Let's Watch This: "The Blue Elephant" (2007)

NOTE: Please do not take any of the little nitpicks in this review (or any of my other reviews, for that matter) seriously. I write these reviews in the hopes of making people laugh. Those nitpicks are really just dumb little observations that I'm attempting to make jokes out of, not complaints that add to whether or not I like something.

I was originally going to write a review of The Ant Bully this week, but as it turns out there is no way to watch the full movie online. The only streaming service it's on is Amazon Prime, and you have to pay to watch it on there. Same goes for YouTube. So unless it pops up on Tubi or something, we're gonna have to wait on that review.

I remember buying The Blue Elephant on DVD when I saw it at WalMart (or maybe it was actually Target, I don't know), mostly because I've always loved elephants and animation so putting them together was a great way to get me to buy something. Oddly enough, I never actually WATCHED the movie. I don't think I even took the DVD out of its case.

It wasn't until years later, when I was compiling a list of obscure animated films to review on my blog, that I found out The Blue Elephant got its start as a Thai animated film called Khan Kluay, and that it was based on the story Chao Phraya Prap Hongsawadee by Ariya Jintapanichkarn. The film took three years to make, and was directed by Kompin Kemgumnird, who'd previously worked on Tarzan, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and Ice Age.

Somehow, the Weinstein Company got ahold of the movie and decided to give it an English dub and a direct-to-video release here in the U.S. As for the original Thai version, it eventually got a sequel and a spinoff TV series, the former of which ALSO got an English dub and was released here as Elephant Kingdom. Today, you can find The Blue Elephant free to watch on YouTube. Is the film any good? Let's find out, shall we?

The film starts off with what appears to be a shadow puppet show. According to the narrator, long ago in the faraway kingdom of Siam there lived a legendary elephant named Khan Kluay. Some say that he was just a myth, but the narrator says that Khan Kluay was real - he should know, he was there. It all began when Siam was invaded by Burma...

Then we cut to a young elephant carrying water back to her herd. Nuan (voiced by Amy Carlson), another member of the herd, has just had a baby. With their pastel color schemes, you might initially mistake them for Heffalumps. I get it, though - it'd probably be harder to tell them apart if they were all just brown-ish grey like real elephants are. Plus, it makes for a more visually-appealing movie.

These elephants also have the uncanny ability to speak without moving their mouths, a
pretty big indicator that the film was dubbed from another language.

"He's a handsome boy, Nuan," the herd's matriarch (Cindy Robinson) says. "Large eyes, thick skin, strong back... but I sense his true strength lies within. We shall name him Khan Kluay: 'great heart'." Okay, well, I sure hope Nuan didn't have another name in mind for HER son... just because you're the leader doesn't mean you get to make all the naming decisions, Matriarch. What if she wanted to call him Sheldon or something?

We cut to a few years later. While the other young elephants are practicing their brawling, Khan, voiced by Thomas Sharkey, is playing hide-and-seek with some frogs... one of who winds up with an elephant's butt falling on top of him. Ouch.

"I might just look really annoyed, but I'm actually in horrible pain!"

As if the poor frog hasn't suffered enough, the young elephants then proceed to inflate him like a balloon and start tossing him around like a volleyball. Khan attempts to save the frog, but doesn't actually do anything, instead just letting the frogs do the actual saving. Here it becomes clear that one of the young elephants - specifically, that orange-y one with the weirdly hairy back named Marong (Troy Baker) - is the film's stock dimwitted bully character whose main purpose is to make things harder for Khan.

Remember that one obnoxious zebra who gave Khumba a hard time? Marong is basically
that character, but he's an elephant.

"Fight! Fight! Fight!" the young elephants chant, and Marong is all too happy to beat Khan up. Fortunately, Khan manages to avoid getting a smackdown by simply dodging Marong's blows, eventually sending him tumbling down the hill and into the pond. "This means WAR!" Marong declares. "Hey, you, come back and fight! I guess being a coward runs in the family!"

This hits pretty close to home for Khan. It was previously mentioned that his father is out fighting in the war against Burma, which is a pretty brave thing to do. Despite this, Marong claims that Khan's dad "turned tail in the middle of battle", which makes him a "chicken". This makes Khan MAD, and it leads to that fight Marong and the other young elephants so desperately wanted to see.

"I'm just gonna kick randomly and hope my foot flies into somebody else's face! It's not the most
effective way of fighting, but it's worth a shot!"

Their little brawl catches the attention of a little bird named Jai voiced by Martin Short, who also serves as the film's narrator. Little did Jai know at the time that this little blue elephant would change his life forever.

Khan returns to his mother with... well, his face looks pretty much fine, but I think the indication is supposed to be that he has a swollen eye or something. "How many times do I have to tell you that fighting is wrong?" Nuan asks. Hey, don't blame him - Marong started it. Khan even points this out, but Nuan won't listen. "Excuse me, ma'am, but sometimes you've GOTTA fight," Jai pipes up, but Nuan's not in the mood to listen to HIM either.

Taking out some of his "business cards"... the first of what I imagine will be many examples of the film's anachronistic humor...

The Burmese-Siamese wars were fought from the 16th to the 19th centuries. I'm pretty sure
that was long before "business cards" became a thing.

...Jai explains that he's one of the king of Siam's royal military birds. The matriarch says that, if Jai really IS a royal military bird, he must know about Khan's aforementioned father, Pran. Checking his record book, Jai identifies him as a hero in the Battle of Ayutthaya. Just then, Marong and his chums run in with the news that there are soldiers around.

"I don't know, but I've been told..."
"I DON'T KNOW, BUT I'VE BEEN TOLD!"
"Harvey Weinstein's a sleazy toad!"
"HARVEY WEINSTEIN'S A SLEAZY TOAD!"

