Gulliver's Travels

Hey kids! Wanna guess what movie we are doing next? Let me give you some hints. It is from the 1930’s, the main character is animated via rotoscoping, and all the comedy relief sidekicks are named after adjectives and/or voiced by Pinto Colvig. If you said Snow White, you are absolutely incorrect. I am talking about Fleischer Studios’ Gulliver’s Travels which should be more appropriately be called I Can’t Believe It’s Not Snow White as it has next to squat in common with the novel it is based on. As a little back story, this movie came out in 1939 and was produced in less than two years. That is an insanely short amount of time for an animated movie, even by today’s standards. Fleischer Studios wanted to get in on the Snow White craze ASAP, and boy does it show. The copyright for it expired and was never renewed so feel free to look it up on You Tube…if you dare.

Enough beating around the bush, and let’s get on to the review. The movie opens up appropriately enough with Gulliver. His boat is caught in a storm and gets wrecked. He barely makes it out alive and collapses on the beach. And this is the most action you are going to see him do for the first half of the movie. I wish I was exaggerating, but I am not.

We then cut to Lilliput. Here’s a fun little fact for you: there was originally eight Dwarfs. That’s right. And roughly two weeks before they met Snow White they decided they had enough of their eighth member, Gabby. After losing his job at the diamond mine, he was forced to take the position of the town crier for the Lilliputians. Okay so I just made that story up, but what is true is that Gabby is voiced by Pinto Colvig, a.k.a. the voice of Grumpy and Sleepy. That just shows how much effort Dave and Max Fleischer put into making this masterpiece.

Anywho, Gabby is walking along and stumbles across Gulliver’s seemingly lifeless body. Once he realizes he is standing on a “giant”, he high tails it back to King Little’s castle. Unfortunately for Gabby, King Little is in the middle of signing a wedding contract with King Bombo of Blefuscu. Little’s daughter Glory is madly in love with Bombo’s son David. As they are working out the wedding plans, the subject of what song to play comes up. Little wants to play a song called “Faithful” and Bombo wants a song called “Forever”. Since they can’t make up their minds, Bombo calls off the wedding and declares war. I guess they were just too stupid to realize that they could have just played both songs. Then again they would probably fight over who gets to play what song first.

As Bombo storms out of the castle with Prince David he talks to his three spies Sneak, Snoop, and Snitch. I am not really sure who is who. I am also not sure what they were doing out there in the first place. Was Bambo expecting to get into a fight or was he just a bad dude to begin with? This was never really explained. As Bombo gets into his carriage he starts flashing back to stuff that happened five minutes ago. He remains true to his word that a war is on the way even though he feels bad for breaking his son’s heart.

Back with King Little, he is mumbling to himself about the upcoming war and Gabby is trying to tell him about the giant on the beach. The scene goes like this:

Little: *mumble, mumble* War *mumble, mumble*

Gabby: There’s a giant on the beach!

Little: Put a sock in it, Gabby.

(Repeat x100)

Finally after Dopey Gabby suggests that the “giant” might be a spy from Bombo, Little finally listens and has Gabby gather up all of Lilliput to go to the beach. They don’t see Gulliver since they were standing on him. When they realized what they were standing on, they construct an elaborate pulley system to pick him up and bring him back to the king. The construction scene goes on for literally ten minutes in a not so very long movie.

I am not sure who this guy is, but I feel that he would have made a better comedy relief character than Gabby. 

Once in Lilliput, King Little gets the bejeezus scared out of him by the size of Gulliver, but the other Lilliputians look on in awe. They marvel at the size of his pocket watch, telescope, and gun. When the latter accidentally goes off, Gulliver wakes up. He seemed to be unfazed that he was surrounded by little people. Everyone runs for cover, but Gabby is unable to get back into the castle. 

Squish him, Gulliver. Squish him like the annoying bug that he is. 

His nonchalant wonder doesn’t last too long as King Bombo’s men started to attack. Once they lay eyes on Gulliver, they retreat. The Lilliputians realize that Gulliver is a friendly giant that will protect them from King Bombo. They celebrate by making him new clothes as they sing “Whistle While You Work” “Hap-Hap-Happy Day”.

