Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

Blockbuster Video is running a neat program here where, for two bucks, you get a card that entitles you to one free rental each day from the kid's and family section. It's a fundraiser for....well, something. Of course, it's a limited program: no new releases, and it's restricted to VHS only. But it's still a cool way to explore all the old releases.

I've heard a lot recently about the death of hand-drawn animation, now that computer-generated animated films are so popular, with hits like Shrek, Finding Nemo, both Toy Story movies and so on being so wildly popular while traditionally animated films, like the current Sinbad movie, Treasure Planet, and others don't do very well at all.

I've seen varying explanations, but they basically boil down to story and script. The computer-animated films, right now, have scripts that are far-and-away superior to the traditional animated films, or so we're told. And yeah, I'd grant that generally-speaking, Monsters, Inc and the other Pixar movies have had better scripts lately than the traditional Disney films. But I'm not convinced the scripts are that much better. We watched The Emperor's New Groove the other night, a film which somehow completely eluded my radar when it came out. I have no memory of it ever being in theaters. But here's a film with one of the wittiest scripts I've seen in a long time, a film which cheerfully plays with just about every convention that animated movies follow. The cutesy sidekick is not so cute; the villain's anger at the hero is actually justified; and most fun is the film's way of poking fun at these kinds of films in general. (Toward the end, the heroes are inches away from victory when the villain arrives. The heroes ask, "How did you get here?" and the villain's dumb-lug henchman pulls down a rolling map -- from nowhere -- and says, "By all accounts, it doesn't make any sense.") This film's script is, in my opinion, every bit as good as that of Toy Story II or A Bug's Life, so why did it leave nary an impression on the filmgoers?

I don't know, really. I'd like to chalk it up to computer animation, but then, I'm not sure if Dinosaur was a huge hit or not. Maybe it's just subject matter -- Pixar's movies tend to hit on storytelling subjects that are of pretty-much common interest, after all. I mean, part of the fun of the Toy Story movies is just looking at all the characters and saying, "Hey, I used to play with that!" And of course, everybody loves big, gross but lovable monsters, so there's Monsters Inc.. Shrek built through word-of-mouth. Why didn't The Emperor's New Groove, then? Hell, I don't know. I just chalk it up to William Goldman's basic explanation for why Titanic blew out the box office while The Postman just plain blew: people simply didn't want to see The Postman. And if people don't want to see it, you can have the best movie in the world, and it won't do well. Just ask all those people who love animated movies, but whose eyes fog over at the suggestion that they take in Princess Mononoke or Kiki's Delivery Service. In the case of The Emperor's New Groove, people probably don't get the concept: a buddy-movie about a poor villager and the Emperor of a pseudo-South American realm who's just been turned into a llama? Huh-whuh?

Well, watch it. This thing had me laughing from beginning to end.

:: We also watched The Hunchback of Notre Dame, earlier in the week. There's another movie that, when I saw it in the theater in its initial release, didn't impress me very much...but this time, I found a lot to admire in it. A lot to admire. The songs are Alan Menken's best since the death of lyricist Howard Ashman, who inspired Menken to his best work in Beauty and the Beast before passing away of AIDS. Yes, the message is pretty heavy-handed; but it's also excellent in its non-cutesy way of dealing with a love triangle and in the way it explores the sexual desires of the villain, in about as frank a way as a Disney animated movie could ever do. Of course, some of the story's logic falters a bit -- if Quasimodo is strong enough to break chains, why isn't he strong enough to pound Frollo into Parisian pulp at the end? -- but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the film this time out.