't want to spoil things too much, but it definitely sound like the director had no clue how to... be a director, just in general, forget directing an animated film. There is a lot of information about this movie in a neat and concise little package that is available for free online. Even if you are have absolutely zero interest in Foodfight, and frankly I don't blame you, I almost recommend this documentary as, like a how not to make a movie thing, like the documentary shows how the movie was made, how people who worked on it felt while making the movie and basically do not follow the footsteps laid down while making it.

Rotten is a fascinating look at one of animations most fascinating... look I have a rule about swearing so that limits things I can compare Foodfight to, just give this documentary a look.

I guess it also says a lot that the highest ranked movie of this selection is said documentary about a movie from 2012. It's honestly kind of foreboding that the two movies I've liked the most this year were Kung Fu Panda 4 and Rotten, like I'm really hoping that there is something else coming this year that will impress me... and I highly doubt it's gonna be Moana 2.

Well... what can I do... Fare-thee-well.

Elemental Vs Zootopia - How Two Different Stories Become Similar

You know what one of my least favourite film criticisms ever has been recently? "Elemental is like if A.I. tried to write Zootopia", and it's not because I think Elemental is a masterpiece. I won't deny that there are some similarities, even I have said that Elemental had some elements of Zootopia in its story. However in comparing the two, I find that the comparison is not actually all that apt, and honestly I feel this way about other movies we compare to each other, like Coco and The Book of Life, or Antz and A Bug's Life, because really most of the similarities just seem superficial. This begs the question, why do we make this comparison? Why do we say this about Elemental, but Zootopia doesn't get unfairly compared to anything it is similar to?

Full disclosure, I did not re-watch Elemental for this blog, I watched and did a review of Zootopia, but most of what I bring up about Elemental will be from memory and what I have previously written about it. We'll see if this was a good idea at the end, eh?

I think the big reason this comparison is made is that, at their cores, both movies are ostensibly about prejudice. I say "ostensibly" because, while the movies may have themes of prejudice, I don't think I would say that Elemental is entirely about prejudice. Zootopia was a crime mystery where the main villain was directly targeting a certain group of people for a twisted sense of justice for another certain group of people. Zootopia focused entirely on different characters experiences with prejudice, from how the police academy is not made for mammals for Judy and how the police don't really treat Judy like an official cop, to how Nick took the prejudice he faced and let it shape him into the person he is. I said in my review that Zootopia was not necessarily strong in its themes of prejudice, but the truth of the matter is that Zootopia is about prejudice. Which is where I feel Elemental throws a lot of people off, because while there is the theme about prejudice in the movie, Elemental is not about that, it is a love story.

Elemental is about the daughter of immigrants befriending and falling in love with someone outside of her... let's be real here, outside of her ethnicity. Partially, it was inspired by the director, Peter Sohn's, upbringing as the child of Korean immigrants, and by his marriage to someone that was not Korean. It is also about Ember finding her own identity, struggling with what she wants and what she believes her family wants. While the movie does show that there is prejudice in this world, and what prejudice Ember and her family faced, the movie is not about prejudice at the very core. If I'm being honest, while I did say that Elemental ultimately had a weak story, I think the fact they didn't focus on the prejudice angle actually made it a bit stronger.

My big problem with Zootopia was that, because it seemed that they wanted to make Zootopia an ideal instead of a metaphor, the actual themes of prejudice were not very strong. I mentioned ways they could have made the theme stronger while still keeping within the restrictions of a PG rated film. However, because Zootopia looks too much like a utopia, the theme doesn't come across. I remember one of the complaints about the movie was that it was very blatant and obvious, and I think a lot of that is that they rely more on telling us than showing us. There are instances where we are shown the prejudice, like when Judy has to do cop training in an environment that was not built to suit her limitations, but even then we still have to be told that "Bunnies have not been cops before", and rather than show other hopeful lagomorphs and rodents alongside Judy only for Judy to be the only one to actually become a cop, she is the only one there alongside larger mammals.

Meanwhile, Elemental opens with Ember's parents being denied housing, while her mother is pregnant, and has a scene in the middle where Ember and her father are denied entry into a location because of their race. One voice in the crowd even yelled at them to "go back to Fireland", which I find amusing because when you think about discriminated ethnicities, you may not tend to think about Ireland, though the Irish were arguably one of the most discriminated against people in American history. What is the point about this anecdote? Well, the fact that, even though Ember and her family are heavily coded as south east Asian, it shows that anyone could have been this fire family, from Korean and Japanese immigrants to those told to go back to Ireland. This shows the clear difference between Zootopia and Elemental, Zootopia dealt with racism, Elemental dealt with xenophobia.