Back at King Bombo’s castle, he sends his pigeon, Twinkletoes out with a letter to his spies back in Lilliput. The letter tells them that they must destroy that giant. They are confused on how to do it until the shortest one (again I don’t know who is who) suggests they steal Gulliver’s gun and use it against him.

Meanwhile the Lilliputians have a dinner party for Gulliver where they is a lot of singing and dancing. Yeah it was pretty much just pointless filler.

We should be thankful they chose this route instead of having 30 Lilliputians stacked up in a trench coat. 

The next morning Sneak, Snoop, and Snitch are loading the gun, when the short guy tells him that Gulliver is coming. They hide the gun and dowsed out the light as fast as possible. They get the ingenious idea of burying the lantern in hay. This in turn causes the house to catch on fire. Gulliver puts it out with some water. We should be thankful that he didn’t drop his drawers and pee it out like Jack Black did.

Later that night Gabby is in his room and he hears someone singing “Forever”. He knows that is King Bombo’s song so he calls the guards. It turns out it was just Prince David singing to Princess Glory (Bombo's son and Little's daughter since I know you completely forgot about them), but they have a sword fight nevertheless. It was a very pointless sword fight that went on for way too long and repeated the same unfunny gag where Gabby loses his sword roughly 147.8657 times. Gulliver shows up and takes the Prince and Princess away. Off screen they explain their situation on how they can’t get married. Gulliver gets the idea that the two should sing both of their songs together. Why no one thought of this in the first place is beyond me.

While this is going on, King Bombo and the spies were communicating back and forth with Twinkletoes. When Twinkletoes was taking a break, the demented Dopey from Hell shows up and reads the letter saying that King Bombo was attacking at dawn. The Lilliputians set out to defend themselves. They get Gulliver to join them. Meanwhile the spies kidnap Gabby for some reason. I shouldn’t really complain however. It is a good thing he is gone.

Down at the beach, Gulliver demands that King Little and King Bombo need to stop. He pulls Bambo’s ships in by their anchors. As he does that the baddies are loading his gun and ready to fire. Have no fear, as Prince David shows up in the nick of time to divert the bullet. But unfortunately he falls to his doom. As Gulliver lectures the two kings on how there stupidity caused them the death of David, he comes back to life. Everyone starts to sing a hybrid of “Faithful” and “Forever”. They build Gulliver a boat so he can ride off into the sunset.

The End

Side Note: This movie spun off a series of cartoons staring Gabby. They are also in the public domain so if you have some time to spare and don’t value your sanity look them up. I am not sure if there was a demand for these, or if Max and Dave Fleischer assumed that people wanted this just like they wanted Walt Disney to do a Dopey spin off. In either case I do remember my family having a couple of VHS tapes with public domain cartoons on them and there were at least a couple Gabby episodes. I am not sure if this is a false memory or not, but I remember kind of liking them because Gabby reminded me of Dopey. Also there were a shorter lived series starring Twinkletoes and the three spies. Not sure if they are in the public domain, but my hunch says that they are.

The Pros:

• I guess it wasn't as bad as I made it sound. It is okay for mindless entertainment. I honestly feel that most of this movies problems can be solved with one or two rewrites of the script. 
• Some of the music was pretty cool, especially at the end.

The Cons:

• The pacing is an absolute mess. The title character is unconscious for the first half of the movie, nearly one third of the movie is either the two kings planning the wedding or the Lilliputians moving Gulliver, so much pointless filler, etc
• The characters are weak. No one was fleshed out enough to make you want to care about them.
• If you thought the rotoscoping in Snow White looked dated and weird, you ain't seen nothing yet.
• It was obvious Fleischer Studios was working outside of their comfort zone. Paramount forced them to be like Disney instead of being themselves. I heard that originally this was going to be a feature length Popeye cartoon. That sounds a heck of a lot better than this.

I give it ** out of *****. 

