Tuesdays with Media: Paperman

Wreck-it Ralph was a fun animated film released by the Walt Disney company in 2012.  Attached to the feature was an animated short called Paperman, which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film the year it was released.

I don't care for it.  (Spoilers below.)

Sorry for all the ads.

The style of the animation is quite clever: a three-dimensional environment that's rendered in a way so that it looks hand-drawn.  Plus, it's black-and-white (except for one character's lipstick), which helps it stand out from the crowd.  And the story is told without any dialog, making the short film a completely visual experience.

So why does this award-winning short get no love from me?  Two reasons: story and figure design.

The story is simple enough: a young man meets a young woman at a train station on his way to work, they have a "meet cute," and go their separate ways.  In his office job, he sees the girl from the train station across the street at the neighboring building.  He ignores his duties and tries to get her attention by throwing paper airplanes her way.  They all fail to get her attention, but they end up meeting up at the end anyway.  The credits roll beside still shots of them talking in a coffee shop.

The basic message is that when you meet the "one," nothing else will matter.  Love is your destiny and anything that gets in the way is bad and wrong and out to destroy your happiness.  I hate these kinds of stories.  Relationships take work; I don't care if two people are "meant" to be together or not, because if they don't work on their relationship, they'll be "destined" to break up.

Also, is this random girl that our protagonist met once going to want to support him when he gets fired from his job?  While we don't see the unnamed character actually get fired, we do see him run out of the office despite his angry boss silently reminding him to get back to work.  Too many movies and TV shows teach that you need to "follow your heart" to be happy, but these stories ignore that doing so will still have boring parts.  I sought out my current job and I've never been happier with a place of employment, but there are still plenty of assignments (or parts of assignments) that I don't really like.  Would the story have been that different if he had rushed out to try and find her on his lunch break, only to run out of time and have to head back in once he finds her?  He'd give her his number and they'd still be able to meet at the coffee shop, just without risking his job.

And then there were the character designs, or design (singular) in this case.  Look, I get that many people equate "thin" with "attractive," but the female character just looks unhealthy.  When we first see her at around the 20 second mark, the first thing I thought of was how ridiculously skinny she looked.  Not only does she look like a light breeze will knock her over, but they made her waist even smaller.  Her waist is so small that her head is actually wider.  That's insane!  Plus, they've made her eyes so big that they're bigger than her hands (which also look undersized).

Look, I get that animation allows creators to design characters with unnatural or unrealistic proportions, but if they're pushing the limits of femininity, why not make the protagonist look like a Greek statue?  Instead, he's also thin, but looks much more natural: his eyes are more proportional, his waist is wider than his head, and he even gets a large nose to give his design personality.  The woman's face is pretty but boring.  With so many girls developing body-image issues, I disagree with the filmmakers' decision to present such an unrealistic vision of feminine beauty.

While I commend the creative team for mixing old and new styles and limiting themselves to a story told without words, I'm disappointed that they chose such a tired, cliché of a story to tell with characters that are in dire need of a cheeseburger.

Paperman is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

Tuesdays with Media: Home

This past weekend, I watched Home while I was visiting with the Larsens.  Neither Ian nor I had seen the film before, but the kids both had.  If you're not familiar with the movie, here's the trailer:

The first thing that jumped out to me about this movie was how it lacked any and all subtly when it came to storytelling.  The climax was broadcast in the first fifteen minutes and the characters' personalities are as flat as can be.  Ian said that the movie felt like it had been made by committee and that everyone was simply following a film-making formula and I agreed with his assessment -- imagine our surprise when, during the credits, we learned that the movie was adapted from a novel.  Having not read the novel, I honestly hope that the movie butchered the story.

One area in which the movie does well is with its designs.  The two alien races seen in the movie, the Boov and the Borg, are both strongly influenced by some of the most alien-looking animals on Earth: cuttlefish (or perhaps octopuses) and starfish, respectively.  The Boov especially are designed to be as cute as possible while still looking other-worldly.

I had heard positive things about the movie due to its central human character, Gratuity "Tip" Tucci, being of mixed race.  I support having characters of all races in works of fiction.  In fact, most of the characters in my stories -- the human ones at least -- are never described beyond their gender, but I have written multiple characters that are minorities.  Even so, characters need to be well-written and properly developed first and foremost and that is not the case of Tip.  Part of the problem is the actress playing her, pop singer Rihanna.  For someone who is not an actress, the performance is decent enough, but the character never comes to life.  But even if the producers had gone with a more experienced voice actor (like the amazingly talented Tara Strong), the character of Tip is just never really developed beyond being a headstrong preteen girl.

Another area where the production design wins points is in the alien technology shown throughout the story.  All of the Boov's tech is based on spheres and bubbles and is bright and shiny.  On the other hand, the Borg's tech is triangular with sharp edges and everything is dark and industrial in tone.  These desperate designs helped to better differentiate the two races from one another while still keeping them distinctly "not human."

In the end, Home is completely uncreative with its story and characters while having a very unique look and feel to its design.  As a visual spectacle, the movie is pretty fun -- too bad that's where most of the enjoyment ends.  Home is harmless to watch with kids, but if you skip it, you're not missing much.

Home is distributed by 20th Century Fox.

Tuesdays with Media: Powerhouse

I want to get back into my weekly review column by dedicating the month of March to instrumental music.  This week's song is one that everyone knows, even if they don't know the name of it.

"Powerhouse" is the name of a popular dance song from the late 1930s by the Raymond Scott Quintette.  There's a really frantic feeling to the music, but in a way that's still light-hearted and fun.  Plus, the bridge in the middle is almost like a completely different song, making it feel even more unique.  You can tell way people liked dancing to it.

Not long after the song's release, the record company that owned the song was bought by Warner Bros.  Now that they had the song in their catalog, they could use in their animated shorts for free.  And use it they did.

By my count, that's 12-15 different cartoons that use the same song, and that's just in that one video.  Which is certainly the reason why I always thought of the song as the "Acme Factory Theme."  That's what's really fascinating to me about this song: it's still known to the world today due to the appropriation of it by a different industry -- animation.  And while it's likely that some fans of early jazz would know it, it's almost certain that it wouldn't be so well known had that appropriation not occurred.  I can't speak for Mr. Scott, but I think that's the best thing an artist can hope for: for his work to be known by as many people as possible.