SCOOBY-DOO! MASK OF THE BLUE FALCON: The New, Updated, Darker, Edgier Blue Falcon

Scooby-Doo! Mask of the Blue Falcon (2013) – Directed by Michael Goguen – Starring Frank Welker, Matthew Lillard, Grey DeLisle, Mindy Cohn, Diedrich Bader, Jeff Bennett, Fred Tatasciore, John DiMaggio, Dee Bradley Baker, Kevin Michael Richardson, and Billy West.

SCOOBY-DOO! MASK OF THE BLUE FALCON is ridiculously good.

This is the first movie I watched after hearing of the passing of both Roger Ebert and Carmine Infantino, so perhaps I was ready made to be charmed by a delightful animated movie that featured two enjoyable parts of my childhood: Scooby-Doo and Dynomutt. Certainly, there’s a nostalgia aspect at play here. If you grew up on Hanna-Barbera cartoons there’s all kinds of old favorites hanging out in the background of BLUE FALCON: Speed Buggy, the Herculoids, Penelope Pitstop, Frankenstein Jr., Space Ghost, the Flintstones, Captain Caveman, the Jetsons, Black Lightning, Mightor, Apache Chief, Hong Kong Phooey, El Dorado, Johnny Quest, and a host more.

It’s more than simple nostalgia that makes BLUE FALCON such a fantastic movie, though. It’s fun, engaging, smart, colorful, beautifully paced, and just clever enough that I appreciated it without being turned off by it.

To be clear, this is not a continuation of the ’70s cartoons. In this movie, Scooby and the Mystery Incorporated gang are not former allies of Dynomutt and Blue Falcon, but rather exist in a world where they watched all of the Hanna-Barbera cartoons, too. Shaggy and Scooby are huge fans of Blue Falcon and Dynomutt, respectively, and they’re excited to head to an analog for the San Diego Comic Con where they discover the original Blue Falcon, Owen Garrison, has an autograph booth.

I won’t lie and act like I knew this before I started reading the Wikipedia page for the original Dynomutt TV show, but it’s clear that this film’s Owen Garrison is named after the original voice actor for the Blue Falcon, Gary Owens. That’s a nice touch and wasn’t shocking for me to discover given how much love for the old HB cartoons is in evidence throughout this film. I hope the animators were old Hanna-Barbera fans, too, or else they must have been mighty confused being asked to draw Quick Draw McGraw and Wonder Twins cosplayers.

When they get to the convention, they’re disappointed to find that Owen Garrison is kinda crazy and embittered. Turns out there’s a new Blue Falcon movie about to debut and it is, in Fred’s own words, a “new, updated, darkier, edgier Blue Falcon.” Full credit to the creators of BLUE FALCON for not only giving us the darker, edgier Blue Falcon, but basically using it to allow for some extended mocking of the Christopher Nolan Batman films. Check out this exchange between Brad Adams, the actor playing the new Blue Falcon, and Freddy and Shaggy:

Brad Adams: “I bring to the Blue Falcon a clean slate, seeing him as a divided soul in an endless debate over the choices he’s had to make in a very real and dangerous world.”

Freddy: “What does that even mean?”

Brad Adams: “That the Blue Falcon is an enigma living a life trapped within the impossibility of certainty. Makes you think.”

Shaggy: “You take that back! I don’t have the slightest idea what you just said but you’d better take it back, like, now!”

It’s nice to see Warner Brothers has at least some sense of humor about their multi-billion dollar franchise, and given that Blue Falcon and Dynomutt, the “Dog Wonder” were playful nods to Batman and Robin back then, it’s nice to see that connection continue.

What is a little surprising are the two big nods to Spider-Man. In one scene, Velma explains that she doesn’t like superheroes because they don’t make sense, that you wouldn’t really get superpowers if you were bitten by a radioactive spider. And later, after Scooby takes off his Dynomutt costume because he feels like a failure, he dumps it in a garbage can in an alley, a clear nod to Amazing Spider-Man 50.

The whole movie is a nod to kids’ cartoons, favoring the simple over the complicated, the vibrant over the dark. It’s done in a really smart, really fun way, and the story here about one of Blue Falcon’s old villains seemingly coming to life is well done. I love the scene where Fred, Daphne, and Velma sneack back into the convention dressed as the Herculoids, and I love how everywhere in the convention is a poster or cosplayer giving constant nods to Hanna-Barbera’s back catalog.

There’s only one letdown here and that’s the almost total lack of Dynomutt himself. With the film’s take being that Blue Falcon and Dynomutt weren’t friends of Scooby but characters on a TV show, it follows that there is no actual Dynomutt. Owen Garrison has a beat up Dynomutt next to him but we never get to see the actual Dynomutt hanging around.

