Let's Watch This: "Animaniacs: Wakko's Wish" (1999)

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.

NOTE #2: No disrespect is meant towards anyone who worked on the movie I am reviewing today. I'm sure they are all very nice and talented people.

NOTE #3: If you like this movie, that is great. Go ahead and like it. I'm not judging you.

All right, everyone take out the torches and pitchforks... am I the only one who thinks that Animaniacs is kind of overrated? Don't get me wrong, it's a great show. It's got some charming characters, memorable songs, and decent jokes. But pop culture references and innuendos can only get you so far, plus as the show went on it started to feel like the writers always had some sort of axe to grind (what did Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert do to tick off the writers of that one Slappy Squirrel sketch?).

But, regardless of the show's faults, there's no denying that Animaniacs is one of the most influental cartoons of the 1990s (I can name other shows that tried to do what it did but couldn't pull it off at all). Of Warner Brothers' animated output during that decade, this is definitely their most popular - even after the show's conclusion in 1998, it recieved a comic book series, video games, McDonald's tie-ins, and even reran on The Hub (now Discovery Family) for a while. Then in 2020 it got a reboot. Which was awful.

Ever wonder what Animaniacs would be like without any of the charm, passion or humor?
This is the show for you!

But the 1990s was definitely when Animaniacs was at the height of its popularity (mostly because that's when it was actually being MADE). And since it was so popular, of course Warner Bros. wanted to make a movie adaptation of the show. According to TV Tropes, there were plans for one in 1995, but the idea was scrapped due to Warner Bros. pouring their money into the production of Space Jam. Eventually, after the show's final episode, they finally got that Animaniacs movie made - a little something called Animaniacs: Wakko's Wish.

This film was originally supposed to be released in theaters, but despite great scores in test screenings, Warner Bros. decided to make it direct-to-video as a result of their previous animated films like Quest For Camelot and The Iron Giant flopping. It was released on December 21st, 1999. There were thoughts of doing sequels, but the film didn't sell enough videos for them to go through with that.

Wakko's Wish is a very divisive film among Animaniacs fans. You either like it or you hate it. Which side do I fall on? Let's find out. This is Animaniacs: Wakko's Wish.

The movie starts out promising enough, with Wakko joining Bugs Bunny during the Warner Bros. Family Entertainment logo to take a bite out of it (I wonder what the shield tastes like)...

Bugs got revenge on Wakko years later by denying him and his siblings a cameo in
Looney Tunes Back in Action.

Then the opening credits play, listing the names of the characters in the movie while snowflakes featuring their likenesses fall on the screen... I know no two snowflakes are alike, but this is ridiculous. And our first joke (not counting the Warner Bros. logo) of the movie is... a pop culture reference. This is Animaniacs all right.

Specifically, Wakko, voiced by Jess Harnell as per usual, grabs a sled with "Rosebud" written on it off the ground. Get it? Like in Citizen Kane? This is one of those pop culture references that literally EVERYONE has made. I remember even Peanuts made this "Rosebud is the guy's sled" joke at least five times. I never really saw the humor in it. Maybe that's because I've never actually seen Citizen Kane, but something tells me that even if I had, I still wouldn't find it funny.

And what do Wakko, Yakko (voiced by Rob Paulsen), and Dot (voiced by Tress MacNeille) do with the sled? They set it on fire. "Hey, what do you want from US? We're freezin' here!" Yakko says. Okay, that's kind of funny I guess. Then we get a close-up of the burning sled and hear an Orson Welles-esque voice whisper, "Rooooooooooosebuuuuuud..." just in case you didn't get the joke. Yeah, yeah, I get it, Citizen Kane exists, there's a sled in it, nyuck nyuck nyuck...

Of course you're freezing, Yakko. You're sitting pretty far from the fire and IN THE SNOW. Move
an inch closer at least!

For some reason, this movie isn't actually canon to the Animaniacs TV show (assuming that show had a canon in the first place, I mean). There's no Warner Bros. movie lot, there's no water tower, there's no Acme Labs, there's no... whatever other locations were featured in the show's segments. Instead, everyone lives in a small village in the foothills of the old river valley: Acme Falls. It's a charming little town filled with happy inhabitants, among them a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker, and a mime whose entire purpose is to serve as an excuse for the writers to make jokes at the expense of mimes. I gotta ask, does ANYBODY actually like mimes? I've always found them creepy myself...

Well, MOST mimes I find creepy. I don't have a problem with this guy.

According to narrator Tom Bodett, Acme Falls was part of a peace-loving, picturesque little country called Warnerstock, ruled by the good King William. Everything was great until King William passed and Warnerstock was overthrown in a hostile takeover by the nation of Tictockia. Their main export: incredibly short videos! See, I can make pop culture references too. Doesn't make me funny.

Speaking of pop culture references, this whole thing is a parody of Warner Bros. merging with Time Inc. in 1990, although Time didn't exactly take over Warner Bros. I don't know if things got crappier for Warner Bros. after that (or at least any worse than what's been going on with Warner Bros. since they merged with Discovery), but they sure did after this movie was released. Did the writers of this film know something that everyone else didn't?

If this movie had been made nowadays, the name of the other country would probably be
"Zaslavia" or something like that.

The new king of Warnerstock is King Salazar the Pushy (voiced by Paxton Whitehead), who vows to rule with a tight fist. The international community doesn't support his regime, and the country's fortune plummets. Salazar's solution, of course, is to go all Prince John and start taxing the heck out of the every city and town in Warnerstock - including Acme Falls, which winds up having to deal with the King's tax collector: Baron Von Plotz (Frank Welker), as well as his minion, Ralph (also Frank Welker).

Making Plotz and Ralph villains is a bit strange to me... I know Plotz was a jerk in the show, but I would hesitate to call him EVIL. And Ralph? He wasn't a bad guy, he was just doing his job. What else could they have done? Maybe they could've given Plotz's role to one of the many antagonists the Warners faced off against in their segments, like that guy in the one where they're on an airplane or that bear who was conning people at his garage sale... but I guess they needed to work Plotz into the film SOMEHOW.