These soldiers are Burmese, and according to Jai they've taken young Prince Naresuan (also Troy Baker) prisoner. "When humans fight, we all suffer," the matriarch says. Don't I know it... okay, I'll get off my soapbox now.

The elephants head into the jungle where they'll be safe. As the others snooze, Khan asks his mother who this "Pran" guy is... wait a minute, he doesn't know the name of his dad? "He's... he's my father, isn't he? And he did something bad?" he guesses. "That's why everybody acts so weird whenever somebody mentions his name! He ran away in the middle of a battle, didn't he?" Nuan insists that Khan's father is a hero. Problem is, he was taken prisoner, so Nuan goes all King Triton and tells Khan to stay away from the dangerous humans. Yes, it's one of those "animals think humans are evil" movies. But considering how many elephants have been poached by humans over the years, I think the elephants' fear of them is justified.

Is this the part where she starts singing "Baby Mine"?

So even though Nuan told Khan to stay away from humans, what does Khan do? He sneaks off while his mother's asleep, determined to find his father... which involves entering the Burmese raiders' camp. Khan, you fool. He sees a bunch of pigs, chickens, and cows in cages and stuff, presumably so the raiders have something to eat, and asks one cow who sounds like Miss Piggy if she's seen his father. One ornery steer tells him that the elephants are in tents with tusks. And sure enough, he does find an elephant in there, covered with battle scars and glowing red eyes.

"You wanna know how I got these scars?"

Outside, the Burmese raiders hear the bellows coming from the tent. When they go to check it out, they find Khan and start chasing him around the camp. Fortunately, he manages to hide out in the tent where Prince Naresuan is being held prisoner. I can't help but notice that the kindhearted Siamese prince has normal-looking features, but the Burmese raiders all look like racist caricatures. I also can't help but find that problematic.

Also, why are both the Siamese prince and the Burmese raiders voiced by white guys?
I'm getting flashbacks to Quackerz...

Prince Naresuan forbids the raiders from entering his tent to look for the elephant, but alas, they spot Khan as he sneaks out of the camp and once again give chase. He manages to get away... by falling off a cliff and into the water below.

Poor Khan has been separated from his herd. In the morning, he comes across another elephant - a PINK elephant, to be precise. No, he's not drunk, the elephant is pink because otherwise we wouldn't be able to tell that it's a girl. Obviously.

Then again, the eyelashes and the flower might have also done the trick.

This is Kon Suay (voiced by Miranda Cosgrove), and with her help Khan manages to make it home quite quickly. I was expecting it to take him the whole movie, but nope, he's back in just a few seconds. But what's this? The other elephants aren't there. Jai's narration explains that they must have been chased off by those pesky Burmese raiders. On the bright side, Kon Suay says that her father knows every inch of this jungle, so maybe he can help Khan find his mom. Khan goes all Golden Girls and thanks her for being a friend.

When they arrive at Kon Suay's home, Khan discovers that her father is NOT, in fact, an elephant - he's a human being!

What a twist!

Did Kon Suay's mother have a thing for humans and marry this guy? We'll have to find out later, it's much more important to have another chase scene between Khan and an ugly-looking dog.

Meanwhile, Prince Naresuan is taken to the raiders' capital city in Burma, where he shall live at the mercy of Burma's evil prince, Minchit Sra (Troy Baker again) until his family complies with their wishes. What are they going to do with him? Again, we'll have to find out later, we cut back to Khan. Apparently this little village where Kon Suay's father lives is keeping other elephants and using them as slave labor. The fiends!

Suddenly, we get an appearance from GAH! What the heck am I looking at?!

That is terrifying. I'm going to be seeing it in my nightmares. Thanks a lot, movie.

Kon Suay shows up as Khan is being tortured by the demonic baby from the pits of the Uncanny Valley. She insists that her father will help him find his mother once he's healed, but Khan is unconvinced - he lives in a village full of humans who use elephants as slave labor. "In this village, elephants are free," Kon Suay says. "You can't judge people until you get to know them." In response, Khan tells Kon Suay to beat it, and she does, taking the terrifying baby with her.

As the summer makes way for the fall, Khan continues to heal. Eventually, his leg is all healed, just in time for bandits to invade the village. Kon Suay's father (Carl Reiner) urges Khan to stay hidden lest the bandits find him and drag him off to Burma to be a slave for their army. But as we've established, Khan is not very good at following directions, and sneaks out to find his mother.

Holy crap, Garfield has been hitting the steroids!

Why do so many of my reviews have jokes about steroids in them?

Jai's narration explains that the soldiers of Burma were nothing more than bandits and that their so-called "taxes" were just an excuse to rob their villages, bringing along their tiger and their... what exactly are these purple animals supposed to be? One of them calls himself a "big bad wolf", but when have you ever seen a wolf with spots and a striped lemur-esque tail? I want to say they look like demonic coatis, but coatis don't live in Asia so that can't be it. I have no idea what they are.

Has there EVER been an animal, any sort of animal, in Asia that looked like this?

The leader of the bandits, Ajan (Richard Epcar), tells them to take everything in the village - their food, land, and lives belong to the king of Burma, he claims. I was expecting them to find Khan and drag him off to Burma, but nope, he manages to sneak off into the jungle. Elephants are surprisingly stealthy. And guess who he runs into again? Jai! Just then, they hear an elephant's trumpet and discover that Kon Suay and that terrifying baby are being attacked by those purple animals, who Jai calls "weasels". They don't look like weasels to me at all, but y'know what, I'll take it. I have no idea what else they could be.

The Heffalumps and Woozles have turned on each other!

Khan and Jai do their best to fight off the "weasels", but just when it seems like they're outnumbered, Kon Suay's father shows up on another elephant, accompanied by the other villagers, to save them. Jai recognizes Kon Suay's father as Tian, the elephant trainer, and seeing them take care of Kon Suay makes Khan start to think that maybe humans aren't so bad.

