Good topic idea, Aerostar.
I'm going to start with one that I've championed a few times here, and that I still feel gets a raw deal: Pixar's
Cars, a wonderful, quietly uplifting and beautifully crafted little film that absolutely does not deserve the black sheep reputation it's ended up with. More than anything, I think the lukewarm reception afforded to
Cars shows demonstrates how much damage the wrong expectations can inflict, because this film was saddled with an unhealthily large amount of them. Admittedly, part of that can be blamed upon Disney and Pixar themselves for their ill-judged and misleading decision to sell this slow-paced, gently comedic character piece as a wacky and action-packed racing romp, but I think the real killer was that
Cars had to follow in the footsteps of
The Incredibles, a creative milestone that had seen Pixar really going above and beyond what anyone might have expected from an animated movie in more or less all respects.
Cars, with its sedate atmosphere, slim story and "take-it-easy" message, was never destined to be the film that topped it, but people expected it to anyway, leading to widespread disappointment with a movie that I thought was outstanding on its own, more modest terms. For starters, it's visually peerless, in more ways than people give credit for; its technical successes are well documented (six words: neon lights on a car bonnet
), but for me the outstanding achievement is how they manage to bring a mechanical world to life, with refined, subtle animation giving these cars amazing personality and expressiveness. Audio-wise, it's equally excellent - as ever, Pixar's policy of casting actors rather than star names pays dividends with some really warm performances, particularly from Owen Wilson, Paul Newman and Bonnie Hunt, whilst music-wise we get a nice mix of the familiar (Randy Newman's pleasant score and ballad) and the new (some well-chosen country/rock songs). Curiously, though, what impresses me most about the movie is its narrative; it's by far the most heavily criticised part of the film, but in its own way, I actually believe the plot of
Cars is perhaps the ultimate expression of Pixar's "Story Is King" mantra. Think about it; the movie is a slow, wistful nostalgia piece about an era most of the perceived "target audience" would be unfamiliar with, with very little of the broad comedy or action set pieces expected from the cartoon blockbuster, but John Lasseter went ahead and made it anyway. Why? Because it was a story that meant something to him, the one he wanted to tell, and as a result we got a film that felt earnest and heartfelt. That's a virtue that can't be prized highly enough in Hollywood movies and it's for that reason, more than any other, that I feel that
Cars is a movie to be treasured; I urge everyone to give it a chance.
Still, if I'm calling the multi-million-dollar-grossing Oscar nominee
Cars underappreciated, I don't know where that puts my other choice, our mutual friend Craig McCracken's
The Powerpuff Girls Movie. It honestly breaks my heart to look over at Box Office Mojo and observe the commercial ignominy suffered by
PPG; $11 million domestic gross + $5million internationally = a pretty grim fate for Cartoon Network's first and to date only (not counting
Aqua Teen) theatrical feature.
I don't know what happened; maybe it was bad timing (the show's popularity peaked around 2000/2001, whereas this film was released in July 2002 against
Men in Black II), bad marketing (it was distributed by Warner Brothers, who had previously screwed up the release of Brad Bird's
The Iron Giant) or other factors (a lot of older fans felt awkward about seeing the movie in theatres, a feeling exacerbated by an apparent lack of evening screenings), but whatever the reason, the fact is that the closest thing I can find to a box office achievement for
PPG is
a place in the Top 20 of Biggest Theatre Drops (ie, the films which lost the most screens in their third weekends), alongside classics such as
Gigli,
Alone in the Dark and
Pluto Nash.
I can only imagine how gutted Craig, Lauren and co. must have been, because you need only watch it to see that it was clearly a labour of love. So many TV spin-offs are content to take the easy route and simply throw out something that feels like a padded extended episode, or else like two episodes stiched together; on
Powerpuff, on the other hand, Craig really went the extra mile to make a genuine movie. The production values impress right off the bat, particularly for a relatively low-budget production; the already great artstyle was refined into something really striking and worthy of the big screen, whilst similarly
PPG and
Foster's veteran Jim Venable expanded the score's scope and depth tenfold whilst maintaining its quirkiness. What's most impressive, though, is the way that Craig was able to take a formula which had previously only been applied to 10-20 minute comedy shorts and use it to create a perfectly-formed 70-minute story with enough depth, emotional resonance and darkness to almost feel epic at times; the
PPG rhythms and character dynamics are all still in place, but in a heightened, expanded form that really gives a cinematic sheen to it (movie Mojo, in particular, is a great villain with tons of presence). I remember Craig mentioning in an interview that he wanted
The Powerpuff Girls Movie to be the ultimate realisation of the
PPG concept, to be everything that
Powerpuff had always dreamed of being; as far as I'm concerned, he succeeded totally, box office be damned, and I sincerely hope that he realises that his hard work was appreciated.