My Favorite Season of Faerie Tale Theatre

Posted on November 4, 2023 by stationmaster

As some of you may know, probably more of you than knew about Jim Henson’s The Storyteller, Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre was an anthology show that ran from 1982 to 1987. Each episode was a retelling of a classic fairy tale, using a loose definition of that genre, with an all-star cast. Many of the episodes were affectionate parodies of their source material. As we’ll see though, some of them played it straight. Not only did the show have big name actors but it usually had sharp writing. The visuals, on the other hand, were terrible at a first glance. Nothing looks good filmed on Video and the show’s use of greenscreen was laughable. But even visually Faerie Tale Theatre could impress. True, the sets and costumes were very obviously fake, but they weren’t trying to look like anything else and, largely thanks to production designer Michael Erler, they could still be lovely. (This show has the word, theatre, in its title, remember? Thinking of it as a filmed stage play should put you in the right frame of mind to appreciate it.) And Faerie Tale Theatre‘s secret weapon was its music, much of which, courtesy of composer Stephen Barber, was legitimately beautiful. The show’s quality wasn’t as consistent as that of The Storyteller, though to be sure it went on for longer and had more opportunities to disappoint. For me, it peaked in consistent high quality with the second season in which every episode was great except for Jack and the Beanstalk, which was actually one of the show’s lamest. Anyway, here’s a rundown of Season 2.

While Faerie Tale Theatre was marketed toward family audiences, its humor tended to be aimed at mature viewers and was sometimes downright raunchy. (What can I say? It was the 80s, a different time.) But there were also episodes that were quite family friendly, which can make it frustrating for parents figuring out whether to watch it with their kids. With that in mind, I’m going to do something I don’t normally do on this blog: include a content warning for each episode, so my readers who are parents of young children can decide which ones to share or avoid sharing with them. My readers who don’t like risqué humor at all may also find these helpful. Those who enjoy it, on the other hand, will be mad at me for ruining the jokes. Sorry, guys.

Rapunzel

This was the show’s third episode and the first of the second season. If you ask me, this is where they really found their groove. While neither was without its charms, the pilot episode, The Tale of the Frog Prince, written and directed by Monty Python alum Eric Idle, was largely a parody heavy on humor that was inappropriate for kids, and the second episode, Rumpelstiltskin, was a simple straightforward retelling of the story with little or nothing specifically for adult viewers. This episode found a good middle path. It has a fun, lighthearted tone. For one thing, Rapunzel’s mother, Marie (Shelley Duvall who doubles as Rapunzel herself) ultimately convinces her husband, Claude (Jeff Bridges who doubles as the prince) to steal from a dangerous witch (Gena Rowlands)’s garden by saying that her mother was right about him. Yet it sticks close to Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm’s story and even delves into some of its darker themes. A surprising decision it makes is to portray the witch as young and glamorous rather than old and cronelike.[1]Well, glamorous in a 1980s kind of way. It also portrays her as a tragic villainess as much as it can while maintaining that light tone. Her motives for wishing to keep the longhaired heroine from men are strongly implied to be because of traumatic experiences of her own with them. At one point, a rebellious Rapunzel snaps at the witch for never giving her a father. The witch automatically strikes her and then briefly looks horrified by her own actions. There’s also something poignant about how even as Rapunzel is willing to defy the woman who raised her and run off with a near stranger, she can’t bring herself to break the witch’s prohibition against cutting her hair.

Parental Advisory: When Marie initially wakes up craving a radish, Claude suggestively asks if she wouldn’t prefer “a nice cucumber.” When Rapunzel first meets the prince, she curiously asks him if he’s a man. He looks down at himself and says, “I certainly hope so.” He seems eager when he hears that Rapunzel has never met a man before. Once he climbs up to her prison and she gets a really good look at him, she describes herself as feeling “warm and tingly all over and kind of scary too” but “a good kind of scary.” After their first kiss, she asks if it gets any better. He grins and nods. This adaptation retains the twins to which Rapunzel gives birth in the desert though the narrator (Roddy McDowall) explains this for innocent viewers by saying that she and her prince “considered themselves husband and wife” and that their children “were born of love.”[2]In the first edition of the Grimm story, Rapunzel’s pregnancy was what tipped the witch off to her secret relationship. Apparently, they deemed this too immoral for children and had Rapunzel … Continue reading

Worst Special Effect: The animated blood that pours from the prince’s injured eyes and Rapunzel’s magical tear that heals them are laughably bad and sadly ruin what should be dramatic moments.

Funniest Line: Witch: When I find him, I’m going to gouge his eyes out. I’m going to make his brains into soup.
Rapunzel: Mother!
Witch: Now, Rapunzel, don’t be hasty to judge it until you’ve tried it.

The Nightingale

This is one of the episodes that tries the hardest to capture the style of its source rather than playing it for laughs. Of course, since Hans Christian Andersen’s story about a plain bird (here voiced by Shelley Duvall) whose beautiful voice makes it a hit at the semi-tyrannical emperor of China (Mick Jaggers)’s court until the courtiers grow to prefer an easily controlled and shinier clockwork bird, already had laughs. But those reflected Andersen’s sense of humor, not necessarily Faerie Tale Theatre‘s sense of humor. The script by Joan Micklin Silver stays very close to the style and content of the source material. The biggest addition being the expanded role of the kitchen maid (Barbara Hershey giving one of the most dramatic performances seen on Faerie Tale Theatre) who leads the court to the nightingale. This version gives her a vital relationship with the emperor. The production design, inspired by the art of Edmund Dulac, are beautiful and so is the soundtrack by Stephen Barber. The climax where the embodiment of death itself (Bobby Porter) comes for the ailing emperor is one of the most legitimately creepy things to appear on this show. Kudos to director Ivan Passer for this episode! If only the series’ take on The Snow Queen had done as much to capture to feel of Andersen’s writing.

Parental Advisory: No sexual innuendo that I can remember. Particularly young or sensitive children may not care for that creepy climax though.

Worst Special Effect: Nothing. Well, all of the effects are dated but none of them jars me out of the viewing experience as much as stuff on Rapunzel.

Funniest Line: Imperial Chef (Charlie Dell): For Your Imperial Majesty’s most royal gratification, a gently roasted suckling pig raised exclusively on lambkins and glazed with the honey of rare Himalayan bees.
Emperor: Haven’t I tasted this before? Some years ago? In the springtime?
Imperial Chef: Oh no, Your Majesty! That suckling pig was glazed with the honey of rare cashmere bees.

Sleeping Beauty

This episode officially credits Charles Perrault for its source material but like most retellings of this story, it’s really a combo of the Grimm and Perrault versions. The costumes and names however set the events in Russia rather than Germany or France, a nod to the Tchaikovsky ballet from which this episode draws its soundtrack. (Lennie Niehaus adapted the score.) One thing both Perrault and Grimm have is an old man who informs the wandering prince (here played by Christopher Reeve) of the enchanted castle’s history. In this version, the prince also tells the woodsman (George Dzundza) about his failed attempt at romance with an exotic princess. Bernadette Peters plays both said princess and the Sleeping Beauty who is the prince’s true love. And in her backstory, Christopher Reeves also plays an unwanted suitor of hers. This double casting allows Reeves and Peters to show off their range and they make the most of it. Next week, I intend to write about how I feel this show often suffers from bland lead performances. Happily, that’s far from the case here.

The script by Jeffrey Alan Fiskin is full of comedy in the vein of Faerie Tale Theatre, much of it cynical and very, very funny. I love the characters of Henbane (Beverly D’ Angelo), the fairy who curses Sleeping Beauty, probably one of the show’s most fun villains, and the younger, more benevolent fairy (Carol Kane) who saves the princess. (“Between you and me,” she confides in her, “let’s just hope there’s a prince out there with more courage than brains.”) But Reeves is unwaveringly earnest as the noble hero, playing the role with only the slightest hint of irony and delivering his big romantic speech at the end with all the conviction of a Shakespearean soliloquy. Peters also gives a highly dramatic performance as the equally noble heroine, one without even a slight hint of irony. The scene where she has to pretend to be fine with marrying a stranger for the sake of her royal father (Rene Auberjonois) manages to be a real tearjerker. This episode is both highly snarky and highly sincere. Theoretically, those two sides of it should clash but they end up balancing each other out, making for both an entertaining parody and something genuinely romantic and moving.

Parental Advisory: This is definitely one of the most risqué episodes. When we first meet the king and queen (Sally Kellerman), it looks like they’re about to have sex, only to reveal that the queen is going to read her husband a bedtime story as she does every night. When she expresses a desire for a child, a fairy spirit (uncredited) appears and (inaudibly) explains to the couple how to make one. In another scene, the chaste prince’s aforementioned anti-love interest tries to seduce him by promising to donate all of the pearls that line her top to the poor if he plucks them all off while she’s wearing it. The prince is embarrassed to relate this, but the woodsman is eager to hear every detail and is disappointed to hear that nothing ultimately happens between the two. There are some other naughty jokes in the episode but if you don’t have a problem showing it to kids yet, I doubt anything else will convince you.

Worst Special Effect: Not only does the prince have to get through a forest of briars in this version, they come to life and attack him. They’re very obviously puppets. Then, taking a page from the Disney movie, Henbane, the evil fairy, turns herself into a giant reptilian monster and he has to fight his way through her. This awkward fight scene is staged with a projected image of a battle between an army and a dragon in the background, which shatters when the prince hits Henbane with a weapon. This all looks ridiculous, of course, but to the credit of Reeves and the episode, they actually manage to kind of sell me on the scene.

Funniest Line: Yellow Fairy (Carol Smith): It is my honor to bestow upon the princess surpassing beauty.
Green Fairy (Gene Varrone): That old chestnut! You’d think after three hundred years, she’d be able to come up with something original!

Jack and the Beanstalk

Right after that sterling episode, we get the one clunker of the season, arguably the clunker of the whole show. Most of the actors’ performances, including those of Dennis Christopher as Jack and Elliot Gould as the giant, are very cartoony, which would normally be what would you’d want, given the farcical writing, but there’s good over-the-top and bad over-the-top and after a while, everyone becomes off-putting and vaguely grotesque. While it’s typical for Faerie Tale Theatre‘s sets to be obviously fake, they’re hardly ever as drab and unimaginative as the ones in this episode. Even the music by Frank Serafine, not a regular composer for the show, is boring and if you’ll remember, I described the music of this series as its secret weapon.

Some versions of this fairy tale, such as Andrew Lang’s, have Jack meet a fairy at the top of the giant beanstalk who explains to him that the giant (or ogre) is the one who killed his father and stole his treasures, justifying Jack’s thievery. Often this fairy is connected to the old man who gave Jack the magic beans. Faerie Tale Theatre does this too, having them be the same person but rather than having the fairy disguise herself as the old man, it has the old man (Mark Blankfield) disguise himself as the fairy! Theoretically, this is funny but in practice, it just comes across as awkward. (Basically, this episode in a nutshell.) Blankfield is annoying in both roles. He also narrates and he’s even disastrous at that, sounding like he has a stuffed nose the whole time. And yet…I still enjoy this episode. I’ll even say I enjoy it more than the series’ Rip Van Winkle episode, which is probably superior technically. The script by Mark Curtiss and Rod Ash, frequently collaborators for Faerie Tale Theatre and Duvall’s follow-up show, Tall Tales and Legends, is reasonably amusing. (“You know what?” the giant glumly tells his wife, the giantess (Jean Stapleton.) “I figured out today that when you die, you’re dead.”) It’s mostly the execution that’s bad. As Jack himself says to his mother (Katherine Helmond) early on, “we haven’t hit rock bottom. We’re just not exactly on the top.”

Worst Special Effect: The whole affair is so visually unappealing, why bother to choose?

Funniest Line: Jack (when the giantess tries to hide him in her oven): You know this is not Hansel and Gretel, don’t you?
Giantess: I’m an ogress, not a witch.

Little Red Riding Hood

This episode’s script by J. David Wyles, who also wrote the one for Rapunzel, and Mark Curtiss and Rod Ash, is one of the series’ funniest and most quotable. (When the wolf (Malcolm McDowell) tries on Granny (Frances Bay)’s nightgown for a disguise, he laments that “the woman hasn’t bought anything new in twenty years!”) Everyone in the cast relishes their two-note performances. Watching them, you think, “this is what Jack and the Beanstalk was supposed to be like!” The episode’s story may certainly be padded, mostly with material involving Little Red Riding Hood’s overly strict father (John Vernon), her perky, cleanliness obsessed mother (Diane Ladd) and her bashful wooer, young woodcutting apprentice Christopher (Darrell Larson), but it’s all such fun padding that who cares?

Parental Advisory: This isn’t so much a sexual joke as it is sexual subtext but this episode, like the Charles Perrault version of the story, has the wolf, disguised as Granny, ask Little Red Riding Hood to get into bed with him, ostensibly to warm him up, prior to eating her. This will probably go over children’s heads. There’s some fleeting profanity in the dialogue and the very young may be disturbed by the scenes where it’s implied the wolf eats Granny and Little Red.[3]Don’t worry. The episode follows Grimm in having them be rescued from its belly. Others will just laugh at the campiness of it all.

Funniest Line: Mother: Now one more problem. Which of your very special friends would you like to invite to the party?
Little Red Riding Hood: Well, Mother, that’s just what I wanted to talk to you about. I never go out; I don’t have any friends.
Mother: Splendid! Now, you see, whenever we put our heads together, we can solve any problem.

Hansel and Gretel

After that delightfully tongue-in-cheek episode, we get one of the show’s most dramatic and least played for laughs. As with The Nightingale, this episode earnestly tries to capture the style and tone of its source, in this case, the story immortalized by the Brothers Grimm.[4]Though it also ends up owing something to Humperdinck’s opera version. For one thing, the script by Patricia Resnick contains an unusually high number of references to God. This is the only Faerie Tale Theatre episode to use actual child actors (Ricky Schroder and Bridgette Anderson) for its young leads. While some of their line readings aren’t as polished as those of more experienced thespians would have been,[5]In their defense, the dialogue isn’t trying to sound like real people talking and can be rather complex. they make it up for it with real vulnerability. This is also one of the only episodes to use real locations and they work far better to convey that Hansel and Gretel are hopelessly lost in the wilderness than even the scariest of painted backdrops.

If there’s anything about this episode that does feel tongue-in-cheek, it’s Joan Collins’s over-the-top performance as the ravenous, child-eating witch. (She doubles as the stepmother and does a great job differentiating the two villains.) I don’t necessarily mean that as a criticism; it’s great to watch her chew up the scenery like its bubblegum.[6]Actually, Hansel and Gretel also chew the scenery when they arrive at her gingerbread house. Get it? Chew the scenery? (“Since I have no other virtues, there is no reason for me to have patience,” she says at one point.) If I do take any issue with this adaptation, it’s that it omits Hansel and Gretel finding gold and jewels in the witch’s house, leaving it an open question how their impoverished father (Paul Dooley) will be able to provide for them once they’re reunited. Maybe Resnick felt he needed to redeem himself by taking them back without anything to gain by it? Anyway, this still stands as one of Faerie Tale Theatre‘s best attempts to explore the serious themes of its source material and a worthy close to its most consistently great season.

Parental Advisory: This is less of a joke than a plot point. The stepmother tells her husband that after they abandon Hansel and Gretel, once the famine in the land is over, they can always have more children. “We can start now if you like,” she says flirtatiously, “having more children.” When he urges her to be quiet lest they wake Hansel and Gretel, she says, “tomorrow (when they’re gone) we can start to make noise again.” Other than that, this is probably the most kid-appropriate episode of Faerie Tale Theatre, though the very young may be scared of the witch.

Funniest Line: Witch: I’m about to teach you something very useful. How to turn a child’s heart into gingerbread.
Gretel: I’d rather learn to read.

I know I just praised Hansel and Gretel for delving into its source material’s serious themes but what struck me rewatching the show recently was how each of these episodes, even the ones played most strictly for laughs, has something going on in its head. Sleeping Beauty preaches the virtue of patience.[7]The same moral, incidentally, that Charles Perrault attached to the story though he joked that expecting his feminine readers to wait a hundred years for a good husband was too much. Jack and the Beanstalk, by contrast, preaches the importance of taking initiative. Rapunzel explores possessive, paranoid parenting. Hansel and Gretel, on the other hand, explores child abandonment and the importance of familial solidarity. Little Red Riding Hood reminds us of the sad necessity of learning by experience. The Nightingale is a satire of the nature of celebrity and contrasts flashy, faddish, soulless art with modest yet timeless art that has heart. Faerie Tale Theatre may be too dated to be described as timeless but it’s happily closer to the latter than the former.

Next week I’m going to look at great episodes from other seasons of Faerie Tale Theatre, episodes nearly as great as the majority of Season 2 and all of them better than the Jack and the Beanstalk episode.

References

References
↑1 Well, glamorous in a 1980s kind of way.
↑2 In the first edition of the Grimm story, Rapunzel’s pregnancy was what tipped the witch off to her secret relationship. Apparently, they deemed this too immoral for children and had Rapunzel make a stupid slip of the tongue instead in their second edition. Yet they still mentioned the twins in the end so there was still the implication that the prince and Rapunzel had sex out of wedlock, only without it serving any plot function. Sometimes the Grimms’ thought processes were hard to follow.
↑3 Don’t worry. The episode follows Grimm in having them be rescued from its belly.
↑4 Though it also ends up owing something to Humperdinck’s opera version.
↑5 In their defense, the dialogue isn’t trying to sound like real people talking and can be rather complex.
↑6 Actually, Hansel and Gretel also chew the scenery when they arrive at her gingerbread house. Get it? Chew the scenery?
↑7 The same moral, incidentally, that Charles Perrault attached to the story though he joked that expecting his feminine readers to wait a hundred years for a good husband was too much.
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Giving De Vil Her Due Part 2 (Hey, That Rhymed!)

Posted on October 27, 2023 by stationmaster

Better the Devil You Know: 102 Dalmatians (2000)

Since I specifically mentioned the opening credits sequences for the first two Dalmatians movies, I should note this one has a surreal visual one much like the original animated film. It’s not nearly as fun or creative as that opening credits scene but an improvement on the one from this sequel’s immediate predecessor. And I have to credit (no pun intended) the accompanying song’s lyrics (“Don’t be believing/Looks are deceiving”) for relating to the movie’s theme of outward behavior and appearances vs. inner worth.

Writers Kristen Buckley and Brian Regan had a hoop through which to jump. The 1996 101 Dalmatians, unlike the 1961 movie or the original book by Dodie Smith, ended with Cruella De Vil being arrested and a sequel without her would be unthinkable.[1]Dodie Smith actually wrote a literary sequel to The Hundred and One Dalmatians called The Starlight Barking which barely featured Cruella. It was about Sirius, the astral guardian of dogs, putting … Continue reading There are a number of ways this could have been handled. Cruella could break out of prison. She could make bail. She could get time off for good behavior. She could have simply served her time and been released in due course. (It’s not like her crime would have earned her a life sentence.) But, no, instead the writers go with her being apparently cured of her lust for fur through electroshock therapy.

Seriously.