Later on, Jai tells Khan about how he's been at the front lines, where there's a lot of hostility to be worked out. When Khan brings up that Pran is his dad, Jai reveals that the royal elephants live in the city, so maybe that's where he'll find his parents. But to see the royal elephants, you have to BE a royal elephant. So, in other words, you have to be Babar? He's a king, so he qualifies as a royal elephant, doesn't he? (Note to self: review something with Babar in it).

Prince Naresuan escaped from the Burmese off-camera and reclaimed the throne, and he has asked Tian to train the strongest elephants in the land and prepare them to become members of the royal elephants - after all, Siam will need large, powerful animals like elephants if they're going to take back their independence. This means that it's training montage time!

"It's the eye of the tiger, it's the thrill of the fight..."

The king of Burma is outraged by Prince Naresuan's freedom, and his demands for the people of Siam get worse and worse. But they, especially Khan, grow stronger and stronger. Eventually, Khan has gotten larger and gained an impressive pair of tusks (he's also now voiced by Jeremy Redleaf). Strangely, no one else seems to have aged a day. Even Kon Suay doesn't look much older...

Ticket sales for the Radio City Music Hall have increased dramatically since the introduction
of the All-Elephant Rockettes.

Oh, and as you could probably have guessed, Khan and Kon Suay are an item now. It seems that Jai's gonna get a girlfriend too, as a female dove shows up and he starts flirting with her. She's there to deliver a message to Tian - that Prince, or rather KING Naresuan has declared their independance. Siam is free! Which I guess means all that training was for nothing, but what are you gonna do?

Everybody dances awkwardly to celebrate being freed from the Burmese. But the bandits show up again the next day, only for the villagers to give them an egg and nothing more. They can't retaliate against the villagers either, lest they ignite the wrath of the elephants. There's just one problem... remember that tiger from earlier? Yeah, the bandits still have the tiger with them, and tigers are known for being very dangerous.

Incidentally, it's revealed here that the tiger's name is Snowball. Somehow, I feel like that name would be more fitting for a WHITE tiger. Since, y'know, snow is white.

That one villager is oddly happy about being chased by a tiger.

Fortunately, Khan manages to defeat the tiger. Unfortunately, Ajan holds Tian at gunpoint. Fortunately, Khan saves Tian by... forcing Ajan to smell his foot. Um, okay then. "You're gonna regret this. The king of Burma will have your heads!" Ajan snaps, but the villagers just send him and the other bandits packing.

The next morning, some of the villagers and elephants head off to help protect Siam. When they arrive in the capital of Siam, Jai tells him that the king is holding a contest to find the strongest royal elephants. The first challenge? Lifting ten tons of logs, which results in a tie between Khan and another elephant named Mongo. Next they have to push the logs, which leads to another tie. And how's this for a coincidence? Nuan is in the capital of Siam too, as one of the worker elephants.

Eventually, it all comes down to Khan and Mongo. They have to push twenty tons of wood across the field. Nuan catches a glimpse of Khan and is thrilled to see her son okay, but just as Khan runs over, Nuan gets dubbed a "rogue elephant" and dragged away. It seems like Khan might be as well when he attempts to save her, but then King Naresuan (now voiced by Richard Epcar) shows up and recognizes him. "This elephant, like our country, might be small in size," he says (are you sure about that?), "But his heart is great. He fought against overwhelming odds, not for greed or for power but to protect a loved one. We must follow his example. We must fight for our friends. For our families. We must fight to set our children free. My people, today I have found my royal elephant!"

As everyone else is getting ready for battle, Khan, Nuan, and Jai are trying to find Khan's father. "I should have told you about your father, Khan. I just wanted to forget the war," Nuan says. "What it did to our family. I wanted YOUR life to be different." Eventually, they're able to find the building where Pran should be located. They don't find him, but they DO find another royal elephant who knew Pran. He leads them to the Hall of Heroes, where the remains of the greatest warriors are kept. "Up there, lad. See that painting in the distance? That is your father on the left," he explains.

The painting depicts Pran and the other royal elephants marching out to face the invaders. "We might have won, too," the royal elephant says. "But then, HE came... the Black Elephant. Tusks like tree trunks. Eyes like burning coals. He fought to live and lived to fight." He's referring to that scary battle-scarred red-eyed elephant who Khan encountered before. He might've been killed had it not been for Pran, who bravely fought the Black Elephant.

Alas, Pran was no match for the Black Elephant and wound up killed. "Khan will not throw his life away on a battlefield," Nuan declares. "Pran did not throw his life away. He sacrificed himself for me, and for YOU," the royal elephant insists. "He fell, but he lives on in our hearts. He can only truly be forgotten if you make his sacrifice meaningless. War is never good, but sometimes, when your home is threatened, when your loved ones are in danger, sometimes you have to take a stand." Khan realizes what he must do...

I'm just kidding, he and King Naresuan lead the good guys into battle. The Burmese have them outnumbered, but they're not going down without a fight. Arrows fly. Swords clash. Elephants brawl. Eventually Minchit Sra shows up on the back of the Black Elephant. Why is he called that, anyway? He's not black. He's red.

"Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You..."
"Yeah, yeah, I know how the quote goes."

It's really hard for me to describe an intense battle and make it sound exciting, the best I can do is "They fight. It seems like the bad guy might have the upper hand, but the good guy triumphs." Let's see what I can do...

"For Nuan, my mother. For Kon Suay. For my country... and FOR. MY. FATHEEEEEEER!" Khan shouts as he finally manages to take the Black Elephant down. The air is filled with the sound of his triumphant trumpet, the winds swirling around him as though he were in the eye of a tornado.

