Matters little

Noel Vera

It's been whispered in the halls: Disney has not been looking too
healthy recently. Michael Eisner has been bumped off as the
company's Chairman of the Board and CEO, the animation department
hasn't had a certifiable hit in years (what profits there are were
made through their partnership with Pixar Studios (the "Toy Story"
movies, "The Incredibles")--who has since talked about ending the
partnership, feeling it needs Disney far less than Disney needs it),
and don't even mention the live-action filmmaking division ("Dark
Water" and "The Great Raid," anyone?).

New CEO Robert Iger has laid out plans to set straight this creaky
house of Mouse--a big promotional blitz for the amusement parks'
50th anniversary has improved park attendance, a handful of hit TV
shows ("Lost," "Desperate Housewives") has helped boost their ABC
Network's ratings. Then there's "Chicken Little."

"Chicken Little" was a hit in the U.S., more or less--Disney's still
formidable marketing arm working 24/7 practically guarantees that,
barring a truly rotten egg, a reasonably entertaining picture will
make money, and for a few weeks the movie actually touched the no. 1
slot (it has since been overtaken by the latest "Harry Potter"
flick). It's not (despite the relentless TV ads crowing its hit
status) big enough a hit to turn the film division around--estimates
are that fourth quarter profits will drop by as much as 27%--but at
least it's not yet another dead weight tied round the company's
shaky legs. Cause for cautious celebration by Mouse employees, maybe
even celebration on our part if the movie was actually any good.

No, it's not a complete stinker; the animation is competent enough
and a few of the voice performances (Garry Marshall as the eponymous
fowl's father, Joan Cuzack as Ugly Duckling, the love interest) stay
in the memory without too much unpleasantness. But the original
fable is thin at best, and Disney stretches the story to roughly 80
minutes running time by inserting subplots (you might call it "War
of the Worlds" meets "E.T." meets "Animal Farm") and useless filler
(an interminable baseball game, a series of musical and dance
numbers based on disco hits, the usual collection of contemporary
gags and pop-culture allusions). At the heart of this so-
called "story" is the struggle between Chicken and his father to
recognize the fact that Little Senior has little faith in Little
Junior--yet another variation on the age-old Disney storyline, of
parents constantly misunderstanding their children (it's gotten to
the point that you wonder if anyone in the animation division ever
had a healthy childhood).

Kids should love it--it's 3-D animation, the latest fad; it has
plenty of (largely uninspired) slapstick (mostly copied off classic
Looney Tunes cartoons) and digital special effects; for those with
more sophisticated entertainment needs (of all ages), the soundtrack-
-mainly cribbed from top 40 lists of years past--helps ease the pain
of waiting for the end credits to finally roll.

Which makes you wonder why Disney even bothers churning up these
charmless, flavorless uh floaters, if they already have a formidable
back catalogue of films to release and distribute. I don't mean the
Pixar movies, which are fun enough but still limited in terms of art
and imagination; I don't mean Disney's large collection of animated
and live-action features (which they have been relentlessly raiding
for some truly odious sequels and remakes: "Little Mermaid 2," "Lion
King 2," "Aladdin 2," "Jungle Book 2," both "101 Dalmatians"
movies, "Herbie: Fully Loaded," so on and so forth, ad nauseam); I
mean the real gold, Disney's partnership with Studio Ghibli, easily
the most famous anime outfit in Japan. Just this year Disney showed
the latest from Ghibli--anime master Hayao Miyazaki's "Howl's Moving
Castle," his adaptation of the fantasy film by Diana Wynne Jones--on
a limited run, dubbed in English and with a modest promotional
campaign (you wonder what might have been achieved if there had been
a serious marketing campaign); it's easily one of the best animated
films of the year, and compares to this movie like a soaring eagle
does to a limping…well, you get the picture.

Even better are some of Studio Ghibli's back catalogue. While I do
love "Howl," it's hardly Miyazaki's or for that matter Ghibli's best
work; 2005 saw the DVD release of two films by Miyazaki's colleague
and fellow filmmaker, Isao Takahata: "My Neighbor the Yamadas,"
and "Pom Poko." "Yamadas" is a kind of domestic epic, experimental
in form (a series of vignettes captioned by a haiku), understated in
the telling, wholly captivating with its fragile, down-to-earth
humor; when it was making the rounds of film festivals I was able to
see it, and actually preferred it to Edward Yang's better-known "A
One and a Two," also showing at the same festival.

"Pom Poko" is a different creature altogether--placing the two
pictures side-by-side, you can hardly believe they are by the same
director. The film tells of a war between tanukis (Japanese raccoon
dogs) and the humans planning to build a suburb in their forest.
Takahata is merciless in his depiction of either participant in the
war: while the humans are seen as mostly corrupt, ignorant, or
uncaring, the tanukis are shown to be largely unorganized,
uncooperative, and unable to commit themselves to any one cause for
any appreciable period of time (basic needs like storing food for
the coming winter are too pressing); they can at the same time be
generous, passionate, and heroically courageous, virtues and vices
common to many non-industrial cultures (the Maori, the Igorot, the
Australian aborigine, the Native American--the list is endless). The
final sequences have all the inevitability of a historic document,
chronicling some obscure tragedy.

In "Yamadas" Takahata shows a flair for quotidian humor to match
Japanese filmmaking master Yasujiro Ozu; his "Pom Poko" approaches
the unflinching emotional intensity of his earlier "Grave of the
Fireflies"--his masterpiece, arguably, and perhaps one of the
greatest films ever made about the horrors of war. I'd recommend
renting or buying both a hundred times over, before I'd even begin
to think of recommending this sorry, unfunny little flick.

(First published in Businessworld, 12/2/05)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)