I think at the end of it all, Zootopia and Elemental are two very different stories, I mean obviously, one is a buddy-cop crime mystery, the other is a romantic-comedy drama. Yet, because both movies discuss themes of prejudice with non-human characters, people would start to expect the newer movie to be like the older movie. However, even within their discussion of prejudice, both movies are different, as Zootopia wanted to present its setting as an ideal, as if this is what is possible if we work together. You see it in the world that it integrates mammals of all sizes, to the point where a lot of the themes of prejudice are lost. Elemental meanwhile showed its setting as a metaphor, as a "this is what our real world actually is". I will not argue that Elemental is the better movie, nor will I argue it has stronger themes of prejudice, what I will argue is that the story and themes of Elemental are ultimately different to that of Zootopia. Comparing the movies to each other only does a disservice, it disregards the story that Elemental is telling, and the story that Peter Sohn wanted to tell, while also putting expectations on Zootopia that I don't think it can live up to.

I'm not going to sit here and force you to prefer Elemental over Zootopia, honestly they're both kind of on a similar level of enjoyability for me. I will however, say that if you're going into Elemental expecting Zootopia, you're going in for the wrong reason. I don't particularly think either movie is all that strong, but both are enjoyable for what they are. I do get why people make the comparison, but at the end of the day, saying that "Elemental is like A.I. rewrote Zootopia" clearly demonstrates to me that you did not actually pay attention to either Elemental or Zootopia. Even before I rewatched Zootopia, I knew that the two movies were not alike at all. So maybe, we can indeed have more than one story where the theme is prejudice, especially if those two stories are as different as they can be.

Zootopia (2016) - Simultaneously one of the Most Fascinating, and most Aggravating Movies

The themes of prejudice have been discussed in art with animal characters for ages, the oldest example I can think of is Art Spiegelman's Maus from the 1970s, which was about Art's father and his experiences in the Nazi occupation, though I'm sure it has to date back even further, and it makes sense why. It's an easy to use metaphor to discuss difficult issues. This is part one of a two part idea, because last year, Pixar released a movie that was partially about prejudice titled "Elemental", and one of the big criticisms of that movie was "It's like A.I. rewrote Zootopia", so I figured it would be a good idea to compare the two, however in order to do that, I needed to watch them both, so I took this as a chance to review Zootopia. In my next blog, I will look into the comparisons and see if it is truly fair to pit the two movies against each other, but as of right now, I just want to look at Zootopia on its own, and see how it holds up as a movie.

The plot follows Judy Hopps, a rabbit who wants to be a cop, however things aren't exactly set up for her. She's a small rabbit, and the other police animals are much larger, so she is stuck with parking duty. However, when she strong arms herself into a case of a missing Otter, she only has a day or so to solve the case or else she loses her job. She teams up with a shifty con-man fox named Nick Wilde to solve the case, with the usual expected twists and turns along the way. The plot moves along fine, like any good mystery plot should, every location we go and person we talk to is part of some form of importance. As a mystery plot, I think Zootopia works, but thematically how does Zootopia work? It has its ups and downs honestly. What I do like is that the movie is smart enough to show the prejudice that Judy is facing, and we get told the prejudice that Nick faced as a kid, and that's mostly it. For a movie that is thematically about prejudice, we don't see a whole lot of it until the end where we get one of the worst twist villains in any Disney movie ever, but more on that later.

The big problem with stories about prejudice is, there's a scale, the more effective the metaphor and symbolism is the more "adult" the story will have to be. Maus is directly about a survivor's experiences in Nazi Europe, as well as the author's feelings about his father being a survivor. It is not a comic I would recommend to the same demographic as Zootopia. I think that for a prejudice story to truly work, we will actually have to see more hints about how the society views certain groups. We see Foxes and Weasels being shifty con-men types, but we only really see three, including Nick. No background appearances from other foxes, weasels or even minks or stoats, and as someone who is a born and bred city folk, the city is full of the kinds of people that could easily be represented as foxes, weasels and minks, people who have to turn to conning and panhandling to get anything. I think the problem is that they wanted to portray Zootopia as an ideal and not a metaphor, so places where they could easily show prejudices being prominent are not really there. For an example, we see that the police academy is not set up for smaller mammals, so wouldn't it be more powerful to see a bunch of other small mammals along side Judy, only for Judy to be the only one to become a police officer? That would signal not only the kind of setting we're in, but also the kind of character Judy is much more strongly.

