Rotoscoping is a tool. It can be used well, or it can be used badly.
Fleischer and Disney used it well. Bakshi used it less well. The fault lies with Bakshi, not with rotoscoping.
You have to remember just how bad the state of the art was in the United States in the 1970s. Bakshi was not competing against Fleischer and Disney. He was competing against Hanna-Barbera and Filmation.
Bakshi was a product of his time. Like everybody, he fancied himself a rebel against whatever authority figures ticked him off when he was a teenager. Like many filmmakers of his time, much of his stuff has not aged well. No doubt our grandchildren will roll their eyes at our favorites.
Re-reading this thread makes me want to chime in on the hate for Peter Jackson’s King Kong. I had very high expectations, but it was a bloated piece of crap. Mr. brown left partway through to wait for me in the lobby. I stuck it out for a few more minutes, but when Jack Black and Adrian Brody were jogging amidst a herd of dinosaurs, I couldn’t take it anymore and left too. Bleh.
Any of the Matrix sequels. Absolutely make me want to vomit, those.
Only movie I ever walked out of was the one with the albino twins…I was with my wife at the time and I was so offended and outraged, I walked back to our apartment alone, slammed the glass-paned back door, which shattered, and spent the next few hours carefully trying to extract bits of broken glass from my face.
I have no idea why, but I found it offensive and repulsive on a profound level. And, yes, I’ve happily watched most if not all of Pasolini’s movies (I’d watch Salò any day of the week) and paid to see a theatrical screening of Duras’s L’homme atlantique. All number of things that “people” typically might despise.
And as an MST3K fan, I’ve seen some of the more palatable “bad movies.” Mitchell goes on the list as a disgusting horror freak-show of a movie that I will never again watch, but that’s not so remarkable.
Nope. Just those Matrix movies…are deeply corrupt and offensive to me.
The first one? Meh, sure. Cute little thriller/action pot-boiler pocorn movie. Not so when it continues.
“Hate” is a strong word but I have a special place in the pit of my stomach for a mystery/romcom titled Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (soon retitled Who is Loving, etc. I guess the original sounded like a gourmet slasher film) Anyway, it starred George Segal and Jacqueline Bisset as exes who were caught up in a series of murders against, well, the great chefs of Europe.
The real disappointment was that in the movie’s first two minutes or so (before anyone dies,) a character appears and after the first line of dialog I not only knew she was the murderer, but I knew EXACTLY why she was going to murder everyone. There was no mystery left, and as a romcom it was pretty weak. I sat through the rest of the movie, but I should have asked for my money back.
I have a vague memory of seeing Highlander 2 when it was released. The movie itself is too much of a nonentity to me to hate; mostly it was just confusing, pointless and non-entertaining. It would be a typical supermarket DVD remainder bin film if you changed the character’s names and eliminated all references to the first movie; then it would simply be a generic direct-to-video schlock scifi movie. It’s only hated in that it squandered the name and legacy of a much-beloved film.
It was not part 2. Rankin Bass did the made for TV movie of The Hobbit and always planned on having Return of the King be their follow up. Lots of the same voice talent was in both. There was never any connection between Bakshi and Rankin Bass. Years later Warner Bros bought the rights to Rankin Bass properties when the company went bankrupt. Warner put out a home video package with all three together but that’s not how they were conceived, produced or marketed originally. It was a money grab by Warner Bros that confused a lot of people into thinking it belonged together.
I remember liking his Lord of the Rings at the time. It’s been decades so I don’t know how I’ll feel about it now. I really liked Wizards when it came out and appreciated the punchline. The film I would give zero stars to is Cool World. A bad Roger Rabbit rip off. Some good animation along with godawful animation. A good cast trying to fight through a mess of a script. It’s a movie that feels unfinished. It is interesting to see a very young Brad Pitt in probably his biggest early role. I didn’t see Thelma and Louise at the time so this it the first time I remember seeing him.
You reminded me of this film, which I probably haven’t seen since 1995. I remember it being a little thin, but still mildly entertaining and I got at least slightly invested in the main romance. So I did a search out of curiosity and lo and behold it has a Criterion collection version. I somehow doubt the Will Ferrell film with the “&” will get there .
Okay, having different movies with virtually identical titles has got to stop. Why is this not policed in any way, or even considered a faux pas?
What’s next? Marvel fanatics lured in to see Deadpool and Wolverine (with Pauly Shore and Rob Schneidfer), opening the week before Deadpool & Wolverine debuts?
Probably the worst example was Jack Frost and Jack Frost. One was a horror movie and one was a family comedy. And they were released only a single year apart (in 1997 and 1998). I imagine there were a few kids who were traumatized when their parents accidentally grabbed the wrong one off the shelf at Blockbusters.
Speaking of Will Ferrell, another of his movies definitely makes my “no star” list – Holmes and Watson, in which Ferrell plays Sherlock Holmes and John C. Reilly plays Watson. It is unbelievably, unbearably bad. It is arguably the worst Sherlock Holmes film ever made. It is tasteless and pointless and embarrassing. Somehow or other they got Ralph Fienes to play Moriarity in this one. I suspect blackmail.
The film had no critical preview – always a good sign – and has been almost universally panned. It has a Rotten Tomato rating of 10%. It won Worst Picture in the4 Golden Raspberry awards for that year.
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