HOME | DD

Description
DAY 168

In the mid 80s, a young John Lasseter approached the heads of the Disney company with a brand new concept; incorporating the then-new 3D animation with hand-drawn animation. He showed them a test of Where the Wild Things Are (with 2D characters in computer-generated backgrounds) and wanted to have that used for an entire feature film, but Disney thought that'd be too expensive so they kicked Lasseter out. So Jasseter gathered a little crew and made the film under Hyperion Pictures and became an independent film Disney would distribute. That film was the Brave Little Toaster. It's the story of a bunch of old-fashioned household appliances: a toaster, an electric blanket, a goose-neck lamp, a dial radio and a vacuum cleaner. They've waited for the arrival of their master for decades and decide to go to the city to find him. Based off the children's book by Thomas M. Disch, this film seems to get a bit of a bad reputation that's not quite deserving. I watched it a lot as a kid and didn't have any problems. It's a simple premise but they do a lot with it; how they view humans and their fates, the simpler moments to breath, the different obstacles the heroes come across and the dark moments. So many people say this movie is dark for no reason at all. But you know what? I didn't mind that either! Walt always said that you need a bit of darkness in a movie or the happy ending will be meaningless and that exact same philosophy is here. The air conditioner blowing up, Toaster's clown nightmare, the climax, the repair shop, the junkyard, the forest, they all work and beneficial. The story as a whole actually reminds me a lot of Pooh's Most Grand Adventure, right down to the owner being named Rob! The animation is pretty good. The backgrounds have so much shading and details, the designs are very PIXAR-esque (heck, PIXAR soon worked with these exact same objects sometimes), the actual animation on the characters is very smooth and really expressive. Even if the quality might be a little dusty (must be bad enhancement rendering), it's really good for the 80s. The characters are good; they're simple but you get a lot of development (again, reminding me of Pooh's main 5 gang). The characters they come across are also neat, from random woodland creatures, broken appliances in a repair shop, the cutting edge technology, the depressed junk cars and many more. The voicework also matches; Deanna Oliver, Thurl Ravenscroft, Jon Lovitz, Mindy Stern, Phil Hartman doing a bunch of roles and a couple others. The songs can be pretty catchy. Some are public domain songs (one of our characters is a radio and we're gonna use that opportunity, dammit), but the original songs like "City of Light", "It's a B-Movie Show" and "Worthless" aren't half bad. The score by David Newman can also sweep you away. So yeah, I like this movie quite well and don't see why people say it's terrible. In fact, there's been some word by some that there could be a live-action remake and y'know what, maybe it could finally be the CGI movie Lasseter wanted to make!
The first BLT was pretty good on its release and managed to win a Parents' Choice Award. Soon after, when Disney Toon Studios was making all sorts of direct-to-video sequels for Disney films, they gave Toaster and his gang two of them... released in the wrong order. The first sequel released advertised as the finale to the series (yeah, marketing really screwed up), Brave Little Toaster to the Rescue wasn't really a good follow-up. I saw this movie once as a kid (rented the VHS from Blockbuster) and didn't really remember it. I remember the trailers more. The story is the "have to save a workplace with people we care about not to go out of business" type. In this case, an animal hospital with injured pets, trying to save the masters files from a computer and stopping a villain who wants to shut down the hospital for... reasons. Yeah, one of the main issues is there's no real surprises and it's all played too safely. At least, that's MY experience since, like I said, I saw Goes to Mars first and already knew this was before that. We know the hospital's gonna stay in business, we know what struggles the animals are gonna overcome, we know Rob's files will be saved, we know the bad guy's gonna get what's coming to him, they even do a sacrifice with Radio giving up his power source, but since I've seen Goes to Mars, I know he's gonna live! The animation is OK, but the settings aren't that great. Most of the movie we're stuck in the hospital at night, complete with dark and muted colors. Said it before and I'll keep on saying it, how is that appealing? It also looses its touch with the new characters being mostly animals and not other appliances (with rare exceptions). We've seen talking animals in movies before, especially ones that hide their talking abilities to humans! Speaking of characters, the old ones it's nice to see again, but there's not much added (aside from Radio's "death") and the new ones aren't any better. Ratso's actually OK, the rest of the animals have usual sickly arches (a cat with a group of newly born kittens, a chiuoa with a broken leg, a snake who's... the snake and a broken armed monkey with a memory problem), Rob and his girlfriend have a usual romance and end up as a proposed couple, Nack is a generic slimey villains who hates animals... for no reason like I said above and any appliances they do show don't get that much screentime. The songs aren't that memorable. They're all regular happy-sounding and they don't really move the story. There's one with the animals remembering when Rob found them, one about the internet superhighway, an "we all end up happily ever after, isn't that nice" ending number. There's only one saving grace in this movie: the character of Wittgenstein. He's got a wonderful and tragic backstory, his song actually progesses the story and isn't there just because, Brian Doyle-Murphy's rusty voice adds to the agedness of the character, he saves the movie both figuratively and literally! Aside from him, the rest of the movie doesn't hold up to the first one.
Finally, the Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars, which was more of a step in the right direction. I saw this one more than To the Rescue but I wasn't lost. Like I said, I saw the trailers for TO the Rescue more than the movie itself, but there was enough shown for me to think "OK, so the Mars adventure takes place AFTER whatever happened before". Rob and Chris have gotten married and now have a baby; the Little Master the appliances call him. One night, a mysterious circumstance happens where the baby ends up being transported to Mars, so Toaster and his friends now have to get him back to earth. Instead of a cliche story we've heard before, this goes back to the "totally out there and work with it" concept the first film has. I mean, a toaster traveling to Mars. How more obscure can you get in this universe? Aside from that, there's still some talks about objects' views on humanity, it's a journey to an unknown place with unusual obstacles, atmospheric moments, talks about putting the plans together and they're all doing it for the protection of a master! The animation again is exactly the same as To the Rescue, but its more imaginative again. We focus back on appliances instead of animals and since it's outerspace and the planet Mars, there's more color. The old characters feel more like their old selves, the little master is a typical cute baby but isn't annoying, a stuckup microwave, a hearing air with a nice backstory, an intelligent calculator, a mother-and-son duo being a kitchen sink, a bunch of balloons floating in space forever, a Christmas tree angel, the Viking I and a bunch of dysfunctional broken appliances given up on humanity wanting to blow up the earth. The voices are also better; the main 5 voices returned for both (almost... with Lovitz replaced and Blanky now the son from the Santa Claus), but there's also Russi Taylor, Alan King, Jim Cummings (dubbing for someone else in another villain song), Kath Souice, DeForest Kelly in his last role, Stephen Tobolowsky, Carol Channing doing her best Ryan Styles impression, Fyvush Finkel and Newman from Seinfeld. All of them do fantastic jobs as the roles they're given. The songs are also a bit more memorable; not as much as the first, but you'll probably remember some melodies in this. A campaigning debate, the balloons floating, a better conclusion song and a "Baby of Mine" esque number. Not the greatest of Disney's direct to video movies, but it's able to land itself into "passable" territory.