I don’t know who would have thought of combining 101 Dalmatians with A Clockwork Orange but that’s what this sequel does. Through “a humane cocktail of electric shock treatment, aversion therapy, hypnosis, drugs and plenty of green vegetables,” Cruella’s mindset has been replaced with that of a sweet natured dog lover with a strong antifur stance.[2]In the aforementioned Starlight Barking, it’s implied Cruella has been able to replace her fur fetish with one for metallic raincoats. I couldn’t make this stuff up, people. In one of the movie’s cleverer touches, we get a version of the classic song, Cruella De Vil, with new lyrics reflecting her new personality.

To demonstrate that she’s changed, Cruella becomes the patroness of Second Chance, a financially strapped dog shelter run by an idealistic man named Kevin Sheperd (Ioan Gruffudd.) Her dog loving probation officer, Chloe Simon (Alice Evans), refuses to believe in Cruella’s change of heart and is sure that her being involved with a dog shelter will lead to disaster, but Kevin persists in taking her at her word. Of course, Chloe proves right since there wouldn’t be a story otherwise and I don’t think any real fans of the character want Cruella De Vil to reform. It turns out that the sound of Big Ben’s chimes restores the brain waves of recipients of this new therapy to normal and, wouldn’t you know it, Chloe’s office is right across from the famous clock.

Glenn Close plays this transformation like Cruella’s new personality is terrified and desperately trying to rein in her evil side, lending an out of place aura of tragedy to the whole thing.

Of course, once she’s back to her old self, the smart thing for Cruella to do would be to secretly enjoy the old furs she has stashed away and not risk anything by trying to get any more. But she’s evil, not prudent, and she sets out to finally get that dalmatian fur coat, this time adding a hood to justify the title 102 Dalmatians.[3]I’m actually impressed that the sequel has her say this means she’ll need three more puppies, not just one, remember that the final two dalmatians of the last movie were the parents, not … Continue reading

So, the implied moral of this story would seem to be don’t give people the benefit of the doubt; they don’t really change and will just take advantage of you. That’s a… bizarrely harsh and cynical message for a movie aimed solely at little kids who want to see pratfalls and cute puppies.[4]Maybe it’s trying to say that true redemption has to come from within, not just changing outward behavior but nobody explicitly says anything like that and in a movie like this, if the … Continue reading I mean, it’s not wrong per se. In real life, trusting people can lead to them taking advantage of you. And while Cruella herself remains evil, there is another antagonist, albeit a minor one, who changes for the better by the end. A careful analysis of the story shows that the message is really that sometimes bad guys reform and sometimes they don’t, sometimes trusting them pays off and sometimes it doesn’t. That’s arguably a refreshingly nuanced take for a kids’ movie. But it feels totally out of place in a cheerfully lowbrow children’s comedy.[5]One of the end credits songs asks listeners “whatchya gonna do with your second chance? Will ya throw it away or get it right?” This could imply that the real moral is neither … Continue reading

Though it remains repetitive, I think I appreciate Glenn Close’s portrayal of Cruella more in this movie. Maybe that’s because in the previous one, while there were plenty of farcical and fantastical characters and plot points, the character of Cruella De Vil was the only thing really played for camp. Here the rest of the film seems to want to be a cartoon. (Compare the tastefully muted wintery colors of the 1996 101 Dalmatians with 102‘s art direction.) She just fits better. During her nicey-nice phases, Cruella has her old collection of fur coats thrown in a basement and boarded up. (Don’t ask me why she doesn’t burn them or sell them.) And when the fur fancying fashionista reverts to her old ways and tears through those boards with her hands, I’ll admit I chuckled.

Gruffudd is likeable as the sweet, naive Kevin and I’m sure Evans could have been likeable as Chloe if the character had been written better. To me, Chloe’s personal vendetta against her client makes her seem like a jerk. You see, she happens to own Dipstick, one of the dalmatians Cruella stole in the last movie. (Dipstick and Cruella’s manservant, Alonso (Tim McInerny), are the only characters from there besides her to also appear in this sequel by the way.) Doesn’t that represent something of a conflict of interest? I’m not saying she should let her guard entirely down with Cruella, but the woman really does seem to be trying to be friendly, albeit because her mind has been altered by outside forces, only to get shot down. (In one of the movie’s better jokes, when Cruella says she wants a job with dogs, Chloe says she sees her as more of a coal miner or a sewage worker.) Chloe also rails against Kevin for letting Cruella near dogs even though Cruella only wants to make clothing out of fancy, stylish animals. It’s doubtful she’d be inspired by the scruffy mutts at Second Chance. Maybe it’s just because I’m a cat person but I got rather tired of everyone in this movie acting like Cruella is a serial killer of human children. I’m not saying I approve of her intending to kill ninety-nine puppies for a coat, but does it really make her as irredeemable as Chloe insists?[6]In the book and the 1961 movie, Cruella actually only stole fifteen of her intended victims. The 1996 one though mentioned that she stole all of them, yet it still had the Dearlys adopt them all in … Continue reading Of course, Chloe starts to trust Cruella (and distrust Kevin) as soon as the story requires her to do so. Sigh.

This movie has more jokes about dog slobber than all the other Dalmatians movies put together, thanks to the character of Drooler, one of the dogs at the shelter. I don’t want to write about Drooler though. He makes me depressed. There’s also a parrot called Waddlesworth (voiced by Eric Idle) who insists that he’s a rottweiler. He’s not funny and gets fairly annoying after a while. Strangely, he doesn’t just mimic human words he’s heard repeatedly but actually is able to hold intelligent conversations with Kevin and even translates what the dogs are saying for him at a critical point in the plot. While Dodie Smith did include a human toddler being able to communicate with animals, none of the movies had done anything like this previously and neither Kevin nor Chloe nor anyone else finds it odd.

Every once in a while, there’s a good joke in this movie, most of them involving the character of Ewan (Ben Crompton), another client of Chloe’s who works at Second Chance. (In his first scene, Chloe asks him if the best excuse he can give her for not having a paycheck is that a dog chewed it up. He tries saying that he was abducted by aliens.)

The rest of 102‘s humor comes from bad dog puns and more of the last film’s overdone, unfunny slapstick.

I’m sorry you had to see this, folks. But I felt like I had to include an image like this to back up my point.

And yet…while I was unimpressed by the movie’s first hour and ten minutes or so, I didn’t really wish to stop watching it either. Maybe it’s that oddly depressing anti-redemptive message. Maybe it’s the weirdness of seeing Cruella De Vil behave so sweetly for a while. Maybe it’s the deliberate outrageousness of her costumes and the tongue-in-cheek creepiness of her house.

Maybe it’s seeing distinguished actors like Timothy West, Ian Richardson and Gerard Depardieu slumming. Maybe it’s the feeling that some people involved in the production were having fun. One way or another, there’s something I find hypnotically fascinating about the movie.

Well, about the first hour and ten minutes or so. Like the previous one, it goes on about twenty minutes too long and saves what is probably its dumbest material for the climax. The reason I’ve been describing so many genuinely funny moments isn’t to give you the impression the movie is hilarious. It’s in the hope that my readers will be able to enjoy them vicariously without the need to sit through the whole thing. You’re welcome.

Sympathy for the Devil: Cruella (2021)

In the early 2020s, the Disney company was in a bit of spot. They were remaking all of their most popular old properties, mostly doing hand drawn animated stuff in a photorealistic style. But they’d already done that back in 1996 with One Hundred and One Dalmatians and apparently felt they couldn’t do so again. That’s too bad in a way because I’d consider most of their recent remakes to be better written and better directed than the 1996 101 Dalmatians and the record will show I didn’t hate that one, so those words aren’t damning with faint praise.[7]Heh. Damning. De Vil. There’s got to be a pun in there somewhere. In any case, this is what they came up with instead.

On a dark and stormy night, a troubled and rebellious young girl called Estella (played by Tipper Seifert-Cleveland at this point) witnesses her beloved single mother (Emily Beecham) pleading with a mysterious rich woman for money. Suddenly, a trio of snarling dalmatians attack the mother, knocking her off a cliff.

Seriously, that’s the premise.

You’d assume from that that Estella is going to grow up hating dalmatians and possibly animals in general, change her name to Cruella De Vil at some point, and try to get a dalmatian fur coat as payback for her trauma. But, except for the name thing, no. Far from hating pets, Cruella actually acquires a couple of canine sidekicks, who feel out the place in this, the only 101 Dalmatians movie aimed mainly at adults. She does end up kidnapping dalmatians at one point and jokes about making them into coats but that’s as far as it goes. This movie isn’t really so much a prequel to the original story or a reimagining of it as it is something new that’s packed with homages to 101 Dalmatians, though there is an end credits scene which could be interpreted as a complete renunciation of the original Cruella De Vil or as setting up the original story.[8]If you don’t mind me giving it away, read on. There are characters in the movie named Roger (Kayvan Novak) and Anita (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), the former being a struggling songwriter and the … Continue reading Could the movie have begun life as a totally unrelated project and Disney decided it wouldn’t be marketable unless it were connected to one of their successful franchises? Or did Disney assign writers Aline Brosh McKenna, Kelly Marcel and Steve Zissis with the task of writing a story with Cruella De Vil as a sympathetic antiheroine and that was such a bad idea that the best thing they could cook up was barely related to it?

Anyway, back to the summary. Estella flees to London where she falls in with a couple of juvenile pickpockets, Jasper (Ziggy Gardner at this point) and Horace (Joseph Macdonald) who remain her partners in crime and makeshift family into adulthood. Quickly realizing that her unique hair coloring makes her recognizable, Estella dyes it red. Eventually, (when she’s old enough to be played by Emma Stone), she gets a job working for the high-profile fashion house, Liberty of London, and claws her way up from bathroom cleaner to personal assistant to the head of the company, the cruel and arrogant Baroness Von Hellman (Emma Thompson.) (Past incarnations of the character have always implied that Cruella came from “old money,” and this is one of the things that makes it hard to view this as a prequel.) One day Estella notices that the baroness is wearing a necklace that belonged to her (Estella’s) mother. When she questions her about this, she speaks of the woman and her death with shocking callousness. Estella enlists Jasper (now played by Joel Fry) and Horace (Paul Walter Hauser) to help her steal back the necklace. Her plan involves herself distracting the baroness by sporting her real hair coloring and posing as an unruly party guest called Cruella.

Things don’t quite go as planned and Estella realizes that the baroness controls her dalmatians with a whistle, meaning that she deliberately killed Estella’s mother. This seemingly causes her mind to snap, and she goes from acting like a typical Emma Stone character to acting like, well, Cruella De Vil, ordering Horace and Jasper around and calling them imbeciles. Only as her Cruella persona, she believes, can she exact revenge on the baroness.[9]In a nice touch, an early scene shows Estella watching a movie with Tallulah Bankhead, an actress who influenced the animated Cruella, mainly her trademark evil laugh. She plans to do that not by killing her, though she teases that possibility twice, not by stealing from her, at least not solely, not even by gaining her trust and then giving her bad business advice, but by upstaging her at every fashion event. I’m not sure why this movie is set in the 1970s instead of the 50s or 60s but maybe it was so it could portray Cruella as sort of a pioneer of punk. Her radical stylings make her the talk of the town and spur the baroness to find some way or another to destroy her mysterious new rival.

I hope no one who hasn’t seen this movie yet is miffed that I’ve just given a broad summary of half the plot. I didn’t know how else to convey that its story, despite a lack of talking animals, is completely ridiculous. There’s no reason the baroness should have dalmatians for attack dogs once you factor out that this is an homage and there’s no reason they should kill Estella’s mother by knocking her off a cliff instead of tearing her throat out once you factor out that while this may be a PG-13 Disney movie, it’s still a Disney movie at heart.[10]That’s not to say I consider it appropriate for kids. And I haven’t even revealed the unbelievable way Cruella ultimately brings down the baroness in the end. Let’s just say this movie has as many holes in its logic as a dalmatian has spots on its coat. I wasn’t particularly interested in the movie when I first heard about it but when I heard the story summarized, I was shocked by how laughably stupid it sounded. Then an intriguing thought occurred to me. What if it was supposed to be stupid? Surely, this must really be a witty parody. A parody of villain origin stories. A parody of perspective flips. A parody of crime movies. A parody of revenge stories. A parody of Martin Scorsese.[11]Cruella (2021) has been described as Disney’s answer to Joker (2019), which was influenced by the works of Martin Scorsese and director Craig Gillespie has been compared, not necessarily … Continue reading A parody of Disney nostalgia bait. A parody of something! But no. While the movie has a sense of humor, it plays out all of its absurd plot points with an unblinking earnestness. The baroness and Cruella sport hairdos and outfits as ridiculous as anything from the old live action 101 Dalmatians movies but there’s much less of a sense, if any, of winking at viewers. Give the devil his due. 102 Dalmatians was a dumb kids’ comedy, but it was a dumb kids’ comedy that knew what it was. Cruella is a dumb adult drama that genuinely believes it’s smart and sophisticated.

That being said…playing the nonsensical story with such a straight face sort of works. At least, it works in that I was able to watch it without laughing at it though maybe that was just because I was already prepared for its looniest plot points. I would rather rewatch this than 102 Dalmatians and I don’t think that’s just because I’m an adult.[12]After all, one of my favorite movies is Nanny McPhee, a children’s movie with bright colors, goofy sound effects, a fart joke and a climactic food fight. The difference between that movie and … Continue reading It also functions better as a piece of storytelling than Maleficent (2014) which it superficially resembles, with none of that movie’s rushed pacing or uneven acting. The writing is engaging. The cinematography and visuals in general are easy on the eyes. And some of the heist elements are genuinely fun, particularly the elaborate con Cruella pulls to ruin one of the baroness’s fashion shows roughly halfway through the movie.

The cast is solid as a whole and Emma Stone and Emma Thompson are great playing essentially two different versions of the same character. Stone gives a fine traditional Cruella De Vil without sounding exactly like the versions portrayed by either Betty Lou Gerson or Glenn Close[13]Who serves as an executive producer for this move., all while giving her cartoonish villainy a creepier vibe since her hammy behavior is apparently the result of a psychotic breakdown. As the regal baroness, Thompson is actually closer to how I imagine the original book’s Cruella De Vil than any other version or she would be if she were cheerier and more convincingly friendly. A big part of me wishes this were a regular remake or, better yet, a new adaptation of the book and Thompson’s baroness were really supposed to be Cruella De Vil. But, anyway, this movie is at its crackling best when she and Stone’s Cruella are trading barbs.[14]Similarly, the most fun part of Maleficent‘s 2019 sequel, Mistress of Evil, was the animosity between the rival villainesses played by Angelina Jolie and Michelle Pfieffer but they sadly only … Continue reading

Still, the only way I could call the movie good were if it were aware of how silly its story was and expected us to laugh at it. It’s not and it doesn’t. If that story had to be executed so earnestly, I guess it did so as well as possible. But that still leaves us with something too good to qualify as so-bad-it’s-good and far too bad to just be good. I guess I’ll call it a guilty pleasure, not one I wish to experience again but a step up from something unpleasurable.

Conclusion

So…yeah, the best of these four movies is easily One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961.) But the original book by Dodie Smith is much better and I’d love to see a fresh yet faithful adaptation of it that jettisoned all the old movies. If you haven’t already given the novel a read, check it out sometime.

References

References
↑1 Dodie Smith actually wrote a literary sequel to The Hundred and One Dalmatians called The Starlight Barking which barely featured Cruella. It was about Sirius, the astral guardian of dogs, putting every other species into a trance to save canines from the possibility of nuclear war. I am not making that up.
↑2 In the aforementioned Starlight Barking, it’s implied Cruella has been able to replace her fur fetish with one for metallic raincoats. I couldn’t make this stuff up, people.
↑3 I’m actually impressed that the sequel has her say this means she’ll need three more puppies, not just one, remember that the final two dalmatians of the last movie were the parents, not the stolen puppies. Of course, since there are also two parents dalmatians in this story, the title should really be 104 Dalmatians.
↑4 Maybe it’s trying to say that true redemption has to come from within, not just changing outward behavior but nobody explicitly says anything like that and in a movie like this, if the characters don’t explicitly say something, it’s probably not the intent.
↑5 One of the end credits songs asks listeners “whatchya gonna do with your second chance? Will ya throw it away or get it right?” This could imply that the real moral is neither “don’t be like Kevin” nor “don’t be like Chloe” but “don’t be like Cruella.” Or it could just indicate how hard it was for whoever writes these end credits songs to put an uplifting spin on this movie’s anti-redemptive message.
↑6 In the book and the 1961 movie, Cruella actually only stole fifteen of her intended victims. The 1996 one though mentioned that she stole all of them, yet it still had the Dearlys adopt them all in the end, so I’m not sure what the point was of that change.
↑7 Heh. Damning. De Vil. There’s got to be a pun in there somewhere.
↑8 If you don’t mind me giving it away, read on. There are characters in the movie named Roger (Kayvan Novak) and Anita (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), the former being a struggling songwriter and the latter an old school friend of Cruella’s. The two of them never meet in the movie but by the end, Cruella has come into some dalmatian puppies, and she gives one called Pongo to Roger and one called Perdita to Anita. Like I said, this could be seen as a complete renunciation of the traditional character (instead of stealing puppies from Roger and Anita, Cruella gives them to them) or it could be setting up the traditional story (she’s giving them puppies in the hope that both humans and dogs will mate and then she can buy or steal more puppies from them to make into coats. I think you may have added some extra steps to that plan, Cruella.) The first option makes infinitely more sense but there’s enough tonal ambiguity in the scene to leave Option no. 2 on the table.
↑9 In a nice touch, an early scene shows Estella watching a movie with Tallulah Bankhead, an actress who influenced the animated Cruella, mainly her trademark evil laugh.
↑10 That’s not to say I consider it appropriate for kids.
↑11 Cruella (2021) has been described as Disney’s answer to Joker (2019), which was influenced by the works of Martin Scorsese and director Craig Gillespie has been compared, not necessarily favorably, to the famous director.
↑12 After all, one of my favorite movies is Nanny McPhee, a children’s movie with bright colors, goofy sound effects, a fart joke and a climactic food fight. The difference between that movie and 102 Dalmatians is…well, there are actually a lot of differences. But the main thing is that Nanny McPhee may not be highbrow, but it’s far from being dumb or unfunny.
↑13 Who serves as an executive producer for this move.
↑14 Similarly, the most fun part of Maleficent‘s 2019 sequel, Mistress of Evil, was the animosity between the rival villainesses played by Angelina Jolie and Michelle Pfieffer but they sadly only shared the screen for a couple of scenes. Cruella doesn’t make that mistake at least.
Posted in Comparing Different Adaptations, Remakes | Tagged , | Comments Off on Giving De Vil Her Due Part 2 (Hey, That Rhymed!)

Giving De Vil Her Due Part 1

Posted on October 20, 2023 by stationmaster

In my last post, I mentioned that one of my favorite things I’ve written on this blog has been a series about the 2014 movie, Maleficent, despite my having-at best-a very mixed opinion on it. I published it to coincide with Halloween since it was about an iconic villain, so for this Halloween I thought I’d do another series about an iconic villainess from a Disney animated movie who has inspired many a Halloween costume. But instead of just looking at the spinoff movie she recently got, I’m going to be reviewing each of the four released movies that feature Cruella De Vil. I don’t think any of them are as interesting as Maleficent[1]Which isn’t to say they’re all inferior to it. Oh no! I make a distinction between interesting and good. but the lore of 101 Dalmatians can be surprisingly crazy. Or maybe not so surprising when you stop to think about how kooky the original story really was.