Brave Little Toaster

This is a special little nostalgic movie for me. Just for those of you who are not in the know, this is a movie released in 1987. Although it isn’t from Disney it was played on the Disney channel quite often and distributed on VHS by them. It also has several folks that later went to Pixar such as John Lasseter and Joe Ranft working on it. It also has two DTV sequels from the '90's called Goes to Mars and To the Rescue. As of this writing they were both available on Netflix and I don't recommend either one. I remember watching this movie, however, a lot when I was little. I also remember taking my toys to reenact scenes from the movie. My mom even bought me an old toaster from a garage sale and painted a face on it to add to the collection. I thought to myself: “would a movie like this hold up?” I mean what a five-year-old loves and what is good to an adult are often times two wildly different things. It was because of that I decided that this movie was worth reviewing.

It opens up with rather ominous music playing in an abandoned cabin in the early morning. An alarm radio goes off. Someone from off screen yells to keep it down and shines a light. Then this person reveals himself: he is a living lamp (named Lampy). Dun dun dun. And the radio is alive too. Dun dun dun. That’s right. All the appliances in the cabin are alive. We are later introduced to Blanky the electric blanket, Kirby the vacuum, the nameless air conditioner, and, of course, the titular toaster.

When they wonder what they are going to do that day, Kirby says they are going to do what they do every day: Try to take over the world Do chores. To make it more fun Radio plays “Tutti Frutti” by Little Richard. As they are happily working, Blanky stops abruptly and stares off into space. He quietly whispers “A car”. That is the cue for the other guys get a bunch of chairs stacked up so Blanky can climb into the attic and look out the window. As Toaster asks if it is “The Master”, Blanky gets sucked into a fantasy where The Master and his parents were coming home. Blanky snaps back to reality when the car just drives on past the cabin.

I wonder why my appliances don't come to life when I am gone and clean. I must own some real lemons

The Master is the bespectacled little boy that owned them. Or at least he owned Blanky, Lampy, and Radio. I am not sure why Toaster and Kirby think the kid is going to be dying to see them again. Oh well. Blanky and Kirby start arguing about whether or not The Master will ever come back, the previously mentioned air conditioner turns on, laughing manically. He essentially calls the other guys idiots for thinking The Master will ever return. When Toaster and Kirby tell him that he is just jealous because he is stuck in the wall and The Master never played with him, he has a heart attack and dies.

After that charming episode, they hear another car. Only this time it is really close. Excited that it might just be their Master, they get into place. To their horror, they realize that this car belongs to a Realtor that is hammering in a “For Sale” sign. As the others cry, Toaster gets on a soapbox (literally) and says that he is going out to find The Master and they should join him. (Just as a side note I am going to be referring to Toaster with male pronouns. I understand that this is a controversial topic for many as Toaster was treated as a male in the movie, but has a woman’s voice and was referred to as female in an interview with the director. If you are in the “Toaster is a girl” camp, you have been warned.) Slowly, one by one, he convinces the others to join him.

After about half a dozen hare-brained plans from Lampy on how they should get around, they settle on riding an office chair with Kirby pulling and a car battery for power. They head out into the great unknown. The next morning, they come to another clearing, only this one is filled with animals! And they are doing weird stuff like singing, synchronized swimming, and making funny faces at Toaster. I would cry “big lipped alligator moment” but I feel that is a bit cliché. Toaster runs away from all of this madness only to stumble upon a flower. The flower falls in love with its own reflection (narcissist!)  When Toaster tells it that it is only a reflection, it withers and dies. When that second big-lipped alligator moment was over, he saves Blanky from being kidnapped by mice and suddenly decides it was time to leave.

Shouldn't the fridge be alive too? 

They enter into a dark forest, with ominous music playing. That can’t be a good sign. Fortunately, Blanky makes himself into a tent to protect the other guys as they rest. After they all go to sleep, Toaster has a nightmare about The Master being taken away in smoke, a demonic clown firefighter, giant forks coming for him, all ending with him falling into a bathtub. Upon awakening, he sees a thunderstorm a-brewin’. Blanky gets carried away in the wind, and the battery they had attached to their chair has gone dead meaning they are trapped. Lampy makes a heroic sacrifice by using himself as a lightning rod to recharge the battery. I don’t think that would work in real life, but what the hay. Don’t worry about Blanky. Once the storm cleared, they saved him from a tree.