DAY 170

Comment & enjoy!

Description
DAY 168

In the mid 80s, a young John Lasseter approached the heads of the Disney company with a brand new concept; incorporating the then-new 3D animation with hand-drawn animation. He showed them a test of Where the Wild Things Are (with 2D characters in computer-generated backgrounds) and wanted to have that used for an entire feature film, but Disney thought that'd be too expensive so they kicked Lasseter out. So Jasseter gathered a little crew and made the film under Hyperion Pictures and became an independent film Disney would distribute. That film was the Brave Little Toaster. It's the story of a bunch of old-fashioned household appliances: a toaster, an electric blanket, a goose-neck lamp, a dial radio and a vacuum cleaner. They've waited for the arrival of their master for decades and decide to go to the city to find him. Based off the children's book by Thomas M. Disch, this film seems to get a bit of a bad reputation that's not quite deserving. I watched it a lot as a kid and didn't have any problems. It's a simple premise but they do a lot with it; how they view humans and their fates, the simpler moments to breath, the different obstacles the heroes come across and the dark moments. So many people say this movie is dark for no reason at all. But you know what? I didn't mind that either! Walt always said that you need a bit of darkness in a movie or the happy ending will be meaningless and that exact same philosophy is here. The air conditioner blowing up, Toaster's clown nightmare, the climax, the repair shop, the junkyard, the forest, they all work and beneficial. The story as a whole actually reminds me a lot of Pooh's Most Grand Adventure, right down to the owner being named Rob! The animation is pretty good. The backgrounds have so much shading and details, the designs are very PIXAR-esque (heck, PIXAR soon worked with these exact same objects sometimes), the actual animation on the characters is very smooth and really expressive. Even if the quality might be a little dusty (must be bad enhancement rendering), it's really good for the 80s. The characters are good; they're simple but you get a lot of development (again, reminding me of Pooh's main 5 gang). The characters they come across are also neat, from random woodland creatures, broken appliances in a repair shop, the cutting edge technology, the depressed junk cars and many more. The voicework also matches; Deanna Oliver, Thurl Ravenscroft, Jon Lovitz, Mindy Stern, Phil Hartman doing a bunch of roles and a couple others. The songs can be pretty catchy. Some are public domain songs (one of our characters is a radio and we're gonna use that opportunity, dammit), but the original songs like "City of Light", "It's a B-Movie Show" and "Worthless" aren't half bad. The score by David Newman can also sweep you away. So yeah, I like this movie quite well and don't see why people say it's terrible. In fact, there's been some word by some that there could be a live-action remake and y'know what, maybe it could finally be the CGI movie Lasseter wanted to make!
The first BLT was pretty good on its release and managed to win a Parents' Choice Award. Soon after, when Disney Toon Studios was making all sorts of direct-to-video sequels for Disney films, they gave Toaster and his gang two of them... released in the wrong order. The first sequel released advertised as the finale to the series (yeah, marketing really screwed up), Brave Little Toaster to the Rescue wasn't really a good follow-up. I saw this movie once as a kid (rented the VHS from Blockbuster) and didn't really remember it. I remember the trailers more. The story is the "have to save a workplace with people we care about not to go out of business" type. In this case, an animal hospital with injured pets, trying to save the masters files from a computer and stopping a villain who wants to shut down the hospital for... reasons. Yeah, one of the main issues is there's no real surprises and it's all played too safely. At least, that's MY experience since, like I said, I saw Goes to Mars first and already knew this was before that. We know the hospital's gonna stay in business, we know what struggles the animals are gonna overcome, we know Rob's files will be saved, we know the bad guy's gonna get what's coming to him, they even