The Devil Appears: One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)

This is one of those movies adaptations which I can sum up by saying, “it’s OK but the book is better.” I know that’s kind of a cliche and there are lovers of movies and television out there who roll their eyes whenever they hear it but…it’s true! It’s not that I consider the 1961 animated movie terrible or anything. It’s quite cute. But the 1956 book, The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith, was also cute while also being much more interesting. Still, I’ll try to give this adaptation its due.

This movie starts out with a really fun opening credits scene.

Individual images from it may not seem that fun out of context but, trust me, they’re fun when you see them in motion and in context.

In general, the visual style for the whole thing is fun. The backgrounds have a much more sketchy, “modern” look than those from most of the Disney animated movies that had come before.[2]The animators were also using a new technology called xerox. I wouldn’t get into it because I’m not a technology guy, but it might be worth a google if you’re interested. I don’t love the look per se, but I think it works for this movie.

The character designs are also much more caricatured and cartoony than typical for Disney heretofore. They’re great. Pongo (voiced by Rod Taylor), the lead dalmatian, and his “pet,” Roger Radcliffe (Ben Wright), are especially fun to watch.

The leading ladies, dalmatian love interest Perdita (Cate Bauer) and her “pet,” Anita (Lisa Davis), are, perhaps predictably, more conventionally pretty. But if you compare Anita to Snow White, Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty, she still has something of an appealing everywoman quality to her.

Despite what I wrote about the book being better, I should stress that this isn’t a horribly inaccurate adaptation of it. Mind you, it’s not beat-for-beat accurate but considering Disney’s reputation for bad adaptations, it’s remarkably faithful.[3]You could argue that it’s Hollywood in general that makes bad adaptations and Disney just makes for a convenient scapegoat but never mind. It stays true to the book’s premise, its broad characterizations and overall spirit. A number of the movie’s most charming ideas come from the source material, like the dogs thinking of their human owners as pets or dogs barking late at night actually being a sophisticated chain of communication. In a few cases, it even takes ideas from the book and improves upon them. The game show, What’s My Crime, and the villainous Baddun brothers, Horace[4]Who was named Saul in the book by the way. (Fred Worlock) and Jasper (Disney veteran J. Pat O’ Malley), being so absorbed in watching it that they don’t notice the multitudinous puppies they’re supposed to skin sneaking out of the room are from Dodie Smith. But the movie makes of this a great little suspense scene with the show’s contestants’ desperation to make the right guess before time runs out paralleling Sgt. Tibbs the cat (David Frankham)’s desperation to herd every puppy out before the episode is over. The book also has the dalmatians rolling in soot to disguise themselves but only in the movie do they have to sneak past the villains this way in another nifty bit of suspense.

The dogs ironically ending up looking like black dogs with white spots is also from the book.

I hate to admit it, but the characters of Roger and Anita are probably more endearing than their literary counterparts, Mr. and Mrs. Dearly. The book opened with both the dalmatians and their “pets” happily married, which I think works fine there, but I agree with Disney story man Bill Pete that it would have been a dull way to open the movie. The initially disastrous meeting between Roger and Anita that turns out surprisingly well is great fun and the two of them have nice chemistry. Mr. Dearly in the book is a financial wizard who “had done the Government a great service (something to do with getting rid of the National Debt) and, as a reward, had been let off his Income Tax for life.” (It’s that kind of book.) Roger in the movie, on the other hand, is a struggling musician. Him being rich made it more semi believable that he and his wife could keep seventeen dalmatians and later a hundred and one. But the Radcliffes’ modest means draw viewers’ sympathy and interest and Roger being a musician leads to the soundtrack having a nice jazzy vibe.

According to the book, Mr. Dearly “wasn’t exactly handsome but he had the kind of face you don’t get tired of.” I feel like Roger’s character design captures that.

In the book, the couple had two servants, Nanny Butler who was Mr. Dearly’s nanny growing up and eventually became his butler and Nanny Cook who was Mrs. Dearly’s nanny growing up and eventually became her cook. The movie combines them into one character, Nanny (Martha Wentworth), who fulfills both functions. This is understandable from a practical standpoint, but I’ve got to say the only really memorable thing about the nannies from the book was the joke of their names and Nanny Butler taking on a traditionally masculine job. Without those things, the movie’s Nanny lacks any kind of gimmick.

The movie’s Perdita is also a combination of two characters from the book. In Dodie Smith’s version, Pongo’s mate was named Missus Pongo and Perdita was the name of a stray dalmatian who had lost her puppies[5]Guess how. and whom the Dearlys took in to help nurse their dogs’ litter of fifteen. Again, this is understandable from a practical standpoint. Having the mother dalmatian just be called Missus was pretty lame. Perdita doesn’t do much in the book besides help nurse the puppies and developing her in the movie would have slowed down the pace. But this change reflects the absence of one of the most endearing things about the literary Hundred and One Dalmatians: its surprising streak of realism. (I said, streak of realism, not a lot of realism.) Not only does the book insist that a single mother dog would have a hard time nursing fifteen puppies by herself, it also has the humans keep Pongo from away from Missus after she gives birth because “mother dogs did not usually Like to have father dogs around when puppies had just been born.” It also has them try to keep Missus and Perdita and the puppies that each nurses apart on the grounds that Missus would hurt her children that she didn’t recognize, and she and Perdita would fight though this turns out to be unwarranted.

…this does happen with some dogs. It would never have happened with Missis, but it will already have been seen that she and Pongo were rather unusual dogs. And so was Perdita. And so, if people only realized it, are many dogs. In fact, usual dogs are really more unusual than unusual dogs.

Perhaps a Disney movie was never going to reference the brutalities of nature in this way even to avert them. But in doing so it loses the sense you get from the book of a real fondness for and interest in dogs and animals in general.

The reason I wished to write about this movie during October was because Cruella De Vil (Betty Lou Gerson) is an iconic villain, wasn’t it? Well, as I said, she’s an icon. The movie’s design stays fairly true to the book’s description of her as tall, dark and sporting that trademark half black, half white hairdo. Her nose is less pointed and more piglike though and rather than the “absolutely simple white mink coat” she wears in the book, she has a giant poofy one that contrasts amusingly with her ridiculously bony body. I don’t mean that as a criticism, for the record, it’s a very fun character design.

I also like a moment the adaptation invents where Pongo tries to evade her detection by erasing his family’s pawprints with a stick and she sees right through it. Villains who are played for laughs but are also somewhat competent and represent legitimate threats interest me.[6]Disney animation has created more than a few. There’s also Captain Hook from Peter Pan and Kaa the python from The Jungle Book. Even Yzma from The Emperor’s New Groove surprisingly has … Continue reading But while I don’t imagine the book’s Cruella as being as hammy and scenery chewing as the one in the movie, Disney actually makes her a less outlandish and over the top character than that one. For one thing, we never see her eating black pepper-flavored ice cream.[7]All Cruella’s food tastes like pepper in the book. Maybe she’s related to the Duchess of Wonderland’s cook. For another, Cruella’s surname isn’t just a joke in the book.[8]And it’s spelled with a small d but, hey, who’s keeping track? It’s actually implied that she’s actually a descendant or some distant relative of Satan. That’s what Pongo comes to believe anyway, and he’s described as possessing “one if the keenest brains in Dogdom.” I wonder why Disney didn’t go with that since they were no strangers to supernatural antagonists. It’s also worth mentioning that while Cruella doesn’t get her coveted dalmatian fur coat and her fancy car is utterly destroyed, she doesn’t get nearly as much comeuppance as she does in the book.[9]The car isn’t destroyed in the book but…well, let’s just say some other possessions of her are. It’s not even clear if the Radcliffes ever know for sure that’s she the one who stole their dogs. Perhaps to make up for this, future 101 Dalmatians movies would devote so much time to humiliating Cruella that it would get tedious, but we’ll get to that later.

Cruella’s ultimate comeuppance isn’t the only memorable scene from the book’s second half that would be cut. We also lose the touching scene of Pongo and Missus encountering an old man who thinks they’re the ghosts of dogs he knew in his childhood and the character of Tommy Tompkins, a human toddler who, not having mastered English yet, can communicate to an extent with dogs and helps them out. (He serves as a foil to another little boy Pongo and Missus meet who throws stones at them.) The book also has some odd use of Christian imagery. Not only is the main villain associated with Hell and the Devil but at one point, the dogs find sanctuary in a church building with a nativity set in it, which they find by following a star on Christmas Eve. Missus has previously resented churches since dogs aren’t allowed in them but changes her mind after this positive experience. Her “pet” is reported as saying that she herself would go to church more if dogs were allowed inside. I don’t know much about Dodie Smith, but the book gives the impression that she found Christianity-or Christian imagery anyway-attractive but disliked that it didn’t provide any afterlife for dogs.[10]The protagonists of a later children’s book she’d write, The Midnight Kittens, would be an atheist and an agnostic, though not militant ones, which presumably reflects her own beliefs at … Continue reading Not much later in the book, the dalmatians are in a tight spot and Pongo declares that nothing but a miracle can save them. Just then, a van appears on the scene, providing their escape and leading Missus to think that type of vehicle is called a miracle.[11]Missus in the book is a lot ditzier than Perdita in the movie but on the flipside, she’s much more resilient. None of this makes it into the movie.[12]Well, there is a van, but it isn’t called a miracle.

On the whole, I’d describe this movie as like the book with most of the most interesting parts removed. Because of that, I really can’t say it’s a good adaptation, but I can’t say it’s a terrible one either. There’s still plenty of charm to be found in it if you’re a member of the target audience and it probably helps if you have a higher tolerance for the sound of dogs barking than I have.

The Devil Is in the Details: 101 Dalmatians (1996)

This 1996 live action remake of the old, animated film really doesn’t do itself any favors by opening with a very dull opening credits scene that shows up poorly beside the visually entertaining one in the original.

The soundtrack by Michael Kamen is also, to my ears anyway, annoyingly heavy-handed compared to the more pleasant one from the 1961 version. But let’s not get too negative too soon.

This remake portrays Roger (Jack Daniels) as a struggling video game designer rather than a struggling songwriter. Hmm, maybe we do need to get really negative right away. I don’t get this change. Struggling songwriter just strikes me as more romantic than struggling video game designer, an irrational prejudice on my part perhaps. I don’t see the point of the career change, but it doesn’t ruin the character or the movie for me. Anita (Joely Richardson) now works for Cruella De Vil (Glenn Close)’s fashion company. This, by the way, arguably harkens back to the book where Cruella was married to a furrier and intended to sell Dalmatian fur coats as well as own one.[13]Roger’s surname is also Dearly as in the book, and I think the ultimate fate of the country home where Cruella stashes the puppies might be the same as in it too. I’m not quite sure … Continue reading Instead of inspiring Roger to write a song that makes enough money for the family to move to the country and keep over a hundred dalmatians, Cruella serves as the model for the villain of his latest video game. Normally, I’d avoid giving that plot point away, but the movie foreshadows it in such a deliberate, even cheeky way that I’m convinced viewers are expected to guess it.

A startling thing about this film is its implied antifeminist message. Cruella expresses displeasure at Anita wishing to quit her job once she gets married and settles down, saying, “More good women have been lost to marriage than to war, famine, disease and disaster. You have talent, darling. Don’t squander it.”[14]Whatever one’s views on gender, I’m really not sure what selfish motive Cruella could have for saying this. Presumably, she doesn’t want to lose a valuable employee, but the movie … Continue reading She also disapproves of Anita’s desire for children, saying coldly that she has “no use for babies” as opposed to puppies. Presumably, since Cruella in the 1961 movie looked down on Anita for marrying someone who wasn’t wealthy, the filmmakers thought the closest modern equivalent would be her looking down on her for pursuing a family over a career, but the result is this remake actually feels more offensive to modern sensibilities than the older original. It’s actually Anita having a job that gives Cruella the idea for a dalmatian fur coat in the first place, setting the conflict in motion.

The biggest difference between this movie and the old one is that the dogs don’t talk and neither do any of the other animal characters. This works fine, though not brilliantly, during the movie’s first half or so where Pongo and Perdita just have to convey basic emotions like attraction to each other, distrust of Cruella and concern for their puppies. But once the big rescue mission kicks off with all of its communication between species, the animals not talking starts to feel weirder than having them talk would.

This is from a scene where a dog has to pantomime for a bunch of farm animals that he’s seen puppies being carried away in a bag.

The movie’s live action dalmatians, while very well trained, also completely lack the highly expressive faces of their 1961 animated counterparts.[15]It’s disheartening to remember that this came out a year after the family classic, Babe, which got such great dramatic performances out of border collies. This means that the movie’s second half focuses largely on noncharacters, and it really drags after a while.

I’d compare this to an image of Pongo and Perdita reuniting with their children in the animated film, but I feel like it would be just unfair.

That’s too bad because the first half or so is actually fairly promising. As long as it sticks to verbal comedy rather than physical, the script by John Hughes is quite funny and quotable. Daniels and especially Richardson are charming as Roger and Anita and the film does a just good enough job of establishing a fairy tale atmosphere to sell their incredibly fast romance. (I always assumed that in the animated version they dated for a while offscreen between the day they met and their wedding. Here Roger lets slip a proposal that very evening!) Joan Plowright is also adorable, if I can use that word without sounding condescending, as Nanny.

Would you believe they’re looking at dog collars in this moment?

The most popular character from the original movie-the only popular character, truth be told, was easily Cruella De Vil and this one clearly sets her up to be the biggest thing in it too. The design team went to town with the cartoony stylizations of her wardrobe, workplace and house with their emphasis on black, white and red.

The script includes all of her most memorable lines from the 1961 movie and invents some good new ones too. “My faith in your limited intelligence is momentarily restored,” she tells her employees at one point. Later, she taunts her animal adversaries by saying, “you’ve won the battle but I’m about to win the wardrobe!” Many would cite Glenn Close’s performance as the best thing or the only good thing about the movie but I’m really not a fan. If you compare any of her readings of the character’s classic lines with those of Betty Lou Gerson, they sound flat by comparison. Her attempts to mimic the cartoon character’s body language, such as the strange way she holds her fingers as if always clutching something, just strike me as awkward. When this Cruella is restrained, she comes across as stiff and when she shrieks or cackles, she comes across as less entertainingly hammy and more…like a genuinely disturbing portrayal of an unhinged maniac.

This weird tonal problem with Cruella arguably extends to the whole film. At times, it seems like it wants to be a slightly darker and edgier take on the story.[16]It’s rated PG rather than G though I’m not entirely sure why. In addition to the comedic Horace (Mark Williams) and Jasper (Hugh Laurie), Cruella has another sidekick, Skinner (John Shrapnel), who skins the animals she steals for her fashion purposes. Skinner never speaks owing to having (reportedly) had his throat torn out by a dog in his youth, leaving him with a very noticeable scar. This is at least potentially creepy as well as ridiculously over the top.

Jasper and Horace overpowering Nanny and locking her up so they can steal the puppies is also potentially more disturbing here though that may just be due to the change of medium.[17]It’s still played somewhat for laughs in the live action version as she still puts up a good fight and you could argue it was always a little bit disturbing in the animated one. On the other hand, the movie’s second half swaps the suspense of the original for slapstick comedy as it turns into a series of scenes of the villains being easily outwitted and outmaneuvered by various animals. (Apparently, nobody informed the filmmakers that raccoons aren’t native to England.) There was already plenty of slapstick violence in the 1961 movie but this one seems determined to outdo it. It certainly outdoes it in terms of outrageousness as Jasper and Horace’s crotches get electrocuted and Cruella gets squashed by a giant hog but not in terms of actually being funny. Slapstick can be really funny in my experience, but this movie’s cartoony violence is the kind of thing that you’ll love as a kid and then look back on as an adult and think, “man, was I stupid at that age!”[18]The remake also dials up the slapstick of Roger and Anita’s meeting from the old movie. It’s not that funny either but thankfully it’s not as obnoxious. Ironically, if it were animated instead of live action, it would probably work better. You can tell this was made by a post-Home Alone John Hughes and I don’t mean that as a compliment. The second half just drags on and on, refusing to leave poor Cruella with any dignity, and it sours the whole viewing experience.

Which is too bad because I really am fond of that first half even if there’s nothing in it worth replacing the original movie. Hey, who said it has to replace the original? If you read this blog at all, you’ll soon find that I’m the kind of guy who likes to hear the same story told by as many different people as possible, even if some of those storytellers are superior to others. I feel towards this remake as a teacher might feel toward a basically smart, underperforming, occasionally obnoxious pupil who could do so much better if only they would apply themself.

