Eccentric Flower:199901/disneyfication
From Eccentric Flower
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three january disneyfication Here's an email I wrote to the woman who reviewed the Disney release of Kiki's Delivery Service over on Otaku World. This won't make a lot of sense until you read the previous postcard. Read your review of Kiki's Delivery Service with some interest. I'm planning on writing an entry in my web journal about my interesting experiences with this film over the last two days or so. Since I am by no means an anime fan, you might be interested in some comments from an "outsider," as it were. I expected you folks to be fairly cynical about the Disney treatment of the film - after all, you're the hard-core - but I thought your review was very even-handed. Two days ago I might have disagreed. Here's what happened. First, you should know that the audience for this film is about to increase dramatically, because Entertainment Weekly video critic Ty Burr - a gent whose opinions I pay close heed to - named it his number-one video of the year last week. So we read that, rented the film (in the dubbed version) and loved it! Absolutely loved it. Especially Jiji [the cat]. We thought Phil Hartman's voice work was perfect. Yesterday I went to the video store to actually buy the film - yup, I was that impressed. I noted that there was a "widescreen" version (i.e. letterboxed - I hate the term "widescreen" for that; to me widescreen means Cinemascope. Why don't they say "non-butchered version" instead?) But the widescreen version had subtitles, not dubbing (since it was for the "videophiles," natch) and for once - possibly the only time ever - I wanted the dubbing. What was I to do? I bought both. The dubbed, scan-n-pan version, and the subtitled, letterboxed version. And that night (at a friend's house) I watched the dubbed version again. This time I noticed some slight dubbing and translation flaws (even though I know about ten words of Japanese), but on the whole, it was better done than your average dubbing job. Disney is always competent if nothing else. Then, just for kicks, my friend wanted to see a little of the subtitled version. Just to see what it looked like. And was I stunned! Even though we only watched about ten minutes of the subtitled version: - Kiki talks much faster in the original, and the voice sounds like a little girl instead of a teenager. You know all this already, I realize. The point is ... as good as I thought the English voicecasting was, I think I still prefer the subtitled version. And since you probably agree, you may want to tell your readers it's available. I found it at my local Suncoast. The reviewer I was writing to made two important points which, more than anything else, show that Disney Just Doesn't Understand. Y'know, Disney used to be saints to me. But they've fallen way, way off their pedestal, even if I still love most of their films. The first was that in the Disneyfied version of this movie, there are no silent moments. I mentioned the extra new dialogue inserted all over the place; the music is the same way. The film is never allowed to be quiet, even when noise would be wildly inappropriate. (In The Prince of Egypt, on the other hand, which I'll talk about tomorrow, silence is used very effectively at several points.) The other point is that at the film festival she attended, where the Disneyized version was first shown, the Disney PR person was clearly expecting an audience full of kids, and was startled to see how many adults had come to see this film. The prepared speech (it began, "Hello, Children") was something of an embarrassment. Disney Just Doesn't Get It. After god knows how many years, and despite any amount of evidence to the contrary, Disney still thinks that only kids watch cartoons, and that they have to gear their cartoons to a six-year-old mind in order to sell them. And it just ain't right. Antz is not a child's film; there are sequences in there which'd have a kid screaming. Even A Bug's Life, while it works as a child film, is full of humor intended for the grownups. Is Disney blind to even their own subsidiaries? I'd like to see some animation intended for grownups, something that isn't Ralph Bakshi's messes - he can't even do smut right - and that's not hentai. Ideally I'd like an animated film with an adult plot. (Sex is optional.) TV is aware of the market, what with The Simpsons hurtling toward the ten-year mark. EW just did a report on the number of animated series that the networks are experimenting with. When are the movies going to catch on? © columbine |
