Tappy Toes (2011) and How it Succeeds Where A Car's Life (2006) Doesn't



I’ve covered one animated movie so far in my Sunday “Bad” Movie escapades.  That was back near the beginning when I watched a little movie called A Car’s Life which was released to capitalize on the popularity of the Pixar film Cars.  Since then, the blog has been live action films.  That is, until now.  I have watched a second animated film.  More specifically, I have watched a second animated film cashing in on a known film.  This movie is Tappy Toes, a by-product of Happy Feet’s success.

I could go on, once again, about movies that pull their idea from other movies to cash in on any success, but I won’t.  Instead, I want to discuss why I feel that Tappy Toes was a successful addition to the movie landscape, rather than a waste of space.  This will happen through a comparison to A Car’s Life, since I feel like that was an unsuccessful attempt at entertainment.

The most important aspect of an animated movie, first and foremost, is the animation itself.  The people behind the movies need to immerse the viewer into the world that they are looking at, or at least make it into a believable world.  Tappy Toes is able to do that.  Every aspect from the characters to the landscape to the random objects has enough detail to make for a convincingly built world.  The movements of these different aspects of the world have a natural flow to them, albeit natural to an animated world and not the real world.  This is more apparent when seen in comparison to A Car’s Life.  A Car’s Life is very minimalistic in its animation.  Though there are details within the animation of the characters, the landscape is very sparse and mostly looks the same wherever the characters are.  This is much less appealing to the eye and deteriorates the overall experience of watching the movie.

Another big component of an animated film is the voice acting.  Tappy Toes has voice acting by professional actors who know how to portray characters.  With an accomplished voice actor, such as Katie Leigh who has done voice work since the 80s, the characters feel more realized and it helps invest the viewer in the story.  Having professional voice actors rather than amateurs makes the movie feel less amateur.  A Car’s Life feels amateur.  Half of the voice cast are the family of the director.  The lack of control in the voices of some of the voice actors takes away from the connection between the movie and the audience, and ultimately hurts the final product.

The final piece of an animated movie that I feel is important is the story.  Like any movie, the goal should be to give the audience a captivating tale that they can sink their teeth into.  Tappy Toes succeeds in this area.  I would get into the story, but I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who wants to see the movie.  It’s only about 45 minutes long and it’s a pretty easy watch.  The story makes it easy.  A Car’s Life, which I think is about the same length, feels much, much longer.  This is due to the fact that it revolves around a child car that is acting out in outrageously sanitized ways.  That story isn’t captivating at all.

These three aspects within an animated movie combine to help make it good or bad.  Were either of these movies outright good?  No, I wouldn’t say that.  However, Tappy Toes was able to make the best of a bad situation by actually trying.  I’ll give it that.  I enjoyed Tappy Toes.  That’s all I ask of a movie.  Knock-off, sequel, remake, original...I don’t care.  Just give me something to enjoy and I’ll be happy.

Bye bye now.
There are some notes to make:

  • A Car’s Life was the second movie written about in the Sunday “Bad” Movie blog posts.
  • If you have any suggestions for bad movies, feel free to leave a comment.  Or you could always message me on Twitter.  That works too.

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