Next Week on The Adaptation Station.com: Attempts are Made to Rehabilitate Cruella

References

References
↑1 Which isn’t to say they’re all inferior to it. Oh no! I make a distinction between interesting and good.
↑2 The animators were also using a new technology called xerox. I wouldn’t get into it because I’m not a technology guy, but it might be worth a google if you’re interested.
↑3 You could argue that it’s Hollywood in general that makes bad adaptations and Disney just makes for a convenient scapegoat but never mind.
↑4 Who was named Saul in the book by the way.
↑5 Guess how.
↑6 Disney animation has created more than a few. There’s also Captain Hook from Peter Pan and Kaa the python from The Jungle Book. Even Yzma from The Emperor’s New Groove surprisingly has her moments. Even more surprisingly, so does Kronk.
↑7 All Cruella’s food tastes like pepper in the book. Maybe she’s related to the Duchess of Wonderland’s cook.
↑8 And it’s spelled with a small d but, hey, who’s keeping track?
↑9 The car isn’t destroyed in the book but…well, let’s just say some other possessions of her are.
↑10 The protagonists of a later children’s book she’d write, The Midnight Kittens, would be an atheist and an agnostic, though not militant ones, which presumably reflects her own beliefs at the time. But you wouldn’t guess that from The Hundred and One Dalmatians.
↑11 Missus in the book is a lot ditzier than Perdita in the movie but on the flipside, she’s much more resilient.
↑12 Well, there is a van, but it isn’t called a miracle.
↑13 Roger’s surname is also Dearly as in the book, and I think the ultimate fate of the country home where Cruella stashes the puppies might be the same as in it too. I’m not quite sure though. There’s also a veterinarian in the movie named Tomkins, which I’d like to believe is an homage to the character of Tommy Tompkins from the book. It’s probably just a coincidence though.
↑14 Whatever one’s views on gender, I’m really not sure what selfish motive Cruella could have for saying this. Presumably, she doesn’t want to lose a valuable employee, but the movie establishes that Anita still sends her sketches from home. “It’s not the same thing,” insists Cruella, “I miss the interaction.”
↑15 It’s disheartening to remember that this came out a year after the family classic, Babe, which got such great dramatic performances out of border collies.
↑16 It’s rated PG rather than G though I’m not entirely sure why.
↑17 It’s still played somewhat for laughs in the live action version as she still puts up a good fight and you could argue it was always a little bit disturbing in the animated one.
↑18 The remake also dials up the slapstick of Roger and Anita’s meeting from the old movie. It’s not that funny either but thankfully it’s not as obnoxious.
Posted in Comparing Different Adaptations, Remakes | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Giving De Vil Her Due Part 1

How Into the Woods (2014) is Messy but Worthwhile and Why That’s Weirdly Appropriate

Posted on October 6, 2023 by stationmaster

Many eyebrows were raised when it was first announced that Disney would be doing a movie adaptation of the 1987 stage musical Into the Woods. Dark, cynical, adult deconstructions of fairy tales are kind of the opposite of what we associate with that company. On the other hand, adaptations that dilute the dark, disturbing or kid-inappropriate elements of their source materials are associated with them and the fact that the movie aimed for and achieved a PG rating than a PG-13 seemed to confirm theater fans’ skepticism. But while director Rob Marshall and others involved in the production admitted that the movie would tone down some of the play’s edgiest aspects, they assured fans it would maintain the main ones and the heart of the piece. Predictably, the resulting film that came out in 2014 doesn’t really have a clear audience, being too racy, depressing and morally messy for many parents to feel comfortable sharing with their kids and too sanitized and compromised to please diehard lovers of the original musical.[1]To its credit, the marketing campaign didn’t try to deceive family audiences quite as much as it could have tried. The second trailer all but states that adultery will figure into the plot. In … Continue reading

It’d be easy to dismiss the cinematic Into the Woods as an example of trying to please everyone and pleasing no one, but that’s not my goal here. I want to write about it because…well, I feel like I’m the only one who can review it from a neutral standpoint. On the one hand, I don’t love the stage play. I mean, I like it. Well, it’d be more accurate to say that I respect it. I find the show’s humor to be fun but not hilarious, though it can be with a great cast. I find the songs by Stephen Sondheim to be OK but not great. (Sondheim’s work in general does little for me.) I find the story to be clever, but I don’t love it. I don’t think it’s because I can’t enjoy dark or depressing stories. Les Misérables, for example is a musical I love. But I don’t care for ones where the whole point is just to say, “life stinks.” Neither am I a fan of stories that are full of characters who get killed off willy-nilly without satisfying ends to their arcs. Of course, people die in real life without “satisfying ends to their character arcs” and Into the Woods is all about the differences between stories and real life, so that’s appropriate. But it doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it. I even disagree with the musical’s message that it’s impossible to say what’s right or wrong. I mean, sometimes it may be, but in my experience, when people say that it’s hard to know the right thing to do, what’s usually going on is they know the right thing and don’t want to do it. (It’s important to note though that there are other messages in Into the Woods that I can get behind.) Truth be told, the main reason I keep returning to this play is my interest in fairy tales and most of the fairy tale-inspired musicals that I really like are family friendly Disney-type ones.

On the other hand, I’m someone who is frustrated by bad adaptations in general, even if they aren’t necessarily of things I love. My heart goes out to fans of Into the Woods who were denied a faithful take on it. It also goes out to the creators who had to compromise their artistic vision for the sake of marketability. And as someone who loves fairy tales, it’s kind of depressing to me that movies of them are only seen as marketable to children.[2]Then again, I can remember being disappointed as a kid whenever there was a fairy tale adaptation that was too adult in content for me to watch, so I guess I can see both sides.

On a third hand, I imagine that even if the movie were aiming for a PG-13 rating, which is what it probably should have done, major changes would still have to be made to the material. That’s because the original Into the Woods is written in a very theatrical way with characters singing about unstageable scenes we never actually see. It marks the passage of time by having each member of the cast march on stage whenever a day has ended and give some kind of maxim that sums up what they’ve learned recently. (“Sometimes the things you most wish for are not to be touched,” “Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor,” etc.) You could, I suppose, do that in a movie with a montage of the characters randomly looking into the camera and speaking but I’d advise against it. I don’t mean to criticize playwright James Lapine or composer/lyricist Sondheim for that. They were making a stage play after all. Why not do things you could only do in a stage play? Still, I don’t consider Into the Woods a naturally cinematic musical like Les Misérables, especially since it relies for its full effect on a two-act structure with an intermission in the middle and Hollywood isn’t in the business of making movies over two and a half hours nowadays unless they’re part of a lucrative franchise.

Enough preliminaries. I’d better summarize the movie’s premise for the uninitiated.

In a village at the edge of a wood, an ugly old witch (Meryl Streep) curses the local baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt) with infertility because of something the baker’s father (Simon Russell Beale) stole from her long ago. She promises to lift the curse if they help her collect ingredients for a potion in three days’ time. These four ingredients are “the cow as white as milk, the cape as red as blood, the hair as yellow as corn, the slipper as pure as gold.” To find them, the baker and his wife must go…into the woods. In the same neighborhood, the familiar stories of Cinderella (Anna Kendrick), Jack (Daniel Huttlestone) of beanstalk fame, Little Red Riding Hood (Lila Crawford)[3]The dialogue never identifies her by name but she’s obviously Little Red Riding Hood. and Rapunzel (Mackenzie Mauzy) are taking place simultaneously. Well, Cinderella’s story is less familiar than the others since it’s the version by the Brothers Grimm rather than the iconic Charles Perrault one. I feel the need to mention that so viewers don’t get confused. Anyway, the opening song establishing this complex setup is the musical’s catchiest and makes for probably my favorite scene in the movie. From reading that list of ingredients, you can probably guess how the baker and his wife will interact with each famous fairy tale figure.

Where does the dark deconstruction part come into play? Well, to explain that, I’m going to have to get into spoilers, though I’ll try to keep some things vague. Those who don’t want a first viewing experience spoiled should skip to the last couple paragraphs of this post. Suffice to say that most of the characters are stuck in terrible situations and their desperation to get out of them leads them to do immoral or at least unwise things. As the traditional fairy tale endings play themselves out, it seems like those compromises were worth it. But then they come back to bite everyone in the butt as the story goes “off book.”

Let’s start off with some bad stuff. Even as a casual fan of the play at most, I take some issues with how James Lapine adapts his own script in this movie. Some of them may be nitpicky but nits have a way of adding up. Changing the opening narration’s description of Jack from “a sad young lad” to “a carefree young lad” makes no sense when the whole song is about how he, like the other characters, is discontented with his life. The final verbal exchange between Little Red Riding Hood and Jack, which was one of the funniest and most heartwarming moments in the play, is cut for time. I’m fine with the decision to cut the character of Cinderella’s father. You could argue it’s an example of softening the material as it means she’s no longer abused by her blood relatives, but while the father can provide some amusing comedy onstage with his air of drunken indifference to everything, he didn’t really contribute to the plot.[4]Most Cinderella adaptations cut the character for the same reason. However, this means a crucial line from Cinderella late in the movie makes less sense. “My father’s house was a nightmare,” she says. Shouldn’t she call it her stepmother’s house? I also approve of cutting the subplot of the mysterious old man who helps the baker during the first act, but I don’t understand why the movie drops the mystery of why the witch is using the baker and his wife to help her make her potion, having her clearly explain it early on. The viewer knowing this means losing a plot twist. I also don’t understand why the movie, more or less, gives away in her first scene just why the witch holds such a grudge against the baker’s father, eliminating another plot twist. I guess these changes fit in with how the adaptation seeks to have us sympathize more with the witch from the start. Having her slowly become more sympathetic as the story proceeds seems to affirm her misanthropic worldview[5]Though the cautiously optimistic ending suggests humanity can learn from its mistakes-future generations of it anyway. made more sense if you ask me.

But the movie’s biggest asset isn’t the writing. It’s the cast. I’d honestly say that I prefer watching this Into the Woods to the 1991 filmed version with the original Broadway cast even though the latter represents the creators’ uncompromised artistic vision and is probably more thematically coherent. There are only a couple of actors in it whom I really enjoy watching. I find it jarring how their performances go from broadly caricatured in the first act to deadly serious in the second. I suppose this was to make the contrast between the two halves as striking as possible, but it doesn’t work for me. After all, it’s not like there’s no real drama in the first act, inherent in the traditional fairy tales and the original story of the baker and his wife, or no moments of humor in the second. The cast of the 2014 Into the Woods finds a perfect balance between the comedic and the dramatic. The only performance I really prefer from the 1991 version is that of Bernadette Peters as the witch with her ability to make every line of dialogue memorable. Of course, many people would credit Meryl Streep with that gift too and she definitely comes across as having fun as the witch. Maybe too much fun actually. To my way of thinking, she’s a bit too gleeful and doesn’t convey her character’s bitterness enough. Still, she’s fun to watch and some of her sad line readings can break your heart.

I know James Corden has become something of a pariah but he’s great as the baker in both the comedic moments and the dramatic moments. 1991’s Chip Zien comes across as wooden by comparison. Emily Blunt is also perfectly cast as the baker’s wife. (I don’t think praising her is controversial.) I wouldn’t say she’s as much of an improvement over Joanna Gleason as Corden is over Zien but that’s because Gleason was better than Zien, not because Blunt is at all inferior to Corden. The two of them even make their big duet, It Takes Two, which I’d previously thought one of the musical’s most boring songs, memorable. While the couple’s relationship isn’t without problems in the movie, they don’t fight as much as in the play. That’s another example of Disneyfication, I suppose, but the film does draw the advantages that come with making the leads pleasanter, mainly it being easy to root for them.

Even bigger improvements over the original Broadway cast are Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen as the two princes who are supposed to symbolize (male) celebrities who can charm any woman they want though they’re really jerks.[6]They also symbolize people who always want what they can’t have. Robert Westenberg and Chuck Wagner were too obviously arrogant and not heartthrobby enough to really convey this in my opinion. Watching Pine and Magnussen though, it’s easy to imagine women overlooking their characters’ faults.

Of course, Rapunzel’s prince doesn’t have quite as many faults as in the original play. From what we see, his feelings for Rapunzel go deeper and he ultimately comes across as a vain but loveable himbo (cf. his counterpart in Disney’s Enchanted.) This makes the story’s themes less consistent, but I’d argue it also makes its allegory for life more nuanced than in the original where all romantic relationships and nearly all parent-child relationships end in some kind of tragedy. After all, while every marriage doesn’t turn out as happily as in the stereotypical fairy tale ending, neither is each one a mistake. And Magnussen makes his goofy character so endearing I can’t bring myself to wish he were a cad.

I do wish Cinderella’s prince weren’t so obviously menacing in his initial pursuit of her as it makes his later caddishness less of a twist and the eventual dissolution of their relationship less sad.[7]The compressed time frame also does that though that feels like a side effect of not being able to make a three-hour movie rather than a goal of the filmmakers. Arguably, that’s another example of softening the original play’s edge. I blame the direction though and not Pine who’s perfectly cast.

The movie takes advantage of lip synching in the princes’ song, Agony, having the actors do ridiculously over the top physical performances they couldn’t do while singing live and making the scene far funnier than it could ever be on stage.

Although Daniel Huttlestone had a role in the 2012 Les Misérables, one of my favorite movies, I didn’t praise his performance much when writing about it since he was portraying a relatively minor character and I had so much to say about everything. He was great in it though and he’s also great here as Jack. The character is portrayed as less of a dolt than in the play, which pays off dramatically, making it easier to get invested in him.

Despite Rapunzel’s story being less tragic here than in the original play, Mackenzie Mauzy also plays her less for laughs than many stage actresses do. She’s great in the role. The bit where Rapunzel, torn between her mother figure and her lover, breaks down crying during the witch’s angry musical plea, Stay With Me, is a highlight.

Rapunzel is the one character who dies in the play but doesn’t die in the movie. This was a mistake in my opinion as it makes the threat in the second half less threatening. And while I may feel that Rapunzel was just killed off in the play because the playwright couldn’t think of what else to do with her character, that’s arguably better than just not doing anything with her. If the movie absolutely had to have a PG rating, I’d have suggested keeping the violent death but having it be offscreen[8]The film does the same thing with another character’s death. The dialogue is weirdly inconsistent here, using euphemisms for death is some scenes and throwing the word around casually in others. with the characters coming across Rapunzel’s body after the fact.[9]As the prince is a sympathetic character who really loves Rapunzel in this version, such a scene could have been even sadder than the one in the play where it was only the witch who really mourned … Continue reading Still, while the character’s fate may be considerably softened, the movie is generally true enough to the spirit of the stage play that I think we can safely assume she’ll always suffer from trauma.

I love it when even the actors playing the supporting characters in a movie or play are great and the 2014 Into the Woods is definitely a case in point. Christine Baranski, Tammy Blanchard and Lucy Punch are hilarious as Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters.[10]Punch has played versions of Cinderella’s stepsister twice before. It’s kind of her thing. The scene where the former chops off parts of the latter’s feet so they can fit the slipper is a highlight. (Remember what I mentioned about this being based on the Grimm version rather than the iconic Perrault one?) The camera doesn’t actually show that act of violence unlike in the play but onstage it’s obviously fake. It’d be harder to make a realistic foot being mutilated onscreen funny, so I’d argue by not showing the violence the film is actually being true to the overall spirit of the scene in the play.

Tracey Ullman is also a lot of fun as Jack’s long-suffering mother.

Undervalued character actress Annette Crosbie could have been hilarious as Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother but, alas, the screenplay cuts her ridiculously bloodthirsty rant from the play, which was one of the few things she had to say in it.

Speaking of Little Red Riding Hood, I remember before the movie’s release, there was some kerfuffle among the Into the Woods fandom about it toning down the sexual undertones of the wolf (Johnny Depp)’s song, Hello Little Girl, about his…hunger for her, in part because of Little Red Riding Hood being played by an actual child rather than an adult or teenager as in your average stage production.[11]Jack’s song about his encounter with the giant’s wife, Giants in the Sky, arguably has sexual innuendo too though it’s much more subtle. All I can say is that if this is the cleaned-up PG version of the scene, I’d be terrified to watch a PG-13 one. I can only imagine it would have shown the wolf visibly masturbating and fantasizing about the child doing a striptease.

If there’s a weak link in the cast, it’s Anna Kendrick as Cinderella. I regret to say that because she really does make the character likeable with her air of being perpetually unsure of herself. But some of her line readings are ridiculously flat. Late in the movie, she accuses someone of abandoning their child in the same tone you might express incredulity at someone not liking chocolate. And it doesn’t help that she’s the cast member whose vocal part is the biggest stretch for her range.

Speaking of music, the movie cuts a handful of songs from the stage musical for time. In my opinion, few of the deleted songs were the best ones and as it is, the film still has a musical number every couple of scenes, but I understand why this is disappointing for fans of the material. I do feel that cutting one particular song really winds up benefiting the movie though. Toward the climax of the play, the baker, devastated by recent events, sings the sad song, No More. In the equivalent scene of the film, he simply breaks down crying. (The tune for the song can still be heard as background music.) We’ve had a lot of scenes prior to this of characters singing about their feelings. This is the first time we see one of them be realistically overwhelmed by their emotions and break down crying. For me, it’s the movie’s most powerful moment.

I’d like to conclude this post by hearkening back to one of my favorite things I’ve written on this blog, a series on Maleficent, another Disney movie from 2014 that sought to subvert fairy tales, making them more morally complex and adult than they are usually perceived as being.[12]Of course, that movie was trying to do that to a Disney fairy tale while Into the Woods does it for three fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm and one by Joseph Jacobs. I wrote of that movie’s rape metaphor that “the movie doesn’t really have anything to say about the reality of rape, beyond that it’s bad, or the psychology of rapists or rape victims. It just feels like the filmmakers trying to prove that just because they’re making a Disney movie it doesn’t mean they’re not edgy.” Into the Woods, on the other hand, does have something to say about abuse, adultery, abandonment and inherited trauma or if it doesn’t, at least it comes across as genuinely pained by them enough to put them in the forefront of the story. It doesn’t use them as a trite villain backstory to score brownie points for social relevance. And it also has the guts to follow through on its aspirations of a gray vs. gray conflict to the very end unlike Malefiecent, which ends with a clear villain falling to their demise and the clear heroes triumphant as in a traditional Disney movie. Viewed as an adaptation of the stage play, this movie is questionable but viewed as a superior alternative to Maleficent, what Maleficent should have been[13]If, indeed, Maleficent should have been at all., it excels. Rob Marshall has said in interviews that he intended the story to resonate with what Americans felt in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, with a sudden threat from seemingly out of nowhere and everyone unsure of how to handle it. I remember rewatching the movie after the attacks on the Eiffel Tower in 2015 and thinking, “yeah, that makes sense.”

I’m not sure to whom I can recommend the movie version of Into the Woods but I do know I enjoy it myself. It’s messy and full of uncomfortable compromises but ultimately worthwhile. Hey, that’s a good summary of Into the Woods‘s depiction of life in general.

References

References
↑1 To its credit, the marketing campaign didn’t try to deceive family audiences quite as much as it could have tried. The second trailer all but states that adultery will figure into the plot. In fact, the trailer nicely parallels the movie with a first half promising a lighthearted humorous take on fairy tales and a more ominous and dramatic second half.
↑2 Then again, I can remember being disappointed as a kid whenever there was a fairy tale adaptation that was too adult in content for me to watch, so I guess I can see both sides.
↑3 The dialogue never identifies her by name but she’s obviously Little Red Riding Hood.
↑4 Most Cinderella adaptations cut the character for the same reason.
↑5 Though the cautiously optimistic ending suggests humanity can learn from its mistakes-future generations of it anyway.
↑6 They also symbolize people who always want what they can’t have.
↑7 The compressed time frame also does that though that feels like a side effect of not being able to make a three-hour movie rather than a goal of the filmmakers.
↑8 The film does the same thing with another character’s death. The dialogue is weirdly inconsistent here, using euphemisms for death is some scenes and throwing the word around casually in others.
↑9 As the prince is a sympathetic character who really loves Rapunzel in this version, such a scene could have been even sadder than the one in the play where it was only the witch who really mourned for her. Then again, you could argue that part of Rapunzel’s tragedy in the original stage version was that only one person really knew her and cared about her.
↑10 Punch has played versions of Cinderella’s stepsister twice before. It’s kind of her thing.
↑11 Jack’s song about his encounter with the giant’s wife, Giants in the Sky, arguably has sexual innuendo too though it’s much more subtle.
↑12 Of course, that movie was trying to do that to a Disney fairy tale while Into the Woods does it for three fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm and one by Joseph Jacobs.
↑13 If, indeed, Maleficent should have been at all.
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The Real Problem with Emma (2020)

Posted on September 9, 2023 by stationmaster

Back in 2022, I did a blog post about the three movie adaptations of Emma by Jane Austen. I had a middling reaction to the one from 2020. I admired what a good job Eleanor Catton’s screenplay did of compressing and restructuring the novel to work as a movie while retaining so many great lines from it, but I found Autumn De Wilde’s direction and many of the acting choices off putting. Still, that screenplay was good enough that I gave it an honorable mention in a later blog post about which classics-inspired movie scripts available to read online are the best. That may well have been solely because of my affection for the original book though.