It’s to Michael Goguen’s credit, though, that MASK OF BLUE FALCON is so good and so fun that whenever I started wishing Dynomutt would make an appearance, the film would give me something else that caused me to smile. I watched this movie via Netflix (the Blu-ray; it’s not streaming) but I like this movie so much I’ll be buying this Blu-ray in the future.

THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE: Of Stolen Parents, Mechanical Queens, and Sherlock Holmes

The Great Mouse Detective (1986) – The 26th Walt Disney Animated Classic – Directed by Ron Clements, Burny Mattinson, Dave Michener, and John Musker – Starring Barrie Ingham, Val Bettin, Vincent Price, Susanne Pollatschek, Candy Candido, Alan Young, Frank Welker, and Basil Rathbone.

THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE is very well done animal analog film, where the main characters are all animals, but all clearly based on human characters. In this case, it’s Sherlock Holmes, re-done as a mouse-dominated story that takes place simultaneously with Holmes’ Victorian adventures.

Basil of Baker Street (Barrie Ingham) lives in the same house as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary Sherlock Holmes (voiced by clips of the legendary Holmes’ performer Basil Rathbone) and Dr. Watson, and is also a genius detective solving crimes for a free for anyone who comes to him with an interesting case to solve. This time around, it’s precious little Olivia Flaversham (Susanne Pollatschek) who arrives at his doorstop thanks to Major Doctor David Q. Dawson (Val Bettin). Olivia has witnessed her father’s kidnapping from his underground toy shop, and she’s come above ground to find the famous “Basil of Baker Street” to enlist his help in getting her dad back. Dawson (the Watson analog) agrees to help her find Basil, but he’s not yet connected with his future partner.

There’s a wonderful sense of happenstance in DETECTIVE that brings our protagonists together. Olivia doesn’t find Basil; instead, Dawson finds her, crying in the rain on the streets of London, then agrees to bring her to Baker Street, where Basil has no real interest in taking on her case until she reveals that her father was kidnapped by a bat that Basil recognizes as Fidget (Candy Candido), the lackey of Professor Ratigan (Vincent Price). Basil takes the case, but only because it dovetails with his long-term goals of catching his nemesis, which does add a nice, subtle layer of characterization to the detective’s character. He’s not a bad guy, but he sees a more communal picture than Olivia. For the young girl, her whole life is her father (her mother is dead) and so obviously getting him back is the only thing she can see. For Basil, however, it’s more important to stop Ratigan because of the damage the rat-who-doesn’t-like-to-be-called-a-rat can cause. It helps, of course, that Ratigan is his nemesis, and Basil is rather myopic when it comes to capturing him, so perhaps he and Olivia are more alike than it seems. It’s a nice character attribute (for us, not Olivia) that he does never quite get Olivia’s last name right, so why he’s not a bad guy, he’s not the most thoughtful guy, either.

DETECTIVE is a fast-moving 74 minutes; there’s little chance for anyone to catch their breath as the film rips towards its conclusion. In that regard, we can see DETECTIVE as a direct precursor to the Guy Ritchie Holmes films, which also don’t waste a ton of time with investigating.

One of the things that I really like about DETECTIVE but that I can see giving parents pause is the level of really terrifying evil at play. In the opening sequence, Olivia hides in a cupboard while her dad is viciously attacked and kidnapped by Fidget the bat. Now, as the film goes on, we see that Fidget is used a bit for comic relief, but we don’t know that in the opening sequence. We see a creepy dude in a cape who bursts into Flaversham’s shop as his scary face is shoved forward to dominate the frame. Poor little Olivia cowers in the cupboard while the fight is going on (her dad put her there) and then exits to find the shop in ruins and her dad missing. It’s scary stuff and could easily be a sequence lifted from a slasher film.

The film ups the ante later on in regards to horror when Ratigan orders a drunk mouse who called him a rat to be put to death by kitty cat. The massive, fat cat Felicia (Frank Welker) loves to eat mice at Ratigan’s request, and while DETECTIVE does not literally show the mouse being eaten, we see the mouse being dangled above Felicia’s mouth in shadow, and then we cut to the grossed out reaction of his fellow gangsters.

There’s even a scene in a human toy shop where the toys are used to provide the film with some added creepiness. None of this is to suggest that DETECTIVE is a horror movie, but merely to point out that beneath all of the humor derived from Basil getting Olivia’s name wrong and Dawson’s fumbling, and in addition to all of the running around action, there is a really dark underbelly here. The film teases Basil’s death and suggests that both Fidget and Ratigan die because they have fallen from great heights.

Ratigan’s goal is to replace the Queen of Mousedom with a lifelike replica that Olivia’s dad creates for him and then have himself appointed King. The plot is really just here to get all of the pieces moving, however, as the Queen plays no real role in the film until it’s time for her to be kidnapped.