"Your king is defeated! The war is over! PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS!" Jai declares. The Burmese soldiers do so, because I guess they can hear what the animals are saying? Khan has avenged his father and saved their country. King Naresuan appoints him "Lord Protector of Siam". He returns to the village to be with Kon Suay, and legend says that his descendants live to this very day. And then the film just... ends.

According to the end credits, the screenplay for the english dub was written by Evan Spiliotopoulos. IMDB tells me that he also wrote the screenplay for the live action Beauty and the Beast remake, Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers, and Pooh's Heffalump Movie (which makes those Heffalump jokes I made kind of ironic, doesn't it?). Just thought I'd bring that up.

What's the Verdict?

The Blue Elephant is okay. I usually associate direct-to-video CGI animated films with total crap (can you blame me?), but this one clearly had some effort put into it - even the english dub avoids being another Doogal in spite of the film having the Weinstein Company's name on it. The characters are fine, if not particularly interesting. Most of the voice actors do a good job, with Martin Short in particular being a highlight (I like Martin Short. So sue me). I think what bogs the film down mostly is its mediocre animation. The elephants aren't so bad, but the humans are pretty spooky-looking. Also, the jokes aren't very funny, though they could've been a lot worse - I didn't see ONE pop culture reference, which is quite an accomplishment since, again, this was made by the same company that gave us Doogal.

Maybe we'll look at Elephant Kingdom another time, maybe we won't, I'm not sure. If you want to watch this film for yourself, like I said, you can find it on YouTube. It's nothing spectacular but I think it's worth watching at least once, especially if you're like me and love elephants.

Before we end the review, I should mention that it was brought to you by...

There's no better place to go when you're hungry than Donkey's Waffle House. The name of the game here is, of course, waffles, but cakes and parfaits are also on the menu. Because who doesn't love cakes or parfaits? Have you ever met a person and you said "Hey, let's get some parfaits!" and then they said "Hell no, I don't like no parfaits!"? Parfaits are delicious!

Pictured: the second most delicious thing on the whole dang planet (second only
to parfaits).

For just $5.18, you can get the Ogre-Sized Breakfast: a stack of waffles as tall as Lord Farquaad (which isn't very), two golden eggs (laid by the goose from Jack and the Beanstalk) made your way, three all-weed rat sausage links, a bowl of porridge (not too hot or two cold - just right), and a Shrek-colored parfait (made with green Jell-O, chocolate chip mint ice cream, and a whole lot of green food coloring). And be sure to visit around the holidays, when we bring out the fifty-foot tall Santa Claus made out of waffles - we dare you NOT to lick the syrup off it!

Donkey's Waffle House: makin' waffles in the morning since 2001!

Let's Watch This: "Treasure Planet" (2002)

NOTE: Please do not take any of the little nitpicks in this review (or any of my other reviews, for that matter) seriously. I write these reviews in the hopes of making people laugh. Those nitpicks are really just dumb little observations that I'm attempting to make jokes out of, not complaints that add to whether or not I like something.

Treasure Planet is one of those animated films that really deserved better. It was a passion project for John Musker and Ron Clements, who kept pitching an adaptation of Treasure Island IIIIIIIIIIIIN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE multiple times over the years (it wasn't until Roy E. Disney backed them up that Michael Eisner agreed to let them do the movie - right after Hercules was completed). They compiled a crew of very talented animators and actors. New technology was created for it - they took the "Deep Canvas" thing used for Tarzan and used it to create a process called "Virtual Sets", which allowed them to create entire 360-degree sets before they began staging the scenes. There were tie-ins with McDonald's, Pepsi-Cola, Kellogg's, and even Dreyer's - just like Finding Nemo after it, Treasure Planet had its own ice cream flavors!

And what happened? Despite the positive reviews from critics, the film was a box office bomb, making just $109.6 million on a $140 million budget, and promptly became a footnote in Disney history. WHY? Why didn't this film do better? Most people claimed it was because it was hand-drawn and not CGI like Shrek or Ice Age (the same explanation given as to why Atlantis, Brother Bear, and Home on the Range underperformed*). But y'know what OTHER animated film Disney released that year that was hand-drawn? Lilo and Stitch. And THAT made a ton of money. Another excuse given was "maybe the film just wasn't that good". But if being a crappy movie was all it took to be a box office bomb, why do so many of Disney's live action remakes make billions?

"Meega just made a billion dollars! Get ready for
a live action remake of Encanto, suckers!"

So why did Treasure Planet actually underperform? Well, for one thing, Disney released it in November 2002, around the same time as The Santa Clause 2 and the second Harry Potter movie. If you release your movie around the same time as a Harry Potter film, no duh it's not going to make much money (and yet Disney did THE EXACT SAME THING in 2011!). Apparently, the marketing wasn't great either - this video suggests that Disney might've actually sabotaged the film so they'd have an excuse to abandon hand-drawn animation.

John Musker suggested in an interview that a preview screening very close to 9/11 might've damaged the film: it's a film where "armed people take over a vessel", after all. He and Terry Rossio, who worked on the film's story, also offered the theory that maybe the film's turning Jim Hawkins into a moody teenager might've turned people off as well. As Terry put it, "Treasure Island, the book, is a boy's adventure, about a young cabin boy who matches wits with a crew of bloodthirsty pirates. All of the key scenes are made more dramatic by the fact that it's a young kid who is in danger, it's a kid who single-handedly steals the pirate ship and sails around the island, it's a kid who faces difficult choices and impossible tasks and somehow wins the day... imagine the trailer for Treasure Planet with an actual kid in that central role. A little kid fighting off alien pirates, a little kid going off into space, a little kid outwitting a cyborg named Silver. There's a kick there, an interest that you don't get with the sullen teen extreme sports guy."