Recently, I was struck “with the speed of an arrow,” to use a phrase from the book, by the biggest dramatic problem with the adaptation. It was one that had been under my nose and relates to criticisms I’ve always had but only now do I really comprehend it. While the acting made it worse than it had to be, this was an issue that was baked into the screenplay. I wrote before of how the movie reimagines Austen’s ending to make it more egalitarian in its message and I had a fairly open mind about that. In theory, the revisionist ending is quite heartwarming. But, as I intend to show with this blog post, the movie made none of the other changes necessary for it to make sense.

This post is going to be full of spoilers for both the book and the movie, so consider yourself warned. For what it’s worth, I’m only going to be focusing on a few of the main characters.

What sets the plot in motion is wealthy 18th century gentlewoman and antiheroine Emma Woodhouse (Anya Taylor-Joy), bored and lonely after the marriage of her longtime governess, befriending Harriet Smith (Mia Goth), a “parlor boarder at a common school,” of unknown but certainly illegitimate parentage. What induces her to cross class boundaries in such a way? Well, here’s what Jane Austen writes about Emma’s interest in Harriet and Harriet’s reaction to visiting Hartfield (Emma’s home) for the first time.

She was a very pretty girl, and her beauty happened to be of a sort which Emma particularly admired… Emma was as much pleased with her manners as her person, and quite determined to continue the acquaintance. She was not struck by anything remarkably clever in Miss Smith’s conversation, but she found her altogether very engaging—not inconveniently shy, not unwilling to talk—and yet so far from pushing, shewing so proper and becoming a deference, seeming so pleasantly grateful for being admitted to Hartfield, and so artlessly impressed by the appearance of everything in so superior a style to what she had been used to, that she must have good sense, and deserve encouragement…Harriet certainly was not clever, but she had a sweet, docile, grateful disposition, was totally free from conceit, and only desiring to be guided by any one she looked up to.

In other words, Emma likes Harriet because Harriet flatters her ego. But as exploitive as their relationship is, there’s still a sense that Harriet has real virtues which attract Emma or at least some kind of charisma. The 2020 film portrays Harriet, far from being “not inconveniently shy, not unwilling to talk,” as petrified at being invited to Hartfield and bumbling and fumbling her way through her first conversation with Emma. Certainly, Emma’s continued interest in Harriet in the book is based on her ignoring her lack of sophistication. But here there doesn’t seem to be anything in Harriet’s behavior besides humility to make Emma want to pursue a friendship with her. Being intrigued by the mystery of her birth seems to be her main motivation. In a scene from the script that was deleted from the movie, Emma argues that Harriet’s parentage must be good on the grounds that “if her origins were very low, there would have been no need for secrecy, for there would have been no shame.” Keeping this scene would have made the transition from Emma missing her governess to her having tea with Harriet much smoother but apparently it had to be cut for time unlike the scenes of Mr. Knightley (Johnny Flynn) bathing and changing and of Emma hanging around in her underwear, which were highly essential to the story.

The first thing we hear Emma say to Harriet is “The misfortune of your birth, Harriet, ought to make you particularly careful as to your associates. There can be no doubt of your being a gentleman’s daughter. You must support your claim to that station by everything within your power.” This may sound incredibly snobby to modern audiences, but it can also be seen as kind. No one has probably ever told Harriet that she could be of high birth. Emma is complimenting and encouraging her to think well of herself. It’s noteworthy though that in the book, Emma says this to Harriet after they’ve been friends for some time and she has allowed Harriet to ramble on about her lowly friends, the Martin family, for a while. Having it be the first thing we hear her say risks making Emma sound more like a prissy lecturer than someone who wants Harriet to be her friend and equal. The fact that Harriet, in an awkward attempt at conversation, brings up the Martins and starts praising them right after this rather than before also makes her seem even more clueless than her literary counterpart. These potential problems could have been alleviated by some real warmth on the part of the actress playing Emma and a certain sweetness from the actress playing Harriet. Anya Taylor-Joy’s brittle, icy performance however and Mia Goth’s perpetual deer-in-the-headlights expression during the scene make matters worse.

The first time in the movie we see Emma reacting to the real Harriet, as opposed to the imaginary Harriet in her head, is in a scene at the local haberdasher’s shop. Harriet is taking forever to choose between two ribbons of nearly identical colors and Emma is bored out of her mind. It’s perfectly legitimate and in keeping with the book to have Emma be annoyed by Harriet sometimes. But this movie has less time to develop the relationship between them than the book has and unlike the book, in which, despite their continued affection for each other, Harriet and Emma’s friendship ultimately proves too unhealthy, and they go their separate ways, the movie wants their relationship to be salvageable. And, for all that she’s frequently annoyed by other characters, Emma is capable of tolerating irritating people out of love.[1]In the novel’s equivalent of this moment, “Harriet, tempted by everything and swayed by half a word, was always very long at a purchase; and while she was still hanging over muslins and … Continue reading Witness her relationship with her selfish, hypochondriacal father (Bill Nighy), one of the most heartwarming parts of this adaptation. Ironically, if the movie were building up to the book’s conclusion, this being the first time Emma really reacts to Harriet would be excellent foreshadowing.

In both versions, Emma emotionally blackmails Harriet into turning down a proposal from Robert Martin (Connor Swindells) since such a marriage would put her forever below Emma’s station.[2]The official screenplay gives an additional reason, describing Emma as “a little envious of Harriet’s patent crush- which is more than she has ever felt for anyone.” An interesting idea … Continue reading Instead, she tries to set Harriet up with Mr. Elton (Josh O’ Connor), the local vicar. If she succeeded in that, it would bring her closer to Emma’s station though still not quite there. (Let’s not get crazy or anything! Emma wouldn’t really want them totally on the same level.) Of course, this plan backfires spectacularly. Harriet, under her misguided patroness’s influence, becomes besotted with Mr. Elton but he interprets Emma’s matchmaking as her being interested in him for herself. In the movie, the scene of Emma breaking this bad news to Harriet begins with her angrily denouncing Mr. Elton for seeking to “aggrandize and enrich himself” by marrying a woman at the top of the local social ladder. This is what Emma thinks in the book too, but it’s a questionable way to begin the scene of her apologizing to Harriet. Our first impression is that Emma is largely angry for her own sake.[3]Perhaps it’s significant that in the filmmakers’ audio commentary for the scene of Mr. Elton’s proposal, they describe Emma’s discomfort as due to him being a sexual threat. … Continue reading Still, apologize to Harriet she does, and Harriet doesn’t blame her for misleading her. In this adaptation, Harriet’s next act is to try to burn the portrait Emma painted of her with the frame that Mr. Elton got. “Burn the frame if you like but you must keep the likeness,” says Emma and when Harriet can’t seem to bear the sight of even that, she agrees to keep it herself and “treasure it as a picture of my friend.” Doubtless, the script intended this to convey that, for all her faults, Emma is basically a good friend. But Taylor-Joy’s bossy line delivery makes this feel like just another example of Emma dictating Harriet’s life for her. The scene would have benefited greatly from an emphasis on Emma’s genuine remorse, her gratitude for Harriet’s forgiveness and her desire to make everything up to her. At this point in her version, Jane Austen writes that Emma thought “that Harriet was the superior creature of the two—and that to resemble her would be more for her own welfare and happiness than all that genius or intelligence could do.”[4]Of course, being Jane Austen, she also couldn’t help but add that “It was rather too late in the day to set about being simple-minded and ignorant.”

In the next scene of the two women together, months have elapsed, and Harriet is still talking about Mr. Elton who has left the neighborhood after Emma’s rejection. “Enough about Mr. Elton!” Emma snaps. I don’t want to be too hard on her here. Since it’s gone from winter to spring and Harriet is still talking about the same thing, I can’t blame Emma for feeling less guilty at this point and more exasperated. Still, we’ve only had one scene showcasing Emma’s repentance and not a very powerful one, so it’s hard to avoid the impression that she’s a jerk. At this point in the book, Emma is so desperate to distract Harriet from her romantic regrets that she takes her to visit the annoying Miss Bates. Eleanor Catton’s script has a nod to this, describing Emma as “almost relieved to see” Miss Bates (Miranda Hart) run up to her. But Anya Taylor-Joy conveys this relief so subtly, I’m not convinced she conveys it at all. (Her sigh can be interpreted as irritation or relief.)

To be fair to the film, while Harriet fades into the background during much of the second half as other subplots take over, there are subtle indications that she and Emma are good friends. Harriet encourages Emma when’s she nervous about her piano playing. Emma allows Harriet to sit with her in church, which is implied to be an honor she rarely bestows. There’s a brief scene of Harriet having a sleepover at Hartfield and she and Emma practicing dancing for an upcoming ball.[5]And even before Elton’s proposal, Emma visits Harriet when she’s ill. But all this is in the background. It’s never really the focus of a scene. Even the dance practice is more about showing Emma’s excitement over Frank Churchill (Callum Turner.) None of it is enough to overcome the general impression the movie conveys that Emma just uses Harriet as a sounding board for her complaints about others[6]To its credit, this works well as a way for the movie to give us access to Emma’s thoughts. and that Harriet goes back and forth between being terrified of offending Emma and obliviously annoying her. To get around that, there needs to be more friendly chemistry between the actresses.[7]According the audio commentary, Mia Goth and Anya Taylor-Joy are actually best friends in real life, so I’m not sure what went wrong here.

If we do start to get a sense of that, it’s toward the end when Harriet confides in Emma that she’s in love again. Emma assumes that she’s fallen for Frank Churchill, in whom she herself has lost interest, and heartily endorses the match. Later, she’s horrified to learn that Harriet means Mr. Knightley whom Emma has just realized she loves.[8]In the book, it’s at this moment that Emma realizes it. In the movie, it’s before, which isn’t a bad change. In an interesting departure from Austen, Harriet realizes the reason Emma isn’t responding to her news more positively, berates her for wrongly raising her hopes and causing her to reject Mr. Martin and then storms off. When Mr. Knightley proposes to Emma in the book, she immediately accepts and rejects “any of that heroism of sentiment which might have prompted her to entreat him to transfer his affection from herself to Harriet, as infinitely the most worthy of the two—or even the more simple sublimity of resolving to refuse him at once and for ever, without vouchsafing any motive, because he could not marry them both.” She pities Harriet and regrets unintentionally encouraging her feelings for the upper class Knightley but maintains that a marriage between them would be “most unequal and degrading” for him. The 2020 movie brazenly ignores this, having Emma tearfully refuse Mr. Knightley’s hand, saying that she can’t be responsible for breaking Harriet’s heart twice.

In the book, Emma writes to Harriet, apologetically telling her the news, and she replies “without reproaches, or apparent sense of ill-usage; and yet Emma fancied there was a something of resentment, a something bordering on it in her style, which increased the desirableness of their being separate.” Emma arranges for Harriet visit her (Emma’s) relatives in London to distract her from her disappointment and avoid awkward interactions between them. There Harriet falls in with Mr. Martin again and Emma is delighted to hear that she accepts his second proposal. Their next meeting is a friendly one but upon learning that Harriet’s father is a mere tradesman, Emma is horrified to think of “what a connection had she been preparing for Mr. Knightley—or for the Churchills—or even for Mr. Elton![9]Keep in mind, this is long after she has dismissed Elton as a worthless jerk.—The stain of illegitimacy, unbleached by nobility or wealth, would have been a stain indeed.” With Harriet’s marriage, the books tell us “The intimacy between her and Emma must sink; their friendship must change into a calmer sort of goodwill” but that, according to Austen, was as it should be. None of that plays well with mainstream audiences nowadays and every adaptation softens it to some extent. The 2020 movie really takes the cake on that score though. Its Emma visits Robert Martin of her own initiative and apologizes to him for ruining his relationship with Harriet, encouraging him to renew his pursuit of her. (In an amusing touch, Emma brings a dressed goose as a conciliatory gift when the Martins have a whole flock of geese in their yard.) Harriet is the one who delivers the news of engagement to Emma in a rather defiant tone. She retains that tone even after Emma has given the couple her blessing as she tells her that her father has revealed himself to be a tradesman and that he’s coming to visit her. “I hope you will bring him to Hartfield,” says Emma humbly. Only then does Harriet melt and the two friends embrace each other, closer than ever.

I’m modern enough in my thinking to find this new climax heartwarming in theory and I like the idea of giving Harriet more depth and dignity in the end than the book grants her. I love it when characters seem at first like they’re sheer comic relief and then turn out to be dramatic. Well, I love that when it’s well done, that is. But the movie and Goth have portrayed Harriet as even more broadly ditzy than the book earlier and it feels less like she’s undergone character development or that we’re being shown a new side of her than like she’s suddenly transformed into a different person.[10]To be fair, there are a few subtle hints earlier that Harriet has the potential for intelligence. She notices a discrepancy in Frank Churchill’s excuse for missing his father’s wedding … Continue reading What’s more, the movie has done too little too late to get me invested in Emma and Harriet’s friendship. At least, not invested in the sense that I think it’s worth preserving. Most of it has seemed to be setting up the same thing the book does, that the bond between Harriet and Emma has ultimately been bad for both and they need to grow apart. If anything, I think I’ve demonstrated above that the movie passes up opportunities the original text gives to show a more positive side to their relationship.[11]It’s instructive to compare this movie to the web series Emma Approved, which transplanted the story of Emma to modern day corporate America. It also made Harriet a more positive, competent … Continue reading A lot of this I’ve blamed on the actresses, but I should clarify that I think Anya Taylor-Joy and Mia Goth were just doing what the director wanted them to do. It’s just that I don’t think what she wanted them to do served the story she wished to tell.

Having written all that, I still like this adaptation better than Clueless.

Bibliography

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Emma, by Jane Austen

Emma_Script.indd (scriptslug.com)

References

References
↑1 In the novel’s equivalent of this moment, “Harriet, tempted by everything and swayed by half a word, was always very long at a purchase; and while she was still hanging over muslins and changing her mind, Emma went to the door for amusement… she knew she had no reason to complain, and was amused enough; quite enough still to stand at the door. A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.”
↑2 The official screenplay gives an additional reason, describing Emma as “a little envious of Harriet’s patent crush- which is more than she has ever felt for anyone.” An interesting idea though not one that you can pick up from Taylor-Joy’s opaque performance.
↑3 Perhaps it’s significant that in the filmmakers’ audio commentary for the scene of Mr. Elton’s proposal, they describe Emma’s discomfort as due to him being a sexual threat. They don’t focus on how his proposal upends all her plans and reveals her blindness to her.
↑4 Of course, being Jane Austen, she also couldn’t help but add that “It was rather too late in the day to set about being simple-minded and ignorant.”
↑5 And even before Elton’s proposal, Emma visits Harriet when she’s ill.
↑6 To its credit, this works well as a way for the movie to give us access to Emma’s thoughts.
↑7 According the audio commentary, Mia Goth and Anya Taylor-Joy are actually best friends in real life, so I’m not sure what went wrong here.
↑8 In the book, it’s at this moment that Emma realizes it. In the movie, it’s before, which isn’t a bad change.
↑9 Keep in mind, this is long after she has dismissed Elton as a worthless jerk.
↑10 To be fair, there are a few subtle hints earlier that Harriet has the potential for intelligence. She notices a discrepancy in Frank Churchill’s excuse for missing his father’s wedding that Emma ignores, and the script’s stage directions imply that she pities Miss Bates when Emma publicly insults her. (It’s not certain in the book that Harriet is one of those whom Mr. Knightley says would be entirely guided by Emma’s treatment of Miss Bates but it’s possible.) However, the movie’s broad cartoony style doesn’t encourage viewers to pay attention to subtleties and I doubt anyone not prejudiced in its favor would notice these things.
↑11 It’s instructive to compare this movie to the web series Emma Approved, which transplanted the story of Emma to modern day corporate America. It also made Harriet a more positive, competent character and made the themes more egalitarian, but it did a much better job of those things.
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You’re On the Big Screen, Charlie Brown! Part 3

Posted on August 11, 2023 by stationmaster

Show the World What You Can Do: The Peanuts Movie (2015)

When the news that Blue Sky Studios would be making a computer animated movie based on the Peanuts characters was announced, it was met with some skepticism. Blue Sky’s output (Ice Age, Rio, etc.) was notable for its broad cartoony animation and humor. The visual style of Peanuts was simple, though hard to replicate as any fan who tried to draw the characters can attest, and while certainly not realistic, hardly lent itself to broad cartoony reaction shots or slapstick. Even aside from that, would the flat simple look of Peanuts translate well to three-dimensional animation at all? Wouldn’t the effect be rather grotesque?

On a visual level, Blue Sky Studios and director Steve Martino gave us a happy surprise with The Peanuts Movie. Every character design and pose in it could have come from the comic strip yet everything is subtly more rounded apart from everyone’s eyes and eyebrows which look like the same old dots and squiggles we know and love. Hair, skin, clothes and other surfaces all have texture yet not quite as much as in your average computer animated movie of this vintage. It’s a perfect compromise: enjoyably different from traditional Peanuts visuals yet pleasingly faithful to it as well.

The movie is also blessed with the best voice cast of any Peanuts film since A Boy Named Charlie Brown. As in the Bill Melendez-Lee Mendelson produced Peanuts specials, all the kids are voiced by no-name child actors, and they have the same pleasingly anonymous, innocent sound while also being more polished in their delivery with fewer flat line readings. Special credit goes to Noah Schnapp as Charlie Brown who has to carry the movie on his vocal cords, as it focuses more firmly on his character than any Peanuts film since the first one and who succeeds beautifully. Small wonder he went on to do Stranger Things.

It’s just a shame that the script by Cornelius Uliano, Craig and Bryan Schulz, the son and grandson of Charles, doesn’t give the voice actors funnier things to say. As far as the characters’ personalities go, Charlie Brown, Linus (voiced by Alex Garfin), Lucy (Hadley Belle Miller), Schroeder (Noah Johnston), Sally (Mariel Sheets), Peppermint Patty (Venus Omega Schultheis) and Marcie (Rebecca Bloom) are very true to their counterparts in the funny papers.[1]Though Snoopy is portrayed as a much more loyal friend to Charlie Brown than the selfish beagle of the comic strip and previous Peanuts animation, one who spends most of the movie assisting him in … Continue reading But didn’t anyone involved with the script remember that Peanuts was known for its elaborate verbal humor? A Boy Named Charlie Brown began with someone asking Linus what shapes he could see in the clouds. He replied that he could make out “the profile of Thomas Eakins, the famous painter and sculptor” and “the stoning of Stephen.” It’s around the seven-minute mark when The Peanuts Movie gets to its first verbal joke and it’s nothing as inspired as that. In fact, the film plays better if you interpret it as a drama about a perpetually unsuccessful grade school student than a comedy.

The movie’s biggest laughs come from its slapstick and other visual gags. The character who lends himself the best to Blue Sky’s style is the mischievous, mercurial Snoopy (whose sounds are derived from archival audio of Bill Melendez as the character.) He’s easily the most entertaining thing here. The Peanuts Movie‘s most inspired idea was to combine his two most famous imaginary personas, the world-famous author, typing atop his doghouse, and the World War I flying ace, pretending to fly on his Sopwith Camel AKA that same doghouse. Interspersed with Charlie Brown’s plotline are scenes from the novel Snoop is writing about the flying ace and each story acts as a commentary on the other. Just as Charlie Brown seeks to impress his beloved Little Red-Haired Girl (Francesca Capaldi), the flying ace seeks to impress a beautiful female pilot named Fifi (Kristin Chenoweth who played Sally in a production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.) And just as Charlie Brown has to struggle against his incompetence and bad luck to do this, the ace has to rescue Fifi from his notorious nemesis, the Red Baron. The fictional hero’s fortunes rise and fall with the confidence of his creator’s master. These fantasy sequences are arguably too elaborate for Peanuts and would fit better in a Calvin and Hobbes movie, but they’re pretty great in their own right.[2]I’d argue there’s something of a precedent for them in the animated specials, most famously It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. The final showdown between Snoopy and the Red Baron is particularly inspired.

