The Thief and the Cobbler (1993)

It is written among the limitless constellations of the celestial heavens, and in the depths of the emerald seas, and upon every grain of sand in the vast deserts, that the world which we see is an outward and visible dream of an inward and invisible reality. Once upon a time there was a golden city. In the center of the golden city, atop the tallest minaret, were three golden balls. The ancients had prophesied that if the three golden balls were ever taken away, harmony would yield to discord, and the city would fall to destruction and death. But the mystics had also foretold that the city might be saved by the simplest soul with the smallest and simplest of things.

Making a movie is not easy. All you have to do is look at some of the films I've reviewed for proof of that.

The original Casino Royale, for instance, went through six directors and had some of its stars meddling with the screenplay, resulting in a Frankenstein's monster of a spy spoof. Two of Terry Gilliam's "Trilogy of Imagination" films sunk in American box offices despite critical acclaim, either because of marketability concerns or slow production coupled with financial disputes. Life of Brian was almost never even made after the original backers saw the script and pulled their funding at the last minute.

But perhaps nobody knows more about the pain, the turmoil and the aggravation that comes with filmmaking than three-time Academy Award-winning Anglo-Canadian animator Richard Williams, who currently holds the Guinness world record for longest production time of a motion picture.

And this is the film with which he holds this record:

In 1964, Williams began production on an animated film based off a story of Eastern folklore about a "wise fool" named Mulla Nasruddin. The project went under various titles--The Amazing Nasruddin, Nasruddin!, The Majestic Fool--before they finally dropped the character altogether and went with a brand new story loosely based on its setting, thus retitling the project The Thief and the Cobbler.

And this was only the start of the film's woes--because of its complex animation and independent funding sources, the project was put on and off the shelf many times over the next two decades while Williams worked on other animation projects to raise money to finish it, including commercial work, movie credits, and even scarring generations of children for life with Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.

A light at the end of the tunnel seemed in sight when his work on Roger Rabbit attracted the attention of Warner Bros., who agreed to finance the film's completion, but they pulled out when work fell behind schedule. Finally in 1992, a completion bond company took over, booted Williams from the project, and finished the movie under the supervision of the quicker, cheaper producer Fred Calvert, and since it was around this time that Disney was releasing Aladdin, it was re-animated and re-edited to include musical numbers, additional voiceovers and dialogue for its two title characters (in Williams' version, the thief doesn't talk at all, while the cobbler only has one line). Two different versions were released, one in Australia and South Africa in 1993 (as The Princess and the Cobbler) and one produced by Miramax Family Films for American audiences in 1995 (first as Arabian Knight and then under its original title) in only a handful of theaters each. Neither were box office hits.

For those of you keeping score, the film started production in 1964 and was finally released by a major studio in 1995 - THIRTY-ONE YEARS. It was such a headache that Williams distanced himself from his own film, and only recently has he finally spoken out about it, having finally screened his 1992 workprint in late 2013-early 2014.

The film is technically still being made today, in a sense. In 2006, filmmaker Garrett Gilchrist released an unofficial fan-edited version, a "Recobbled Cut" if you will, a frame-by-frame restoration of the film that stitches together animatics, pencil tests and pre-existing footage from Williams'  workprint, Calvert's edition and whatever else exists to get as close as possible to the story Williams wanted to tell. It has been revised three times since then as additional footage has emerged, the latest edition as recently as last year, and considering that Williams as well as Disney and all other major animation studios have no plans to finish and release the film, I've decided to go with the more recent version, since it's about as complete a movie as we're going to get.

Don't be shy. I've reviewed cinematic fiascos before.

After a really long sequence where I imagine the opening credits were supposed to go, we are transported to a not-the-least-bit-modest Arabic setting, and a golden city. At the center of this city is a very tall, slightly leaning minaret upon which are skewered three golden balls of great implied importance. Prophesy dictates that if ever anyone were to abscond with these golden balls, the golden city would plunge into chaos and ruin.

It is here where we meet our principal cast. So let us now:

The titular cobbler, a quiet, resourceful young lad named Tack with a long, lanky, rag doll-like appearance.

The titular thief, a nameless bloke with a severe case of kleptomania, an attraction to shiny things and a lack of personal hygiene.

King Nod, an aptly-named person in that he is both ruler of the Golden City and a narcoleptic;

Zig Zag the Grand Viseer (voiced by Vincent Price in what turned out to be his final film appearance--his voice work was recorded quite early in production but the movie took so long to come out he ended up dying one month after it finally saw a theater screening) a quite slender-looking Blue Meanie who acts as the king's chief adviser, owns a perpetually-starved vulture named Phido, and speaks entirely in rhyming couplets.

What'd the bad guy from Aladdin have? A PARROT? This guy's got a friggin VULTURE. That is BAD ASS.

The King's daughter, Princess Yum Yum, a maiden fair who must have suffered some injury when from heaven she fell.

Anywho, this Zig Zag feller--loyal subject, office kiss-up, bit of a poet, but wouldn't you know it, he's actually kind of evil. We can tell this when he has Tack arrested and tries to have him executed for accidentally spilling tacks on the floor where he was prancing about in egotistical splendor and stepped on one. We later find out he plots to take Yum Yum as a bride and usurp the kingdom.

When Tack is brought before the king, Yum Yum takes pity on him and just so conveniently has a shoe in need of repair. And being the love interest that she is, a sort of blush-every-time-they-look-at-each-other-face-to-face romance starts happening between her and Tack. Kinda cute, really, even if this is all of a sudden.

"I am Zig Zag the great, and haters gonna hate!"

Meanwhile, our thief notices the golden balls at the seemingly unreachable top of the highest minaret in the city and tries various Wile E. Coyote ploys to steal them. At one point he runs into Tack and makes off with the shoe he was repairing, leading to a chase sequence that is quite reminiscent of the Loonyland castle chase sequence in Raggedy Ann and Andy. Only trippier. And nowhere near as traumatizing.

As the Thief finishes repairing Yum Yum's shoe, Zig Zag throws him into a prison cell where he is nearly fed to his vulture pet. Meanwhile the King, during one of his numerous naps, has a nightmare where the golden balls are stolen and the city is ravaged by an army of one-eyed men...which as it turns out isn't that far from the truth, really.

So, Mr. One-Eye, what are your views on gender equality in the military?

As you've probably already assumed, because we wouldn't have a movie otherwise (or what there is of a movie, anyway) the thief eventually relieves the king of his balls (yes, that's what happens) which fall in the hands of Zig Zag, conveniently when word of a one-eyed warlord's army in the vicinity reaches the kingdom. The king, rather than changing his freshly-soiled shorts, arranging some kind of search party to find his missing balls (tee hee), and perhaps fortifying the city's defenses a bit, sends Yum Yum out into the desert to consult a mad old witch for advice on what to do next. Tack, who has managed to escape his prison cell with a file and a tack, is elected to accompany her, the lucky dog.

Somewhere else, Zig Zag, having failed to use this calamity to have the king grant him Yum Yum's hand in marriage, decides to show his balls to the leader of the One Eyes (phhffftt).

Meanwhile, the thief sets off after our heroes to...do his own thing.

It's interesting how King Nod is protective of his daughter and yet trusts her to carry out this dangerous mission, let alone with a complete stranger whom she's fallen for after only meeting him just yesterday.