Speaking of, one thing I do have to commend this movie for is that Judy is a pretty great character, clever and determined, but also excitable and not ashamed to be vulnerable. Nick is also a fine character, he definitely comes off as a the guy who was shaped by the environment and society. The other major character we have to discuss is the twist villain, Bellwether... Yeah, she's one of the worst Disney villain ever. The Twist Villain has been used to label a lot of different characters over the years, some less deserving of the label than others like Lotso Huggins and John Silver from Treasure Planet, but Bellwether is one of the characters I think earns that label. The worst part is, with a couple rewrites, I genuinely think she could have worked, maybe not one of Disney's best villains, but at the very least could have been good. We see how she's treated by Mayor Lionheart, and honestly they could have done something with that, like have him make passive aggressive comments or microaggressions against her, but no, they don't really go that route, just making her the unappreciated secretary character. At least the voice cast is solid, with J. K. Simmons being one of my favourite voice actors, I'm always going to praise a voice cast with him.

Animation wise, this movie is pretty good. Visually is can get really dark in places, but otherwise the textures and lighting are really good. This is the kind of movie I can appreciate a more realistic animation style for, it's kind of like Monsters, Inc. except with a bigger leap in technology, and Monsters, Inc. was already a major leap in CG technology. There really isn't a whole lot to say about the animation, it's good. I think there has been better anthropomorphism in movies like Kung Fu Panda, and even in DuckTales, but otherwise I don't have very many complaints about the technical side of the movie... just the metaphor side.

The biggest problem with Zootopia is, at the core is a good movie with a strong message about prejudice, however what we have instead is an alright movie with an okay message about prejudice. Honestly, going back to Zootopia after I first watched it years ago, I was actually kind of surprised at how much I wasn't into it, and I think it all comes down to the themes. I really do think that there is a good message about prejudice inside of this story with these characters, a great one even, but they just didn't bring it out. They wanted to make it a balancing act, where Zootopia could be an ideal society, but prejudice could still be a thing here, kind of like how Star Trek does it, except Star Trek is clever enough to get away with it, and even they fumbled the ball a bunch of times. As a whole, do I recommend Zootopia? I guess I do have to, if you're too young to read Maus, I would recommend this, but ultimately I think that this is at least two levels above those Dhar Mann videos.

Let's Be Real About the Streaming and Digital Era

Frankly I can't begin this blog any other way than by being blunt about this, I don't think anyone is shocked about the news that Paramount+ has dropped Big Nate and the Rugrats Reboot from their service. We can be upset, honestly I think we're even allowed to be offended, but surprised? After the multiple HBO Max purges? After the Disney+ purge? After the fact that it has been established that this is how streaming services work for years now? Frankly, it is not shocking, and the worst part is that it is not shocking.

I've made it clear that I am not a particular fan of the era of streaming we are currently in. To be clear, I am very much in favour of Streaming services, I think they are a cheap, convenient and accessible way to watch thousands of movies and TV Shows... or at least they were. Over the years, every advantage streaming has had over physical home media has been completely ruined by asinine decisions, over-abundant greed, and a huge misunderstanding of what made streaming so appealing in the first place. What was a promising new way to watch your favourite movies and shows became, let's be one-hundred percent honest here, the new cable.

Remember cable? All the annoying packages and bundles that gave you channels you didn't want just for one channel that you did want? Tell me, how is that any different from subscribing to one streaming service just to watch one movie or TV show? Streaming faces the same problem any service that has nearly endless content will face, a glut of content, specifically content you don't actually want to watch. So the argument of "You get accesses to a lot of crap" really is not the ringing endorsement that companies think it is. Why should I get Paramount+ if I only really want it for Star Trek? Why should I recommend Disney+ if they're only going to watch The Simpsons? Likewise, why should anyone get a cable package if the only channel they want out of the whole thing is some cooking channel?

This has led to streaming services trying to have that one "killer app" that proves that you need this service far more than you need the other one. Disney's The Mandalorian, HBO Max's Our Flag Means Death, Paramount+'s, Star Trek: Picard, shows that were made solely to entice viewers into choosing their service over the others, and let's not forget about "Original movies", Luck, Beavis and Butt-Head Do The Universe, The Tiger's Apprentice, Turning Red, and the less said about Netflix's originals, the better. Not all of these shows and movies are bad, but it's very clear that they only exist because the companies behind the services want a carrot on a stick to dangle in front of their audience, a new Star Trek Reboot, the latest Pixar movie, and it absolutely makes sense why they would be baiting viewers with original programs, since all of their other content can just disappear.

This isn't really the fault of most streaming services, particularly ones that predominately rely on third party content like Netflix or Tubi, but services that have predominately first party content, like Disney+, HBO Max or Paramount+. When Netflix takes something off their service, it's usually because their rights expired and they need to renegotiate, but Disney or HBO Max removing their own content from their own streaming services, at best they're just doing a modern day equivalent of the Disney Vault, and at worst... well we're hoping it isn't another Coyote vs Acme case.

