Odds & Ends
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
At Least It Isn't Speedy vs Daffy
Thad Komorowski, over at Animation ID, has posted the five Larry Doyle-produced Looney Tunes that were made but never released a few years ago (here). Larry Doyle was an ex-Simpsons writer who was hired by Warner Bros to produce these shorts, and he picked up a whole lot of writers from The Simpsons and the then-recently-axed Family Guy to assist. Six shorts have now surfaced: The Wizard of Ow (with the Road Runner), My Generation G-G-Gap (Porky), Museum Scream (Tweety and Sylvester), Cock-a-Doodle Duel (Foghorn Leghorn), Hare and Loathing in Las Vegas (Bugs), and Attack of the Drones (with Daffy). Only The Wizard of Ow was ever widely seen: the others were quietly shelved. Larry Doyle tells his side of the story, in an interview dating from before the series was scrapped, here. Komorowski calls them the "worst Looney Tunes ever," arguing that they are worse than the Daffy vs Speedy cartoons produced in the 1960s, or the Rudy Larriva-directed Road Runner shorts from the same era. Which isn't true - those cartoons really are just about unwatchable - but certainly most of them are pretty bad, and you can see why Warner Bros wouldn't give them a proper release (they slipped out in Australia on a bonus disk with selected editions of Looney Tunes - Back In Action). The comments to Komorowski's post are full of derogatory comments about what happens when TV people try to do theatrical animation, and are generally pretty insulting to those involved. I think its better to look on these shorts as a cautionary tale: the interview linked above shows Doyle had the right sort of ideas about what he should be going for, and he assembled some talented people, but the results show just how hard it is to emulate the classic Looney Tunes. After all, they spent most of the thirties making Looney Tunes before the first good ones started to appear. Doyle's group, by contrast, was being asked to produce good cartoons straight away and use beloved characters others had created and work without anywhere near as good animators and overcome the fact that we know the originals so intimately and manage without the original voice talent and deal with much more studio interference and second-guessing than the original staff and try to live up to the legacy of the several of best animation directors ever... So let's just say they failed at a supremely difficult task.  However, there is a bit of a diamond in the rough here, and that is the Daffy Duck short, Attack of the Drones. I don't want to oversell this, either, but it's pretty good, and deserves much more credit than Komorowski gives it. Directed by Simpsons and Futurama veteran Rich Moore, the timing of the gags is much sharper than the other shorts, and the animation better across-the-board. There's even a variation on the age-old mirror-that-isn't-a-mirror routine. It isn't really a Looney Tune, so much as the strange bastard child of a drunken one night stand between Duck Dodgers and Futurama. But as a fan of both, I'm happy with that. And as a Star Wars fan, I had to laugh at Moore's take on the opening credits for the Star Wars films, which references the infamous opening lines of The Phantoim Menace: A complex trade negotiation threatens to bog down as three distinct federations of interstellar actuaries blah blah blah blah blah...If only that were really how Phantom Menace started. One footnote to this is that the list of shorts that were started but never finished includes a short called Guess Who's Coming to Meet the Parents. The concept: "Bugs brings a squirrel home to dinner. His mother disapproves." With plots like that, perhaps it is just as well the plug was pulled - the strange, limited virtues of Attack of the Drones notwithstanding. Labels: animation Comments  Cinephobia on Facebook |
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