"Drive safely and be sure to have her home by eleven. Have fun, you two!"

After some spliced-together scenes in which the thief tries and fails to steal a ruby off the top of a sacred golden idol (where the U.S. Air Force Song is curiously playing during a moment where the thief considers flying overhead the idol's armed guards) and Yum Yum hires an out-of-work band of brigands who would probably have ransacked their caravan and carried the princess off by now were they not for the sake of the potential audience too dimwitted to realize this as their bodyguards, our heroes finally reach the mad old witch living in a rock mountain that from a distance looks like millions of disembodied hands in a big pile through an entrance revealed by the ruby. When asked about how they can save their city, rather than making quite rational claims about strategic defense formations and diplomatic solutions, points to Tack almost immediately and provides cryptic hints as to what he could possibly do, shouting "Attack! Attack! Attack!"

So Tack is destined to save the city, it turns out. Well, at least the film spares us showing him expressing his feelings of self-doubt and ruing his lot in life, wanting so much more than what he's getting, tired of people looking upon him as a lowly, insignificant shoemaker. You know, like that guy in that other movie. The one with the parrot.

As easy as it might be to make a Ghandi joke here, I just don't have it in me.

Fortunately it didn't seem like they had to travel very far, which means absolutely no side trips to strange worlds with taffy monsters, inflatable kings and stuffed camels on strong hallucinogens. Just a young man accompanying a princess on a search for her daddy's balls. (Couldn't resist, sorry.)

It also means that our heroes return to the golden city just in time to learn those one-eyed warriors have decided to pay them a visit, with Zig Zag leading the charge. And they're brought them a lovely present: a big black nasty war machine filled with soldiers, catapults and very sharp things.

Fortunately, Tack is suddenly struck with a moment of inspiration and stands before Zig Zag David-and-Goliath style armed with a piece of string and a single tack. (Get it? "A tack a tack a tack?" Hah, the witch was using a play on words, because he has a tack, and his NAME is Tack, heh heh...) Fashioning a makeshift catapult, he fires the tack at Zig Zag...and misses...but sets up a cartoon-style chain reaction that eventually destroys the One Eye army's war machine.

Figures. And they all want to watch the Super Bowl on MY TV.

The climax of the film consists mainly of the thief retrieving the three balls while the One Eyes' war machine falls apart around him, narrowly escaping numerous death traps during the meanwhilst, as Zig Zag nearly runs off with Yum Yum, fights Tack and then gets eaten by some alligators and his long-suffering bird while the brigands fight off One Eye soldiers and their leader is apparently killed. (That part consisted of storyboard drawings and wasn't exactly clear.)

Everything in the previous statement takes up about fifteen minutes of a ninety-eight minute cut.

Tack takes the king's balls (snicker snicker) back from the thief, and with that the Golden City is saved and the king in his gratitude allows the cobbler and Yum Yum to wed. Then the thief in a closing fourth-wall gag, delays the film's release even further by running off with it.

Yeah, this moment was pretty inevitable, too. Cute, though.

What this movie makes me is sad.

It isn't because of the story. Any flaws in its plot--the minimal romantic development between Tack and Yum Yum, the super-long climax, the lack of characterization of the brigand army and the One Eye warriors--can perhaps be blamed on the amount of footage that was available to piece this Recobbled Cut together. At the very least, Princess Yum Yum wasn't just written as the damsel in distress, which was nice, and even though the thief didn't have a lot to do here story-wise apart from plot catalyst, he does do comic relief duty quite well.

It isn't because of the visuals. The finished portions of the film look extravagant. Williams is known for being a perfectionist and for hiring veteran Looney Tunes and Disney artists and expecting perfection of them, and although their work here was not as appreciated by widespread audiences, the complexities of each finished scene are to be admired, and I haven't seen art design this mesmerizing since Yellow Submarine. This movie is certainly a must-see for art and animation buffs.

No, the thing that makes me sad about this film is the sheer amount of wasted potential. This movie has all the makings of an animation classic, a masterpiece, something you'd find on Turner Classic Movies on the very rare occasion that they show an animated film. The Thief and the Cobbler could have been a milestone in the history of the medium instead of the footnote it is today. Richard Williams started out all those years ago on the verge of something truly great, and if things hadn't turned out the way they had, something great is what he would have gotten.

It must feel, metaphorically speaking, like someone had ripped his golden balls off. (Sorry, that one was too easy.)

Thieves should know better than to handle another man's--okay, I'll stop now.

"Hanna-Barbera's All-Star Comedy Ice Revue" (1978)

Nothing surpasses the beauty and elegance of a bad idea.
--Craig Bruce

It has been a longstanding notion of mine that people were very easily entertained in the 1970s, as a majority of the popular culture I've seen from that time was seemingly made to accommodate the lowest of the lowest common denominator. Oh, sure, this was the decade that gave us "Stairway to Heaven", Farrah Fawcett, Fawlty Towers and Star Wars, but on the other end of the spectrum it was also the decade that gave us "Disco Duck", Scrappy Doo, the variety show phenomenon, and one of the most reviled televisual offerings in the history of Farnsworth's box, The Star Wars Holiday Special.

(Of course, other decades had their low points, too - the '80s gave us Saved by the Bell, the '90s inflicted the Backstreet Boys on us, and have yet to recover from the reality TV show craze of the '00s - but the 70s seem to be more remembered as a good decade for bad ideas.)

Talking of Scrappy Doo, the 70s was also the decade where the animation duo of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, once known for popular characters like Tom and Jerry, Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound, went to crap. This was the decade where the quality of their creations were in flux, recycling everything from characters to show pitches to animation sequences to fill out entire broadcast network Saturday morning schedules before they had The Smurfs to fall back on. Carbon copy groups of teenagers with talking animals who weren't oversized Great Danes going around solving mysteries, a girl band and their entourage travelling haphazardly through space for no apparent reason, all of their characters from the 60s floating around in an ark battling personified social issues like smog and litter and vandalism, the Harlem Globetrotters as superheroes...

They used the wrong spelling of the word "revue". I have SUCH a good feeling about this one...

Hanna-Barbera's All-Star Comedy Ice Revue was another such misfire, first airing on CBS on January 13, 1978, and like other crappy TV specials I can think of, has justifiably not been re-aired since. It was released on videocassette in 1986, but that's about all the attention it got after it aired. Time Warner probably owns it now, and hasn't seen fit to release it on DVD. (Don't strain yourselves, guys!)

Okay, here's the rundown - the special is supposed to be like a Dean Martin celebrity roast or something, only with ice skaters and ballet and stuff like that. Your masters of ceremonies are country singer and Hee Haw host Roy Clark and One Day at a Time star Bonnie Franklin, flanked by a cavalcade of actors dressed as some of Hanna-Barbera's most beloved characters (and the Hair Bear Bunch) to celebrate the 48th birthday of one Fred Flintstone of The Flintstones, the most popular prime-time animated sitcom ever to be accused of ripping off The Honeymooners.

There's only one slight detail - Fred is absent from this whole affair, as he is sitting at home watching the special on TV, thinking he was supposed to be on the next day, and only just realizes that he's supposed to be at the ice arena now, so much of the special is focused on this particular plot point.

To think many of those people had dreams of skating in the Olympics.

