NOTE: This post contains a few mild spoilers about movies you've either already seen or probably won't ever.
If any of you have perused my profile, you might have noticed All Dogs Go To Heaven listed under my favorite movies and some might have thought it was a joke. This couldn't be much further from the case. The golden age of childrens' animation lasted well over a decade, but it's long dead. This was a time when the industry wasn't averse to grit, darkness, or the good old-fashioned horrors of reality. While the endings were still generally happy - and there's nothing wrong with that - you could surely expect blood, tears, corruption, death, failure, and a lot of other themes that today's kids' movies can be arsed even to allude to.
While this is a sentiment I've carried for almost as long as I can remember, what sparked me to finally write something about it was my recent acquisition of a copy of Watership Down, a dark story of fear and oppression born out of the UK. By it's premise - a group of rabbits search for a new home - it sounds like it could exist in this day and age. Dig a little deeper into the subject matter, and you'll see it most certainly couldn't. Until Kehaar, the drunk Russian seagull shows up, this isn't a journey lightened by comic relief, it's one marred by danger. The group is hunted by animals, shot by farmers and conspired against by other warrens. The climax of the movie features several graphic deaths ranging from throats being torn out to lacerating tosses through the air. I'm not saying all the blood is necessary, but the themes carried in this movie could better prepare a kid for the real world than the fairy gumdrop bullshit you'll find in Space Penguins go to Space or whatever the hell's in theaters now.
Flash forward to 1989. Childrens' animation as a respectable purveyor of storytelling is in its last throes. Donald Bluth releases an admirable stronghold against the oncoming tidal wave of cutesy drivel piling up in the industry. All Dogs Go to Heaven took a few steps towards what today's kids movies represent, but still told a compelling and gritty story, especially for its time. A glance at its cover and it looks wholesome, but make no mistake, this movie follows the story of two smoking, drinking dogs, one of whom co-owns a gambling bracket. Not long into the movie, his business partner gets him drunk and runs him down with a car in an act of unbridled greed. Our hero, Charlie, condemns himself to Hell by escaping heaven and returning to the world of the living. He reunites with his friend Itchy, at which point they proceed to exploit an orphan's ability to speak with animals as a means of rigging horse races.
So how pissed am I when we have to consider something like The Incredibles "daring" in this day and age, just because it deals with some bleak views? It pains me that nothing like either of two aforementioned movies will ever be released again. It's depressing that I'll find more childrens' movies I respect by looking backward than will ever be released during my lifetime. It absolutely kills me that the mainstream idea of 'style' in 3D animated movies revolves almost completely around proportions.
If I ever have kids, I'm not taking them to see Ice Age 7. We're popping my All Dogs Go to Heaven cassette into the dusty VCR and making sure at least one more kid ends up aware that sometimes life spits in your drink and pushes you down the stairs. I'm not gonna be the parent that blames the media for their own failures as a caregiver. I can only blame them for piling all of the best childrens' stories of our time onto a dead cassette format.
End rant. Sorry if that got pretentious, long-winded or melodramatic :P
Fawx
I miss the old days.