This character is from a Warners segment too: specifically, the segment "Toy Shop Terror" from
the show's fiftieth episode.

Soon the once-prosporous town of Acme Falls is poor, and everyone who lives there is miserable - especially Yakko, Wakko and Dot, three orphans living on the street since the orphanage shut down. They're so miserable that they decide to sing about it.

As I said at the beginning of this review, Animaniacs is known for its great songs: if you know the capitals of all fifty states, it's more likely than not because of Randy Rogel and Jess Harnell. This song apparently was not written by Randy, or at least the lyrics weren't, and it shows. Though, to be fair, it's probably hard to write a good song where the lyrics are basically just complaining about how much life sucks.

I do like the lyric about how the orphanage had "hot and cold running dirt" in its faucets, at least.

All of the other characters join in the song to complain about their lot in life too - all of the shops are closing, they have no money, and apparently Salazar's presence makes the temperature cold all the time. Wakko insists that they just need to "cheer up and never ever give up hope".

This is also where we get the film's first "LOL we said something dirty and then pointed out how dirty it is" joke, Animaniacs' OTHER go-to source of humor when it couldn't think of an actual joke to make - Skippy (Nathan Ruegger) complaining that his nuts are frozen. This is a joke that COULD be funny, but there's something about it that sucks out the comedy. Maybe it's the delivery? Maybe if Slappy (Sherri Stoner) just SAID the line "Be careful with that last verse!" instead of SINGING it, it would've been funnier? Or maybe it would've been funnier if it was revealed that Skippy was holding a giant block of ice with nuts in it AFTER he said the line? It's like, you get what the joke is, but something's just off about it that you can't put your finger on. But what do I know? This very blog should demonstrate how little I know about comedy.

Maybe the "Be careful with that last verse!" part is the problem. It's almost like they're explaining
the joke.

The other characters have more to worry about than just the taxes, mind you. Dr. Scratchensniff (Rob Paulsen) is trying to sell his new elixir, but nobody's buying. The Brain (Maurice LaMarche) wants to - you guessed it - take over the world, but the low temperatures are preventing him from doing so. For some reason. He could figure out a way to send Salazar and Plotz to the Amazon, where they'll A) be far away from Warnerstock and B) probably wind up eaten by a jaguar, and the people would probably be so grateful that they'd make HIM king if for no other reason than because he couldn't possibly be any worse than Salazar. But nope, instead he just sits there watching Pinky (Rob Paulsen) make ice sculptures out of his spit.

As for Slappy and Skippy, their tree isn't growing acorns, so they have to eat frozen creamed spinach... even though squirrels do eat things other than acorns, even if they don't have any money to buy other food surely they can forage for fruit or fungi or just peel the bark off their tree and eat THAT. Or, here's a suggestion for everyone: just MOVE. Pack your things and move to another country. What, did Salazar put up a giant wall around Warnerstock to keep you from leaving?

So because everyone in Acme Falls is too dumb to consider just LEAVING Warnerstock (surely Pinky and the Brain could sneak out of the country without a problem. They're mice, do they even NEED to pay taxes?), they all just continue to hope that things will get better. They do not, even after an entire year. And just to add insult to injury, Dot needs an operation. Why? Even Yakko and Wakko admit that they're not sure. Eventually, Wakko heads out into the world for about a year to seek his fortune and bring some money back to Acme Falls. If you can take a train out, I guess that torpedoes the "Salazar put up a giant wall to prevent anyone from leaving Warnerstock" idea, which leads me to ask why everyone in town doesn't just hop aboard the train and ride it to another country. Unless Wakko only went to other cities and towns in Warnerstock to get some money (which doesn't seem likely, if the entire country is being taxed to the brim it wouldn't be a good idea to seek money anywhere else in it), why does nobody think of this?

Heck, why don't they just REVOLT? Form an angry mob, beat the crap out of Plotz, then go to
Salazar's castle and pulverize HIM too?

The entire town waits for Wakko to return. By the following winter, they're still waiting. Meanwhile, Pinky has started dating a horse, Pharfignewton, and Brain does not approve of this. What would the children look like?

If Brain thinks that PINKY being in love with a horse is strange, just wait until he hears
about Bronies...

Eventually, the train returns to Acme Falls, and everybody sings another lousy (but, mercifully, short) song about it. And when it pulls into the station, Wakko reveals to everybody his fortune: a ha'penny!

Does anyone else hear crickets chirping?

That's it? He's been out working, earning money, for a whole year and all he's made is half a cent? Who was he working for, Mr. Krabs? Well, even though it's very little, everyone in town is very impressed by Wakko's ha'penny, which he made by chopping wood, chopping suey, and pitching horseshoes and hay. I can't tell if we're supposed to find this uplifting, depressing, funny, or some combination of all three.

Everyone is so happy that Wakko has a ha'penny that they launch into another musical number! Say, remember that episode of Animaniacs where they did a parody of Beauty and the Beast? Their parody of the opening song, "Belle", was mostly just them singing about how bad the lyrics were and how the characters were singing way off-key. And now here they are, basically having the characters from the show act like the villagers from Beauty and the Beast, singing far worse songs that are very clearly inspired by songs like "Belle". Don't throw stones if you live in a glass house, Animaniacs.

Well, at least they're letting the mime participate in the song.

And now Wakko can use his ha'penny to repair the water tower shed that he and his siblings are living in... wait, I thought they were living on the street. Or maybe he can use it to pay for Dot's operation.

Ralph tells Plotz about Wakko's ha'penny, and much like a falcon swooping down to grab a vole in its talons, he swoops in and snatches the ha'penny, claiming that it's for taxes. I'm not sure WHY Plotz takes such pleasure in taxing the citizens of Acme Falls, considering that HE'S not the one getting the money, Salazar is. Unless he's actually been hoarding the money for himself, but wouldn't Salazar have noticed that by now and fired him?

And why on Earth are the Warners just taking this? Heck, why haven't THEY tried to fight Salazar? They're the Warner Siblings! Go to his castle and give him the "special friend" treatment! Clobber him with a giant mallet!