Roy and Bonnie are forced to fill up time to wait for Fred, and the guy in the Jabberjaw costume is not making life any easier for them, as he pretends to be Don Rickles, makes several failed attempts at wisecracks at the honoree's expense (this is a roast, remember) and insists that with the man of the hour nowhere to be seen, they should roast HIM instead.

What's Jabberjaw, you ask? Think Scooby Doo with a talking shark set in Al Gore's dystopian vision of the future, or in a world where the bad guy from The Spy Who Loved Me actually succeeded.

To make matters worse...apparently they couldn't get Frank Welker to play Jabberjaw as he did in the TV show, so voice acting duties went to Don Messick. And I have nothing against Don Messick, his voice is legendary--Scooby Doo, Papa Smurf, Hamton on Tiny Toons--but his attempt to sound like a shark who borrows shtick from both Rodney Dangerfield and Curly Howard comes out sounding like--ughh--his Scrappy Doo voice.

In a nutshell, it's Scrappy Doo once again trying to steal the spotlight from a character more popular that he. Only as a talking shark.

Sharks just aren't popular. Once Jaws came out, the market was pretty much oversaturated.

Variety shows aren't necessarily known for their plots, so here are some edited highlights:

Bonnie dresses up as a polar bear and sings "You Are My Lucky Star" while skating girls dance around and sing the completely unrelated "We're in the Money".

Then we're treated to an unusual comedy vignette from a duo named Course & Young, who I can't even find info on Google about. One of them tries to sing a song but gets distracted by the janitor, who keeps hitting him with a mop, knocking things over, then tries to blow him up and bites him in the leg.

I'll be over here crying for those poor baby seals if you need me...

A Jackson Five-ish group called The Silvers, of whom I have also never heard, sing a song titled "Disco Showdown" while all the dancers and costumed animals get day-yown on the ice.

Sashi Kuchiki, a shirtless guy in a badly-made thong, skates and jumps around with flaming torches while some men and women dressed entirely in yellow give us a fitness workout video.

Roy Clark plays the theme from that one movie Love Story whose name escapes me on the guitar while some lady dances in the background.

This aired during the family hour, right?

And also, for the purpose of entertainment and DEFINITELY not to pad out the special's running time, the audience is treated to some live-action vignettes from another recently-produced live-action Hanna-Barbera program, The Skatebirds. The Skatebirds, for those who don't know (i.e. all of you), was a Banana Splits-style supershow-type dealie starring a trio of live-action people in rollerskating bird costumes getting chased around by someone in a live-action rollerskating cat costume (rollerskating in an ICE skating special, go figure). I couldn't tell you anything else about it, apart from the fact that it gave us among other regular segments a cartoon called The Robonic Stooges, which is just...ughhh...oh lord...that'll take you to some dark places.

Why am I always forgetting which one of them is Fleegle?

Finally, the climax is a grand birthday tribute number where all the cartoon-character-costumed actors dance around with chefs for some reason paying their respects to the still-absent Fred. The Hair Bear Bunch trio tell jokes that stopped being funny in the third grade, some ice dancers in Wally Gator costumes dance around for a bit while one of the Bears chases after them with a flyswatter--why, I do not know--and finally a giant birthday cake flanked with dancing girls is brought out onto the ice.

During this whole farce we get animated updates on Fred's travel to the ice arena, as he and Barney watch the whole affair on a portable TV set in the car on the way there.

Okay, special, explain this to me. In the cartoon segments, which are clearly based in Bedrock, the "place right out of history" where The Flintstones takes place, we are clearly in the prehistoric setting, while the live-action ice skating segments were filmed in Bakersfield Civic Auditorium in 1978 A.D. California. How does this work? Did the ice rink suddenly fall through a hole in the time-space continuum and land 65 million years in the past? Did Fred somehow go through a wormhole and end up in the Bedrock of the late 20th century just in time for his 65,000,048th birthday?

Well, as it turns out, Fred doesn't make it after all, because when it seems that he finally arrives on stage, it's actually another actor in perhaps the worst character costume of the bunch. All the other costumes use fur, but Fred having no fur to speak of, has a head obviously made out of plastic. His mouth doesn't even close.

After that, the special ends and the credits roll.

Roy, get off the screen! You're distracting me from the pretty girl!

So...how does Hanna-Barbera's All-Star Comedy Ice Revue stack up?

To answer that question, let's break down its title.

It isn't exactly "all-star", since not only does it include lesser-known characters like Jabberjaw and the Hair Bear Bunch (and of course the Skatebirds, whose show you can't even find episodes of on YouTube), but I've never even heard of ANY of the musical, comedy or ice skating acts in it. I barely even know anything about the hosts, other than that one of them sang country music and the other was on a TV show that starred Valerie Bertinelli.

And it also didn't have anything in the way of comedy, either. None of the gags were funny, Jabberjaw was just annoying, and the laughter, par for the course in a Hanna-Barbera production, obviously came from a can.

In fact, the only thing that Hanna-Barbera's All-Star Comedy Ice Revue promises and actually DELIVERS is...ice. The one thing I can definitely guarantee you is that there is ice in this special. Ice that is both danced and skated upon.

And, honestly, the ice wasn't all that bad.

Fwed Fwintstone wuvs you DIS MUCH.

"Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" (2000)

I hate the goody-goody feelings of Christmas! All this caring and sharing! So I kidnapped Grandma and made Santa Claus the fall guy so I could get all his money! Hey, I deserve to be rich.
--Cousin Mel

It seems with every holiday that comes along, there are always certain unanswered questions to go with them.

Like, why do they call those little candy bars kids get trick-or-treating on Halloween "fun-sized" when everyone knows there's nothing "fun" about a smaller candy bar?

Why do they make grape-flavored Starburst jelly beans every Easter and not grape-flavored Starburst year-round?

But it always seems to be Christmas that has the most curiosity surrounding it.

How can a fat guy in a sleigh fit down a chimney, let alone deliver presents to everyone in the world in one night?

Why does he always deliver the bigger gifts to the kids in a higher tax bracket?

Is Die Hard really a Christmas movie?

But for me, the same question keeps popping up year after year:

WHO THE HELL THOUGHT THAT A NOVELTY CHRISTMAS SONG ABOUT A DEAD RELATIVE WOULD MAKE THE PERFECT FAMILY HOLIDAY SPECIAL?

Yes, they made a TV special out of the 1979 Elmo and Patsy song about vehicular geriatricide on Christmas.

And it is AWFUL.

I'm not just saying this because I have an aversion to corny holiday specials. It is truly bad.

How bad is it? Well, let me put it this way...I hate the song now. That's right. This special has turned me off of it. FOREVER. I can't hear it anymore without thinking of this steaming pile of elf vomit. It is right down there with WHAM's "Last Christmas", that Mariah Carey song and that annoying one with the singing chipmunks.

Directed by television animation legend Phil Roman (you executive produced Garfield and Friends and co-directed Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown, what were you THINKING, man!?) and starring the voice of Elmo Shropshire himself who was also co-writer (J'ACCUSE!!), it was first unleashed on unsuspecting television audiences on the WB (now the CW) in Christmas of 2000. And no one has the common sense to take it off the air yet. They and their partners in crime at Cartoon Network have been showing this multiple times every year since then, for no other reason than to fill up holiday airtime. It has regularly aired on television every Christmas for more than a decade now. It JUST WON'T DIE.