I'm sorry that I didn't see Treasure Planet in theaters. I was very little, I didn't make the decisions on which animated films my family went to see in theaters (we DID see Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmaron and The Wild Thornberrys Movie in theaters that same year, so don't say we didn't do our part for hand-drawn animation!). In fact, for some reason, I never actually watched this film until... 2020 or 2021, I think? And I liked it. And now I'm going to watch it again, because I had a poll on DeviantArt for which movie my 200th review should be of and Treasure Planet got the most votes. This is Treasure Planet.

The movie starts off with narrator Tony Jay telling us that on the clearest of nights, when "the winds of the Etherium" were calm and peaceful, merchant ships carrying solar crystals were pursued by pirates. And the most feared of all these pirates - by which I mean "yo ho yo ho a pirate's life for me, shiver me timbers, hook for a hand" pirates, not "I'm going to steal music off the internet" pirates - was the notorious Captain Flint. And no wonder, just LOOK at the guy!

"Hello, kids! I'll be seeing you all in your nightmares tonight!"

It's then revealed that this is all part of a storybook that young Jim Hawkins is reading. His mother, Sarah Hawkins (voiced by Laurie Metcalf), comes in and points out that he's supposed to be asleep, but she's no match for Jim's adorableness.

You probably noticed that there's a Stitch doll in Jim's bedroom. Considering that
this movie was made around the same time, the filmmakers probably didn't know how much
money Disney would make off of Stitch merchandise yet. Kind of funny when you think about it.

The book claims that after stealing all the loot from the merchant ships, Flint and his ship vanished without a trace. Legend has it that his treasure, "the riches of a thousand worlds", is hidden somewhere at the farthest reaches of the galaxy, on a planet known as... drum roll, please... Treasure Planet. Honestly, if Flint didn't want other people going after his treasure, maybe he shouldn't have hidden it on a planet with the word "TREASURE" in its name. He must be pretty stupid.

So after this cute moment of Jim Hawkins as a tyke, we cut to him as the aforementioned moody teenager, now voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He's flying around with his earring and his ponytail and his presumably leather jacket (these things don't make him "cool", they just make him look like a tool), doing something called "solar surfing" - basically parasailing but you're doing it in the air and apparently it could get you arrested.

"All this for a loaf of bread?"

We then cut to the Benbow Inn, owned and run by Mrs. Hawkins. It's here that we meet one of the film's most divisive characters (not THE most divisive, we'll get to him at some point in the third act) - the doglike Dr. Delbert Doppler, voiced by David Hyde Pierce. I've seen some folks online dub him annoying, but I personally don't have a problem with him. That design does take some getting used to, though...

I think Dr. Doppler is supposed to be this film's equivalent of Dr. Livesey from the original novel. I assume they renamed him because "Doppler" is a funnier word than "Livesey" is.

I wonder if he's the evolved form of a... whatever Goofy is.

The door to the inn swings open, revealing Jim and those two police robots, who tell Mrs. Hawkins that he was "operating a solar vehicle in a restricted area" - a violation of his probation. His solar surfer has been impounded and if he gets into any more mischief, he's getting a one-way ticket to Juvenile Hall.

When the police bots leave, Jim acts all emo and Mrs. Hawkins complains about all the run-ins with the law he's been having. She gives us some exposition about how Jim's been like this ever since his father left. Yep, the dad just... left. No explanation is given as to why. As Jim is being all angsty, he suddenly sees some sort of strange spacecraft land. When he approaches it, out pops this charming fellow:

"Heeeeeeeeeeee's a-comin'."

"Who? Long John Silver?"

"Worse. Bob Iger! As soon as Eisner gets kicked out, they're puttin' HIM in charge of
Disney! We're gonna get a ton of live action remakes and crappy replacements for beloved
Disney World attractions!"

This is Billy Bones (Patrick McGoohan), who rambles to Jim about how there's a fiendish cyborg after his treasure chest. Jim helps him into the inn, where he opens his chest and pulls out a strange round object wrapped in cloth.

"Beware the cybooooooooooorg..." he hisses just before he dies. And then ANOTHER ship approaches the Inn. Presumably, the folks on that ship aren't just there for a good meal...

"I hope this place has vegan options."

Jim, his mother, and Doppler make a run for it as the shadowy figures who emerged from the ship barge in and start ransacking the place, which leads to it being set on fire. Fortunately, they manage to get away. When Jim unwraps the strange round object wrapped in cloth, he discovers that it's some sort of spheric Rubix Cube - does ANYBODY know how to solve one of those things? I'VE certainly never been able to. Anyhow, he starts fiddling around with it and this happens...

Doppler identifies this strange light show as a map. He also identifies the planet that they're on, Montressor, on the map, as well as the Magellanic Cloud, the Coral Galaxy, the Cygnus Cross, the Kerian Abyss - and, of course, Treasure Planet. It's not just a legend after all! It exists!

"Mom, this is it! This is the answer to all our problems!" Jim exclaims. With that treasure, they could rebuild the inn! Mrs. Hawkins thinks this is all ridiculous, but Dr. Doppler's on board. He'll use his savings to finance the expedition, commission a ship, and hire a captain and crew. "All my life, I've been waiting for an opportunity like this!" he says. "And here it is, screaming, 'Go Delbert! Go Delbert!'"

I think this line was ad-libbed by David Hyde Pierce.

Mrs. Hawkins, of course, still thinks that this idea is insane, but Jim insists that this is his chance to make it up to her. And then Doppler goes all Calvin's Dad and says that a few months in space would build character.

The next day, Jim and Doppler head to the spaceport, which appears to be a model reused from one of those Star Wars video games. Their ship, the R.L.S. Legacy (tell me, what does "R.L.S." stand for?), is waiting for them, and upon boarding they encounter an alien who communicates... in fart noises. Yeah, I can't defend this scene. It's pretty cringe-worthy.