Oh, right, I forgot that the king's guards have big, scary GUNS. Somehow, I don't think the Warners would let that stop them. The ACTUAL Warners, not the pathetic, cynical Warners from the reboot.

Well, at least this isn't as pathetic as Space Jam's turning Bugs Bunny into a total wimp who's terrified of five dimwitted aliens because they have ray guns, needs the help of Michael Jordan and the other Looney Tunes to defeat them instead of just thinking of a way to trick them into blowing themselves up in five minutes as he generally does to his foes, and eventually needing to be saved from a DOG as well.

Check out that one guard with the skin tan and the mustache. He's the only one who
doesn't look like a clone of the others.

Heck, the guards shoot the Mime with their guns and he shows up alive and well later on, so apparently their guns don't even do anything. So what exactly are Yakko, Wakko and Dot afraid of?

After another song, we see Yakko tucking Dot into bed. She asks to be told "the story" - NOT the one about the man from Nantucket, but the one about how she was born. According to Yakko, once upon a time a brave night married a beautiful princess and they had two sons. But they wanted a daughter, too, so they planted flowers all over the kingdom. And on the first day of spring, every flower in that garden bloomed, and out of the prettiest flower came Dot. When I turned the movie on, I expected to find this scene incredibly sappy... and, yeah, it is, especially for Animaniacs, but I don't hate it. Maybe it's because of Rob Paulsen and Tress MacNeille's performances, maybe I'm just soft, maybe it's because I'll gladly take this over the mean-spirited bits in the original show and the reboot... yeah, it's probably just because of Rob and Tress' performances. They're two of the most talented folks in the biz.

Although I can't help but wonder if this stuff about Dot being born from a flower is true or if it's just Yakko avoiding having to tell Dot where babies come from. And I know we're probably just supposed to ignore the fact that in the show, the Warner Siblings are in-universe cartoon characters who were created by being drawn on an animation cel, but that just raises further questions about this movie's weird continuity.

Were Yakko and Wakko born from flowers too?

"If I'd only earned more..." Wakko laments. Yakko insists that they'll pay for Dot's operation some other way, then after he goes to bed, Wakko has a seat at his makeshift harp and starts singing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" to the stars in the sky overhead. This somehow causes one star in particular to start glowing brighter and brighter, and then a beam of green light appears in front of him. The beam of green light turns out to be Ben Stein's character from the show, Pip - here some sort of fairy who's there to grant Wakko's wish (I swear I didn't do that on purpose).

"Bueller?"

For those of you unaware, Pip's first appearance in the show was in the segment "Chairman of the Bored" - the Warners met him at a party and took turns having to stand there shaking his hand while he blathered on about whatever crap came to mind, which made them incredibly bored. Apparently the writers of this film thought it would be HILARIOUS to do that again. And by "do that again", I mean do the EXACT SAME JOKE, with Wakko doing the EXACT SAME THINGS to get out of having to shake Pip's hand that Yakko did in the segment (using a crowbar, attempting to chew his arm off, etc.). All you're doing is reminding me that I could be watching that segment instead of this, movie.

Actually, Pip's not going to grant Wakko's wish himself - the Wishing Star will do that. Or rather, it'll randomly fall out of the sky like a comet and land somewhere far away but still within traveling distance from Acme Falls. Because it can't just land in front of Wakko, it just HAS to make things needlessly difficult. And if somebody ELSE gets to the Wishing Star first, that means no wish for Wakko.

We also get to hear Ben Stein sing. It's not quite as cringe-worthy as it sounds, but
I'm not expecting him to release an album anytime soon...

Wakko tells Yakko and Dot, and the next day they find a sleigh/boat they can use to get to the Wishing Star. I know this is a minor thing, but it's always bothered me that Dot just sits in the sleigh and doesn't help Yakko and Wakko push it. How lazy!

And don't tell me you can't help because you're sick. You're acting like you're in perfect health
right now!

They wake everybody up with their singing, and their little song turns into "Hungarian Rhapsody" with lyrics. They're not the first to give this song lyrics, but of the attempts that I've heard, I'd say this is the weakest. It has the same problem as the first song in that they're trying to cram too many words into each line, and with how fast the song moves, it results in a very frantic calamity of noise. Lin Manuel Miranda's work this is not.

Of course, when everyone else hears about this "Wishing Star", they all want to get their hands on it and have their wish granted too. Slappy and Skippy take to the trees, Rita (Bernadette Peters) and Runt (Frank Welker) hitch a ride in Scratchensniff's wagon, Pinky and Brain build a flying machine (despite Pinky's claim that if they were meant to fly, they would have been born with little bags of nuts). Even Mindy (Nancy Cartwright) and Buttons (Frank Welker), who haven't shown up until now, get involved - Mindy's mother (Tress MacNeille), who's dressed like Snow White for some reason, tasks Mindy with bringing her grandmother a pie and Buttons with making sure Mindy gets home safely (and to make sure she doesn't run into any big bad wolves). Mindy just gives the pie to Buttons and then starts following Slappy and Skippy.

This is why you shouldn't leave the job of watching your toddler up to a dog and nobody else.

Who's gonna get to the Wishing Star first? I  have a pretty good idea, seeing as the name of this movie isn't "RALPH'S Wish" or "SKIPPY'S Wish"...

In the meantime, Plotz and Ralph have been brought by the guards to King Salazar. He knows about the Wishing Star, and he wants Plotz and Ralph to make sure nobody gets to it before he can touch it - ESPECIALLY not the Warners. This leads to yet another song. Jeez, does EVERY scene in this film need to have a song in it?

King Flava Flav in the house, y'all.

Not only that, but he wants Plotz to straight-up kill the Warners. Plotz is horrified by that, but there's no arguing with Salazar. Then after Plotz and Ralph leave, King Salazar orders the captain of the guards (Jeff Bennett) to send the northern army to secure the area where the star fell - and to bring him the Goodfeathers, who also work for him. What use does a tyrant have for pigeons? Well, I suppose he could always send them out to crap on the heads of anyone who refuses to pay their taxes...