So why would I want to waste my time watching this lukewarm glass of congealed eggnog?

Because nothing says Christmas like a heartwarming TV special about love and caring and family.

And if I have to suffer through it, then so shall you all.

Somewhere there's a Dairy Queen that's missing its mascot.

It all starts in the quaint little town of...Cityville. The town is literally named Cityville. They actually couldn't think of a better name than Cityville. I'm guessing this ISN'T the town with the three super-powered kindergartners and the evil hyper-intelligent monkey with the big hat.

It gets worse. The special focuses on a family named...*snrrkk*...Spankenheimer.

That pretty much sets the tone.

Yeah, they actually had their name legally changed years ago. Before that, they were the Fondlebergs.

Welcome to the Spankenheimer family store, where the staff is friendly, the prices are cheap and you can also get away with shoplifting, because your credit's always good with its proprietor Grandma Spankenheimer.

By the way, her name really is "Grandma." Probably says so on her birth certificate. Turns out her parents were just as unimaginative as the writers.

Well, since there's no point in learning any of the other characters' names, we'll just give you the principal cast. We already know the grandma who I'm guessing at one point in this special will in fact get run over by a reindeer. There's also Jake, the annoying "I-do-believe-in-Santa-Claus-I-do-I-do-I-do-I-do" kid who passes as this story's hero. There's Santa Claus, of course, to encourage this kid's wild imagination. There's a grandpa named Grandpa who mostly sings crappy songs and doesn't really do much anything else. And then there's Cousin Mel, the family entrepreneur who helps run the store with a Southern accent and poorly drawn hair. You can already tell she's the villain from her first line--she's more interested in money and profits and being rich and couldn't care less about warmth and family and giving and stuff.

Her dialogue in a nutshell: "Evil evil evil, rich rich rich, money, money, money...y'all."

Grandma is constantly being made offers to sell the store by the stereotypical CEO of the mega-multi-million-dollar conglomerate who already owns everything else in Cityville. HIS name is Mr. Bucks. Yep, B-U-C-K-S. As in, the synonym for dollars. I'd strangle this cartoon if I could.

Cousin Mel, naturally, has a differing opinion to this, and gets the idea that if people stopped coming to Grandma's store, business would go south and she'd have no choice but to sell it, so she pours some unknown liquid from a perfume bottle into the fruitcake that Grandma distributes every year to customers so as to kill--I mean, SICKEN unsuspecting innocent people.

Yeahhhhhhhh, there's no way that's going to work. Because as it turns out, nobody really eats Grandma's fruitcake. Or even likes it. And they're all too polite to tell it to her face. There's even a song that drives this point home with a series of lame fruitcake gags. As if gags about fruitcake not being safe for human consumption were still funny.

SEE!?! EVEN THE DOG HATES FRUITCAKE! IT'S FUNNY!!!

Anyway, on Christmas Eve, the cast go and reenact the titular song word-for-word, and Grandma has her inevitable accident. Jake sees the whole thing from his bedroom window, but seeing as he's not just the only witness but also an impressionable child, nobody believes him. At least not until morning, when two police officers arrive (one of whom I swear is straight out of Fargo) and find sleigh tracks and a silhouette-shaped Grandma-sized hole in the snow.

Anyway, time passes, Grandma's still missing, her face turns up on milk cartons, blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda, etc., etc., etc.

We're in September now, and Cousin Mel still wants to sell the family store. I'm kinda surprised she hasn't done it yet. So she has Grandpa take her to her favorite restaurant and asks him to sign the paper.

But he announces that he'd rather sing.

How the hell do you get "sing" from "sign"? I suppose you could just switch two of the letters, but that joke only works when it's WRITTEN OUT. It doesn't make sense when you say it out loud.

Anyway, Grandpa sees this botched attempt at a wordplay gag as an excuse to sing about Grandma being dead and partying up in heaven with Elvis and all the other dead celebrities.

This was made for KIDS, can you believe it?

"This Grandma is no more, she has ceased to be, she has expired and gone to meet her maker..."

Meanwhile, after nine months of searching, Jake eventually gets the idea that Santa MIGHT have an email address--it turns out he does--and shoots him a post asking him about Grandma. (Why didn't you do this SOONER?!?! Like, maybe RIGHT AFTER THE ACCIDENT!!!) As it happens, Grandma's at the North Pole now, STILL recuperating from her accident and now with a slight case of amnesia. Santa's been taking care of her this whole time.

Speaking of Santa Claus:

This is our Santa Claus? I always thought Santa was plump and jolly with a loving smile on his face. This guy just looks like a hobo in a Santa suit.

Anyway, right now Santa's so obsessed with Cityville being too wrapped up with themselves to think about him, as opposed to the rest of the world, to the point where he's considering canceling Christmas there (not if the church, white Republicans and Bill O'Reilly have anything to say about it) when Quincy, his chief elf, conveniently shows up with a printout of the email identifying "Grandma X", as he calls her. Santa perks right up and has Quincy pick Jake up to take to see Santa while a corny song about Christmas and sharing and such crap plays in the background.

And now your annual dose of Christmas creepiness.

Santa, Jake and Quincy rush Grandma back to Cityville corporate headquarters so they can stop the sale of the store, but dadgummit, Grandma gets lost again thanks to Cousin Mel's transparently evil lawyer. Fortunately, Santa just being there is good enough, so he proves himself to Mr. Bucks, explains what happened, the sale is called off, the store is saved and everyone lives happily ever after.





Oh, wait, there's still twenty minutes left. Cousin Mel drops a bomb on everyone by asking that Santa be arrested for kidnapping, and Jake does his Anakin-at-the-end-of-Episode-III impression.

Oh dear. Christmas the religious holiday is ruined because its most popular secular icon is going to jail.

Incidentally, Cousin Mel's lawyer's name is "I. M. Slime." ...you know, for a Christmas special that takes place in the town of Cityville, I'm not surprised in the least.

Serves him right, taking Christmas away from Jesus.

Meanwhile, in their cabin hideout deep in the mountains--the only mountain in North America where it snows in early autumn--Cousin Mel and her lawyer contemplate Santa Claus rotting in jail and the two of them winning his entire Yuletide operation in front of Grandma, her mind still a blur, and then calculate how much money they could make off it. Let's see, he spends ten or fifteen dollars on every kid on his Nice list, so just multiply that by the millions of kids in the world that are ON his Nice list and...



Okay, I've heard Carrie Fisher's drug-induced solo at the end of the Star Wars Holiday Special. I've heard St. Nick's off-key aria in that Mexican Santa Claus movie. I've heard "Hooray for Santy Claus".

But THIS is the worst song I've ever heard in a Christmas special:

OHHH IT HURTS!! IT HURTS SO MUCH!!! THESE SONGS ARE TERRIBLE!!

WHAT IS THE POINT OF IT!! WHY IS IT A CARMEN MIRANDA NUMBER!! WHY ARE THEY DRESSED LIKE THAT!! WHY ARE THEY MOVING THEIR HIPS BACK AND FORTH!! WHY!!!!!!

That's it. From now on, I'm only celebrating the winter solstice.

Anyway, Santa's trial lasts clear to December, conveniently threatening Christmas. Back at home Jake's dog Doofus smells something in Mel's backpack as she's leaving the house, so Jake has him follow the scent all the way to Mel's cabin hideout.

