Cult Film Review – Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure

The year was 1975 and production was gearing up for a new animated film based upon a line of children’s books and toys that had been a favorite for generations.  The budget for the film was $4 million.  Considering that around the same time Disney only spent $1.2 million to make The Rescuers, $4 million allowed the producers to assemble a virtual all-star team of animators and filmmakers to work on the project.

The director was Abe Levitow, a man who earned his animation stripes while working under Chuck Jones, drawing iconic characters like Pepe Le Pew and Wile E. Coyote for the Looney Tunes series of shorts during their 1950’s heyday.  He also directed animated versions of Dick Tracy, Mr. Magoo, Tom and Jerry, and even worked on an Oscar-winning animated film, 1971’s A Christmas Carol.

The film’s animation was going to be overseen by the director of the same Oscar-winning A Christmas Carol, Richard Williams, who would later win an Emmy for a Ziggy cartoon special in the early 1980’s, as well as a couple more Oscars as the director of animation for Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.  Sadly, Williams had to take over directorial duties after Levitow died during the film’s production, though with his experience, he was perfectly capable of the helm.

The songs and music were written by Joe Raposo, the same genius who helped change the landscape of children’s television forever when he wrote “C Is For Cookie”, “Doin’ the Pigeon”, “Bein’ Green”, and even the theme song for Jim Henson’s Sesame Street.

The animators were a multi-generational team of seasoned professionals and young, but talented upstarts.  Many had been key animators on Disney classics like Sleeping Beauty, Lady and the Tramp, Cinderella, Peter Pan, Fantasia, Pinocchio, and Dumbo (just to name a few), as well as dozens of Looney Tunes shorts.  Others were just getting their start in the business, but would one day be central to the 1980’s after-school cartoon golden age with their work on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, G.I. Joe, Transformers, My Little Pony, Muppet Babies, Super Friends and The Smurfs.

What was the product of all this talent, money, and popularity?  1977’s Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure.  I know what you’re thinking, “Who would want to see a Raggedy Ann movie anyway.”  But, come on, Captain America and the rest of the Avengers can count a Norse god in their membership and they’d still be jealous of the team assembled to make this movie.  The amount of creative juice behind this film should have elevated it above and beyond the source material.  But could’a, would’a, should’a do not a good film make.

The movie begins as a live-action scene of a little girl, Marcella, coming home from school carrying her Raggedy Ann doll.  She immediately runs up to her playroom and opens a gift she has received for her birthday – a new doll that came all the way from France, named Babette.  When Marcella leaves the room, her toys, including the Raggedy siblings, come alive and welcome the new toy to the group with what feels like four song and dance numbers (Seriously…so many songs in this movie).  Babette, though, wants nothing to do with her new roommates and retreats into her dollhouse to pout.

Meanwhile, The Captain (known as “Captain Contagious” in some sources), a sneezy pirate caught in a snow globe, notices Babette, and immediately falls in lust – his too-long moustache, which has a mind of its own, begins to curl around his body, forcing him to do pelvic thrusts, and even becoming stiff as he watches her (Yes, critics at the time did mention how inappropriate the Captain’s reaction was).  Intent to make the new toy his own, The Captain manages to knock over his snow globe prison, snatch Babette from her bedroom, and escape out the room’s window into the world outdoors in his pirate ship  Despite only knowing Babette for a few minutes, Raggedy Ann and Andy (herein known as “The A-Team”) decide to risk life, limb, and stuffing to rescue her.

Sadly, as soon as The A-Team leaves the house, the film starts to fall apart.  In an obvious effort to be Alice in Wonderland, the pair meet all kinds of strange characters on their journey.  However, none really serve a purpose other than to be strange.  For example, The Camel With Wrinkled Knees, a blue, Southern-accented stuffed camel that has been left behind by all of his other camel friends, quickly becomes The A-Team’s BFF after they find him discarded in the woods.  The Camel has hallucinations of his dromedarian pals wandering off into the void without him, so he occasionally attempts to follow them with a zoned out look in his eyes.