Or peck their eyes out, either or.

Salazar orders Squit (also Maurice LaMarche), Pesto (Chick Vennera), and Bobby (John Mariano) to follow Plotz and make sure he does his job. When the pigeons fly off, they decide that they're fed up with the king treating them like garbage and that they're gonna use the Wishing Star themselves to get some respect. Or they can just fly off to another country where Salazar won't find them, just an idea...

The pigeons sing, and then we get ANOTHER song immediately after that. This song at least has an actual purpose, it allows us to learn what everyone aside from the Warners wants to wish for. Brain wants to rule the world, Pinky wants Pharfignewton to have his babies, Plotz wants to be king, Rita and Runt want a home, Hello Nurse (Tress MacNeille) wants people to appreciate her for her mind and not just her looks, Dr. Scratchensniff wants people to buy his elixir, Slappy wants to just relax in a giant acorn tree and be left alone, Skippy wants some friends his age, and Ralph isn't quite sure what he wants until the end of the song: what he really wants to do is direct!

Eventually, the Warners arrive at a rickety rope bridge across a chasm, because that's the only type of bridge they have in cartoons (aside from those bridges that rise up JUST as you're about to drive over one). We get a reference to Vertigo - y'know, for all the three people watching this who even know about that movie. And once again, lazy Dot just sits in the sleigh while Yakko and Wakko pull it across. Don't give us that "but I'm sick" excuse, Dot. A few scenes ago you were dancing around with clearly nothing wrong with you whatsoever.

This is why you're my least favorite Warner Sibling, Dot.

One sequence of everyone crossing the bridge later, the Goodfeathers smash into Pinky and Brain's flying machine, and when Pharfignewton (who's pulling Scratchensniff's wagon) sees them falling, she rushes to the rescue. While this is going on, Ralph attempts to murder the Warners, and a big crazy chase sequence starts up. Among the chaos, Runt and Buttons manage to blow up Plotz's wagon, the Warners do some snowboarding, Pinky is reunited with his equine love (who attempts to eat Brain), and some of Scratchensniff's elixirs are mixed, creating something very tasty. Wakko, upon drinking it, unleashes a massive burp... that causes an avalanche because of course it does.

On the bright side, the avalanche carries the Warners right to the Wishing Star (which looks more like the sun fell out of the sky and landed in the snow). They start singing AGAIN... in the words of Slappy Squirrel, enough with the singin' already. But then Salazar and his guards show up, and everyone is taken prisoner, even Plotz and the pigeons.

And now that the Warners are face-to-face with the villain, it's time for them to actually act like the Warners and not just generic 1990s animated film that wants to be Disney but isn't main characters.

Heck, they're acting more like the Warners here than they ever did in the reboot!

Salazar orders that the Warner Siblings be executed... again, I know we're supposed to ignore that in the show they're in-universe cartoon characters, but how exactly does one kill Yakko, Wakko and Dot? This isn't a Roger Rabbit sequel so somehow I doubt Salazar has any Dip. But then Yakko brings up that they know secrets about the star that HE doesn't...

This is, of course, a lie. It's just an excuse for the Warners to give Salazar the "special friend" treatment. But Salazar has ways of making them talk: he puts them in a mine cart and sends them through a cave full of their worst nightmares. Which leads to MORE JOKES RECYCLED FROM THE SHOW. Remember that Jerry Lewis parody director who appeared in a few episodes? He pops up here again! And that gag in "Potty Emergency" where Wakko went into a gas station bathroom and was horrified by it, wasn't that hysterical? Let's do it again! And the Barney parody, let's have HIM make an appearance!

Even if we ignore that they're just rehashing the exact same jokes from the show, except not funny (the Barney parody was funny because Yakko, Wakko and Dot were more just unnerved by him than straight-up TERRIFIED like they are here), if this isn't in the continuity of the actual show, why are the Warners afraid of these things and how does Salazar KNOW that they're afraid of these things? And were people even still making anti-Barney jokes in 1999? Well, maybe they were, I don't know, but surely there are other things you can poke fun at.

How about the Teletubbies? They're a lot creepier than Barney...

After the Cave of Jokes From the Show Rehashed Here, the Warners are willing to tell Salazar all of their bullcrap secrets. Yakko says that you have to be really specific with wishes so they're not twisted into ways that backfire on you. You wish for the world? You'll get a globe (somebody should tell Brain that). You wish for youth and beauty? You get a kid riding Black Beauty. You wish for two million bucks? You get a bunch of deer. You wish to be able to fly? It'll probably turn you into a sugar glider or something. It's like with genies, you gotta choose your words carefully.

Eventually, Salazar decides to have the Warners executed again, but the captain of the guard can't bring himself to do it because he thinks Dot is just too cute. By the way, the captain of the guard is also a parody of Dennis Hopper and this is another joke recycled from the show. When Salazar finds out that the Warners escaped, he is MAD! Especially since they're running towards the Wishing Star! But wait, Dot keeps stopping to cough - that illness she's got has returned with a vengeance! Of all the times it could've kicked in...

Salazar orders the guards to fire a cannon at the Warners. Yakko and Wakko manage to get away, but Dot isn't so lucky.

And, oh boy, here we go. This is the scene that I think of whenever I think about this movie. The big, dramatic scene where Dot is killed. Coughing and weak, she begs Yakko to tell her the story one last time. So they do the story and everyone around them makes sad faces, even Salazar.

So, yeah. Dot dies. I'm sure THIS got a big laugh out of the kids watching at home. Animaniacs is supposed to make us laugh, right?

Wakko runs to the Wishing Star, everybody starts singing again, and as soon as he touches it, Dot wakes up - apparently, she was just buying time for Wakko. Y'know, as obvious as it is that they're not actually gonna kill Dot, even Khumba pulled off the "everyone thinks they died but they're actually alive" cliche better than this.

Oh, hey, Ben Stein is back. Please don't start singing again...

So what does Wakko wish for? Not one, but TWO ha'pennies. Personally, I would've wished for world hunger to be solved, but that's just my dumb opinion...