There’s a few Sherlockian “great detective” moments but for the most part, THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE is more physical action than brilliant detection. It could be smarter and there could be more of a mystery but I’m not complaining. DETECTIVE doesn’t alter the landscape of animated movies, but it is a really engaging story. There’s not a lot of songs (and none of them memorable), so watching DETECTIVE might not fill your hunger for classic Disney, it’s still a highly enjoyable animated film.

One addendum – there is a delicious story of how the film’s title angered the filmmakers. Based on the Basil of Baker Street books by NNN, Disney executives decided that title was “too British” for American audiences and changed the film’s title to THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE near the end of production. According to the Los Angeles Times, a inter-office memo was written that took a dig at the marketing department:

A mystery’s afoot in the animation department at Disney, and it’s going to take a moustermind to solve it. What we shall call “The Case of the Impertinent Memo” began when Disney’s marketing department invited the animation department to suggest new titles for “Basil of Baker Street,” an animated feature about a famous crime-fighting mouse. [...] The animators think the title is as imaginative as retitling “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” as “Seven Little Men Help a Girl.” In fact, one day in February, a memo appeared on the animation department bulletin board announcing that the studio had renamed all of its animated classics. First on the list was “Seven Little Men Help a Girl.”

And here’s the full list of the animation department’s dig at the marketing department’s renaming DETECTIVE reprinted in the LA Times:

“The Wooden Boy Who Became Real”
“Color and Music”
“The Wonderful Elephant Who Could Really Fly”
“The Little Deer Who Grew Up”
“The Girl With the See-Through Shoes”
“The Girl in the Imaginary World”
“The Amazing Flying Children”
“Two Dogs Fall in Love”
“The Girl Who Seemed to Die”
“Puppies Taken Away”
“The Boy Who Would Be King”
“A Boy, a Bear and a Big Black Cat”
“Two Mice Save a Girl”
“The Evil Bonehead”

I’m pretty sure PUPPIES TAKEN AWAY is in development as a Liam Neeson movie.

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My latest book, STUFFED ANIMALS FOR HIRE: THE CHRISTMAS OPERATION is now available for purchase in PAPERBACK and KINDLE formats.

SAFH is a kid’s espionage novella, but it’s also a tribute to the television shows I watched as a kid: The A-Team, Magnum PI, Knight Rider, Hardcastle and McCormack, Riptide, Dukes of Hazzard and generally any show where Post and Carpenter did the music. Recommended age? If you let your kid watch superhero cartoons or Knight Rider reruns, SAFH should be age appropriate.

Here’s the back cover description:

Jurgen the Gorilla. Throne the Lion. Bronze the Golden Eagle. Ray the Brown Bear. Bottle the Dolphin. Dev the Lynxwoman. 3 the Triceratops. Ptera the Pterodactyl.

These eight stuffed animals make up the Return Squadron. For seven months they have worked together to return disconnected stuffed animals home. But now … on their final mission, the Return Squadron seek to steal the legendary Map of Everything.

Before Christmas morning arrives, three of the Squadron will turn traitor, four will be stranded, and one will never see another Christmas.

THE RESCUERS DOWN UNDER: Of Sequels, Impractical Organizational Structures, and Saving Wilderness

The Rescuers Down Under (1990) – The 29th Walt Disney Animated Classic – Directed by Hendel Butoy and Mike Gabriel – Starring Bob Newhart, Eva Gabor, John Candy, Tristan Rogers, Adam Ryen, George C. Scott, Frank Welker, Wayne Robson, Russi Taylor, Bernard Fox, and Douglas Seale.

I love RESCUERS DOWN UNDER.

It is, however, a bit of a forgotten movie inside the Disney catalog. It is the most under-appreciated and under-performing of all the Disney Renaissance movies, and for good reason as it’s the most understated of all the Renaissance movies, too. There’s no sweeping songs, no re-imagined fairy tale, and no groundbreaking animation. In short, it is largely exactly what the other Renaissance movies are not. What THE RESCUERS DOWN UNDER is, however, is a really good, really engaging sequel. It’s fun and harmless and while there are some story issues (there should be more of the actual Rescuers in the movie), none of it negatively impacts my enjoyment of the film.

It takes too long to get to the Rescue Aid Society, and then once we get there, we still have longer to go to have the missing Bernard and Miss Bianca (Bob Newhart and Eva Gabor) show up. Even though this takes “too long,” though, I don’t mind because the opening story of young Australian boy Cody (Adam Ryen) saving the trapped golden eagle Marahute (Frank Welker) is so enjoyable to watch.

And then when Bianca and Bernard do show up, they are as charming and wonderful as ever, so the wait totally pays off.