...Okay, where does this special take place? Where IS Cityville? Midwestern Police Lady is the only person with a northern accent, Cousin Mel is the only person with a southern accent, and yet Jake can just WALK up into the mountains?

With help from Quincy, who has suddenly reappeared, Jake gets Mel out of the cabin long enough to get Grandma and smuggle her back to the store, where he desperately tries to cure her amnesia. Only a whiff of her infamous toxic fruitcake FINALLY restores her memory. (Hey, her fruitcake's finally good for SOMETHING now, right? ...HA!)

Satan plays this special at the end of his holiday parties when he wants all the guests to leave.

At the courthouse, the judge is about to send Kringle up the river when Jake and Grandma conveniently reveal some last-minute evidence, one of which is that Grandma is in fact alive and kicking. Cousin Mel's plan begins to crumble when results of a forensics test are given on the fruitcake found at the scene of the accident (turns out Mel inadvertently slipped "reindeer nip" into her fruitcake, go fig). And when Grandpa brings in a note left at the scene explaining what happened, which Mel also hid, she sings like a canary, admitting that she arranged this whole thing for no other reason than that she likes being rich and she hates Christmas and all this caring and sharing stuff. Well, if that isn't motive enough, I don't know what is.

Santa is acquitted of all charges as Midwestern Police Lady slaps the cuffs on Mel for "almost ruining Christmas", and then chimes in with "that's what you get for being selfish and stupid." You hear that, kids at home?

Mr. Bucks returns with a new proposition to franchise Grandma's store and put her in charge of the potential chain (meaning she'd still have to sell it to him), the whole family has a big hug, and Grandma gets run over one more time when she opens the tainted fruitcake dish on accident. You know, since it was so funny the first time. Sadly, the credits roll before Santa can circle back and run down the rest of them.

"I don't know why we're making a big deal about this. I CLEARLY had the right of way!"

Check out that one guy on the right. "HOLY @#&!! IS THAT REINDEER TALKING?!"
...Yes, that reindeer does talk. Don't ask.

A major hangup I have with specials like this is the cheesy, ham-fisted messages they give about the celebrations meaning nothing and family being the ONLY true meaning of Christmas. I'm not gonna argue, its heart is in the right place, and I too have problems with the over-commercialization of the holiday season, but consider the alternative--if people REALLY took the morals of specials like this seriously, then nobody would buy any gifts or decorations or anything, and I would think that many a childhood memory of Christmas would include the lights, the tree, the presents and the food as well as the whole "getting together as a family" thing. Not to mention sales would plummet and some stores would financially get hit hard, including small home-grown independent stores like Grandma's that have more to lose. The U.S. economy would very well go into recession and millions of people--who have families to support--would be unemployed. I'm not gonna disagree about corporate bigwigs being soulless money-grubbing bastards--let's face it, many of them are--but I don't think everyone's going to buy into a moral as anvilicious as this while we all have mouths to feed and bills to pay the OTHER eleven months of the year. Plus, there's a hint of irony here, considering the rights to these specials are usually owned by big publicly-traded entertainment companies like Disney, Viacom and Time Warner, who I'm sure make SOMETHING off their home video sales.

And that is this special's only GOOD POINT. Never mind the fact that making a lighthearted family TV special about a song as dark as "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" is generally a bad idea to begin with, the animation is piss-poor, the characters are cookie-cutter, the voices are grating, especially Jake's, the story is ridiculous and the songs range from in poor taste to just unbearable. It isn't funny. It isn't heart-warming. It isn't even entertaining. It's like waking up on Christmas morning and finding one of Santa's reindeer took a dump in your stocking.

And yet there is one thing--ONE THING--keeping me from ranking it above the Star Wars Holiday Special as the all-time worst Christmas special ever made...

No gratuitous Wookiee masturbation.

They say Christmas is a time for miracles.

Bah, humbug.

"You're in the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown!" (1994)

You know America is backwards when Groundhog Day is a holiday and the Super Bowl isn't.
--unknown source

Today is Super Bowl Sunday.

Today, millions of people across the country will gather around their TV sets to watch two of this season's best (or luckiest) NFL teams duke it out for the right to call themselves kings of the professional football mountain.

If you're a football fan from a city that hosts one of these two teams, it'll be a time to sit through four pulse-pounding quarters before either wallowing in defeat or basking in gridiron glory.

If you're just a football fan in general, it'll be a time to participate, whether you have a ticket or not, in the biggest televised sporting event of the year.

Or if you're like me, a graduate of a certain basketball college in the Kansas City area, it'll be a time to go to parties, eat, drink, watch the commercials and make fun of the halftime show.

Speaking of perennial losers...

This was the very first Peanuts special that didn't air on CBS. Makes sense, considering NBC was airing the Super Bowl that year.

It was also the last Peanuts special aired on TV in direct succession to the very FIRST Peanuts special, A Charlie Brown Christmas way back in 1965, as well as the last Peanuts special made before Charles Schulz's death in 2000.

Let's get one thing straight off the bat--Charlie Brown does NOT actually play in the Super Bowl in this special. If you're looking for the one where he DOES play football, you're probably thinking of It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown from 1977. I really didn't understand that one...why did everyone keep blaming HIM for losing the game when it was LUCY who pulled the football away? What kind of football player pulls the ball away from his OWN KICKER? When he's trying to make a GAME-WINNING FIELD GOAL?

But I digress.

The best way to attack this special is to split it into two parts. The first part gets underway immediately as the Birds (no relation to the band who sang "Eight Miles High") are gearing up for their postseason run for the AFL Championship. That's AFL as in "Animal Football League", which basically means you get a lot of scenes of animals standing on their hind legs and tackling each other.

Oh yeah, and Snoopy is their head coach. He is Snoopy; question it not.

Their first game is the Eastern Division Championship against their arch-rivals the Cats, and thanks to Snoopy's coaching, the Cats' general ineptitude and some reused animation, the Birds easily dominate their opponents. They win the game 38-0, are Eastern Division champions, and give Snoopy a celebratory Gator--oh wait, that's a brand name--a celebratory CHIRPade bath.

I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we've passed the audition!

After the opening credits, we begin the second part of this special, and what's a Peanuts special that has anything remotely to do with football without that old chestnut where Lucy holds the ball for Charlie Brown to kick only to pull it away at the last second?

Well, this gag is interrupted by the annoucement of a punt-pass-and-kick competition which all the kids decide to enter, the winner recieving a prize of a new bicycle and tickets to "the finals at the Super Bowl." I thought the Super Bowl WAS the finals...

Meanwhile, Charlie Brown takes Lucy's momentary distraction as an opportunity to try and kick that football she's still holding, with the usual results.

Chuck and Linus take some time to practice when they run into a new girl in town named Miss Melody Melody, whom they are both immediatlely smitten for, and tell her about the contest over some ice cream.

Peggy Jean, the little red-haired girl, and now her. Chuck, you sly dog.

Go on. She's pulled the football away hundreds of times. What makes you think she'll do it again?

Speaking of dogs, we go straight to the AFL East-West Conference Championship, where the birds are playing a team composed of anthropomorphic dogs this time. After some more bumblin', fumblin' and stumblin' and more reused animation, the Dogs prove to be just as hopeless as the Cats, getting pummeled 56-0 and sending the Birds off to the World Championship. And Snoopy gets another Chirpade bath.