Everyone heads back to Acme Falls so Wakko can spend his two ha'pennies. With one, he pays for Dot's operation... or rather, her plastic surgery. She just wanted to get a beauty mark on her cheek. So, I guess she wasn't really sick? Or did she just have a headcold or something?

Dot mentions Cindy Crawford because mentioning a celebrity is automatically hilarious... oh, wait. No it isn't. I suppose I could take this moment to list every single cartoon character who is much cuter than Dot, but nah, let's just wrap up the review.

With the ha'penny that HE earned from Dot's operation, Scratchensniff buys all the ingredients for his new elixir and takes in Rita and Runt, who mix the ingredients together. Hello Nurse comes up with a new bottle design for the elixir - one with a curvier figure. While Scratchensniff heads off to market with his new drink, Wakko buys something from every store in town (and season tickets for the Lakers). Everyone prospers! And Slappy's tree starts growing acorns again in the spring, and Skippy makes some new friends, including a very attractive young female squirrel. "He used to like nuts, now he's discovered dates," Slappy says.

Behold, the rare Creamsicle-Colored Squirrel.

Buttons returns Mindy home safe and sound, and is rewarded with a platter of steaks.

You're a good boy, Buttons.

Rita and Runt have a happy home with Scratchensniff, whose elixir is renamed "Scratchy Cola" and is a huge success. Hello Nurse is the CEO of the company and is now appreciated for her smarts. Plotz becomes king... of a burger joint chain as opposed to a whole kingdom, but he's happy.

He was, however, eventually asked by McDonald's to redesign the windows. Something about
copyright infringement...

Ralph gets a job directing traffic. Even the pigeons get their wish - they're perched atop a statue of the Warners, which means that people are looking up to them. Speaking of the Warners, the hospital tracks down their birth certificates, which proved them to be of royal heritage. Their parents? The very strange-looking king and queen of Warnerstock!

This means that Yakko, Wakko and Dot are heirs to the throne. Salazar sent them into exile back when he took control of the throne. He is promptly kicked out of the palace and mauled by dogs. Pinky is appointed royal stable-mouse so he can stay close to Pharfignewton, a job given to him by Brain, who is the Warners' advisor and prime minister - but he's got big plans for the sequel. Nobody tell him that the sequel was never made.

So in the end, everyone gets their wish... except for the Mime, assuming he even HAD a wish. To close out the film, the characters sing another song and spin the Wheel of Morality. Can you guess the moral of today's story?

A) Just cheer up and never ever give up hope

B) Brush your teeth after every meal (this message brought to you by the American Dental Association)

OR C) Films shouldn't have more than ten musical numbers

Of course, it's A.

Hey, wait, did the Hippos have THEIR wishes granted?

What's the Verdict?

I had very low expectations for Wakko's Wish going in, but I honestly don't think this is a bad movie. However, I wouldn't call it a good movie either. Let me start off by saying what I DID like about it. The animation is pretty good, although the use of digital ink and paint for these characters is pretty jarring since the show didn't do it. The voice actors are all on their A-Game - even though Jess Harnell's character is the one whose name is in the title, it's Rob Paulsen who's carrying the film on his shoulders, but EVERYONE does a good job.

Now, what DOESN'T work about the film? Its first problem is, quite frankly, what it's TRYING to do. I'm not the first person to point this out, but... Wakko's Wish is trying to be a Disney-esque feel-good heartwarming animated movie with moments that tug on the heartstrings and lift your spirits. Animaniacs is a zany sketch comedy, this is not the kind of movie you should be trying to make with its characters. What's more, the film desperately tries to be a wacky, fast-paced jokefest at the same time, almost like it thinks that it's a PARODY of Disney-esque feel-good heartwarming animated movies... except that since they're playing all the cliches these movies have completely straight, it's not a parody at all. Instead, they just throw in gags after the emotional moments that just wind up undercutting them. One minute we're seeing the Warners messing with the villain and it's all yuks and hilarity, the next Dot dies and it's played up as this big sad moment... and then Dot immediately wakes up and we get a joke about her taking acting lessons.

Okay, fine. Are the jokes at least funny? No. This film had five writers, one of whom was the show's creator Tom Ruegger and the other four worked on the original show, so you'd expect at least ONE chuckle. Instead, we get a parade of lame pop culture references, jokes recycled from the show that don't work out of context, and - again - repeated attempts at making light of the dramatic moments that basically ruin them.

The characters are there, but they feel oddly watered-down. Most of them are just there to contribute a line or two in the musical numbers and not much else - the sole exceptions being the Warners and Pinky and the Brain, but even THEY'RE not funny here. The Warners, in particular, are not "zany to the max" here or fun to watch because they've basically been shoehorned into the roles of these poor, powerless underdogs who need to fight for a better life (basically any other protagonist from an animated movie made in the 1990s)... roles that they don't fit. And despite the name of the movie being "WAKKO'S Wish", he doesn't get much focus at all, I feel like Yakko and Dot both had more lines than he did. The villain, despite Paxton Whitehead's great performance, is pretty uninteresting too. And did I mention how bad the songs were? The lyrics are clumsy, they're not well-sung (and Rob Paulsen, Jess Harnell, and Tress MacNeille CAN sing, so I'm not sure what happened here), and maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if there weren't SO MANY OF THEM.

There was clearly a lot of heart and passion put into this, far more than there was in the reboot, and maybe that's why I'm not being harder on it. But my recommendation is to simply watch episodes of Animaniacs instead. Maybe these characters just weren't meant to carry a full movie.

By the way, I should probably acknowledge that the Tumblr blog "Hello, Nice Warners", which reviewed every episode of Animaniacs, did a three-part review of the movie in January 2014. I'm well aware that I probably wound up repeating most of the same points they brought up in their review, but hey, when has being unoriginal ever stopped me before?

