You may notice I generally gave some poor scores, but highly recommend this movie. Why? It's a perfect example of why communication is important. This movie has everything it needs to be amazing. It was worked on by some true animation giants. Chuck Jones of Looney Tunes fame, who invented many standards of animation that are used to this day. Ray Bradbury, writer of Fahrenheit 451. Music by the Sherman Brothers, who wrote a ton of music I guarantee you know! Even Hayao Miyazaki, the man the myth the legend, worked on the film for a brief time. If you look closely you can see their influences. And there are some other big names linked to this project.
So why do so many rights make a ginormous wrong?
Lack of communication.
Some are quoted as saying they asked the animators what they were working off of, "we're just illustrating what Bradbury is writing" and when Bradbury was asked what he doing he said "I'm just putting in writing what these wonderful artists are drawing"
Insert screaming melty man pop art. I highly recommend you watch this movie simply because it is such a piece of animation history with so many big names on it. You can see Chuck Jones' influence in the design of the squirrel Icarus. And some scenes, like them fancifully bouncing around the kingdom on balls while a song plays, are clearly worked on by Miyazaki. It's fun to watch and try to spot who animated what.
This is definitely a film to watch when you're in the mood for a bad movie.
