Saturday, July 17, 2021

Animation Celebration Saturday - Animalympics

Listberger Studios/NBC, 1980
Voices of Gilda Radner, Billy Crystal, Harry Shearer, and Michael Fremer
Directed by Steven Listberger
Music and Lyrics by Graham Gouldman

This rare film had a long and convoluted road to the big screen. Listberger first came up with the idea in 1976 after being inspired by the hype surrounding the Olympic Games that year. He initially made a seven-minute short; after that went over well, NBC asked him to expand it into two half-hour specials for the 1980 Olympics. The Winter Olympics segment aired as planned, but the Summer special ended up scrapped when the US boycotted the Summer Games from Moscow. Still hoping to get more of an audience for the segments, he finally edited the two parts together to make this film. How does this spoof of Olympic glory and sports celebrity look today? To answer that question, we follow four animal athletes bearing the torch to the lost island of Atlantis to watch the games begin. 

The Story: It's guts, glory, and flying fur as sports network ZOO brings us coverage of the first ever Animalympics. This mélange of winter and summer sports showcases some truly bizarre athletes from every continent in the world and "Eurasia" (aka Russia). Between events ranging from soccer to volleyball to figure skating and weightlifting, we mainly focus on three "main" stories that carry throughout the film:

African lioness Kit Mambo and European goat Rene Fromage are the favorites to win the marathon. They're neck and neck for almost the entire race...but no one knows what to do when they fall in love...

European Weiner dog skiing star Kurt Wuffner wins the slalom event, only to vanish mysteriously in the mountains before the big downhill event. 

American alligator high-jumper and sprinter Bolt Jenkins literally clawed his way out of the New York sewers to become a major track star. He reveals a keen sense of fair play as well when he protests the results of the 100 Yard Dash.

The Animation: Surprisingly good for an independent animated film originally intended to be two TV specials. Listberger went on to do the groundbreaking computer animation for the first Tron film; it shows in the incredible opening logo, with its satellites and muscular man who somewhat resembles Tron himself. There's a few too many static shots of non-moving artwork for their own good, but they make up for that with some wonderful work on the designs of the animals. You have no trouble telling what each critter is supposed to be and how they manage to play their respective sport. The movement in particular is quite well done.

The Song and Dance: I've loved this film since I saw it during frequent runs on HBO and Showtime in the mid-late 80's. The real highlight is the hilariously satirical script, played to the hilt by four talented comedians and voice actors. Each animal has such a distinct voice and character, you'd never realize the cast is so small if you didn't read the credits. Everything is true-to-life of sports broadcasts in the early 80's, from the flashy early CGI titles announcing each event to the puff-piece interviews to the dead-on spoofs of sports celebrities, endorsements, and rivalries (some of which exist to this day). Gouldman provided a memorable soundtrack, too, one that's lingered in my mind for years afterwards.

Favorite Number: "Born to Lose" is Bolt's number, showing how he went from a poor sewer dweller destined to be a hand bag to a beloved track star. "We've Made It to the Top" is the montage mid-way through depicting fierce competition in many smaller track events (along with cycling and an especially violent field hockey game). "Go For It," the disco dance routine at the Ark nightclub, spoofs Saturday Night Fever and other disco movies by showing the animals we've seen to this point happily carousing and letting off steam. 

"Away From It All" is the gorgeous ballad performed over the sequence that depicts what happened to Kurt Wuffner after he vanished, and how he loved and lost the female dog of his dreams. "Underwater Fantasy" gets more than a little surreal as we see what happens when Dean Wilson dives and really goes "into his own world." Kit and Rene have two ballads showing Rene's initial resistance to love, and their eventual coming together, "Love's Not For Me" and "With You I Could Run Forever." 

Trivia: Though the movie was shown theatrically in Europe and elsewhere, it went straight to cable in the US in 1984. It proved so popular in its frequent airings on HBO, Showtime, and later The Disney Channel, it's now considered a cult classic. 

Many of the animators involved in this film went on to far bigger projects in the 90's and 2000's. Brad Bird became a frequent Pixar director, including on The Incredibles and Ratatouille, and Roger Ailliers was one of the directors on The Lion King

Dean Wilson was named for surf rock musicians Jan Dean and Brian Wilson. 

What I Don't Like: The episodic structure makes it pretty obvious this wasn't originally intended to be a feature-length film. The movie lurches from sport to sport and from segment to segment with no rhyme or reason. Those frequent static pictures also reminds us that, while relatively high-budget for something initially made for TV, this is still lower-budget than the offerings from Disney or Don Bluth later in the decade. There's also a surprising amount of mature material and gags, from some of the hook-ups at the disco to Dean Wilson's assessment that Kit and Rene are going to go "all the way," along with several weight and stereotypes jokes that may not sit well with some folks today. 

The Big Finale: If you're a fan of the real-life Olympics, animation from the 80's and 90's, or other animated animal tales like Zootopia, you'll want to sprint to Animalympics Island and track this one down.

Home Media: It finally came out on DVD in the US in 2018 and can be found easily on streaming as well.

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