do a sacrifice with Radio giving up his power source, but since I've seen Goes to Mars, I know he's gonna live! The animation is OK, but the settings aren't that great. Most of the movie we're stuck in the hospital at night, complete with dark and muted colors. Said it before and I'll keep on saying it, how is that appealing? It also looses its touch with the new characters being mostly animals and not other appliances (with rare exceptions). We've seen talking animals in movies before, especially ones that hide their talking abilities to humans! Speaking of characters, the old ones it's nice to see again, but there's not much added (aside from Radio's "death") and the new ones aren't any better. Ratso's actually OK, the rest of the animals have usual sickly arches (a cat with a group of newly born kittens, a chiuoa with a broken leg, a snake who's... the snake and a broken armed monkey with a memory problem), Rob and his girlfriend have a usual romance and end up as a proposed couple, Nack is a generic slimey villains who hates animals... for no reason like I said above and any appliances they do show don't get that much screentime. The songs aren't that memorable. They're all regular happy-sounding and they don't really move the story. There's one with the animals remembering when Rob found them, one about the internet superhighway, an "we all end up happily ever after, isn't that nice" ending number. There's only one saving grace in this movie: the character of Wittgenstein. He's got a wonderful and tragic backstory, his song actually progesses the story and isn't there just because, Brian Doyle-Murphy's rusty voice adds to the agedness of the character, he saves the movie both figuratively and literally! Aside from him, the rest of the movie doesn't hold up to the first one.
Finally, the Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars, which was more of a step in the right direction. I saw this one more than To the Rescue but I wasn't lost. Like I said, I saw the trailers for TO the Rescue more than the movie itself, but there was enough shown for me to think "OK, so the Mars adventure takes place AFTER whatever happened before". Rob and Chris have gotten married and now have a baby; the Little Master the appliances call him. One night, a mysterious circumstance happens where the baby ends up being transported to Mars, so Toaster and his friends now have to get him back to earth. Instead of a cliche story we've heard before, this goes back to the "totally out there and work with it" concept the first film has. I mean, a toaster traveling to Mars. How more obscure can you get in this universe? Aside from that, there's still some talks about objects' views on humanity, it's a journey to an unknown place with unusual obstacles, atmospheric moments, talks about putting the plans together and they're all doing it for the protection of a master! The animation again is exactly the same as To the Rescue, but its more imaginative again. We focus back on appliances instead of animals and since it's outerspace and the planet Mars, there's more color. The old characters feel more like their old selves, the little master is a typical cute baby but isn't annoying, a stuckup microwave, a hearing air with a nice backstory, an intelligent calculator, a mother-and-son duo being a kitchen sink, a bunch of balloons floating in space forever, a Christmas tree angel, the Viking I and a bunch of dysfunctional broken appliances given up on humanity wanting to blow up the earth. The voices are also better; the main 5 voices returned for both (almost... with Lovitz replaced and Blanky now the son from the Santa Claus), but there's also Russi Taylor, Alan King, Jim Cummings (dubbing for someone else in another villain song), Kath Souice, DeForest Kelly in his last role, Stephen Tobolowsky, Carol Channing doing her best Ryan Styles impression, Fyvush Finkel and Newman from Seinfeld. All of them do fantastic jobs as the roles they're given. The songs are also a bit more memorable; not as much as the first, but you'll probably remember some melodies in this. A campaigning debate, the balloons floating, a better conclusion song and a "Baby of Mine" esque number. Not the greatest of Disney's direct to video movies, but it's able to land itself into "passable" territory.

DAY 170

Comment & enjoy!