Likewise, it’s sort of maddening how Cody himself gets trapped by the poacher McLeach (George C. Scott) IN AUSTRALIA and the Rescue Aid Society is still IN NEW YORK. The producers could have easily just said Miss Bianca and Bernard were on vacation in Australia and no one would have batted an eye, but nope, they’re in New York, which means the message for the Rescue Aid Society requesting help has to travel to the other side of the planet. Even thought this also takes “too long,” I don’t mind because there’s a very clever, “moving arrows on a map” sequence that shows how the message makes that trip. It gives DOWN UNDER a bit of an Indiana Jones vibe, even though Bianca and Bernard are as far removed from Indy as Bob Newhart and Eva Gabor are from Harrison Ford

It’s good stuff, and while any film made by Americans and set in Australia runs the risk of turning into an amalgamation of Crocodile Dundee and ads for Outback Steakhouse, the “Australianness” of DOWN UNDER never overwhelms me. I had my fears when Jake (Tristan Rogers), a kangaroo mouse wearing Pete Postlethwaite’s costume from the second Jurassic Park movie, arrived on the scene, but he never overwhelms the narrative.

There’s a simple, but strong pro-environment message in DOWN UNDER, which can be reduced to: “Don’t kill wild animals.” There’s a couple scenes with the animals trapped in McLeach’s compound that’s clearly designed to make kids realize where bags and shoes come from. This is another part of the movie that should annoy me – there’s really not a lot done with these trapped animals except to give Cody someone to talk to while he’s in captivity. They help to further McLeach’s evilness, but that’s never really a question. Despite not really contributing much to the film, these captive animals are more positive than negative.

Sensing a trend? RESCUERS DOWN UNDER makes these little blips such a part of the overall story that they end up working for the film. One blip might feel like a mistake, but several makes it feel like a style.

McLeach is drawn without any ounce of goodness in him, and for pure evil, he’s one of the all-time bad guys in the Disney canon. He’s mean to everyone, and doesn’t just kidnap Cody but plants the kid’s backpack in croc-infested waters to make it look like they ate him. Think on that. This is a bad guy who’s willing to let this kid’s mom think her son died just so he can trap a bird. He wants to capture Marahute because she can make him rich, and to ensure that her value as a rare creature is maximized, he lowers Joanna (his pet goanna) to the eagle’s nest to eat Marahute’s three baby eggs. This is also a pretty good sign that McLeach is not a long-term thinker.

Luckily, Joanna doesn’t succeed because Bernard is down there already. He hides them, and then convinces Wilbur (John Candy) to sit on them until they hatch.

Yeah, John Candy … George C. Scott … Bob Newhart … Eva Gabor … even though DOWN UNDER was only released just over 20 years ago, it feels like a much older movie if you know the voices. And being such a simple movie, absent of any strange-looking villains

The animation in DOWN UNDER is pretty spectacular, too, but not in an eye-popping manner like Beauty and the Beast or in a dazzling manner like Tarzan. DOWN UNDER’s animation is clean and efficient. There are a few really gorgeous sequences – the long tracking shot at the start of the film and Marahute giving Cody a ride on her massive back are the most standout – but every scene here just feels meticulously put together by the animators.

As I said up top, I love RESCUERS DOWN UNDER. While not one of the all-time great Disney movies, this movie would get a lot of spins if I had kids. It’s got a great message, it’s got great characters, it tells a solid story, and it’s a visual treat. Much like 2011′s Winnie the Pooh, DOWN UNDER’s ambitions are clearly lower than something like The Lion King, but that shouldn’t deter you from giving it a watch. Not every film needs to be a blockbuster; sometimes, simply being a good film is enough, and on that score THE RESCUERS DOWN UNDER delivers.

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Stuffed Animals for Hire: The Christmas Operation and all characters, stories, and artwork copyright Mark Bousquet 2012.

My latest book, STUFFED ANIMALS FOR HIRE: THE CHRISTMAS OPERATION is now available for purchase in PAPERBACK and KINDLE formats.

SAFH is a kid’s book, but it’s also a tribute to the television shows I watched as a kid: The A-Team, Magnum PI, Knight Rider, Hardcastle and McCormack, Riptide, Dukes of Hazzard and generally any show where Post and Carpenter did the music. Recommended age? If you let your kid watch superhero cartoons or Knight Rider reruns, SAFH should be age appropriate. Here’s the back cover description:

Jurgen the Gorilla. Throne the Lion. Bronze the Golden Eagle. Ray the Brown Bear. Bottle the Dolphin. Dev the Lynxwoman. 3 the Triceratops. Ptera the Pterodactyl. These eight stuffed animals make up the Return Squadron. For seven months they have worked together to return disconnected stuffed animals home. But now … on their final mission, the Return Squadron seek to steal the legendary Map of Everything. Before Christmas morning arrives, three of the Squadron will turn traitor, four will be stranded, and one will never see another Christmas.