The A-Team doesn’t so much meet other characters as randomly encounter them like some poorly-run D&D campaign.  They literally fall into The Greedy, a giant soupy swirl of sweets, who is constantly consuming himself and his surroundings.  Then they stumble into The Loonie Knight, who takes them to see King Koo Koo.  The King’s body inflates or deflates depending upon how loud he’s laughing at someone.  So, naturally, he surrounds himself with idiots.  After they escape a cream pie fight (no, really) by stealing a vehicle that appears to have been designed by Dr. Seuss on an off day, Koo Koo decides he has to imprison our friends.  So he sends Gazooks, a sort of amorphous blob that might be water, but also has what appears to be an inner tube spout, to interrupt their quest.  Gazooks catches up with them after they randomly find The Captain’s ship.  Even the resolution of the story has nothing to do with the “heroes” or their actions – The Captain’s parrot saves the day.  But of course The A-Team are given a hero’s welcome as if they actually did something to return Babette, thwart the evil King Koo Koo, or, ya know, move the plot forward.

With the pedigree of the people creating it, this film should have featured stunning animation, an infectious score, and a storyline that would rival ol’ Billy Shakespeare in his prime.  Instead, the animation is incredibly disjointed, probably because each character was drawn by a single artist who was allowed to interpret the character however they liked, using their own unique art style.  This creates a strange mix of wildly different animation types, adding to the already baffling plotline.  What’s most disappointing is that the animation isn’t terrible – and at times is pretty damn impressive – if you take each character individually.  The A-Team move with smooth, although perhaps slightly exaggerated fluidity, especially when they fall to the ground; their stuffed appendages become serpent-like, twisting and turning around to get them upright again.  The big set pieces of the film – The Greedy and the ocean/Gazooks – are alive with a somewhat awe-inspiring amount of moving and shifting that doesn’t just become a loop of motion like you’d see in cheaper productions.  The Greedy is especially great as a giant amoeba-like, formless mass that is in constant motion. Of course the entire point of the character is to be disgusting, which it pulls off so well that you almost don’t want to watch it again. Babette’s coiled locks, The Captain’s prehensile moustache, the Camel’s mopey, loose gait – these all move with a sense of reality that is a real joy to watch.  But without consistent look, feel, or character design, the film comes off as schizophrenic, which might be great if it’s an art piece, but not as a kids’ movie.

While Raposo might have written some of the most endearing songs ever for Sesame Street, here he really drops the ball.  Not one song is catchy, memorable, or anything less than a chore to sit through.  However, part of this frustration could be due to the sheer number of songs in the film – a whopping 13 (In comparison, Fantasia, an animated film built entirely around music, has eight songs).  Considering the film is only 85 minutes long, we’re looking at a song every six and a half minutes.  “Tedious” is about the nicest thing you can say, really.

The voice work is fine, for what it is.  The biggest names include Didi Conn (Frenchy in Grease) and Mason Adams (The Smucker’s Jam voice-over guy).  Conn does a pretty decent job as Raggedy Ann, though she apparently had laryngitis while filming the musical numbers (with that many, I don’t know how you couldn’t have a sore throat), so they are sometimes lacking spunk and strength.  Still, there were no career-making turns in the film, and rightfully so.

Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure was a critical and financial disappointment, leaving theaters shortly after its debut.  With that much talent behind its production, we should be talking about this film in the same breath as other late-1970’s animated films like Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings and Wizards, Watership Down, Pete’s Dragon, and Hayao Miyazaki’s feature debut, The Castle of Cagliostro. Instead, it has been somewhat forgotten, barely receiving a VHS release, later languishing in syndication hell for much of the 1980s, occasionally making an appearance on The Disney Channel as a time-filler, and has yet to come out on DVD or Blu-ray.  These factors have helped the film develop a bit of a cult following, which, sadly, I don’t feel is deserved.  However, if you’d like to judge for yourself, you can watch a pretty grainy copy over on Google Video.

(Side note: Do you think Pixar’s writers saw this movie before they came up with Toy Story and Toy Story 2?  We have a new toy that is forced from the safe confines of the kid’s bedroom via the window, and then it’s up to the favorite toy in the group to go rescue said new toy.  And at the end, a new tag-along sidekick (The Camel) is told they should just stay, which won’t totally freak the kid out or anything when they discover a new toy they’ve never seen before in their room.  The similarities are interesting to say the least.  It wouldn’t be the first time Disney borrowed heavily from a previous animated film.  Isn’t that right, Kimba the White Lion?)