The crew is already assembled, too. This film's version of Mr. Arrow (voiced by Roscoe Lee Browne) is a rock monster (kind of like the Thing from the Fantastic Four), and instead of Captain Smollett, we have Captain Amelia, a literal catwoman voiced by Emma Thompson.

Can you believe that they rejected her audition for Cats?

Amelia tells Doppler that she'd like to have a word with him in her stateroom. Specifically, she wants to tell him not to mention the treasure map in front of the crew he hired, all of whom look and act like thugs... or, as she describes them, "a ludicrous parcel of driveling galoots". Doppler really should've known better than to listen to the little man who lives in his finger when he was hiring the crew. Hey, I had to make a Muppet Treasure Island joke at SOME point...

So, yeah. Amelia and Doppler aren't getting along. I guess you could say they're fighting like cats and dogs. Ba-dum-ksssh. Amelia says that Jim will be working with the ship's cook - Long John Silver, voiced by Brian Murray... who turns out to be a cyborg. The cool thing about this is that it's a 2D character with CGI limbs, something that I don't think has been done before. To test whether or not this would work, Glen Keane and the other animators took a pencil test of Captain Hook from Peter Pan and composited a CGI robotic arm onto it:

Neat, huh? Even though Jim is suspicious, Silver seems like a jovial sort, and anyone who pals around with a cute little pink blob of goo can't be all bad. Ah, yes, I should mention Morph (Dane A. Davis). Not to be confused with the Aardman character, Morph is one of the characters from the film who always stuck out the most to me. Actually, I think one of the kids in my preschool had a toy of him...

It took me until now to realize this, but... pirates usually have parrots as pets, right?
And parrots are known for mimicking people, right? And Morph's shtick is that
he can shapeshift into other characters and mimic them, right? Ergo, Morph is kind of
like a parrot.

"See to it the new cabin boy's kept busy," Mr. Arrow tells Silver. After he and Doppler leave, Jim starts interrogating Silver about how he met Billy Bones and how he warned him to "beware the cyborg", but Silver claims that it must have been a different cyborg. But for those of you who haven't read Treasure Island or seen any of the other movie adaptations, spoiler alert: Silver's a villain. Morph, on the other hand, doesn't have a bad bone in his body. Or ANY bones, it would seem.

The ship takes off... or should that be "sets sail"? Well, anyhow, it's off, flying through space among the dated CGI space whales...

Flying CGI whales? When did this turn into Fantasia 2000?

Silver puts Jim to work swabbing the deck, and the other members of the crew start menacing him. It seems that the leader of these rascals, scoundrels, villains, and knaves - and Silver's second-in-command - is Scroop (Michael Wincott), a scary spider-esque alien who, much like Captain Flint at the beginning, likely worked his way into children's nightmares after they saw this film.

Where's a can of Raid when you need it?

Fortunately, Mr. Arrow and Silver show up and get the others to knock it off. After Silver tells Morph to keep an eye on Jim, he heads down below to meet with the other crew members, revealing to the audience that he's their leader and they're planning a mutiny. "You just stick to the plan, you bug-brained twit!" he tells Scroop. "As for the boy, I'll run him so ragged he won't have time to think..."

We get a montage of Silver teaching Jim how to peel barnacles off the ship, tie knots, stuff like that, interspliced with flashbacks to Jim's youth, accompanied by a John Rzeznik song. It's clear that they're starting to warm up to each other, which is going to make Silver's mutiny plan difficult. And y'know what else is gonna make it difficult? A random supernova!

"Our whole universe was in a hot, dense state..."

Everyone ties themselves down as the ship tries to get away, but eventually the star devolves into a black hole (insert reference to Disney's 1980s flop The Black Hole here) and starts sucking them in. Mr. Arrow even winds up falling off the ship, no thanks to Scroop cutting his rope. Alas, poor Mr. Arrow. I didn't even get to make an "IT'S CLOBBERING TIME!" joke.

Sorry, Mr. Arrow. You're only allowed to survive if you're being played by Sam the Eagle.

The ship gets sucked in... and then Disney Plus decided to throw a bunch of ads at me. Great timing, guys... and the ship escapes, riding the next cosmic wave or whatever to safety. Downside: Scroop claims that Mr. Arrow fell off because "his lifeline was not secure", and Jim blames himself because he checked them all. "I screwed up!" he whines. "I mean, for two seconds, I thought that maybe I could do something right, but... AUGH! I just... just forget it. Forget it." "Now you listen to me, James Hawkins," Silver says. "You got the makings of greatness in ya, but you've gotta take the helm and chart your own course. Stick to it, no matter the squalls... and when the time comes you get the chance to really test the cut of your sails, and show what you're made of... well, I hope I'm there... catchin' some of the light comin' off ya that day."

I keep forgetting that his arm is CGI. That's quite an accomplishment, seeing how
dated most of the CGI in this film looks...

The next morning, we get that scene where Jim is in the barrel and overhears Silver and the crew talking about their mutiny. Silver calls out Scroop for disobeying his orders and killing Mr. Arrow, but Scroop knows how to push Silver's buttons. All he has to do is say that Silver's got a soft spot for Jim and Silver snaps, "Now, mark me, the lot of ya... I care about one thing and one thing only - Flint's trove! You think I'd risk it all for the sake of some nose-wiping little whelp?! I cozied up to that kid to keep him off our scent!"

...OUCH. Just... OUCH.

"Boy, I hope that kid isn't within earshot of us. Wouldn't it be troubling if he overheard
you talking about how you were just playing him like a fiddle? I mean..."

"SHUT YOUR TRAP! That only happens in movies!"