The guys get to a waterfall which leads to Kirby having a panic attack. Once he got snapped back to normal, the come up with a plan to cross the waterfall by tying their cords together and throwing Toaster to the other side. Toaster has a panic attack himself and accidentally drops the cord and they all (except for Kirby) fall to their doom. Kirby plunges down the waterfall to save his friends (who surprisingly all float despite the fact they are made out of metal). The river ends at a swamp, where they all fall into quicksand, only to be saved by an appliance repair man named Elmo who happened to be driving through the swamp with his big wheel truck for some unexplained reason.

Elmo takes them to his store filled with all sorts of horrors such as loose motors and cords out for sale. When Elmo leaves they are greeted by all the appliances that live in the store, and they learn the horrible truth: Elmo is a psychotic madman who takes appliances apart. Of course to us he is just doing his job, to them he is Hannibal Lector. After watching Elmo brutally murder a blender for its motor, they come up with a plan to save themselves by pretending to be a monster. After scaring the bejeezus out of Elmo they take off in the baby buggy they stole from him.

Now we finally get to see The Master in real life. His name is Rob and he isn't a little kid anymore. In fact he is heading off for college. He is telling his mom that he and his girlfriend (Chris) are heading out for the cabin to pick up the old appliances to take to his dorm. When they leave the apartment, all of Rob’s stuff comes to life and are in a panic. How dare Rob bring some old junk to his dorm instead of them!

We cut back to Toaster and company and they have finally made it to the big city. With the help of a phone book and a friendly traffic light, they make it to Rob’s apartment. There they are greeted by Rob’s appliances who look like they are plotting something that isn’t exactly wholesome. They also reconnect with Rabbit Ears, the old TV that used to live in the cabin with them. The new guys break into a song about how they are on the cutting edge of technology circa 1980's. After that horribly dated bit, our heroes get kicked out the window and into a dumpster.

Now we just need to find the Pizza Planet truck and the character voiced by John Ratzenberger. 

Back at the cabin, Rob is trying to show Chris about how much fun he had as a kid, but she doesn’t believe him. The place is a dump (remember all the wacky hijinks that happened before the guys set off). Rob also realizes that most of the appliances are gone. He does notice the broken air conditioner. Rob fixes him because he apparently has the skills of a repairman. When Rob leaves, Air Conditioner comes to life and cries tears of joy. He was finally used by The Master. Rob is sad however as he had his heart set on bringing his old stuff from the cabin to college.

Toaster and the rest of the gang are at the dump watching old cars accepted their fate by being smashed into cubes. Back at Rob’s apartment, Rob and Chris are decided on where to go shopping for a vacuum and stuff. Rabbit Ears is desperately trying to get their attention by running faux commercials with the dump’s address on them. After what seemed like forever, he finally gets their attention. So Rob and Chris head out to what they think is an appliance store but is actually the dump. For some reason the super magnet at the dump is hellbent on destroying our heroes by picking them up and putting them on the conveyor belt as much as he (she, it?) can. When Rob notices his old stuff on the conveyor belt he picks them up and all is well.

Well not really. He grabbed up Lampy, Radio, Kirby, and Blanky (Toaster jumped off before Rob could get to him). The evil magnet came back sucking up everything including Rob. He gets put on the conveyor belt and covered by junk so he couldn’t move. He is headed for the smasher and there is only one thing Toaster could do: sacrifice himself by plunging into the gears to stop the conveyor belt. The smasher stops inches above Rob who can only sigh. Somehow off screen Chris must of pulled the junk off of him and he must of realized his toaster was mashed into the machine’s gears because they are back at the apartment. Rob fixes up Toaster as good as new, and loads everyone into his car and heads off for college.

The Pros:

• Fully fleshed out 3-dimensional characters (or at least the main characters)
• An amazing soundtrack and score
• It was a “quest” movie, and I am a sucker for “quest” movies.

The Cons:

• The animation can get pretty sloppy at times. Since the budget was only around $2 million I will let this one slide.
• There is a huge plot hole: It was established they need a battery to move, but they lose it during the waterfall incident and never had any problems since.

Overall I give it ***** out of *****.