Well, the brunt of this next part focuses on the punt-pass-and-kick competition, so we'll just talk about the visual aspects.

First off, the reason you will never find this special on DVD anywhere EVER, apart from its trademark-infringing title--all of the characters in this punt-pass-and-kick competition are all wearing helmets with NFL team logos on them. In fact, you may have also seen the NFL logo on the scoreboard during the Birds' football games. Not sure why it's there, since this is the ANIMAL Football League, but perhaps this was written before the merger.

The 49ers? I think a CHIEFS helmet would suit Charlie Brown better.
Lucy in a RAIDERS helmet, however, is a perfect match.

Also--you know how some of the Peanuts characters have last names? Charlie and Sally Brown? Linus and Lucy Van Pelt? One strip even revealed another character's full name as "Peppermint" Patricia Reichardt.

Well, in this special we learn two more. Give a warm welcome to Franklin ARMSTRONG and Marcie JOHNSON.

Schulz didn't really consider the TV specials canon, however, since some of them had Charlie Brown and Peppermint Patty going to the same school, so I'm sure they're unofficial surnames.

Getting back to the action here, Charlie Brown actually does really well in punting and throwing the ball. In fact he may very well have this competition in the bag.

That is, until Linus takes the field and trumps him by mere inches.

Linus' fleeting moment of glory is spoiled, however, thanks to a dark horse contestant: Miss Melody Melody, who leaves both of them in her dust and takes the bike and the trip to the Super Bowl. Incidentally, she's wearing a Dallas Cowboys helmet, and...didn't they win the Super Bowl that year?

Linus is noticeably crestfallen. As for Charlie Brown...hey, you came in third place. That's better than your baseball team's done...EVER. Maybe you're playing the wrong sport. Or maybe it's because Lucy's not holding the ball this time, I dunno.

Hey, Melody Melody! You've just won tickets to the Super Bowl! What are you going to do next?
"I'M GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!"

Anyway, now that that's happened, let's return to AFL action, where the Birds are in the World Championship.

And who are they playing next? They've already beaten a team of football-playing cats and a team of football-playing dogs...who do they face in the Championship?

Okay, this special's getting weird.

Yes, it's the Birds against a thundering herd of bison in football uniforms for the world championship.

And it seems the Birds have had it too easy for too long. The Bison clearly have an advantage in size and a cunning strategy. The Birds are in way over their heads now as the Bison prove to be too much for them to handle. How will they pull themselves out of this hole? They're clearly over-matched! The Bison are easily dominating this game! Is there any hope for this squad of plucky avians? Somehow they'll have to come together as a team and find a way to overcome this powerful Bison attack!





Nahh, I'm just kidding. It's just more recycled animation of birds running rings around larger animals. The Birds win 68-0 and become world champions. The only difference is that this time, Lucy is there for some reason to talk down the coach and the team, and she gets the Chirpade bath this time.

Wait...didn't Buffalo LOSE the Super Bowl that year? Surreal.

Look at the ref, tossing the coin like he's done this before.

I think I see how this became the last Peanuts special for a while.

Don't get me wrong, it's not completely terrible or anything. The punt-pass-and-kick plot with Melody Melody wasn't at least. Nobody acted out of character or anything, and Marcie even got a couple of funny lines. ("Splendid Bowl"--tee hee). It's just...not very deep. Melody Melody isn't really that interesting a character--she just appears at one point to establish some kind of love triangle story and then doesn't really come back until the very end. And as for the subplot with Woodstock's football team...BISON? Seriously? I mean, I know there's a dog who can walk on his hind legs and fly in a plane first-class, but...BISON?

Well, it's only a hair MORE plausible than a football team composed entirely of birds beating other larger animal football teams by monumental blowouts.

Plus, the animation is not that great and I haven't heard such grating voices in a Peanuts special since It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown. I think you could tell that after thirty-seven specials, four feature films and two TV series, by the time You're in the Super Bowl premiered, they were kind of worn out.

Still, for a Peanuts special, I suppose you could do worse. I mean, there's always It's the Girl in the Red Truck, Charlie Brown.

Ehhh. I prefer soccer anyways.

"The Thanksgiving that Almost Wasn't" (1971)

I do invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States…to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.
--Abraham Lincoln

I bet you didn't know that if it hadn't been for your great-great-great-grandfather Jeremy Squirrel, there never would have been a Thanksgiving.
--the present-day father squirrel in today's special

In 1620, a group of English settlers traveled across the Atlantic on the Mayflower and set foot on Plymouth Rock in Virginia to make new lives for themselves in the New World. After struggling through a cold winter of hardship, they met a tribe of natives who shared their food with them and also taught them how to hunt, catch fish and grow their own vegetables, and that fall the natives and settlers got together and had a big feast to celebrate the first successful harvest.

And thus was the first Thanksgiving.

Or so the history books tell you.

If you go by the 1971 Hanna-Barbera special The Thanksgiving that Almost Wasn't, you may find the history books neglected to mention the talking squirrel.

That's right. If it wasn't for a talking squirrel, we all would not be taking every fourth Thursday of November off to get together as a family and be reminded that there's only one more month until Christmas.

And they're worried about teaching evolution.

Dinner now, then the football game, and then it's off to bed for the early Black Friday sale.

It all began while everybody is getting ready for the big feast, cooking, singing, dancing reusing animation and Thurl Ravenscroft vocalizing.

The talking squirrel in question is named Jeremy, and that autumn afternoon while getting ready for a feast of his own, he finds two children playing in the forest near the village - a pilgrim boy named Johnny Cook and an Indian child named Little Bear - arguing over who is the better turkey hunter, and breaks up their argument to suggest that the two become friends.

"You two shouldn't be fighting! You two should be friends and get along and--"
"HOLY @#&!! IS THAT SQUIRREL TALKING?!?"

After more reused animation of cooking and dancing and whatnot set to the same song, Jeremy notices Johnny and Little Bear chasing small animals in the woods. Incidentally, I think Little Bear would be the better hunter of the two of them--he actually carries a bow and arrow, while Johnny is holding a stick that's made to looks like a rifle. You get them in front of a bear or a wolf and we'll see how Johnny likes to hunt with his little toy. Inevitably, they get lost, and nobody notices they're missing until it's time to sit down and eat. Fearing for their safety, everyone leaves the food to get cold and form a search party to go after them.

Johnny and Little Bear eventually realize they're lost, but they're not fazed. No, not even a near-death experience over a waterfall can, dare I say, dampen their spirits! In fact, after a stern lecture from Jeremy, the boys sing a bright, upbeat song about going home as they march in tune in the direction of the settlement!

In a complete circle.

And now, our interpretation of white man-Indian relations for the next three hundred years.

Finally fed up with with their directional incompetence, Jeremy tells the boys to stay put, and leaving the boys in the capable hands of some other forest animals, goes off to find help. While he's gone, a wolf finds them and chases them. The animals of the forest try to fight it off while of the birds goes after Jeremy, who has just found the search party and was telling them that the boys were safe.

IN SQUIRREL TONGUE.

He's been speaking plain English this whole time and all of a sudden he's squeaking and chittering like a squirrel when it matters the most.