To really discuss how this movie adapts Peanuts, I’m going to have to describe the broad outlines of not only its plot but those of A Boy Named Charlie Brown and Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown, so if you don’t want any of those spoiled for you, please skip down to the last few paragraphs of this post.

The Peanuts Movie‘s biggest departure from the general spirit of Charles Schulz is how it sands off the edges of Charlie Brown’s comedically tragic existence. Not that he doesn’t fail often in it. Nor is the idea of him developing real skills or even having an occasional victory completely heretical.[3]Check out this link to read about some surprising wins for his baseball team. In A Boy Named Charlie Brown, desperate to change his fate, he buckled down and really honed a talent that looked like it was going to make him a celebrity, only to trip at the metaphorical finishline. The Peanuts Movie repeats that formula, more or less, four times! Sheer repetition makes the losses frustrating, but it also gives the impression that Charlie Brown is more competent than the comic or the other Peanuts movies and specials do. Reinforcing that impression is the fact that two of those four near victories are lost partly because of his clumsiness but also due to plain bad luck, which, to be fair, has always been a factor in Charlie Brown’s failures. In the other two instances, however, he sacrifices his wins by taking the moral high ground,[4]One of these plot points I distinctly remember seeing on an episode of The Brady Bunch. something not impossible for the pathetic, wishy-washy character of the comic strip but not likely. And then there’s the feel-good ending which fulfills Charlie Brown’s fondest wishes.

What’s wrong with that, you may ask. Don’t you want that? Well…yes, in a way. There’s always going to be a part of me that wishes A Boy Named Charlie Brown ended with him winning the national spelling bee. But another part of me would find that anticlimactic and unsatisfying in the way that getting what you want sometimes feels.[5]It would also be a questionable victory to end with Charlie Brown being beloved by his peers solely because he won. As it is, the ending of A Boy Named Charlie Brown lets Linus’s loyalty shine. … Continue reading There are plenty of sympathetic fictional underdogs whose stories end with them triumphing. Those can be cathartic for real-life underdogs who aren’t ever going to triumph themselves and I never wish for them to go away. But there’s also something cathartic for those real-life underdogs about a fictional underdog who will always be like them or worse off and that’s rarer for mainstream American entertainment. Ultimately, the brutality of the Peanuts universe is just as much part of its appeal as the kindliness of the Phineas and Ferb universe is for it.[6]It’s also worth noting that the cruelty of Peanuts doesn’t seem to have influenced its fanbase to be more meanspirited. When Charlie Brown received no trick-or-treat candy in It’s … Continue reading Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown found a good compromise if you ask me. Charlie Brown doesn’t win the race the way convention and our hearts would dictate but he displays a non-wishy-washiness that earns him the respect of his peers and of himself. The same thing basically happens at the end of The Peanuts Movie but it’s a lot more indulgent and on the nose with the moral than I’d prefer. Still, I’d be lying if I claimed the climactic line, “it must feel pretty great being Charlie Brown right about now,” didn’t make me grin.

The upshot of all this is that this Peanuts Movie is less an example of Peanuts magic than a fond tribute or homage to it. It’s frustrating because it didn’t have to settle for being that. Recently, Kaboom comics has produced some marvelous original Peanuts comic books, ones which are humorous in a Schulzian way while also doing their own thing.[7]Though the quality of these comic books has been sadly on the decline. Their take on Race For Your Life was far too sanitized for my taste. It’s too bad Vicki Scott or Jeff Dyer couldn’t have written this movie. Still, as far as tributes go, the 2015 Peanuts Movie is an enjoyably elaborate, lovingly made one. It’s packed with fun references to the comic strip and the old, animated specials. It even manages to work Schulz’s favorite novel, War and Peace, into the plot.[8]Too bad they couldn’t do the same with Citizen Kane. Even the sentimentalizing of the main character feels like the work of a fan wanting to see their favorite character be a hero. The very end credits are full of Easter eggs for Peanuts lovers. For many children, this movie was probably their introduction to the characters. I don’t think it works very well on that level. It may give me joy to hear Linus say he hopes his new neighbor will have an open mind about the Great Pumpkin, but I don’t know what the uninitiated make of it. A Boy Named Charlie Brown is what I would recommend as an introduction to Peanuts for newcomers. The Peanuts Movie I would recommend for nostalgic fans of the franchise who can keep their expectations reasonable.

Conclusion

So, which of these four movies do I consider the best? That’s hard to say. A Boy Named Charlie Brown encapsulates what Peanuts is all about to me the most but Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown is the one I have the most fun watching. That’s a wishy-washy conclusion but that feels right for a series analyzing movies about good ol’ Charlie Brown.

References

References
↑1 Though Snoopy is portrayed as a much more loyal friend to Charlie Brown than the selfish beagle of the comic strip and previous Peanuts animation, one who spends most of the movie assisting him in his quest for self-worth. For what it’s worth, this benefits the movie in that it allows it to include plenty of Snoopy without contrivance. Patty (Anastasia Bredikhina)’s crush on Pig-Pen (A. J. Tecce) is also original to this movie though there was a time in the comic strip’s long history when Pig-Pen and Peppermint Patty were romantically linked. Could the screenwriters have confused Patties? Anyway, I don’t mind since the idea of anyone being besotted by Pig-Pen is hilarious.
↑2 I’d argue there’s something of a precedent for them in the animated specials, most famously It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.
↑3 Check out this link to read about some surprising wins for his baseball team.
↑4 One of these plot points I distinctly remember seeing on an episode of The Brady Bunch.
↑5 It would also be a questionable victory to end with Charlie Brown being beloved by his peers solely because he won. As it is, the ending of A Boy Named Charlie Brown lets Linus’s loyalty shine. Only he is friends with Charlie Brown throughout the whole thing, both when his star is rising and when it falls.
↑6 It’s also worth noting that the cruelty of Peanuts doesn’t seem to have influenced its fanbase to be more meanspirited. When Charlie Brown received no trick-or-treat candy in It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and no valentines in Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown, the original kid viewers sent him their own and a look at the comments section for Peanuts on GoComics.com shows that the average fan hates the bullying Lucy.
↑7 Though the quality of these comic books has been sadly on the decline. Their take on Race For Your Life was far too sanitized for my taste.
↑8 Too bad they couldn’t do the same with Citizen Kane.
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You’re on the Big Screen, Charlie Brown! Part 2

Posted on August 4, 2023 by stationmaster

Free as Running Water, Fresh as Morning Dew: Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown (1977)

The first line of this movie’s opening song is “it’s a new day,” and that’s appropriate since the third Peanuts film represents a lot of firsts for them. It was the first to be produced by Paramount Pictures rather than Cinema Center Films. It was first to have two directors, Bill Melendez and Peanuts animation veteran Phil Roman. It was the first to introduce antagonists who weren’t from the comic strip[1]Well, Snoopy Come Home did have Clara but she was only in one scene. and the first to have life and death stakes. The story puts the Peanuts kids on a bus to a remote wilderness survival camp with Snoopy and Woodstock in tow on a motorcycle. There they are pitted against a trio of bullies (voiced by Kirk Jue, Jordan Warren and Tom Muller) and their fearsome cat on a dangerous three-day river rift race. The bullies have a ridiculously high tech “raft” compared to those of their competitors and absolutely no qualms about cheating or even about endangering people’s lives. (And, no, they don’t receive any discipline. Whoever runs this camp really believes in letting kids rough it.)

If you’re wondering why their boat is so beat up, this image comes from late in the movie after everyone in the race has faced considerable setbacks.

Another first is that while the comic strip had sent the gang to summer camp many a time, the entire of story of Race For Your Life and nearly all of the jokes are original to it. A Boy Named Charlie Brown and Snoopy Come Home, by contrast, had taken storylines from the comics and expanded on them, making them more dramatic. But while more dramatic, they were still arguably the exact kind of stories you’d expect from Peanuts. I’d argue that was exactly what they should have done for their debut on a new medium. But after two movies, it was time for something new and Race For Your Life delivers with a much more adventurous and suspenseful tale, one that’s not as good of an introduction to the characters for newcomers but is arguably more fun for longtime fans.

Like Snoopy Come Home, this movie marks the big screen debut for some characters who had only appeared in the newspaper and on television. Peppermint Patty (Stuart Brotman)’s foil, Marcie (Jimmy Ahrens), is a highly welcome presence here. There’s also Franklin (Joseph Biter)[2]Well, technically, his big screen debut was a wordless cameo in Snoopy Come Home. though he only has one line of dialogue and basically exists to even out the girls’ cabin and the boys’ cabin.[3]I’d call Franklin the token minority but that wouldn’t be fair since when he was introduced in the comic strip, having an African American character actually was kind of daring, though … Continue reading Actually, Schroeder (Greg Felton) doesn’t get much to say or do either.

This film was released toward the end of the Golden Age of Peanuts animation.[4]That’s not to say the specials that afterwards were bad, just that they weren’t as consistently high quality. At first glance-first glance, mind you-it seems like a stepdown from Snoopy Come Home and A Boy Named Charlie Brown. There are some nice touches in the backgrounds, mainly the mountains and the trees, but the visuals aren’t as attractive as in the previous two movies. I know that to the casual viewer’s eye all Peanuts animation looks the same and they’re probably laughing at me right now, but what can I say? I rewatched Race For Your Life a few days after rewatching Snoopy Come Home and that’s the impression I got.

The soundtrack by Ed Bogas isn’t quite as great as those of the first two Peanuts movies either, though that opening song is a favorite of mine. And the voice acting isn’t as consistently great either.

But somehow this movie is more fun, if not, strictly speaking, better than its predecessors. I can’t quite put my finger on what makes that so. It just is. I mean, one of the first things that happens in it is Snoopy doing an Evel Knievel impression. How does that not convey fun?

This was also the first Peanuts movie to really utilize Sally Brown (Gail Davis) to her best advantage. I’ve criticized Davis’s performance as Sally in the past, but I don’t mind her here. The character’s constant carping throughout the movie is a hoot.

I also love the running gag of the girls’ cabin voting on everything, which actually gets a satisfying dramatic payoff. Speaking of drama, emotions don’t run as high in this movie as they do in A Boy Named Charlie Brown or Snoopy Come Home. That’s part of what makes it fun. But Race For Your Life does have a quiet heart beating in its metaphorical chest. Early on, Charlie Brown (Duncan Watson) confesses that he came to camp because he “never felt like much of a person” and he hoped that the experience would make him more of a leader. The race gives him his chance and…well, I’m not going to tell you.[5]Not in this post anyway. The movie is great enough that I don’t want to spoil it for newcomers.

I Want to Remember This: Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and don’t come back!!) (1980)

In many ways, the fourth Peanuts movie follows in the footsteps of the third one with another story that’s more adventurous than typical for the franchise and one that takes the characters even further out of their comfort zone-right, out of the country in fact. True, A Boy Named Charlie Brown and Snoopy Come Home also had the characters leave their neighborhood to go on journeys, but those movies spent time in that familiar neighborhood first, showing the characters doing familiar Peanuts things. When the journeys began, it was more of a contrast. With Race For Your Life and Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown, the journeys are the main dish.

In other ways, Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown maps out its own territory. The first three entries in this series began with peppy music and eye-catching opening credits that showcased the beloved Peanuts characters.[6]Well, technically, A Boy Named Charlie Brown began with a dreamy romantic scene that quickly became a farce and then had the eye-catching credits scene. Bon Voyage, by contrast, opens at night somewhere in the French countryside. As rain falls, a shadowy figure in a car leaves the local cafe and returns to a gloomy chateau. The only light in the house comes from a room where a little girl (Roseline Reubens) is writing a letter. It’s a very moody atmospheric beginning that rouses your curiosity.

Then we cut to America where Charlie Brown (Arrin Skelley), Linus (Daniel Anderson), Peppermint Patty (Patricia Patts, one of the few actual girls to voice the character) and Marcie (Jimmy Ahrens again) have been selected to go to Europe as foreign exchange students with Snoopy and Woodstock tagging along as usual. Before he leaves, Charlie Brown receives a letter. That in itself is unusual for him, but what’s really mysterious is that the letter is written in French. (If you’re intrigued already and want to wait until you watch the movie to find out more, skip the rest of this paragraph.) On the plane, Marcie translates the message for Charlie Brown. It’s from someone named Violette who claims she’s heard all about C.B., is eager to meet him and invites him to stay at the Chateau du Mal Voisin e.g. the Chateau of the Bad Neighbor.

This setup recalls Lila’s letter from Snoopy Come Home but in that movie while everyone else was at a loss as to what was going on, Snoopy clearly understood. What’s more, fans who had been following Peanuts in the newspaper would have known her identity. With Violette and her letter, we’re totally in the dark and once the gang reaches France, the mystery and suspense deepen. This movie introduces a villain, the Baron (Scott Beach who voices all the offscreen adults in the film), who’s far more intimidating than the three bullies from Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown or even their cat. The fact that we don’t get a good look at him, though a better look than we usually get of adults in Peanuts, initially serves to make him even creepier.

Unfortunately, it also backfires in the end, making a final confrontation between him and our heroes impossible. While the mystery of Violette and why she invited Charlie Brown is resolved in a satisfactory way, the resolution of the conflict with the Baron is a disappointment. It involves a climactic action scene that’s exciting in that it’s far more dramatic than typical for Peanuts but not very exhilarating or well staged when compared to cinematic action scenes in general.

Not helping is that this movie is a good candidate for being the least funny Peanuts movie. Fortunately, there’s a difference between being the least funny Peanuts movie and not being funny at all. Humorous highlights include Charlie Brown’s panic attack having to show his passport, Snoopy’s John McEnroe impression at Wimbledon, the announcer’s outraged response to his tantrum[7]This film has an unusually large amount of intelligible dialogue from adults for Peanuts. and Peppermint Patty thinking her host, Pierre (Pascale de Barolet), is attracted to her when he’s clearly interested in Marcie.

Most of this movie’s French characters have pointy noses. Was that a stereotype back then?

Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown is worth a look for completists and the curious but there’s no escaping the feeling that its premise had potential to which it frustratingly does not fulfill.

Next Time: Charlie Brown and Company are Animated by Computer. Good Grief!

References

References
↑1 Well, Snoopy Come Home did have Clara but she was only in one scene.
↑2 Well, technically, his big screen debut was a wordless cameo in Snoopy Come Home.
↑3 I’d call Franklin the token minority but that wouldn’t be fair since when he was introduced in the comic strip, having an African American character actually was kind of daring, though less so by the time this movie was made.
↑4 That’s not to say the specials that afterwards were bad, just that they weren’t as consistently high quality.
↑5 Not in this post anyway.
↑6 Well, technically, A Boy Named Charlie Brown began with a dreamy romantic scene that quickly became a farce and then had the eye-catching credits scene.
↑7 This film has an unusually large amount of intelligible dialogue from adults for Peanuts.
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You’re On the Big Screen, Charlie Brown! Part 1

Posted on July 28, 2023 by stationmaster

In the past, I’ve lamented on this blog that of all the Peanuts specials, only A Charlie Brown Christmas and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown are beloved when there are so many others just as great or greater to my mind. The five full length Peanuts animated movies to be released in cinemas have arguably suffered an even sadder fate. None of them is really well known outside the Peanuts fandom. Of course, the person writing this has a hard time comprehending the mindset of anyone outside that fandom. But with the court’s permission, I’m going to make the case that you should consider checking out at least a few of these films.

Something to Make the Fourth Column Headlines: A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969)

The 1960s were when Peanuts was arguably at the peak of its popularity. It must have been a thrill for fans to see their favorite characters on the silver screen, doing what they did best and at the exact point in Peanuts animation history when most of the best voice actors for those characters were available. The script by series creator Charles Schulz works in just about all of the most famous Peanuts tropes. We get Charlie Brown (voiced by Peter Robbins for the last time) failing to fly a kite, he and his hapless baseball team losing a game, Snoopy (director Bill Melendez)’s suppertime dance, Snoopy imagining himself as a World War I flying ace, Lucy (Pamelyn Ferdin)’s psychiatry booth, Linus (Glenn Gilger)’s security blanket addiction and more. But the movie does more than reproduce what fans had already seen in the comics and in the five television specials that had been made at this point. It goes much bigger. There are several nifty visual flourishes that were new for the franchise.[1]That’s an ugly word, franchise, but an accurate one.

There are even a few Fantasia-esque psychedelic scenes, most notably for when the gang plays the American national anthem before their baseball game and for Schroeder (Andy Pforsich)’s performance of Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata.[2]Ingolf Dahl did the actual performance.

There’s also a fantasy sequence of Snoopy at an ice rink, imagining himself as alternatively a world-famous hockey player or a world-famous figure skater, which isn’t as pretty but is a lot of fun.

At a first glance, the backgrounds for the “normal” scenes are rather nondescript in keeping with the deceptively simple art style of Peanuts. But at a second glance, they have a subtle beauty lacking in the backgrounds for the specials that came before them.

The academy award nominated musical score by Vince Guaraldi and John Scott Trotter is an overlooked gem. Most of it is highly pleasant and laidback, in keeping with the movie’s relaxed pacing, but it also packs a punch in the emotional moments, in keeping with the story’s melancholy themes. Not as much use is made of Guaraldi’s classic Linus and Lucy theme as I might have expected or preferred but when it’s used, it’s used well, mostly notably for a joyously silly cathartic moment near the climax. I’m not familiar with songwriter Rod McKuen but maybe that should change because the three songs he contributed to this movie are wonderful. All of them look at the title character from a different angle. Failure Face savagely mocks him for his incompetence. Champion Charlie Brown celebrates him for a rare victory. And the film’s title song celebrates him for simply being a likeable everyman character. There’s also a song about spelling, I Before E, by John Scott Trotter, which doesn’t fit into the pattern but is still fun.

Some fussy viewers/critics may object that this movie feels like a collection of related jokes from the comics. But that’s the part of the movie’s appeal for me, especially since they’re such hilarious jokes. I’d argue it’s perfectly right for adapting the comic to a new medium for the first time and I’d argue the movie does have a story, just one that it takes time to set up. It also takes its time to set up punchlines, something that is also part of its appeal for me. I consider Phineas and Ferb, a more modern cartoon about which I recently blogged, and its typically modern two-jokes-a-minute pacing to be brilliant. But rewatching A Boy Named Charlie Brown after rewatching a bunch of Phineas and Ferb episodes, I was struck by how refreshing it was to have to wait for the laughs, especially since they were so big when they came. This movie trusts its characters charm enough to relax and spend time with them without the need for everything to get an immediate laugh or further the plot somehow. I pity any unsophisticated modern kids who find this a turnoff.

