Home » Film & TV » Animation » Not Brave Enough To Go Theatrical

Not Brave Enough To Go Theatrical

© Enoch Allen

by Enoch Allen

By now, you’ve heard of the Disney sequels, formally labeled “cheapquels” by dissenters. But, Disney isn’t the first company to make animated sequels, and neither will they be the last. Paramount advised their companion studio, Nickelodeon! Films, to manufacture a continuation of the 1998 hit “Rugrats! The Movie”, and the sequel came to be called “Rugrats in Paris”. That did well also, on a meager budget. (Now, the first one wasn’t all that good. The second one was even worse. I can only torture myself by imagining how bad the third one’s going to be.)

A third Rugrats movie, “The Rugrats Meet The Wild Thornberrys”, is slated to be out either this November or early next year, depending on how hard up Nickelodeon! Films is for additional cash. Or maybe they’re just plain GREEDY.

But, there something to be said for Paramount’s audacity to distribute their animated sequels--in a theatrical fashion. Astonishingly, none of them have gone direct-to-video, while Disney, Warner Bros., and (yes) even Dreamworks did not have the stomach to give their animated sequels a theatrical release. (For Disney, “Return to Neverland” doesn’t count for crap. It is a film that stands all by itself in terms of being “linked” to the Disney classic “Peter Pan”.) “Toy Story II” counts as a legitimate release, partly because the same exact characters--and the same voice actors--return for a second outing.

But Disney seems to think that releasing swill like “The Hunchback of Notre Dame II” is acceptable. Okay. If they think that it is acceptable to put this trash on video, why not “Go the Distance” (title of song on the soundtrack to “Hercules”) and commit it to celluloid. Or, at least digitally. It’s bad enough that critics severely bashed it when it appeared on video. Why not take some lumps, for being so--um, what’s that word, Roger--GREEDY.

I would not like to call Dreamworks “greedy”. I’d like to believe that they are a respectable film company. I mean, after all, it was founded by Spielberg, Katzenberg, and Geffen. All three of these gentleman know what it’s like to work with greedy studios. So, they don’t repeat their mistakes. As a result, Dreamworks’ films tend to be higher in quality. I mean, how else do you explain two of their films in a row winning Best Picture at the Oscars? (The two Best Pictures were “Gladiator” and “American Beauty”.) That’s why it puzzled me as to how they could release a picture as good as “Joseph: King of Dreams” direct-to-video. Another thing is Universal, releasing “Balto II: Wolf Quest” to video. That was a well-made production--too well-made to be among the other amazingly poor direct-to-video efforts (if they can, indeed, be called “efforts”).

The copyright of the article Not Brave Enough To Go Theatrical in Animation is owned by Enoch Allen. Permission to republish Not Brave Enough To Go Theatrical in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.