Tsumura had to watch out for certain problems from the satellite studios. In a rush to meet deadlines, companies farmed work out to their own network of freelancers, which some times created continuity problems.

The logistics of riding herd on a multi-studio, multi-continent effort are daunting, but controllable via now-standard production tracking software. Maintaining continuity and consistency are another story. Tiny details can slip past the sharpest eye, and whether or not a character is on-model is often little more than a judgment call. Tsumura admits that, “it was sometimes a challenge to hook up different sequences. People were going so fast. Sometimes the workbooks, which are the blue prints of every scene, had inconsistencies. For example, it would say Ted’s hat had to be on a table for one scene, but it didn’t say it for the next scene. Then obviously when you watch it, [you ask] ‘Where’s the hat?’

“We said, ‘Hey, this could snowball into something very problematic.’ In the movie there were school kids on a field trip; in the rough animation we had scenes where they were all in a different order in every shot. Our continuity director would have to make sure all the characters were there in the right order.”

The problem was compounded when the satellite studios, in a rush to meet deadlines, farmed work out to their own network of freelancers. As Tsumura describes the problem, “The studios each have a chunk and they’re supposed to watch out for continuity. But when someone is in Orlando and someone else is in Tampa, that’s where the break happens and you inevitably have continuity problems.

“One of the lifesavers was doing all the compositing under one roof in L.A. You would immediately see the problem and try to fix it. Send a message to Florida for example and say, ‘We’re missing elements,’ or ‘It’s not panned correctly,’ or ‘The animation is jittering, fix it.’ Plus we had in-house fix-it teams as well.”

It was a Herculean, race-the-clock effort that paid off, with final tweaks being performed as recently as two weeks before premiere. Tsumura boasts, “We put together a world-class ensemble group that performed a miracle.”

Will Curious George mark the revival of 2D feature animation or is it just a last gasp before its extinction in the U.S.?

But what of the final film itself? Is it true to everyone’s memories of the mischievous monkey while sustaining a feature length story? Thankfully, George is free of the self-congratulatory hipness that is a given in too many contemporary animated features. Winks to audience (including the explanation for Ted’s yellow hat and safari outfit) are kept to a minimum, and apart from a blatant banana plug, the product placement blends into the background. And while Ted’s character arc provides the movie with its narrative, it doesn’t overshadow George’s antics, which are indeed funny. His friendship with Ted rings true as well — truer, in fact than Ted’s romance with his obligatory girlfriend (voiced by Drew Barrymore).

“I have to admit,” says Tsumura, “that if I had to make a prediction of what the film would look like when I started to what it really looks like now, it’s just a beautiful project. The major studios don’t even put out direct-to-videos in the time that we produced this quality. I’m crossing my fingers that it’ll be a date movie-type of thing, but I think it’s primarily going to skew towards families, which is in a great market to be in too.”

Whether it’s a great enough market to recoup the film’s production costs (under $50 million according to Universal, a figure viewed with skepticism by many given the film’s history) remains to be seen. Then there’s the bigger question of whether Curious George marks the revival of 2D feature animation or just a last gasp before its extinction. “People are looking at it as the Alamo of 2D,” says one longtime animator. “Then again, they said the same thing about The Iron Giant and Eight Crazy Nights. It had better make a lot of money — there’s nothing else 2D in the pipeline right now.”

Joe Strike lives in New York City and writes for and about animation; he’s this close to finishing his children’s novel.