- “I don’t know if Disney has a house rule about which animals can speak and which cannot, but guidelines seem to be emerging. The rule is, if you are a predatory carnivore, you don’t talk, but if you are a pacifist, a vegetarian or cute, you do. In Tarzan, the apes spoke, but the leopards didn’t. In Dinosaur, all of the creatures speak, except for the vicious carnotaurs. A Faustian bargain seems to be at work: If you are an animal in a Disney picture, you can speak, but only if you are willing to sacrifice your essential nature.”
-Quoted from Roger Ebert’s review of Dinosaur >Catena Ex Situ - A black & white Betty Boop in Who Framed Roger Rabbit was employed a cigarette girl at the Ink & Paint Club circa 1947. She bemoaned how “work’s been kind of slow since cartoons went to color”. Perhaps Miss Boop forgot about her starring role in the 1934 Fleischer Color Classic “Poor Cinderella.”
-Contributed by Brendan S. - In Ratatouille, whether Remy walks on all-fours or on two feet depends on his mood:
“If he feels exuberant, he tends to be more upright, and his hands pulled back. Later on, when he feels shame in front of his father, and [his dreams] have all turned into disaster, he folds back in again. It’s not just a mannerism. It’s a thing that helps tell the story.”
-Quoted from an L.A. Times interview with Brad Bird >Catena Ex Situ
Tags: Brad Bird, Disney, Faust, mannerism, Roger Ebert
May 7, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Ugh, what a terrible quote by Ebert. Talk about your idiotic Selection Bias. Either that or he wasn’t paying attention when the hyenias talked on The Lion King, for starters.
May 11, 2008 at 9:03 am
You quote Roger Ebert for saying that the ability to talk is given to animals who are “cute” and “charming” leaving the predators mute.
What about Lion King where both Scar and the Hyenas talk?
If your answer is that it was one of the few movies where the presence of humans is absent so all animals talk to give the bad guys character and personality, then what about Jungle Book? Both Kaa and Sheir Khan speak.
I’m not counting either Robin Hood or the Great Mouse Detective because both of those have the easy argument that they are anthropomorphic (even more than usual) animals and replace the people who would’ve had a speaking roll.
Lackeys or side-kicks often can speak as well.
In the Fox and the Hound the older dog Chief is a “bad guy lackey” and he is able to talk. As is Iago the parrot from Aladdin, and the two eels Flotsam and Jetsam from the Little Mermaid both have a line or two.
In the end I think it’s less about the type of animal and more about the personality/charactization of the animal. If it’s supposed to be vicious and kill a baby (ie Tarzan) then there’s no real voice or dialog you can add in a kids movie to make it more terrible.
September 29, 2008 at 6:21 am
[...] S. mentions several characters seen in the feature Who Framed Roger Rabbit? that were created after 1947, the [...]