Month: May 2020

It was raining hard in the City by the Bay, as I stared at the words “Max, Mike; Movies” scrawled in peeling paint on the office door. My partner, as usual, was passed out on the ratty old couch after one too many Strawberry Quiks. Then suddenly the door swung open and he shuffled in.  A rabbit. Never trust a rabbit; I could tell right away that this one was going to be trouble. I was right . . .

Welcome back to the final episode of our series “Drawn Apart”, where down-and-out human characters directly interact with no-good animated palookas. This week we’re tackling the movie that gave us the idea for the entire series: Roger Zemeckis’ “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” the movie best known for using an actual question mark in the title (it’s true; most movies don’t do that. It’s considered bad luck). Or did they? Ok, maybe they didn’t. Why are you hounding me about this?! Oh yeah, and using cutting-edge (for 1988) tech to put humans and cartoons into the same movie. Oh, and for being probably the last movie you’ll ever see where Disney and Warner Brothers cartoon characters share the screen . . . at least until Disney assimilates Warner Brothers into their Mouse Collective. Sure, this flick was remarkable when it came out, but how does it hold up over thirty years later? Wish upon a star, tune up your Acme Spy Listening Device ™ and find out!

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Howdy, folks! Welcome to another smurfin’ good episode of “Drawn Apart,” where we focus on movies that smurf together live action and smurfimated characters.  This week’s smurftastic entry, as you may have gathered from my immensely subtle clue-dropping, is 2011’s 3D animated smurf of a movie “The Smurfs,” which sees the near-legendary Belgian characters, stars of books, toys, tv shows, and probably personal hygiene products, dropped into live-action New York.  Pursued by the evil wizard Gargamel (who has got to have the worst success rate of any villain since Wile E. Coyote), they smurf their way through all sorts of smurfjinks and more product smurfment than you can shake a smurf at.  So adjust your lumpy white hat, try not to think about the socio-sexual ramifications of a society with one hundred males and one female, pull up a smurf and give a smurf to our thoughts! And if you don’t, well you can go smurf your smurf on a big smurfin’ smurf of smurf! Smurfsmurfsmurfsmurfsmurfsmurfsmurf ohgodIcan’tstop smurfsmurfsmurfsmurfsmurfsmurf . . .

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Here we are again with another cinematic arrow in that quiver we’re calling “Drawn Apart,” where live-action and animated characters come together . . . and only one leaves alive! Ok, um, not so much.  This week we’re checking out “Osmosis Jones,” the movie that asks the question: who’s the leucocyte cop who’s a cell-dividing machine to all the chicks? Osmosis! Damn right.  They say this guy Osmosis is one bad mother . . . . ok, I’ll shut my mouth.  This one is . . . different; for the most part the animated and live-action characters don’t interact, because the animated characters represent the internal biological workings of a live-action human type being.  Yes, we’ve got sentient cells, sentient cold medication capsules and a rather disturbing sentient virus (which is a little too on-the-nose these days, for my taste) voiced by Laurence Fishburne.  From the delicate and tasteful sensibilities of the Farrelly Brothers, the ones who brought us “Dumb and Dumber” and “There’s Something About Mary,” we’ve got a heck of a voice cast for the animated characters and one heck of a Bill Murray for the live action characters.  Oh, and some others.  Does the Farrelly sense of humor translate well to the animated world? Is this wild and wacky or gross and wacky . . . or just gross? Focus your apparently sentient auditory nerve systems and find out!

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Welcome back for still more of “Drawn Apart, where we examine movies that attempt to address whether humans and animated characters can live together in peace and harmony, or at least make decent movies together.  Before we begin, we’d like to thank for not smmmmmmokin’!
*crickets*
Yes, I know, I’m deeply ashamed.  As you may gather, this week we’re focusing our Vulcan squinties on the 1994 Jim Carrey vehicle “The Mask,” a movie adapted from the graphic novel of the same name.  Sort of.  While technically there aren’t any discreetly animated characters in this movie, no fewer than  three characters turn into a kind of living cartoon during the story.  And let’s face it, Jim Carrey is the closest thing we’re going to get to an actual human/cartoon hybrid (at least with today’s puny science.  Just wait and see.  They called me mad at the Academy, you know. Maaaaaad! We’ll see who’s mad now! Ahahahahaha . . . dammit, where are my pills . . . ).  So pull up a Tex Avery wolf and join us for the p-a-r-t-why? Because we gotta!

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