But I was supposed to be explaining that plot, wasn’t I? Well, after a leisurely first act that sets up Charlie Brown’s character, the movie adapts a 1966 storyline from the comic strip about him entering a spelling bee, but it takes this storyline in a much more dramatic direction with much higher stakes than the Peanuts norm.

As you may have gathered, the story centers around Charlie Brown, probably the most emotionally compelling Peanuts character, and his many failures. It’s probably the most piercing exploration of him in any bit of Peanuts media. Linus also plays a major role, trying to encourage Charlie Brown. Throughout most of the movie, his maxims, such as “winning isn’t everything” and “we learn more from losing than we do from winning” provide Charlie Brown with no comfort and even make him feel worse by putting pressure on him. (Lucy meanwhile deliberately discourages him with a hilariously cruel “therapy session” and later latches onto him for nakedly selfish reasons.) But Linus’s final line, while it might sound equally trite out of context, proves to be just what the old blockhead needs and is the character’s finest moment since the climax of A Charlie Brown Christmas.

A Funky Sparkling Wonderland: Snoopy Come Home (1972)

The second Peanuts movie is almost as great as the first. I’m not sure why I don’t consider the two movies equal. Maybe it’s because this one focuses on the second-best candidate for the franchise’s main character rather than the first.[3]I’d argue that the comic strip didn’t really have a main character but never mind that. Don’t get me wrong. Snoopy is a great character. While the animated version lacks the sarcastic wit of the comic strip character’s “thought balloons,” his adorable design could have been made for animation and Bill Melendez’s squeaky growls and guffaws bring him wonderfully to life. Yet while Snoopy Come Home has some big laughs, it’s not really the funniest Snoopy vehicle. He and Woodstock had finer hours in specials and movies where they had smaller roles.

Ah, yes, Woodstock. This movie was the little yellow bird’s big screen debut and he’s a welcome presence in it. Despite what I said in the previous paragraph, he and Snoopy are still great fun to watch here. They remind me a bit of Shawn Spencer and Burton Guster from USA’s Psych. (Snoopy is Shawn and Woodstock Gus.)

Peppermint Patty (Christopher DeFaria) had more screentime than Woodstock in A Boy Named Charlie Brown in that she appeared in the background while having no dialogue. Here she gets a major role. Well, for the first two thirds of the movie or so. She oddly vanishes for the last part, only appearing in the background of one shot toward the end. You could argue she doesn’t really fit in the story and only exists to pad it out. Still, she makes for entertaining padding, mainly her disastrous date at a carnival with Charlie Brown (Chad Weber) which goes to show that they really aren’t suited to be a couple.

The film’s plot is set in motion by Snoopy mysteriously receiving a letter from a girl named Lila (Johanna Baer) saying that she’s in the hospital and asking him to visit her. Snoopy runs off in a state of agitation, leaving his owner and neighbors bewildered. Fans who had been following the comics would already know Lila’s identity, this being adapted from a storyline that ran in newspapers four years prior. Personally, I’m thankful I hadn’t read it before I saw the movie because it’s a great mystery and the movie takes things in a much more dramatic direction than the comic did.

Snoopy Come Home‘s score was composed by Don Ralke, making it the first bit of Peanuts animation, I believe, not to feature Vince Guaraldi, and its musical numbers were written by Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman who were responsible for just about every cinematic children’s musical during the 60s and 70s. (They’re most well known for their work on Mary Poppins and The Many Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh.) I’d argue that the Shermans were more notable for their quantity than their consistent quality, but all of their songs for this movie, both the cheery and the tearful ones, rank among their best work.

There certainly are occasions for sad songs in this movie, which is kind of infamous among the Peanuts fandom for its sadness. Before Snoopy’s departure, he’s shown to get in conflicts with Charlie Brown, Peppermint Patty, Linus (Stephen Shea) and Lucy (Robin Kohn), ones in which both parties are at fault.[4]Well, except in Peppermint Patty’s case where neither is at fault and the whole thing is a misunderstanding, making it arguably even sadder. After he leaves, they all miss him and blame themselves for pushing him away. Charles Schulz had just gone through a messy divorce[5]Aren’t they all? and the script he wrote arguably reflects that. When Linus lets go of his security blanket a couple of times, you know things are serious.

But this movie also features scenes as amusing as anything in Peanuts, such as Snoopy and Woodstock’s encounter with a girl named Clara (Linda Ercoli) who tries to adopt them against their will. Clara had appeared in the comic strip before, but this movie revealed just how hilarious she could be. It also has the most heartwarming emotional finale to any Peanuts movie. Part of me really wishes it wouldn’t proceed to comedically undermine said finale. But too many of the recent Peanuts specials that Apple has produced have focused too much on trying to be heartwarming and not enough on trying to be witty or to capture the spirit of the comic. By contrast, there’s something refreshing or at least appropriate feeling about the cynical humor of Snoopy Come Home‘s final moments.

Next Time: Charlie Brown Goes on a Treacherous River Raft Race and Becomes a Foreign Exchange Student to France. AAAUGHH!

References

References
↑1 That’s an ugly word, franchise, but an accurate one.
↑2 Ingolf Dahl did the actual performance.
↑3 I’d argue that the comic strip didn’t really have a main character but never mind that.
↑4 Well, except in Peppermint Patty’s case where neither is at fault and the whole thing is a misunderstanding, making it arguably even sadder.
↑5 Aren’t they all?
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Adaptations as Introductions vs Adaptations as Commentary

Posted on July 1, 2023 by stationmaster

This post is going to be a bit different from my usual. I’m going to be discussing a certain kind of adaptation, which I’ll call “the adaptation as commentary,” its advantages and disadvantages. As examples, I’ll be using two movies I’ve written about in the past. Hopefully, it’s been long enough that my regular readers won’t groan and say, “not this again!” While there will be some overlap with my past discussions, I will be looking at the films from a different angle. That also means I’ll be a lot freer with spoilers and my past blog posts about these movies were already pretty spoiler heavy, so if you don’t want a first-time viewing experience ruined, I advise you to skip this post.

There are many things that I want from an adaptation of a book I love, one of them is that it serves as an introduction for newcomers to the story, even though I’m not a newcomer myself. I love that I can watch the BBC’s 1999 David Copperfield, which I recently recommended, with my friends who would never read the book and be confident that afterwards they’ll understand exactly why I love it. They won’t know every reason why, mind you. But they’ll get the gist. Remember I wrote that the adaptation should be an introduction to the source material, not a complete reproduction.

But there are some adaptations that are less introductions and more commentaries on their source. Of course, you could argue that every adaptation is a commentary on some level. What the adapter chooses to leave, cut, expand on and downplay indicates what they consider the best or most important parts of the original and often tells us as much about them as about the source. But it’s considerably truer of some adaptations than others. These “commentaries” can sometimes, though not always, be very intelligent and thoughtful and are what some fans want from adaptations, but they come with distinct tradeoffs. In this post, I’ll be examining two modern(ish) movie adaptations of classic and oft-adapted works of children’s literature, the 2003 Peter Pan and the 2019 Little Women. I included both of these in my list of top five screenplay adaptations albeit only for adaptations this blog covered in its first year. I’d even argue that they’re truer to their source materials in some ways than past takes on them.[1]Peter Pan is more upfront about the violent nature of Neverland than either the classic Disney movie or the thrice filmed stage musical and Little Women is the only movie version to really give the … Continue reading I didn’t choose them to discuss because I think they’re examples of the adaptation-as-commentary done wrong. However, I’m going to argue that neither works well as an introduction to the original books.

Taking its cue from the 1953 animated movie, the 2003 Peter Pan has young Wendy Darling fly away with Peter on what her father had intended to be her last night sleeping in the nursery with her younger brothers. Thus, her flight becomes a deliberate avoidance of maturity, something latent in the original novel and stage play by J. M. Barrie, but less overt. This Peter Pan doesn’t just lure Wendy away with promises of seeing mermaids and pirates and of having all the lost boys respect her. What ultimately convinces Wendy to turn her back on her loving parents is his invitation to “never have to worry about grownup things again.”

Barrie’s attitude toward growing up in Peter Pan is hard to pin down. Like Peter, he seems to get bored and switch sides when winning a fight too easily. In the book’s last chapter, he dismisses the lost boys as “goats” for having left the island to be adopted by Wendy’s family and grow up. But he also treats Wendy’s growth positively or at least neutrally, saying that “she was one of the kind that likes to grow up. In the end she grew up of her own free will a day quicker than other girls.” Then again, the adult Wendy does regret her decision when Peter comes to take her back to Neverland and she can’t go. Barrie is very upfront about the wonders of Neverland that adults can’t enjoy, but he’s also very upfront about the consciences that adults have and children, in his estimation anyway, do not. Of course, consciences aren’t necessarily fun things to have and for some (evil) people that may be an argument in favor of eternal youth. Barrie’s Peter Pan leaves readers and audiences to come to their own conclusions. Director and screenwriter P. J. Hogan however overtly makes the case against running from adulthood. His Wendy decides to return home when she realizes to her horror that she and her brothers are forgetting about their parents. What prompted Barrie’s Wendy to do this was the idea that her parents might be forgetting her, which was arguably just more childish selfishness.[2]Though the book does describe Wendy as being disturbed by the way her brothers’ memories of home and her own were fading, but not enough to make her leave Neverland.

Something that this movie wants adult viewers to keep in mind, which the Disney movie didn’t, is the reason growing up entails Wendy no longer sharing a room with her brothers: her budding sexuality. This was always implicit in the book and the play with her crush on Peter, but the movie makes it a main theme. In the second scene, more or less, Wendy’s busybody aunt declares that she’s almost a woman and needs to start thinking about marriage. As evidence of this, she says that Wendy has a kiss hidden in the righthand corner of her mouth.[3]This language comes from the book but as is typical of the movie, its context is different. This, she tells her uncomfortable niece, is for the greatest adventure of all. In a wink-wink nudge-nudge moment aimed over the heads of young viewers, Wendy’s schoolteacher is scandalized to find that Wendy has drawn a picture, inspired by her first glimpse of Peter, which tellingly went to her mother in the original story, of a strange boy in her bedroom watching her sleep.[4]Peter’s costume also shows a great deal of skin and occasionally so do those of the lost boys. This is sort of eyebrow raising given rumors of child predators in the entertainment industry, but … Continue reading

Ironically, Wendy’s puberty is as much what draws her to Peter as it is what scares her away from her family. But though he enjoys playing father to the lost boys with her as the mother, he can’t or won’t return her feelings. At one point, he asks her for assurance that their roles are “only make believe” and when she gives it to him, he’s relieved since “it would make me so old to be a real father.” This bothers Wendy who then tries to Define the Relationship, asking Peter what his “exact feelings” are for her. All this comes from Barrie[5]Though significantly, in his version, it follows Peter and Wendy acting out a domestic scene, sitting by the fire and talking about their children whereas, in the movie, it follows a scene of them … Continue reading, but what follows is much more dramatic. In the book and the play, Peter casually replies that his feelings are “those of a devoted son.” Wendy stomps off in a huff and when Peter, more curious than exasperated, asks what it is she wants to be to him that’s not a mother, she primly says, “it isn’t for a lady to tell.” With that, the issue is dropped. In the movie, Wendy explicitly brings up the concept of love and Peter responds negatively, saying that the very sound of it offends him. His response is even more negative when Wendy argues that there’s much more to life than flying and fighting and that it becomes clearer when you grow up. Later, when Peter insists that he wants to always be a little boy and have fun, she replies, “you say so, but I think it is your biggest pretend.” Surprisingly, to me anyway, this line comes from Barrie’s stage directions for the play. However, there it was only for the director and the cast to know. The movie explicitly makes the case that refusing to grow up is a waste, resulting from cowardice.

Wendy’s not the only character to call Peter out here. The adaptation’s climax is much more emotional than the one in the original, which was a basically a lark.[6]I should note that it starts out as lark and this movie captures much more of the book’s fun than Disney’s recent, Peter Pan and Wendy, which gave the latter character an arc similar to … Continue reading Here Captain Hook taunts Peter with the knowledge that Wendy was about to leave him before she was captured.[7]It’s a pity I couldn’t give Jason Issacs’s Hook a mention in my “awards ceremony” or any of the other great portrayals of the character from other versions of Peter Pan. … Continue reading He calls Peter “a tragedy” on the grounds that he’ll never live up to his potential and be able to give Wendy what she really wants. “You die alone and unloved,” he says, “just like me.” Here the character of Hook acts as a commentator, drawing parallels between himself and his adversary. (Along similar lines, he tells Tinkerbell, a character who is obsessed with Peter in a way different from his, that by killing him, they’ll both be free.) Only when Wendy gives Peter her “hidden kiss”, demonstrating that she really does love him even if he can never be her husband, is he able to defeat Hook.

The 2019 Little Women makes far fewer changes to its source material’s story and characters than the 2003 Peter Pan does. But in some ways, the adaptation’s function as a commentary on the original becomes even more obtrusive. This is because, for better and for worse, it ends up being just as much a movie about the book, Little Women, as it is a movie version of Little Women, but we’ll get to that later.

The main way director/screenwriter Greta Gerwig comments on the original novel by Lousia May Alcott is by drawing contrasts between its first half and its second half through her movie’s nonlinear story. It begins with the March sisters as adults, having gone their separate ways for the first time. Meg is raising two children with her husband, Jo is in New York working as a governess and part time writer, Amy is in Europe studying art and Beth is still at home with her parents. All this is intercut with flashbacks of them seven years ago when they were all together. (Both the past and present storylines proceed chronologically.)[8]The 2019 movie is technically not the only adaptation to use this device. The 2018 film, which sets the story in modern times, does it too, though with less of a purpose behind it. I can’t … Continue reading While the sisters always had different personalities and goals, the emphasis in the flashbacks is on them as a unit and on the cheerful camaraderie they had between them that they miss in their adult lives. What’s also stressed is how much more confident they were in their youth about achieving their dreams. Thus, we cut from Meg happily partying with her rich friends in the past to her worrying about money with her husband in the present.[9]Though even in the flashbacks, Meg, being older, was more realistic about her dreams’ plausibility than Jo and Amy were. Visually, the scenes set in the past and the present also contrast each other with the former being all bright, warm, nostalgic colors and the latter grayer and grittier looking. This suggests the flashbacks are colored by nostalgia. We’re not seeing so much what really happened back then as what Jo remembers.[10]I’m not sure how this can be the case when some of those scenes are from the perspective of her sisters, mother and neighbors. Maybe they’re supposed to be the family’s collective … Continue reading The movie doesn’t cut any of the bad things that happen during the childhood section of the story and neither does it cut any of the good things that happen in the adulthood section, but it consistently deemphasizes them.

The most striking contrast created by intercutting is between Beth’s two bouts with Scarlet Fever. After a montage of her family taking care of her in both the past and the present[11]The nonlinear storytelling really benefits the movie’s pacing here as two such montages would be repetitive and skimping on one would make the outcome of each obvious., we see a flashback of Jo waking up to find Beth’s bed empty. She rushes downstairs in a panic to find her not dead but sitting up and eating, well on the road to recovery. Then we get the uplifting scene of the girls’ father, who has been at war and dangerously ill himself, returning home for Christmas. And then Jo wakes up in the present to find Beth’s bed empty. Slowly, she comes downstairs to find that this time Beth really is dead. Then we get the sad scene of her funeral. This is one case where the contrast explicitly isn’t the result of Jo’s nostalgia, but ironically Beth’s initial recovery was something of a wish fulfillment fantasy on Louisa May Alcott’s part. She based Jo’s personality on herself and Beth’s on that of her sister, Elizabeth, who had died before she wrote Little Women. The first half of the book, ending with the father’s return and Meg’s engagement, was originally the whole thing. When Alcott wrote about Beth’s illness, she was probably depicting how she wished it happened for her sister and when she wrote the sequel, which is now considered part of the book, she was writing something closer to what had actually happened though still probably a somewhat idealized and sanitized version.

Instead of writing a short story inspired by her memories of Beth, as in the book, the movie’s Jo expands on a short story she wrote for her about their childhood together, turning it into, well, Little Women or the first half of it anyway. This isn’t the only movie adaptation to make that change, but it’s the one that does it in the most interesting way. Jo sends the first twelve chapters to Mr. Dashwood, her editor in New York, telling him in a letter that “it could suit as a story for young people, but I think it is probably quite boring.” Privately, with a true author’s angst, she laments to her sisters that the book can never be really great because it’s a just “a story of domestic struggles and joys. It doesn’t have any real importance.” Amy argues that people don’t realize how important domestic struggles and joys are because people don’t write books about them, and that Jo’s will be the one to demonstrate it. Here Greta Gerwig makes the case in her adaptation for the literary Little Women being great literature.[12]More cynically, you could say it’s Gerwig patting herself on the back for making the kind of movies she does while pretending to celebrate Louisa May Alcott, but it’s a great scene so … Continue reading Mr. Dashwood initially rejects the manuscript but when his young daughters get their hands on it, devour it and demand more, he changes his mind.

All this is based on the real story of Little Women‘s publication, though the facts are somewhat sensationalized. Little Women wasn’t really a labor of love for Louisa Alcott. It was an assignment and one she didn’t initially like. Publisher Thomas Niles asked her to write a story for and about young girls. She preferred boys and put the task off until she really needed the money.[13]Remember my earlier footnote where I mentioned that I tire of all the critics and fans complaining about Disney’s recent and seeming endless stream of remakes? Well, I think the story of Little … Continue reading When she did write it, she used the girls she’d known best, herself and her sisters in their childhood, as the basis for her heroines’ personalities. Niles wasn’t impressed with the first twelve chapters she sent him, but he showed it to members of the target audience who loved it, especially his niece. Encouraged by her mother and sisters, Alcott warmed to her task, realizing that “lively simple books are very much needed for girls.” She would always resent though being famous for her moralizing children’s literature rather than serious adult writing.

She also resented that her publishers and readers insisted that she end the book with all her heroines, in the words of the 2019 movie, “married or dead.” This especially annoyed her when it came to the character of Jo whom she’d modeled on her contentedly single self. The film actually works this frustration into its commentary.[14]Along similar lines, both Jo and Amy lament that seemingly the only respectable way they can make money is to marry into it. This is the most boring part of the movie’s commentary since every … Continue reading Just before the romantic finale between Jo and Professor Bhaer, we cut, for the first time in the film, from the present to the future when Jo and Mr. Dashwood are discussing the ending to her book. He objects to her intention that the main heroine not marry either of her possible love interests.[15]The main difference between this and reality is that Alcott probably wouldn’t have created Bhaer at all unless she had to give Jo a husband. “She says the whole book she doesn’t want to get married,” Jo argues. “Who cares?” says Dashwood. “Girls want to read about women being married, not consistent.” If she doesn’t relent, according to him, nobody will buy the book. Reluctantly, Jo agrees and only then do we get the scene of her and Bhaer under the umbrella, implying that it’s fictional. Dashwood finds it very moving and since he represents the pulpy commercial writing Jo is supposed to avoid, this amounts to a critique of the book’s ending, though Jo herself seems pleased that he likes it.