The History of "Quest For Camelot"

That post I did about the history of Home on the Range was, for the longest time, just going to be a one-off thing... like I said, it got its start as an edition of Back to the Drawing Board but I wasn't able to find out much about the original version of the movie, Sweating Bullets, while finding a lot of information about the development of the film we wound up getting, so I decided to work with it. But after watching various videos online about the development of certain movies, I started to think, what if I made this a recurring thing? What if I made MORE posts about the troubled productions of animated films infamous online for one reason or another? And thus, I now have a new series on this blog: The History of...

There's a very good chance you've heard of Quest For Camelot even if you haven't actually seen it. It's generally regarded as being one of the worst animated films of all time. Like, on par with Delgo and The Emoji Movie. For the longest time, I believed it was just as bad as everyone made it out to be... mostly because I, embarrassingly enough, was a fan of the Nostalgia Critic, and he did a negative review of the film. In fact, most of the criticisms aimed at the film are clearly because of his review: if you see somebody complaining about how the heroine looks like Belle from Beauty and the Beast (I mean, she DOES, but still) or that it doesn't make sense for the plants in the enchanted forest they go through at one point to move, you can tell they're a Nostalgia Critic fan.

I am no longer a fan of the Nostalgia Critic. Well, not a BIG fan, anyway. I'll admit that his pre-2013 reviews are still pretty funny, and most of the stuff he reviews genuinely ARE pretty bad, but I recognize that he's been an awful influence on the internet and has a habit of overreacting to films that are for the most part harmless. So, in preparation for this post, I decided to give Quest For Camelot a watch for the first time via Sling TV. What did I think of it? Well, it's bad, but it's not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. It's mostly just another generic animated film that wants to be like Disney's (and to a lesser extent Don Bluth's) but just isn't. The best thing about it is Devon and Cornwall, who are genuinely very funny characters and have most of the best lines. Aside from that, I found it to be just mediocre. There are far, far worse animated movies out there.

Have you ever wondered how Quest For Camelot became a thing? Probably not. But I'm going to tell you anyway! It actually has a fascinating history.

Concept art for the film.

Quest For Camelot was announced in 1995. It wasn't called Quest For Camelot at that point, it was called "The Quest For the Grail", and it was slated to be released in 1997 as opposed to 1998. The Los Angeles Times article announcing the film claimed that it would focus on "Susannah, an idealistic, independent young woman living in the days of King Arthur's Court, who goes on a dangerous quest for the Holy Grail to save her sister from a ruthless and powerful knight". Elizabeth Chandler was to be the screenwriter, and the co-directors were to be Bill Kroyer and Frederick DuChau.

What you might not have known is that Quest For Camelot is based on a book - specifically, The King's Damosel, a 1976 fantasy novel written by Vera Chapman.

I've never read the book, but according to Wikipedia it's about a character from the original Arthurian Legend named Lynette. And it's definitely not a book for kids. I won't go into details on why. So why on Earth would you adapt it into a kids' movie? Well, that wasn't the original plan. The film was supposed to be a lot darker, something with a PG-13 rating a la Ralph Bakshi's Wizards. But y'know how Rover Dangerfield was originally gonna be an R-rated comedy, only for the Warner Bros. executives to turn it into a kids' movie in an attempt to compete with the super-successful animated Disney movies of the 1990s? Yeah, the same thing happened here. I'm not sure how well Rover Dangerfield did at the box office, but if it was successful I guess the mindset was "Hey, if it worked the first time..."

According to Frederick DuChau, Warner Bros. had absolutely no clue about making animated movies. Apparently, the executives straight-up told Bill that he was going to make the film that wound up becoming Quest For Camelot and he was going to like it. "I, at the time, had just become a director in development at Warner Bros. Feature Animation, 'cause I'd just sold them two projects, and then one of them, I was attached as a director and that sort of made me get an office as opposed to being in a cubicle, and you are a director trying to push your project forward. And they really liked what I was doing, they liked my projects, they liked ME," Frederick explained. "In hindsight, probably because I was just too... not that I was a doormat, because I was doing the kind of stuff that they LIKED... they liked what they saw, basically. So right before they announced Quest For Camelot, they pulled me off my project that I was developing, and they got me into a room with Bill, we all got along really well... and they said 'Listen, this is how it's gonna go. Bill is gonna direct this movie and you're going to direct it with him. We do understand that Bill is the veteran director here." They didn't use these words, but it was very well understood that he was going to take the lead." He agreed with all of that, despite how skeptical he was that they really needed another King Arthur story.

A team of great animators was compiled. Production on the film started up... and then came to a halt when most of the studio's artists were reassigned to Space Jam. When storyboarding for the film began, the plot was divided up in sequences - Bill had half, and Frederick had the other half, and together they would present their sequences to upper management. "Which is already very wrong," Frederick said, "Because, if you're gonna hire directors to make a movie, let them make the movie. And they weren't, but if you were really good at running a studio, that doesn't mean that you are very good at making an animated movie from a creative point of view... those are completely different things. But, in animation back then, the management set it up that they got to decide everything and everybody else worked for THEM." When the sequences were presented to the higher-ups, they'd give feedback like claiming a sequence was "four minutes too long" - even though at this point it was just storyboards. Frederick was more willing to do what they wanted than Bill was, which led to Bill leaving production and having Frederick be the full director... that is, assuming they didn't find another co-director or replace him altogether.

Concept art by Cynthia Wells. She labeled it "badguyflirtswithsister_gif", so
I'm guessing this is concept art for the original version of the film about Proto-Kayley
saving her sister from a ruthless knight.

Frederick explained, "Bill came to see me... and again, I do not remember the exact words whatsoever... and basically said, 'Dude, we gotta stick together here. We're gonna walk. We should walk. This upper management doesn't know what they're doing. We need to walk... let's walk away.' I went into a panic... in my head, I was like, if I walk away from this, Warner Bros. is gonna go, 'What is this idiot doing? Walking away from an opportunity like this? He's never gonna direct anything in this town again.'" Plus, he had bills to pay. "I wasn't gonna drop the biggest paycheck I'd ever had. I wasn't gonna let that all just slip and fall away at all. There was no plan... there was nothing offered in return. So, no. That was not a good deal for me at all. They were really shocked when I was like 'Uh, no, sorry, I'm gonna keep doing this.' I could tell they were really disappointed when I didn't go, 'Yeah, man! You're right! Let's just walk!' So we both went our own ways. But it was bad... Bill and I, basically, I don't think we talked again. It was painful, it was frustrating, but there also wasn't any time to go 'All right, let's put the brakes on, let's sit down, let's talk about all of this.' On top of that, lots of rumors flew that I would have orchestrated his exit and all of that was one big plan..."