Yet what really irritates me, and others, is the digital storefront. Many companies are using digital storefronts as more digital rental shops. In that when you "buy" and item from the store, the company still retains every right to it, and can remove it from your library without your consent. This has happened with music and some video games as well (Screw you Konami), and it's slowly becoming apparent that "ownership" is something that we very well me never have in an all digital distribution world. So, any convenience and accessibility we got out of streaming and digital distribution has been made completely moot, but what about the price?

Clearly paying X amount of dollars a month for unlimited access to potentially unlimited content is way cheaper than paying one to three hundred dollars for a DVD or Blu-Ray player, anywhere from twenty to fifty dollars for a Blue-Ray and of coursed the fifteen dollars plus concession for the movie theatre. Except, you're only really getting the better deal if you are using one streaming service, if you are only paying about $185.88 a year for one streaming service, it's probably fine. If you're paying that, plus other subscriptions, it's much more of an issue. Streaming services seem to be under the delusion that when it comes down to utilities, rent, food and entertainment, that they'll be safe from any budget cuts the audience members have to make. Besides, you can find equipment and movies for much cheaper at thrift stores and local libraries, public amenities people, you pay for them for a reason.

At the end of it all, I can easily imagine a future where we talk about streaming the same way we talk about cable, a relic of a not-to-distant past that we dropped in favour of something better. I remember when we all thought that home media releases were gonna be obsolete because of Netflix, but as we are still seeing DVDs and Blu-Ray in stores today, it's very obvious that physical media is still holding on strong. The issues arriving with convenience and digital ownership make the purchase of a DVD seem much more appealing, you don't need wi-fi to access it, you need to pay for it more than once, and the only way it can be taken from you is if someone breaks into your house and steals it, which can be prevented. I will always be a champion of technological progress, but at the end of the day, I just can't keep heralding something that is inferior to what we had before. So, if you are able, buy as much physical media as you can, or rent it from your local library, because streaming is far messier than it needs to be.

Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003) - A Ridiculous Effort, Kind of a Guilty Pleasure

Warner Bros. is in a rough position... understatement of the year I know, but y'know.. hindsight and peaks and valleys and all that... The point is Warner Bros. is not in a good place as of now, and it is very likely that the ramifications of said not good place are very likely to reveal their ugly heads soon. Whether that is another, much larger strike, the dissolution of one of the most important studios in film history, or the complete collapse of the Hollywood system... Well I've put money on stupider bets, but it remains to be uncertain, though each outcome is equally likely. I bring this up because, people are saying that the big animation studios are gonna crumble, you know Disney, Warner Bros, and all that stuff, or at least people are thinking that is what will happen, and all I have to say is... no. If Disney was going to crumble, they would have crumbled during their disastrous era in the nineties and early two-thousands, which involved failed theme parks, box office flops, and lots of bad business decisions. Disney is not going to crumble because of a couple movies that we're mediocre are worst. However, Warner Bros is a different story, because it is looking pretty bad over there, because while Disney's current lull is not as bad as their Post-Death, Pre-Renaissance era was, this is looking worse for Warner Bros than their post Quest For Camelot era, where they straight up lost faith in all their upcoming animated releases... which included The Iron Giant and Looney Tunes: Back in Action.

All of that build-up to such a minor reveal. Almost like a real journalist. Anyway, I needed another movie to fill in this week, because I have an editorial that will follow my next movie review, so for this week I chose to review another movie from my childhood, it also let me rant about the response to this valley for Disney and Warner Bros, so, I win.

The story is... zany. Describing almost feels like a Herculean task because it's just so wild and ridiculous. After Daffy Duck gets let go from Warner Bros. he causes some ruckus that gets a security guard named D.J. Drake fired as well, which is unfortunate because D.J. is the son of the studio's most beloved star, Damian Drake, who has appeared in several spy movies. It also just so happens that Drake is in fact, a super spy and is on a mission to recover a supernatural diamond called "The Blue Monkey", but he gets captured, and must entrust the mission to his son, D.J. and Daffy tags along because he heard the word diamond and thinks he'll get rich, while Bugs and a WB Executive are after them to get Daffy back. Honestly... this plot is inane, ridiculous, asinine, and other synonyms. I kind of love it, it is a little bit too ridiculous for what I would imagine to be a Looney Tunes movie plot, I think somewhere between Space Jam and Back in Action is the level of ridiculous I'd like for a Looney Tunes movie. That being said, the plot gives us some fascinating locations, unique scenes and some pretty alright gags. It's pretty clear that at some point, they stopped taking this movie seriously as a movie and took it seriously as a vehicle for gags and jokes. It's ridiculous, but I can't help but love it.