I imagine the writers probably didn't have any dialogue written for this bit, or they could have just kept this scene silent, but this raises a few questions. Does Jeremy talk ONLY to children and other animals and not to fully grown adults? And how can they understand him? Why doesn't he just speak English to them, considering the situation at hand? In this cartoon parallel universe where animals and humans can freely converse with the same tongue, why does Jeremy choose to revert back to squirrel noises when alerting the search party where the boys are?

"Anybody understand what he's saying?"
"I'm still wondering why my kid keeps talking to them."

Anyway, everyone finds the boys as the wolf has them cornered, and Jeremy fights off the lupine beast and...sends him bouncing away on a log seemingly made of rubber.

So the boys are home and safe, and the story finally ends with the first Thanksgiving feast (one day late, so everything's gotten cold) and Jeremy is invited to sit at the head of the table and say grace. Jeremy talks about being thankful for the hard work that went into this feast, and that they have it to eat and share with others. Of course, all the boys sing about is how hungry they are, which kind of insinuates that their experience in the forest has taught then nothing.

And there's The Thanksgiving that Almost Wasn't, which wasn't "almost wasn't" uninteresting. The animation is up to Hanna-Barbera's usual 1970s standards, as in, minimal and reusable. The story is really nothing to write home about - boys get lost, squirrel rescues them, the end. The "first Thanksgiving" backdrop feels kind of superfluous; it feels more like a Lassie episode than a Thanksgiving special. There isn't very much to gain from watching this outside of nitpicking how the Pilgrims and Indians didn't really wear those outfits back then.

But if I've learned anything from this special, it's to be thankful for the squirrels. Especially the ones that talk. If it wasn't for that talking squirrel who saved those two boys so very long ago, we as a nation would take what we have for granted all the time, and not feel fortunate and thankful for all that we have and all that we enjoy every day, and Thanksgiving would be forgotten in the frantic shopping rush between Halloween and Christmas (or more than it already is, anyway).

So when you sit down to that big turkey dinner, remember to thank God for the squirrels who made it all possible.

And to leave an offering of nuts by the tree in your backyard, or else Jeremy's ghost will raid your bird feeder.

Yellow Submarine (1968)

Once upon a time...or maybe twice...there was an unearthly paradise called Pepperland.

Eighty thousand leagues beneath the sea it lay...or lie. I'm not too sure.

From the Cavern Club in Liverpool in 1963 would emerge a quartet which would forever change the face of popular music.

What could be said about the Beatles that hasn't already been said millions of times by millions of people in the past few decades? Apart from "about time iTunes put their music up in their online store"? Most influential rock band of all time, put out some of the best music ever recorded, sold millions of records, at least three of them went on to successful solo careers after their breakup in 1970, blah blah blah, yada yada yada.

With a band as successful as the Fab Four, it seemed only natural that they would make a transition into the motion pictures...and they did, with the 1964 Richard Lester film A Hard Day's Night, regarded by moviegoers all over as one of the greatest rock 'n' roll films of all time. This was followed up one year later with Help!, which I can best describe as A Hard Day's Night with a plot...and also in color. The Beatles weren't too pleased with Help!, and coupled with the poor reception of their 1967 made-for-TV effort Magical Mystery Tour, they were kind of turned off on the whole starring-in-movies thing.

So perhaps it came as a great relief to them that their fourth film would be a little more...animated.

Yellow Submarine was NOT the Beatles' first foray into animation. That honor would go to a 39-episode Saturday morning cartoon series of their namesake produced in 1965 by British animation studio TVC. In it, the band traveled the world, played gigs and got into scrapes not uncommon for any 1960s TV show. The actual Beatles hated it. So when the time came to make this film, TVC threw out their original art and character designs and hired artist Heinz Edelmann to give the movie its trademark psychedelic pop art feel. George Dunning, who had produced the TV series, was chosen to direct.

As for the band themselves, they only agreed to the film as a means of finishing out their movie deal with United Artists, and thus their contribution was minimal. They don't voice themselves, but they did contribute four original songs to the soundtrack--"All Together Now", "Only a Northern Song", "Hey Bulldog" and "It's All Too Much". However, they later saw a draft copy of the finished product and were so impressed by it that they chose to appear as themselves in a live-action cameo at the end of the movie.

The film was remastered and re-released in 1999 for the first time on DVD (I remember giving my sister a VHS copy for Christmas that year) but since then it's gone out of print and hasn't seen another DVD release since. In that time, Robert Zemeckis and Disney had threatened to remake the film with ghastly 3-D motion capture animation and release it in time for the London Olympics next year; luckily those plans were torpedoed by the poor performance of his all-zombie Christmas Carol and the CATASTROPHIC reception of his adaptation of Berkeley Breathed's Mars Needs Moms.

Welcome to Pepperland, a paradise of green pastures and blue skies eighty thousand leagues under the sea, where the air is crisp, the scenery is more colorful than normal, and the music is always playing to the delight of its denizens. Everything's happy and peaceful and love and peace are in the air and all the rest of it. It's also the home of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band--the original one, mind you. Don't know who those other guys were...posers.

We're Sgt. Pepper's. Yes, we're the real Sgt. Pepper's. All you other Sgt. Pepper's' are just imitating.

Meanwhile, far out on the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of Pepperland live some contemptible creatures known as Blue Meanies, who hate music and color and all things nice and won't even answer in the affirmative. No really, they answer every question with "no", even when in the affirmative. They have an army, led by the Chief Blue Meanie, a blue fuzzy thing with rabbit ears and a psychotic demeanor, and his subordinate Max. And they have clowns;

fat men dressed in fezzes who can eat things with their stomachs;

a flying glove;

a squadron of cat-like butterfly stompers;

and some rather tall blokes who like to drop giant green apples on things.

And they're about to launch an invasion. In fact, they just have. Trapping the house band in a giant bubble, they set about laying waste to Pepperland, destroying the landscape, immobilizing civilians, setting off explosions and...dropping giant green apples on things. The Lord Mayor of Pepperland, who only notices that they're under attack when three members of his quartet are suddenly silenced, takes Old Fred (or Young Fred, whichever you like) the sea captain atop an Aztec-like structure where atop sits the titular vessel, and sends him off to points unknown to get help. The submarine takes off just before the Mayor has some giant green apples dropped on him.

After sailing through the title song and opening credits, the submarine finally comes out in Liverpool, England, where after an melancholy inner-city animation sequence to the tune of "Eleanor Rigby", it finds none other than Ringo Starr of the fabulous Beatles, who gets a little nervous as the sub follows him all the way to his house. After docking, Fred makes his situation known to him through the front door via incoherent babbling about submarines and explosions and finishing on Blue Meanies, and Ringo lets him inside their psychedelic TARDIS/cartoon cliche endless hall of doors of a house to gather his friends.

A Frankenstein's monster awakens and drinks a steaming potion to turn itself into John.

George is sitting in a Eastern-style meditation room...but then drives up to Fred and the others from behind.

Paul emerges fresh from an out-of-shot Mozart concert in one of their house's many rooms.

So with all of the Beatles on board, literally and metaphorically, the submarine takes off with the aid of a certain song played to death by those annoying Sprint commercials en route to Pepperland.

Before they get there, however, they must embark on a periolous journey through the many many seas that lie before them. Besides, this is a musical film and we need something to play Beatles songs to.