After that, the upper management decided to keep Bill on - they fired him but kept giving him a giant paycheck and had him and his wife just come in when they felt like it and roam the halls complaining to the crew about how much he hated the higher-ups. And in case you're wondering if Frederick ever regretted not walking with Bill, he said "No."

One member of the crew who DID leave production when Bill was fired was animator Darlie Brewster, who was going to be the lead animator of Garrett. He explained, "All of the best parts were the parts he boarded. The producer set us all up letting Bill pull in a crew, board the film and then pretty much stole it from him... what they turned it into was pretty much garbage."

More concept art by Cynthia Wells.

The Holy Grail was replaced as the thing everyone is trying to get their hands on by Arthur's sword Excalibur. Why? Well, for one thing, Warner Bros. was nervous about the inescapable religious connotations associated with it. But according to Max Howard, the president of Warner Bros. Feature Animation, "The symbol of Camelot is the power of Excalibur, and that became a more interesting theme: Whoever held the sword, held the power." There were so many delays during production that the release date was changed from November 1997 to May 1998.

Frederick wanted to hire a lot of "European comic book people" that he knew like Claire Wendeling and Frank Page, and had them design the characters and do visual development - really go back to what the King Arthur story is. It wasn't all just "knights in shining armor with lots of flags", it was the year 4000 and early Britain. He described it as "this whole world that you can tap into". A few months after doing that, the higher-ups rejected all of this because it wasn't anything like they'd seen before. For example, when Frank Page came in, Frederick put him on a sequence in which the characters encounter rat-like trolls. He went full throttle on that, with a very "earthy" feel and a lot of dark humor. This didn't make it into the movie. His designs for the dragons did, but they were "watered-down".

Eventually, the heads of Warner Bros. at the time, Robert Daly and Terry Semel, saw what Frederick's crew was doing and gave a mandate: since Disney already made The Sword in the Stone, an animated movie about a young King Arthur, we should never at any point in the film see a young King Arthur pull the sword from the stone because then you're just begging for comparisons to be made. Their response was, "What? We're doing a King Arthur movie and we can't do the most iconic scene from the story?" This is why, in the movie, when we actually see Arthur pull the sword from the stone near the beginning, it cuts away to the people that are just standing around watching him.

Concept art for Devon and Cornwall.

"I was surrounded by too many people that they assigned... 'Well, these people are gonna do layout, these people are gonna do colors, and backgrounds...' And before you know it, you basically have an old Disney crew, doing something that they weren't comfortable with either," Frederick lamented. "Because, again, the movie wasn't set up from a director's point of view, around he or she with the people they would like to have around to do their vision and so on. It was backwards, it was from the top. Y'know, 'We just get a bunch of people, tell 'em what to do, hire enough people that worked at Disney and hopefully something good will come out.' And so, this is where I failed completely, I had no experience how to get my vision done. Most people probably didn't even know I had a vision." All those European artists were also pretty miffed about their work on the film being either watered down or cut.

In fact, the movie originally wasn't even going to be a musical. That was another decision from the higher-ups: they wanted it to be "Little Mermaid with swords on horses". This was both because of the whole "trying to be Disney" thing - Disney movies have songs, so we should have songs too! - and because the wife of Bob Daly was Carole Bayer Sager, an Oscar-winning songwriter and her group of friends really wanted to write songs for an animated movie. Y'know that really popular song from the movie performed by Celine Dion? "The Prayer"? Y'know how it plays over an unfitting chase sequence between Kayley and Ruber's minions? Apparently, that was delivered and recorded so late into production that the movie was practically finished and they went back in and re-animated a bunch of stuff to find a spot to put it in (Frederick thought it worked really well, but a lot of us beg to differ).

Frederick DuChau admitted that the studio's vision was only "If Disney did it, we should do it too." "They had no vision other than 'Well, when I was a production coordinator at Disney during Aladdin, we did THIS!', which has nothing to do with running a studio..." he claimed. "Lots of studios were starting up. FOX had one, DreamWorks just started... and so everyone who was a production assistant at Disney would become a department head at one of these studios." Even just watering the flowers at Disney could get you a job as president of feature animation, it would seem.

Concept art of Kayley and Garrett.

Quest For Camelot's production had the unintended consequence of another animated film, one that was released before it but while it was in production, being a flop: Cats Don't Dance. That movie was originally in development at Turner Feature Animation when Time Warner purchased the studio just before it came out. Which meant Warner Bros. would have to release Cats Don't Dance. And they really didn't want Cats Don't Dance to outperform and overshadow Quest For Camelot, so they released it on a crowded Easter holiday weekend and barely marketed it (there was ONE POSTER made for the movie, toys in Subway kids' meals, and that's about it).

The film's producer, Frank Gladstone, wound up leaving the project in February 1997 and was replaced by Dalisa Cohen - who, according to animator David Germain, HATED animation for some inexplicable reason and apparently only got put on the project as punishment for a previous film she co-produced, A Little Princess, being a flop. Most of the animation was done at the main Warner Bros. Feature Animation facilities located in Glendale, California and London, England. Yowza! Animation, Heart of Texas Productions, and A. Film A/S also worked on the film. For the CGI effects, Silicon Graphics' Alias Research software was used.

