Yellow Submarine

By Richard Corliss | June 23, 2011 | +

Everett

Director: George Dunning

Year Released: 1968

Cast: The Beatles, Paul Angelis, John Clive, Dick Emery, Geoff Hughes, Lance Percival, Peter Batten

Intended to take the songs of the Beatles into the medium of animation — and to cash in on the 1960s’ greatest and most profitable pop phenomenon — Yellow Submarine somehow found a sense of humor and sophistication worthy of the Fab Four. To translate the group’s groovy, borderline-psychedelic spirit to pictures, Canadian animator George Dunning assembled a writing team that included Erich Segal, soon to be famous as the author of Love Story, and Roger McGough, Britain’s foremost punster poet. They came up with a free-form, mostly underwater narrative that sent the lads (voiced by soundalikes) swimming backward and forward through the Sea of Time, getting lost in the Sea of Nothing and fighting a vacuum-cleaner beast in the Sea of Monsters, all while fighting off the evil Blue Meanies on their trip to Pepperland.

Some sequences were their own short films (Charles Jenkins created the poignant “Eleanor Rigby” segment), but the thing held together thanks to the hallucinatory opulence of Heinz Edelmann’s design. A G-rated head trip, the movie appealed to kids, their stoned older siblings and their hip parents. As A Hard Day’s Night and Help! had invigorated live-action film a few years before, so Yellow Submarine proved that the Disney style wasn’t the only way for animated features, and the film’s financial success made possible rougher fantasias such as Fantastic Planet (1973) and Heavy Metal (1981). Could the movie, so indelibly a part of its era, speak to ours? Robert Zemeckis thought so: he planned a 3-D version for release in 2012. But after the box-office failure of his animated Mars Needs Moms, his sponsoring studio — Disney — killed the project.

Next: Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!

Related Topics: Adventure, Comedy, The Beatles, Yellow Submarine

Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!

By Richard Corliss | June 23, 2011 | +

Everett

Director: Jimmy Hayward, Steve Martino

Year Released: 2008

Cast: Jim Carrey, Steve Carell, Carol Burnett

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In the Jungle of Nool, something foreign — the nearly infinitesimal planet of Who-ville — lands on a piece of clover, and Horton the elephant (voiced by Jim Carrey) detects cries from the clover speck. He can’t see the little Whos, but he deduces, believes, knows they’re in there; and his caring instinct tells him that they must be protected, against the collective protestations of other jungle creatures. Who-ville’s microscopic mayor (Steve Carell) has the same problem convincing his constituents that some giant unseen creature wants to help them. Ted Geisel’s 1954 book is about belief in what you can’t see, fidelity to a cause that others think is ridiculous and community service to reach an improbable goal. We’re all in this together, Seuss says; everyone’s important. Or, as Horton puts it: “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”

This children’s classic — a plangent plea for kids’ rights — was the source material for a 1970 TV cartoon by the great Warner Bros. animation director Chuck Jones. In the feature version from Blue Sky Studios, directors Jimmy Hayward (a veteran Pixar animator) and Steve Martino elaborated on the TV show’s designs to develop a dense, gorgeously goofy Who-ville — a town whose bright colors and sweetly tilting towers might have been dreamed up on a peyote-munching jag by Antonio Gaudi and Red Grooms. (Who-ville’s daft architectural logic makes a comely contrast to the jungle lushness of Nool.) As the faithful elephant and the cheerfully addled, increasingly desperate mayor, Carrey and Carell do inspired voice work. Though there are enough clever gags to entertain the most demanding media-savvy toddler, Horton remains faithful to the Seuss spirit, 100%. Blue Sky produced the Ice Age franchise, whose first three films have earned nearly $2 billion in movie houses worldwide, and this year’s color-and-comedy riot Rio, but Horton is still the studio’s peak achievement.