Suddenly, the alien in the crow's nest (Onus, voiced by Corey Burton) declares that Treasure Planet is in sight. When Silver heads back down to get his spyglass, he encounters Jim, who sticks a knife in his mechanical pegleg. Dang, I don't recall Jim Hawkins doing that in the original book. Then again, it's been years since I've read it...

"Change in plans, lads! We move NOW!" Silver shouts. The pirates all get mutiny-ing, but Jim has told Amelia and Doppler about Silver's plan, so they're ready for them. Amelia tells Jim to protect the map, and they make a run for the longboats. Unfortunately, Morph decides to be Mr. Mischevious and steal the map for himself. This leads to a scene where he gets caught in the middle between Jim and Silver, both of whom are begging him to give him the map. It's played for laughs, but it actually provides some insight for Morph's character. Who knew one of the most complex characters in the movie would be a floating pink blob?

Long story short, Morph hides with the map in a barrel. Jim reaches in and grabs it, then runs off. Silver lifts his gun at him, but can't bring himself to shoot. They get away in a longboat, but a laser ball from a cannon fired by one of the pirates knocks them off-course and they land in a forest of what appears to be floating mushrooms. Amelia is injured. On the bright side, they have the map... or DO they?

"Psych!"

It was Morph the whole time! Apparently, he hid the actual map back on the ship. Amelia has Jim search for a more defensible position before the pirates show up, leaving Doppler to tend to her injuries. So Jim and Morph head into the bowels of Dagobah, unaware that they're being watched. After a jumpscare, we are introduced to B.E.N. (which stands for "Bio-Electronic Navigator"). He's a robot who was once under the employment of Captain Flint. After he helped Flint bury his treasure, he took out B.E.N.'s primary memory circuit so he wouldn't remember where the treasure was - ensuing that NOBODY other than him knew where it was.

Y'know how I said Doppler was one of the film's most divisive characters? Well, B.E.N. is THE most divisive. I often see people who otherwise liked the film badmouthing him. As for me, I think he can be a bit much, but I stomach him fine for the most part. I'm probably just biased because he's voiced by Martin Short, an actor who I really like. The main problem with B.E.N., I find, is that Martin Short was seemingly directed to shout a good chunk of his lines. Shouting is not automatically funny. But to be fair, if you were stranded on a deserted planet for who knows how long, you'd probably be a bit off your rockers too.

"Bite my shiny metal [CENSORED]!"

Jim and Morph take pity on B.E.N. and allow him to tag along with them - which works out quite well for them, because B.E.N.'s house is exactly the great hiding place that they need! Once they're safe inside, Doppler notices that the markings on the walls are identical to the ones on the map. "I suspect these are the hylogriphic remnants of an ancient culture," he muses. Alas, B.E.N. winds up giving away their hiding spot to the pirates... in his defense, he didn't know they were the guys they were supposed to be hiding from.

"Hide me! There are a bunch of Disney executives coming our way! They want me to play
Jack Frost in their crappy third Santa Clause movie!"

Silver arrives, tells the other pirates to stop blasting, and waves a white flag. Amelia guesses that Silver wants to bargain for the map... which means that he thinks they still have it. When Jim emerges, Silver tells him that he didn't mean any of that "I don't care about the boy, I'm just trying to throw him off our trail, honest" stuff. "If we play our cards right, we can both walk away from this rich as kings," he claims. "You get me that map, and an even portion of the treasure is yours." Jim still doesn't trust him, though, and declares that he's gonna make sure Silver doesn't see even one piece of that treasure.

"And then I'm gonna listen to Linkin Park and complain about how much I hate
the world on the internet! And other things that moody teenagers do!"

"Oh, you still don't know how to pick your fights, do you, boy?" Silver snarls. "Now, mark me... either I get that map by dawn tomorrow, or so help me, I'll use the ship's cannons to BLAST YOU ALL TO KINGDOM COME!" As for Morph, he's so frightened by Silver's outburst that he decides to stick with Jim.

As for Amelia, Doppler hasn't been much help. He's an astronomer, not a doctor... well, he's not THAT kind of doctor, he has a doctorate, it's not the same thing. He and Jim mope about how they're pretty much trapped, but then B.E.N. reveals that there's a back door that serves as an entryway to the miles and miles of machinery that run through the entire course of the inside of Treasure Planet. Advantage: good guys.

Jim's plan is to sneak back to the ship, disable the laser cannons, and bring back the map. After stealing the pirates' longboat, they sneak aboard the ship, and B.E.N. races off to disable the cannons... which is going to be hard since there are so many wires in the ship's control panel to choose from.

Word of advice, B.E.N. - it's usually the red wire. Or maybe it's the green one?

Jim and Morph get the map, but B.E.N. accidentally sets off an alarm, resulting in them getting caught by Scroop. The film basically turns into Alien...

I've never actually seen Alien, so I'm not sure what joke to make here...

And then B.E.N. disables the ship's artificial gravity, sending Jim flying up to the crow's nest. He manages to grab the ship's flag, Scroop crawling up behind him, but thanks to some quick climbing-down skills on Jim's part, it's SCROOP who winds up flying off into outer space. Sayanora, Scroop.

B.E.N. turns the gravity back on and disables the laser cannons, then he, Jim, and Morph return to B.E.N.'s house where Amelia and Doppler are waiting. But guess who's there waiting for them? Silver and the pirates!

Dun dun dun!

Silver finds himself unable to open the map (like I said before, it's like a Rubik's Cube - NOBODY knows how to solve one!), so he has Jim do it for him or else he'll shoot Doppler and Amelia. The map shows them the way to the treasure... or rather, to absolutely nothing. Or maybe the treasure is just invisible? Or somebody already found it and claimed it? Or maybe the real treasure was actually friendship all along?

Or maybe the treasure is actually that magnificent view.

