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Connections, in both directions
This was Anastasia , the latest telling of the oft-told tale of a young woman posing as the long-lost Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last imperial ruler of Russia (it was 20th Century's Fox's own second version of the story, though 1956's Anastasia has little to do with 1997's).
The source for the new Anastasia is the Oscar-winning 1956 Ingrid Bergman movie, about the youngest daughter of Czar Nicholas II, long rumored to have survived the execution of the Romanov family during the Russian revolution in 1917.
Ratatouille (2007)
Directed by Brad Bird
influenced by The Secret of NIMH (1982), An American Tail (1986)
Visuals
(Watch for one clear visual nod of acknowledgement to Don Bluth’s The Secret of NIMH .)
From Cinderella to An American Tail , we’ve seen a lot of rodents on the big screen.
(One is an homage to Orson Welles' The Lady from Shanghai , using a field of giant ice floes like a house of mirrors.)
The Nut Job (2014)
Directed by Peter Lepeniotis
influenced by The Secret of NIMH (1982), An American Tail (1986)
Visuals
Credit Disney vet Ken Duncan and the artists at Canadian outfit ToonBox Entertainment with designing what is quite possibly the cutest pack of scavengers to hit the screen since Don Bluth (“An American Tail,” “The Secret of NIMH”) put down his pencil.
Credit Disney vet Ken Duncan and the artists at Canadian outfit ToonBox Entertainment with designing what is quite possibly the cutest pack of scavengers to hit the screen since Don Bluth (“An American Tail,” “The Secret of NIMH”) put down his pencil.
The Great Mouse Detective (1986)
Directed by Burny Mattinson
influenced by The Secret of NIMH (1982)
Visuals
If I could, I'd look back a few years to compare The Great Mouse Detective to another mouse cartoon from the 1980s; Don Bluth's The Secret of NIMH .
Besides, they make this Hollywood evergreen -- the pair who don't trust each other at first but eventually fall in love -- seem as fresh as Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant in Charade.
Borrowing heavily from "Cinderella" and "My Fair Lady" (Anastasia is the spitting image of Audrey Hepburn after a Paris shopping episode) this movie lacks originality to be sure.
The prehistoric quest motif has been covered in animated movies like Dinosaur and The Land Before Time, while the ‘good-natured creatures as surrogate babysitters’ theme seems partially cribbed from 2001’s fantastic Monsters, Inc.
From its beautiful handdrawn images to the three-dimensional computer-generated work, all shot in the 2.35:1 CinemaScope aspect ratio (the first animated feature to be shot so since 1959's Sleeping Beauty), Anastasia truly looks and feels like an epic even when the goings-on are less so.
One of them, Rasputin's I'm-so-evil theme song "In the Dark of the Night," is so cheesy it could have been a left-over from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show."
While the producers include Tim Burton ( Edward Scissorhands ) and Timur Bekmambetov ( Night Watch ) 9 tonally owes more to some of the darker 1980s animated features such as Don Bluth’s 1982 The Secret of NIMH .
Also, it's surprising how lame the character banter and dialogue is, considering the script writers were Ben Edlund (the "Tick" animated series), John August ("Go") and Joss Whedon (TV's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer").
"Titan A.E." was written by three men who should have done something incredible: Ben Edlund (TV's "The Tick"), John August (1999 indie hit "Go") and Joss Whedon (TV's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"; "Toy Story").
Amazingly, the screenplay is by three talented writers: Joss Whedon of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (both the 1992 movie and the current TV show) and Toy Story (1995), John August of Go (1999), and Ben Edlund, creator of the comic book and cartoon series "The Tick".
The plodding story (written by Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Joss Whedon and a gaggle of others) is an uninspired, nonsensical muddle that pilfers freely from the Star Wars movies and a bit from Star Trek II and III.
By the third movie in any kid vid franchise, you’re likely to be more The Land Before Time than Toy Story.
Basically, it’s a mashup of “The Flintstones” and “The Land Before Time.”
Strong in the belief that it was his vision that was truly heir to Walt Disney's own beliefs about the role of animation in popular entertainment, Bluth managed for a short time to give his old company its first serious competition ever in the mid-'80s, seemingly poised to take on the title of The New Walt, unclaimed since Disney's premature death in 1967, until his former employer got its head screwed back on and roared back to life in 1989, as The Little Mermaid wiped the floor with Bluth's All Dogs Go to Heaven , forever crushing Bluth's presence as a major player in American animation.
1995's Pocahontas was the first stumble for the old masters, followed by a quick succession of movies that underperformed commercially and were met with unenthusiastically positive reviews of the "Well, this is okay, but what happened to The Lion King ?" variety.