I don't think the characters are all that great, I mean, the live-action characters are passable, but they're mostly saved by their casting. Brendan Frasier smiles like a Looney Tunes character, and Jenna Elfman is pretty good at being the frigid and more grounded in reality character. I love Steve Martin, but I think the role was written more for a Jim Carrey type performer, someone who has much more fluid movement, Steve Martin just looks very stiff with his movements, which I guess is a joke in and of itself, but I dunno, I think you could have given this role to Jim Carrey and it would have been a lot funnier. One place I can give credit to the casting for is the smaller roles, Timothy Dalton as the Super Spy? Come on, that's just an amazing casting gag, and Peter Graves cameos in a secret mission instructional video. Goldberg as a secret agent henchman is great, and the Acme VP members are all filled with "if you know, you know" kind of names like Bill McKinney, George Murdock, Ron Perlman, and Robert Picardo.

I also must give credit to the voice actors. Joe Alaskey is probably my second favourite Bugs Bunny, behind Mel Blanc (I should do a blog about that), and Jeff Bennett is a great performer for Foghorn Leghorn and Yosemite Sam. Of course, Billy West and June Foray are wonderful as always, two of my favourite voice actors right there, and Casey Kasem and Frank Welker cameoing as Shaggy and Scooby-Doo respectively is always welcome. Some archive recordings were also used, for the most part it's minor. I think the casting is very well done here, and the cameos from some lesser known Looney Tunes characters like Nasty Canasta and Marc Antony and Pussyfoot are really nice. I do wish Blacque Jacque Shellacque cameoed, but that's really about it.

I think the animation is a mixed-bag. On one hand, the actual animation is not terrible, the characters move fluid and look solid enough. The problem comes in with the live-action mixing, and not just the actual integration, though honestly it's pretty fine, like I can believe these characters are part of this world, until I see them interacting with other characters. When a live actor has to hold, attack or physically interact with a cartoon character in any way, it often looks phony, and does pull me out of this illusion. Roger Rabbit worked because they took several steps in order to make sure the cartoons were believably interacting with the live actors, and Space Jam had the live actors predominately in the cartoon world, so it had less blending to do than this movie. It also doesn't help that some of the CG has visibly aged rather poorly. I think to mask a lot of this, the editing is much faster paced than a typical Looney Tunes short, and that does this movie zero favors. Slapstick really works best when you can feel the impact of each hit, and if you cut away as soon as the impact is made, it just doesn't land as well. Looney Tunes shorts worked best because they were a lot more cleverly written than other shorts of the era, and that clever writing also lends itself best to slower paced editing.

However, I think the major saving grace of this movie is the humour, and I don't mean the big jokes or the slapstick, a lot of those are alright, but a lot of the background jokes had me howling with laughter. Everyone brings up Mathew Lillard talking to Shaggy about his portrayal in the live-action Scooby-Doo movie, but in the same scene, seeing Sam Sheepdog and Ralph Wolf do their routine in the background, or seeing Michigan J. Frog just be randomly carried away are really good gags. Bugs and Daffy exchanging last will and testaments during a car chase was a fantastic gag. I also loved a lot of the fourth-wall breaks and seeing the references in Area-52 was just fantastic for my little movie loving heart, Robot Monster, Forbidden Planet, Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Kevin McCarthy reprising his role for a brief cameo as well. To be fair, some of the bigger more prominent jokes and gags were kind of funny too. I don't think I'll ever get tired of the lit match in the room full of explosives gag, it's a well-worn bit, but I love it.

The term "Guilty Pleasure" has a very loose and undefined meaning. Is it something you like in spite of, or even sometimes because of, the flaws? Is it something you wouldn't normally admit to enjoying, but love anyway? I think Looney Tunes: Back in Action is kind of a guilty pleasure for me, in that "Shut your brain off and enjoy the ride" type of enjoyment. It's a dumb, ridiculous and inane mess, I'd almost call it a farce, but I'm not always best with genre. I think if you're my age and you grew up with this movie, you'll have some fondness for it, not like a Treasure Planet level masterpiece that was unappreciated in its time, but as a movie that's good for some dumb laughs. This might be my favourite of the Looney Tunes movies, which... kind of says more about the rest of the movies than it does this one. Do I recommend it? Yeah, I guess. It's hard to really recommend this as a hidden gem or an unfairly slept on movie, but at the same time, I do think it's an entertaining flick, and if you can tolerate an inane plot, there may be some enjoyment in this film.