However, if the movie’s goal was to make the case that Jo getting married was arbitrary and out of character, it chooses a strange way to do it. Clearly, there’s more going on here. Rather than emphasizing Jo’s happiness with her liberty, her loneliness and weariness of being the only single person left in her family are depicted more dramatically than in any previous adaptation or even the book. At one point, according to the official screenplay, we’re supposed to fear that Jo will jump into a river, something Alcott really contemplated at her most despondent, though I don’t think it really registers that way on film. It’s impossible not to interpret the umbrella scene as not only a concession to marketability but as Jo’s fantasy of what she wishes had happened with the implied suggestion that Alcott was also indulging in wish fulfillment when she wrote her version. Since Bhaer is present for the final scene, taken from the book, of the Marches celebrating their matriarch’s birthday at the new school Jo has opened, that is apparently fictional too. Intercut with it is the publication of Jo’s book, which is unambiguously real. The only happy ending of which we can be sure in this Little Women, for Jo anyway, is the existence of the book, Little Women, itself.

All this is great fun to analyze but I would not want either of these movies to be anyone’s introduction to the originals. Not that I think newcomers wouldn’t enjoy them. Far from it.[16]Well, I do know that many casual viewers find it a pain to keep track of which scenes in the 2019 Little Women are flashbacks. It might not have hurt it to sacrifice a little subtlety and include … Continue reading My concern is that having watched these adaptations with all their commentary, they’ll find the book versions anticlimactic and lacking depth by comparison. Well, you might say, isn’t that because they are? I’d argue not. The impression of added depth is an illusion. While the 2003 Peter Pan may explore one interpretation of him and his eternal childhood more fully than the book or the play did, it does so at the cost of every other possible interpretation latent in the text. And the 2019 Little Women, by making it so much about nostalgia, gives the sad scenes, which are presented as real, a power it denies the happy ones, which are presented as imaginary. In the book, on the other hand, both the high points and the low points are equally valid or at least the decision is left up to the reader. Earlier in this post, I mentioned the 1999 David Copperfield.[17]That seems like a good point of comparison since, like Little Women, David Copperfield is a very personal novel about the relatable life experiences of a young author. (Both even had movie … Continue reading That adaptation may not be anywhere near as creative and interesting as the two I’ve examined here, much more of a cut and paste job[18]Though I’d argue it has a few inspired, original moments, such as Betsey Trotwood’s response to Micawber’s claim that he’s not going to make a big speech. And the book is so … Continue reading, but, unlike them, it won’t hinder viewers who haven’t read the source material from choosing their own interpretation of it.

Does this mean I dislike the 2003 Peter Pan and the 2019 Little Women? No. I probably wouldn’t recommend them as introductions to the originals, but I would recommend them to openminded and curious fans of the originals, those who don’t mind an interpretation that might not exactly align with their own. I wouldn’t agree that these stories have gained rather than lost through these adaptations-as-commentaries, but I would say they have both gained and lost.

References

References
↑1 Peter Pan is more upfront about the violent nature of Neverland than either the classic Disney movie or the thrice filmed stage musical and Little Women is the only movie version to really give the characters of Meg and Amy their due.
↑2 Though the book does describe Wendy as being disturbed by the way her brothers’ memories of home and her own were fading, but not enough to make her leave Neverland.
↑3 This language comes from the book but as is typical of the movie, its context is different.
↑4 Peter’s costume also shows a great deal of skin and occasionally so do those of the lost boys. This is sort of eyebrow raising given rumors of child predators in the entertainment industry, but honestly it does strike me as more how adventurous boys, cut off from civilization and adult ideas of propriety, would choose to dress. I don’t think such boys would gravitate toward the tights of the traditional Peter Pan costume.
↑5 Though significantly, in his version, it follows Peter and Wendy acting out a domestic scene, sitting by the fire and talking about their children whereas, in the movie, it follows a scene of them dancing romantically together.
↑6 I should note that it starts out as lark and this movie captures much more of the book’s fun than Disney’s recent, Peter Pan and Wendy, which gave the latter character an arc similar to that of her 2003 counterpart, and which I found rather dull and joyless. I should also note though that Peter Pan and Wendy does have some fun moments and isn’t the worst movie ever or anything. I’m somewhat sick of all the YouTube videos my feed recommends decrying every new Disney remake or reimagining as a travesty. Not saying they’re all great but, come on, they’re not all that terrible either!
↑7 It’s a pity I couldn’t give Jason Issacs’s Hook a mention in my “awards ceremony” or any of the other great portrayals of the character from other versions of Peter Pan. But there was a lot of competition for great villains and Hook is a hard one to categorize being something of an affectionate parody of a villain.
↑8 The 2019 movie is technically not the only adaptation to use this device. The 2018 film, which sets the story in modern times, does it too, though with less of a purpose behind it. I can’t resist mentioning that, on the whole, I actually enjoy watching the 2018 Little Women more than this one, though I know that’s not a popular opinion.
↑9 Though even in the flashbacks, Meg, being older, was more realistic about her dreams’ plausibility than Jo and Amy were.
↑10 I’m not sure how this can be the case when some of those scenes are from the perspective of her sisters, mother and neighbors. Maybe they’re supposed to be the family’s collective memories.
↑11 The nonlinear storytelling really benefits the movie’s pacing here as two such montages would be repetitive and skimping on one would make the outcome of each obvious.
↑12 More cynically, you could say it’s Gerwig patting herself on the back for making the kind of movies she does while pretending to celebrate Louisa May Alcott, but it’s a great scene so let’s not be cynical, OK?
↑13 Remember my earlier footnote where I mentioned that I tire of all the critics and fans complaining about Disney’s recent and seeming endless stream of remakes? Well, I think the story of Little Women proves that being made for profit doesn’t doom a piece of entertainment artistically.
↑14 Along similar lines, both Jo and Amy lament that seemingly the only respectable way they can make money is to marry into it. This is the most boring part of the movie’s commentary since every modern adaptation of a classic book about women does it, so I only mention it in a footnote. Lest that sound too dismissive, I think there’s a case to be made that a modern adaptation should include that since it’d be unfair for storytellers from the 21st century to condemn Amy for being a gold digger in her pursuit of Fred Vaugn without acknowledging the realities of her historical situation. Alcott, being a single woman in the midst of those historical realities, could do so without hypocrisy.
↑15 The main difference between this and reality is that Alcott probably wouldn’t have created Bhaer at all unless she had to give Jo a husband.
↑16 Well, I do know that many casual viewers find it a pain to keep track of which scenes in the 2019 Little Women are flashbacks. It might not have hurt it to sacrifice a little subtlety and include more title cards.
↑17 That seems like a good point of comparison since, like Little Women, David Copperfield is a very personal novel about the relatable life experiences of a young author. (Both even had movie adaptations directed by George Cukor.) And, like Peter Pan, it’s partly about the relationship between someone who basically wants to grow up and someone who wants to never do so, though the genders are flipped.
↑18 Though I’d argue it has a few inspired, original moments, such as Betsey Trotwood’s response to Micawber’s claim that he’s not going to make a big speech. And the book is so inspired itself that even a cut and paste job is pretty awesome.
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The Greatest David Copperfield but Not the Greatest David Copperfield

Posted on June 9, 2023 by stationmaster

When I was writing my post about two movie adaptations of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, my original plan was to do a quick summary of my thoughts on my favorite adaptation, the BBC’s 1999 two-part miniseries. Maybe something along the lines of “it has great production design, courtesy of Roger Cann, some beautiful locations, mainly in Hampshire for the Dover residence of Betsey Trotwood (Maggie Smith), an excellent musical score, courtesy of Rob Lane, and a cast to make fans of the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings movies weep.” But by the time I reached the end, I decided that the post was so long that it needed to end as quickly as it could without being anticlimactic. And why should I devote paragraphs and paragraphs to adaptations of David Copperfield that weren’t my favorite and only one to the adaptation that is?

Well, one reason was that I feel like the works of art or entertainment that I completely love or completely hate don’t make for the most interesting posts. The ones that have some good and some bad make for more interesting reading if you ask me. But, on reflection, there are enough things about this generally wonderful miniseries that aren’t great to keep this a bit interesting. One thing in particular.

But I’d like to lead into it with something about this David Copperfield that is the best of any adaptation. That’s young Daniel Radcliffe as the protagonist during most of the first episode which focuses on the character’s childhood. This might not seem like high praise at first. When he’s a kid, David’s character[1]By the way, I feel a bit uncomfortable calling him David. You see, basically ever character in the book calls him by a different name in keeping with that character’s social status, personality … Continue reading is mainly defined by being cute. But that’s harder to do in a movie or a play than you’d think. It works great in the book but for a young actor to mainly try to be cute for long can easily fall flat.[2]Another issue is that what makes young David’s characterization so great in the book is so how well Dickens gets in the head of someone so young. A movie or a TV show can only show the … Continue reading Radcliffe, however, never feels like he’s trying to be cute. He just naturally comes across that way, and it works wonderfully.

It seems to be kind of a tradition with movies or series where a character is played by one actor in his youth and another in his maturity that one of those actors be much better than the other. Sadly, this David Copperfield is a case in point. Ciaran McMenamin is easily the worst adult David Copperfield I’ve seen with his inexpressive face and his dull line readings. I’m honestly baffled as to why he was cast, especially when everyone around him in this series is so great. Maybe part of the fault lies with the script, which always seems to have him saying to the other, better cast characters, “oh, Character X, don’t have this interesting emotion. Be boring like me.” OK, not really, but that’s how it sounds.[3]Harry Lloyd also makes more of an impression as the younger version of David’s false friend, James Steerforth, than Oliver Milburn does as the older version, but the gap between the two is … Continue reading

How can this possibly be my favorite David Copperfield adaptation when it has my least favorite David Copperfield?[4]Not only are Frank Lawton and Dev Patel better than he is, by the way, but so is Hugh Dancy from the 2000 made-for-TV movie, which I won’t be reviewing. And so is…well, let’s not … Continue reading Well, that has to do with the story’s structure. It’s really a collection of subplots seen through the eyes of the main character. It doesn’t feel like his own problems are more important than that of his friends. For many major scenes, he’s an observer, a supporting player, a chronicler[5]Though it’s worth noting that in Dickens’s version, unlike the 2019 movie, David never intended his memoir with all its potentially unflattering information to be published., not the center of the action. He’s not as important as the title character of your average Dickens story. That’s how I feel anyway. Other fans may differ in their opinions.

There are actually three actors who portray David Copperfield in this series. Besides Radcliffe and McMenamin, there’s also Tom Wilkinson who provides voiceover narration as an older David looking back on his life. He sets exactly the right tone, communicating warm nostalgia and regret for whichever the scene requires, sometimes both at once.

If I were to criticize anyone in the cast besides McMenamin, it’d be Amanda Ryan as David’s ultimate love interest, Agnes Wickfield-which says awesome things about the cast since even she does a great job at conveying the pain of her unrequited love. (Unrequited until the end, of course.) The problem is she doesn’t really convey much else. Again, this might be the fault of the writing. Watching the series, you get the impression she was screenwriter Adrain Hodges’s least favorite character from the book, at least of the ones included in this adaptation, and that he struggled to find what to do with her. To be honest, I get that. Agnes is my least favorite of the A-list David Copperfield characters, but I’ve seen her come across as having greater emotional range and charm in other adaptations. I wish this one could have found the time to show her friendly teasing of David over his many crushes[6]David Copperfield is the Dickensian protagonist with the highest number of love interests. Apparently, he takes after his father who, according to his aunt, “was always running after wax dolls … Continue reading or her misplaced guilt over her father (Oliver Ford Davies)’s problems or her stubborn faith that “real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.” As it is, her character is pretty much defined by being sad.

Most of the casting is superb. Even some people I’ve encountered who don’t like Dickens will admit he knew how to write villains you love to hate, and David Copperfield delivers on this. Trevor Eve is chilling as the abusive stepfather, Edward Murdstone and Zoe Wanamaker is perfect as his equally sadistic sister, Jane. I’ve seen a lot of great Miss Murdstones, but Wanamaker really takes the cake and eats it too. The way she takes the household keys from David’s mother (Emilia Fox-a little too old for the role but, granting that, she’s great), puts them in her hard steel purse like she’s taking them prisoner and snaps it shut convinced me that I was seeing the literary character in the flesh.

Also perfect is the raspy, nearly inaudible voice that Ian McKellan gives the abusive schoolmaster, Mr. Creakle. Incidentally, the character of his wife is cut, and he gets her role of trying to break bad news gently to young David in one memorable scene. This was probably done to save the expense of another actor rather than to add humanity to Creakle but it works for me.

As Uriah Heep, Nicholas Lyndhurst is stiff and cold, delivering his character’s insincere groveling like he’s reading from cue cards, rather than slimy and serpentine as Dickens describes him. But he’s just as palpably creepy and monstrous.

On to the good guys. As David’s great-aunt, Betsey Trotwood, Maggie Smith isn’t as awesomely over-the-top as Edna Mae Oliver was and the scene where she tells the Murdstones what’s wrong with them isn’t quite as satisfying. But she shows more of the character’s subtle but unmistakable character arc as she grows more tolerant and easygoing through her relationship with her great-nephew. She doesn’t get as much depth as in the book, of course, with so many subplots to juggle and only three hours, but she gets more of it than in several other adaptations. And Smith gets to have fun too, most notably in the character’s unforgettable introductory scene.

Betsey Trotwood at the beginning
And Betsey Trotwood at the end (See a difference?)

In my last David Copperfield post, I lamented that the subplot of Dr. Strong and his wife is always cut by adaptations, including this one, not so much for its own sake as for the depth it gives to Betsey Trotwood’s mentally disabled friend, Mr. Dick (Ian McNeice.) Here he’s once again reduced to a goofy supporting character. Still, McNeice brings more humanity to the role than Lennox Pawle did in 1935. If only the miniseries gave him more opportunity to show it.

Another thing I lamented in that previous post was how both the 1935 and 2019 movie adaptations reduced Mrs. Micawber (Imelda Staunton here) to a pathetic comic figure. That’s not so here. She gets as many dramatic moments as you’d wish with the time limitations. So does Bob Hoskins as her kooky husband, Wilkins. But that doesn’t mean they don’t get plenty of humorous moments too, most notably the bit where Micawber fails to commit suicide and then cheerfully inquires about breakfast.[7]If you’re not familiar with the character, you may be wondering if that’s normal for him. Yes. Yes, it is. Sorry, I’ve still got Phineas and Ferb on the brain.

I don’t know why of all the minor comic relief characters in the book, this miniseries insisted on retaining David’s alcoholic landlady, Mrs. Crupp (Dawn French.) But I’ll be forever grateful to them for it. French is hilarious and she and Maggie Smith do a great job of playing off each other in the one scene they share.

My proofreader has told me before that the reviews where I list practically every member of the cast and state my opinion on their performance are among my more boring ones. But I really couldn’t resist doing that for this miniseries. There are so many great actors and characters that I haven’t gotten to yet!

Pauline Quirk as Clara Peggotty
James Thorton as Ham and Alun Armstrong (whom Dickens fans may recognize as Squeers from the 1982 Nicholas Nickleby and Inspector Bucket from the 2005 Bleak House) as Daniel Peggotty
Aislin McGuckin as Emily
Clare Holman as Rosa Dartle and Cherie Lunghi as Mrs. Steerforth

With the court’s indulgence, I’d like to treat one more of them individually: Joanna Page as David’s ditzy first wife, Dora Spenlow. Watching her, you both totally buy that David would be infatuated with her cuteness and that actually living with her would drive him crazy.

It helps that McMenamin’s David is more expressive when he’s exasperated by Dora than at any other point.

I wish the series had shown the couple having a fight and then making up, as the 1935 movie did, to really flesh out their relationship. But it’s amazing how much depth and nuance the miniseries gives it even without that.

Depth and nuance are what I really appreciate about this adaptation. More than your average Dickens book, a major part of what makes David Copperfield compelling is how so many of its characters turn out to be more complicated than they seem when we first meet them. Too many retellings of the story focus solely on capturing the characters’ memorable quirks without properly developing their emotional journeys or retaining their moments of self-awareness. This one might not be able to include every bit of character development or nuance from the book, but you can tell that character development and nuance were the main goals of Adrian Hodges and director Simon Curtis, and they focused on them without skimping on humorous character quirks. And while not every subplot from the book was included and the ones that were included sometimes feel a tad rushed, none of them feel more rushed than others. Each one is given equal weight.[8]Contrast this with the 2000 TV movie that underdeveloped the storyline of Steerforth and the Peggotty family and the 1969 one that underdeveloped everything else.

Another thing about the book, David Copperfield, that this adaptation prioritizes is how much of it is about life itself with its ups and downs. It shows a lot of cute babies[9]They’re cute in this miniseries, I mean. I don’t remember them being described that way in the book., representing birth, and a lot of scenes of people grieving for lost loved ones, representing death. Not that this story has as high of a body count as some Dickens books. In fact, the ending has been quite reasonably criticized for indulging in wish fulfillment. The ultimate fate of the improvident Micawber family, in particular, has been described as unbelievable. But this adaptation creates a heartwarming moment between the husband and wife that reconciles me to the ending. (I’d include an image, but I don’t want to spoil too much.)

When it comes to heartwarming ways to waste three hours in front of the TV, I’d rank this David Copperfield right up there with The Sound of Music.

Remember what I said about some beautiful scenery?

References

References
↑1 By the way, I feel a bit uncomfortable calling him David. You see, basically ever character in the book calls him by a different name in keeping with that character’s social status, personality and relationship to him. David is what his evil stepfamily calls him, and I don’t want to sound like one of them. But none of his nicknames (Davy, Doady, Daisy, etc.) feel natural to me. I’ve thought of coming up with a nickname for him of my own. (D.C.?) But I haven’t come up with one I really like yet and David falls naturally from my tongue.
↑2 Another issue is that what makes young David’s characterization so great in the book is so how well Dickens gets in the head of someone so young. A movie or a TV show can only show the character from the outside, so to speak.
↑3 Harry Lloyd also makes more of an impression as the younger version of David’s false friend, James Steerforth, than Oliver Milburn does as the older version, but the gap between the two is narrower than between Radcliffe and McMenamin.
↑4 Not only are Frank Lawton and Dev Patel better than he is, by the way, but so is Hugh Dancy from the 2000 made-for-TV movie, which I won’t be reviewing. And so is…well, let’s not compare him to every other actor I’ve seen in the role. That might just be depressing.
↑5 Though it’s worth noting that in Dickens’s version, unlike the 2019 movie, David never intended his memoir with all its potentially unflattering information to be published.
↑6 David Copperfield is the Dickensian protagonist with the highest number of love interests. Apparently, he takes after his father who, according to his aunt, “was always running after wax dolls from his cradle.” In the modern vernacular, she would probably have said “barbie dolls.”
↑7 If you’re not familiar with the character, you may be wondering if that’s normal for him. Yes. Yes, it is. Sorry, I’ve still got Phineas and Ferb on the brain.
↑8 Contrast this with the 2000 TV movie that underdeveloped the storyline of Steerforth and the Peggotty family and the 1969 one that underdeveloped everything else.
↑9 They’re cute in this miniseries, I mean. I don’t remember them being described that way in the book.
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