As the pirates start throwing a fit over the lack of treasure, Jim finds a small divot in the ground where he's supposed to place the map, resulting in the creation of a holographic globe, which is promptly followed by a tear in the fabric of space and time! Makes sense to ME, I don't know why YOU'RE confused...

"Would anyone else like to enter the Fly of Despair?"

Actually, Jim says that it's a portal to the Lagoon Nebula, which is halfway across the galaxy. If he keeps pressing buttons on the globe, it shows him other locations, including his home planet's spaceport. "So THAT'S how Flint did it!" he comments. "He used this portal to roam the universe, stealing treasure." But where is the treasure now? Jim theorizes that it's the center of the mechanism - and by "mechanism", he means the planet. I feel like the whole "you have to dig for it" answer was pretty obvious, I mean, it's called buried treasure for a reason.

Problem is, the planet's surface is as hard as a rock. You can't get to the center by digging, you have to use the portal. So they do that and find the treasure. Huzzah. Time to channel Scrooge McDuck.

"DuckTales, woo-hoo!"

While the pirates bask in their riches, Jim spots Captain Flint's ship and tells B.E.N. that they're getting out of there and they're not leaving empty-handed. Climbing aboard the ship, they find Captain Flint's skeleton (I'll spare you the screencap), still clutching B.E.N.'s primary memory circuit. Jim puts it back in B.E.N.'s head, resulting in B.E.N. getting his memory back... and then remembering that there's a booby trap. To make absolutely sure that nobody would get their hands on his treasure even if they found it, Flint rigged it so that if anyone found it, the whole planet would blow sky-high.

Well, I guess it's easier than just putting a giant lock on the place...

Some sort of laser beam starts cutting the entire room in half, creating a giant chasm that the treasure - and a few pirates - falls into. Jim starts hotwiring the ship's controls, telling B.E.N. to go back and help Amelia and Doppler. Speaking of them, Doppler's wrists manage to slip out of the ropes binding them, and he manages to outwit the pirate guarding them. Go, Delbert! Go, Delbert!

Meanwhile, Silver finds himself in a situation where he needs to choose between rescuing Jim and saving the treasure. He chooses Jim, of course. "Just a lifelong obsession, Jim. I'll get over it," he claims. B.E.N., Amelia, and Doppler show up with the ship, having defeated the remaining pirates, and Jim, Silver, and Morph climb aboard. The day is saved, right?

Well, no... the mizzen sail is destroyed, and the thrusters are only working at thirty-percent of capacity. That means they'll never clear the planet's explosion in time! "We've gotta turn around," Jim says. "There's a portal back there! It can get us out of here!" With Silver's help, he manages to build a makeshift hoverboard and flies off to change the portal's destination from a fiery inferno to... I don't know, the Bahamas? I hear it's lovely this time of year...

"Extreme sports skillz, don't fail me now!"

Of course, Jim pulls it off and they manage to escape. Oh, and by the way, Amelia and Doppler have the hots for each other now. Yes, it IS possible for a dog to fall in love with a cat.

"Do you believe in interspecies dating?"

"Well, I've dated some DOGS before, if that's what you mean..."

Amelia says that she'd be proud to recommend Jim to the Interstellar Academy. As for Silver, he and Morph are currently trying to steal a lifeboat before they get back to the spaceport and he gets, y'know, put on trial and thrown in the slammer. "You never know when to quit, do you?" Jim asks. But, of course, he decides to look the other way. Silver offers him the chance to join them, but he says he's gonna chart his own course. "You're somethin' special, Jim," Silver tells him. "You're gonna rattle the stars someday." Before he heads off, he tells Morph he can stay with Jim and gives him the treasure he managed to salvage so he and his mom can rebuild the inn.

Jim and his friends return home, and the inn is indeed rebuilt. B.E.N. works there now. Jim is now part of the Interstellar Academy. And Doppler and Amelia have had four kids. There was apparently a line here that revealed Doppler gave birth to them, but it was cut. Probably for the best, there's some things about his biology that I don't need to know.

If anyone else out there has the book Disney 365 Bedtime Stories (the 2004 edition),
it actually features a story about the kids.

So all's well that ends well. Everybody dances (B.E.N.'s got some slick moves!) and Jim looks up into the night sky and sees a cloud that looks like Silver's head. The end.

What's the Verdict?

So that's Treasure Planet, and while I wouldn't say it's John Musker and Ron Clements' BEST movie (it's got some heavy competition, after all), it's a pretty good movie. The animation is great - well, the hand-drawn stuff, anyway, most of the CGI is pretty dated. I like the characters, with the exception of that alien that spoke in fart noises, who I could've done without. The passion that the filmmakers had for this idea really shines through, there's a genuine heart to it that a lot of recent movies, Disney or otherwise, lack.

What's my biggest problem with the movie? Well, I think Terry Rossio and John Musker are on to something with the film's portrayal of Jim Hawkins being a turn-off for audiences. I dunno, I didn't find moody teenage rebel Jim Hawkins that engaging, especially since he's surrounded by far more colorful side characters. Was this solely why the film underperformed? No. I still think it was a combination of the lousy release date, the films it was up against (even then, I'm still not sure why people chose to see The Santa Clause 2 instead), and the clumsy marketing. If it had been fully CGI or even live action, it still would've underperformed.

But, until we invent time travel and we can go back to 2002 and ensue that the film does at least a LITTLE better at the box office (enough to be considered profitable, it doesn't need to be an Ice Age-level hit), the best we can do for Treasure Planet is raise awareness of it so folks who've never seen the film before will seek it out. You can find it on Disney Plus, after all.

* I have a book about the animation studio Disney opened in Florida that claims the "people don't like hand-drawn animation anymore" mindset actually got started in 1995, because Pocahontas didn't make as much money as Toy Story. Make of that what you will.