Most of the animators involved in Quest For Camelot hated it. Lauren Faust has admitted that they all knew it was going to bomb and dubbed it worse than Don Bluth's 1990s films. If you go on Facebook, you can find a lot of comments from animators who worked on the film complaining about how much of a pain it was. For example, David Lee Thompson said, "The movie was a bunch of missteps and they switched everyone around after I signed on. I was on the Kayley team. They changed directors, designers, animators, writers, and on and on. Kayley was first Suzanna... then Lynett and finally Kayley... they put the songs in the worst places. Putting the award-winning song over a chase sequence. Kayley's first song where we are supposed to really care for her was farmed out and then crapped out. She floated from rock to rock... I just have post-dramatic stress all these years later... the original artwork and development was stunning and what made me want to be on the production to start with. There were some great animators on the project and people I still hold in high regard to this day. I remember Max Howard standing up in front of us all and saying we were going to do something that Disney couldn't touch. Something uniquely WB and then they say we are doing Quest."

Concept art by Michael Gagne.

Jerome K. Moore, likewise, had this to say: "WB's first mistake (of which there were many) was in trying to emulate the Disney style. I mean, we're talking about a studio that was and still is at the top of the animation game, and WB tries to copy their expertise? Better to have done what they did in the old days, with Looney Tunes' Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Termite Terrace being the antithesis of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and the Nine Old Men. Then they lost the Kroyers, the couple that started out designing the whole Quest For Camelot production. They couldn't pick a consistent direction with Kayley, originally making her more heroic and tomboy-ish, then switching to make her more girlish. It was indeed an absolute mess. As I sat up there on the 19th Floor of the building in Glendale, I mostly heard complaints from all the animators and production assistants."

Steve Garcia, meanwhile, said, "I was at Warners at this time. Even though I had an offer from DreamWorks to go help them finish up the project they were doing at the time (I think Prince of Egypt?) and then go onto their next film, I opted to stay because I reeeeeeally wanted to work with Brad Bird on his flick, The Iron Giant. My one stipulation was that I NOT work on Camelot. So... they put me to work in viz 'til Giant was ready to go to animation. Man did they beg for those of us that weren't on to take scenes and help out. It was mired in one terrible problem after another. It was a train wreck. Warners was a company that tempted a lot of talents to come on (including me) because they were saying they wanted to be the non-Disney studio. Doing different types of things. And I can tell you right now... that what we were doing in viz dev... it WAS different. But... that said... it did raise suspicions with us when the first [CENSORED] movie that they were putting out... was nothing more than Disney Lite." No wonder near the end of production, the entire crew bailed to go work on The Prince of Egypt (actually, Warner Bros. lent DreamWorks their crew).

John Alvin's concept art for the film's poster.

Let's talk about the voices. Eric Idle stated on Twitter that he and Don Rickles "ad-libbed for days", but for some reason, the filmmakers "didn't use a single line". Do those recordings still exist? I'd like to hear those ad-libs. Christopher Reeve was originally supposed to voice either King Arthur or Merlin, but eventually was unavailable to record new dialogue. According to Darlie Brewster, Garrett was originally going to be voiced by Jared Harris - his readings were incredible and he fleshed out the character, but for some reason he got replaced by Cary Elwes. As for the voice of Ruber, Gary Oldman... TV Tropes claims that he was drinking alcohol while in the recording booth and would record his lines drunk. Take that with a grain of salt.

How did Warner Bros. promote the film? Boy howdy did they make merchandise: dolls, video games, books, you name it. Toys were included in Wendy's Kids Meals. There were tie-ins with Tyson Chicken, Kraft Foods, Frito-Lay, Kodak, and Act II popcorn. Devon and Cornwall hosted the Kids' WB Saturday morning lineup on May 9th (Eric Idle reprised his role as Devon for it, Maurice LaMarche filled in for Don Rickles as the voice of Cornwall). Six Flags Great Adventure received a live show called Quest For Camelot Nights, which featured live characters, fireworks, pyrotechnics, and water effects.

From left to right: Garrett, Kayley, Devon, Cornwall, Merlin, and...
I'm not sure who that guy in blue behind Kayley is. King Arthur?

When the film was released, it wound up being a flop - the budget was forty million dollars and it only made $38.1 million at the box office. Why? After all, being a poorly-recieved movie isn't enough for a film to flop. Otherwise that live action Smurfs movie from 2011 wouldn't have become a hit. I don't think it was solely because it was such a blatant Disney wannabe either... Don Bluth's Anastasia, which was released the previous year, was also a pretty blatant Disney wannabe and it did pretty well at the box office. Apparently, one of the reasons it didn't do better is because of the tie-in with Wendy's - the toys also gave tickets for adults to pay child admittance fees to see the film, which cut a lot of the profits in half.

And as a result, Warner Bros. completely gave up on the idea of doing theatrical animated films. The three films they still had in production - The Iron Giant, Osmosis Jones, and Looney Tunes: Back in Action - were basically sabotaged like Cats Don't Dance was, given little advertising and crappy release dates. Whatever plans they had for animated films after that were all scrapped: an adaptation of The Snow Queen, King Tut, Arrow, the list goes on. Apparently, there were also plans for sequels to Quest For Camelot, based on Vera Chapman's books The Green Knight and King Arthur's Daughter, but those got scrapped too. Oh, and there was also going to be a touring live production debuting at Six Flags Fiesta Texas and then traveling to different renaissance fairs in the United States, but that got the axe as well. On the bright side, Six Flags Great Adventure's Quest For Camelot Nights stuck around for four years because it was pretty popular.

Presented by Tyson Chick'n Chunks!

So, basically, it's another case of the higher-ups at a movie studio having no idea what they were doing and then refusing to admit they were at fault when the film underperforms. Did Quest For Camelot deserve to bomb? I'm not sure. Even if the movie itself isn't great, I think its flopping did more harm to the theatrical animation industry than good, and I don't think the movie itself is that bad - far worse animated movies have been box office hits (I haven't seen either of the Minions movies, but somehow I doubt they're better than Quest For Camelot). Then again, if it HAD been a success, then Warner Bros. would have basically been "validated" in their meddling with the movie and made sure all of their post-Iron Giant animated films were just like it. Boy, this is a double-edged sword (no pun intended), isn't it?

Ah well. At least Eric Idle had fun working on it.

Sources:
- https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-05-26-ca-6143-story.html
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeCFeEuyzFk
- https://variety.com/1997/film/news/warner-bros-searches-for-boxoffice-grail-111662043/