THE SEA OF TIME

This particular part of the...well, I know there's no water, but let's call it an ocean anyway because I can't imagine a submarine sailing through anything else has the power to alter the passage of time for anyone that passes through it which could be dangerous as there is the risk of death or pre-life and THEN death. Old Fred and the Beatles suddenly become younger (Ringo cries for his mother, very cute) and then age just as rapidly, but a simple sing-song of "When I'm Sixty-Four" and they make it through the area with their present ages.

THE SEA OF SCIENCE

Nothing much happens here--just a set piece for "Only a Northern Song". Most psychedelic moment of the film, though, if you ask me.

THE SEA OF MONSTERS

Whilst observing and occasionally fighting off the local wildlife, and giving the audience some quick visual gags in the process, Ringo accidentally pushes a button which ejects him from the submarine. Fred and the remaining band members must fight off a vacuum monster, a creature with boxing gloves and a swarm of beings made to look like Native Americans to save him.

Eagle-eyed viewers will notice some instruments falling out of the bottom of the sub while the lads are fighting off the boxing monster (plot point), as well as a banner coming out the back with THE ROLLING STONES written on it (not important, just worth mentioning).

The vacuum dude eventually sucks up the submarine, then the background, and then itself, which segues into

THE SEA OF NOTHING

Pretty self-explanatory, this one. Just...nothing. Emptiness. Blankness. Absence of content. Not a good place for the submarine's motor to break down.

Luckily the band finds a local who might help fix it--Jeremy Hillary Boob, Ph.D., a little green guy who talks in rhyming couplets and looks a little like a Blue Meanie except for the fact that he's...well, green. And quite polite as well. He's the "Nowhere Man" who spends all day sitting in his nowhere land making all his nowhere plans for nobody.

Hey, that reminds me of a song.

A song that hurts Jeremy's feeling a little afterward, so Ringo makes up for it by inviting him to join them on the sub.

THE SEA OF HEADS

(also known as the Foothills of the Headlands)

When the sub breaks down again after just having left the Sea of Nothing, Jeremy's attempts to fix it with chewing gum sends it flying off to points unknown, leaving him and the Beatles stranded. As they walk around, John manages to amuse himself with one head that shows pictures of rotoscoped dancing girls and plays "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". Love that song.

Some friendly heads with allergies sneeze them in the general direction of

THE SEA OF HOLES

Another self-explanatory one. Big black dots you can fall through as far as the eye can see, one of which will lead them to the Sea of Green, and from there it's a straight shot to Pepperland. John says that this place reminds him of Blackburn, Lancashire. Jeremy notes that now they know how many it takes to fill the Albert Hall. Ringo pockets one of the holes ("I've got a hole in my pocket") while a random Blue Meanie rummaging though the holes pockets Jeremy.

Ringo finds the Sea of Green by stepping on a green hole, and just like that, they've arrived in Pepperland. Ahead of the submarine by a minute or two, even, but let's not deny it a grand entrance.

THE SEA OF...oh wait, this is Pepperland, we've arrived, sorry

It seems Pepperland has fallen into further decay while Fred was gone. The crowd just stands there totally lifeless, everything is drained of color, Blue Meanies are running around bullying people...sounds like military school without the gun practice. After the Lord Mayor revived with a bit of singing and pulled out of the green apple pile, he notices that the help Fred has brought in bears a striking resemblance to the Lonely Hearts Club Band--hey! The could impersonate them and play the music to rally the populace to revolt!

Only one problem--they lost all their instruments in the Sea of Monsters (go back and watch it again--seriously, blink and you'd miss it) and they'll have to infiltrate the Meanie forces to get to the gazebo where they've stashed every music-making device in Pepperland!

Which they do.

Just another case of The Man trying to keep us down.

The next day, after running away from Meanies, armed with contraband musical ammunition and dressed as the locals' hometown favorites, the Beatles launch the first wave of their campaign to take back Pepperland--a performance of the intro track of their Sgt. Pepper's album--not only do they look just like them, but they also know their songs, what are the odds of that?--which awakens the people to take their freedoms back from the blue menace.

The Meanies retaliate by sending in their flying glove, which momentarily worries the populace, but a defiant John takes him on mano-a-mano (pun intended, Spanish speakers) and with the power of the sudden physical materialization of his words as he sings "All You Need is Love", makes a quick job of him. And with the music bringing the color back to the flora and fauna of Pepperland and the audience digging the vibes, the Meanies are sent packing.

Using Ringo's souvenir from the Sea of Holes, the Beatles dissipate the bubble thing silencing the Lonely Hearts Club Band and together, with the help of a old-timey piano, they confound the Meanies' four-headed bulldog into submission while singing "Hey Bulldog" in a musical moment which was never seen in America until the 1999 remastering.

"What is it?"
"I don't know. Some kind of toilet?"
"Maybe if we bark at it, it'll go away."

Ringo finds and frees Jeremy, and raring to join in the fight he stumbles upon the Chief Blue Meanie, distressed at the sight of his once-menacing forces running away in droves and desperate to get something out of this battle. He attempts to kill Jeremy, but as a last request Jeremy recites some poetry which has the power to sprout roses all over the Meanie's body, sending him away too.

Floral print? I'd thought even a Blue Meanie would have more fashion sense than that.

With the Pepperlanders victorious and the Meanies contemplating moving to Argentina, John shows that they are gracious in victory by inviting the Meanies to join them in their never-ending reverie. Max says no--whether he's in the affirmative or the negative is uncertain--but the Chief Blue Meanie corrects him and accepts his oral peace accord as he's finally seen the error of his authoritarian buzz-killing ways and now wants to join his enemies in an act of peaceful co-existence. Either that or it's a side effect of the roses growing out of his torso, I dunno. Either way, we get a nice and trippy ending montage to the tune of "It's All Too Much" as Meanie and Pepperlander unite in a glorious cacophany of peace and love and music and pop art and stuff like that.

Then the actual flesh-and-blood Beatles appear on screen and lead us all in a final reprise of "All Together Now" to ward off the newer and Bluer Meanies that the actual flesh-and-blood John sees approaching the theater. And there's your movie.

You say you want a revolution.

Basic? Yes. Trippy? Mos def. But the art design is unique, the animation is pretty good and it contains some of the best Beatles songs in their catalog (and this was pre-White Album) as well as a fantastic background score by musical director George Martin. The dialogue is pretty fun too--witticisms, musical references, non sequiturs, the occasional pun, and just watching the Beatles bounce lines off each other and everyone else makes it that much more enjoyable. It also has a very anti-establishment message--the oppressive Blue Meanies are described as simply "all the bad people in the world", so they could represent practically anyone--policemen, politicians, Nazis maybe ("Are you bluish? You don't look bluish"), some of them even smoke cigars and drink martinis, so they could represent Wall Street as far as I'd know.

Interpretations and debates of possible influences aside, Yellow Submarine easily ranks right up there as one of the most fun experiences you could ever have watching a movie. It's sad that it hasn't been reissued on DVD since the one in 1999, partly I assume because of the bankruptcy woes of United Artists' parent company MGM, so it's pretty difficult to find a copy today. Maybe if Zemeckis' remake hadn't been cancelled it would have driven up demand, but them's the breaks I'm afraid. It's easily one of the best animated films ever made, at least among the ones I've seen, and fans of the Beatles and/or classic animated movies will love it.

This is a free concert from now on...