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ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 5.02 - MAY 2000
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The Problem With Bad Teeth
Sounds nice but a cold shower follows. After showing the video with Loisel's images, Coldewey says first of all, of course, that Peter's bad teeth will be redrawn. The reason soon becomes clear: Trixter wants to sell the film to the U.S. market and one cannot have an animated character with bad teeth there -- not even in a film that tells about an extremely poor and neglected slum child of London's East End in the 1880s. Goodbye Dickens and historical facts, hello sleek entertainment with modern dental care. The paradox is that Loisel didn't want to sell his story’s rights to the big U.S. animation company that was interested. He wanted to keep it in European hands. Now the European producer seems to be writing a story that is fit for U.S. cinemas; for a country where practically no foreign films are screened. "We are currently rewriting the story for family entertainment. We do not use all the parts of the albums," director Coldewey says. According to my judgement, they aim to cut the "sex and nudity" away. The story includes very little of these banned things and they are an integral part. One of the main lines of the original story is the robbing away of childhood with structural and physical violence. Another is the sexual awakening of a young boy. All this Loisel tells with a sensitive style, filled with innocence and understanding. Coldewey says that Loisel is following the developments and has accepted the changes. "He knows the process and understands that making a film is different than making an album and needs a wider audience." Loisel was involved with the development of Disney's Tarzan. He was one of the artists figuring out how Tarzan would look. Finally Disney only used the dreadlocks-type hairstyle from his drawings, though they were afraid it would look untidy. Loisel reminded them that Tarzan lives in a jungle with apes; he cannot look as if just walking out of a barbershop.
New Releases The story is an intelligent pastiche of traditional British detective stories, with a smart script, which is full of imagination. The story runs slowly, perhaps too slowly for audiences of this millennium, but is hilariously funny. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.2. This science-fiction action story is based on the U.S. comic book and is also known as a computer game. The story is straight from the most common cliches of the genre: A man, who is a real bundle of muscles, finds a jewel that gives him supernatural powers and greed for killing and conquering the world. He kills the family of a young —surprise, surprise -- big breasted and lightly dressed woman who finally kills him. |
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