Banjo the Woodpile Cat 1979
This isn’t a feature length movie, more of an animated short at only 26 minutes. But it was released on DVD and has a good “making of” feature that explains how it came to be. Therefore it is more interesting as a look into a group of Disney animators than maybe the movie itself. Don Bluth was an animator who had worked at Disney, left for a few years, and then returned again. He started this film as a side project out of his garage and let other people come help him out on nights and weekends. He felt like Disney had gone astray in how they did animated movies, and he was right. The animation department was only releasing a new movie every few years and they were not the studio’s best work. Disney was always a tough place to work and morale was not great. Bluth loved the classic Disney animation and wanted to get back to that, working on this project about a runaway cat. Eventually things came to a head and Bluth and about 10 Disney animators left. Disney would eventually recapture the magic in 1989 with The Little Mermaid, but still had some tough years ahead. And Bluth also had very mixed results, with movies like The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, and The Land Before Time. Listening to him and two of his partners talk, it is the classic story of talented but disgruntled employees at a big company who want to do things their own way and eventually must leave. This has to be even harder in a company full of artists who all want to try new things. It is neat hearing about the collaborative effort, including some of Bluth’s neighbors who would come over and grab a stack of cels to paint by hand.
I knew some of the basics of that story, so I was expecting some amazing work from Banjo, but it seems pretty conventional. It feels like a feature film, just a lot shorter. There is nothing wrong with it and the animation is good, but the songs are kind of weak and the story a little too familiar. In retrospect, the creators said they felt like they should have gone a little darker. I haven’t seen NIMH lately, but it certainly has darker moments.
Written: 02 May 2021
Owned on: DVD