An Analysis of Celebrities Doing Voice Acting: Why It Works When It Works, and Doesn't When It Doesn't

It's something that frustrates the heck out of me, and a lot of other people as well. My second post on this very blog was about it. Folks online repeatedly point out how much of a problem it is, and yet the higher-ups in the entertainment industry just don't get the hint.

Of course, I am referring to celebrities' taking over voice acting and dominating it with an iron fist, making it harder and harder for professional voice actors to get jobs nowadays.

NOTE: most of the celebrity voices in Zootopia did a good job, I just wanted to
put a picture here and this was the first thing that came to mind.

No one is quite sure how or when the mindset that if a project has voice acting involved, the voice acting MUST be done by celebrities got started. Celebrities doing voice acting dates back to 1940's Pinocchio, with Cliff Edwards doing the voice of Jiminy Cricket. Nowadays, whenever an animated movie comes out, the voice cast will more likely than not consist entirely of celebrities. As if that isn't annoying enough, this trend has leaked into television shows as well - name one recent (as in, post-2010) cartoon that didn't have at least one celebrity as part of the main or recurring cast. You can't, can you?

Stunt-casting in animation is incredibly divisive, with some (like me) hating it and some defending it. Even those that hate it will admit, however, that there are celebrities who have proven themselves capable of being good voice actors as well: Robin Williams, Eddie Murphy, Jack Black, Steve Buscemi, and Martin Short to name a few. But for every celebrity voice acting performance that's good, there's a lot of celebrity voice acting performances that are bad, annoying, or unfitting.

Sooooooooooo... what are the main problems with celebrity voice acting other the whole "stealing jobs from professional voice actors far more qualified to do voice acting than some pop star" thing. Well, that's why I wrote this post. To help those who don't understand why we don't like seeing celebrities hog voice-over jobs actually, y'know, understand us a bit more.

Reason #1: Not Every Celebrity Has a Distinct Voice That Lends Itself to Animation

Part of what makes an iconic cartoon character so iconic is their voice. Name a cartoon character - any cartoon character. Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Bullwinkle, Yogi Bear, SpongeBob... would they be as memorable if they sounded like any other random dude off the street? Probably not.

The insistence that so many animated characters nowadays must be voiced by celebrities has resulted in so many animated characters not having very distinct, memorable voices. Some celebrities DO have voices that lend themselves well to animation - look at John Goodman. His voice lends itself well to, say, a big furry blue monster (Monsters Inc.) or a friendly tyrannosaurus rex (We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story). Even celebrities who DIDN'T do much if any voice acting had voices that lend themselves well to animation. Why do you think there are so many cartoon characters who sound like Ed Wynn and Peter Lorre?

And I'm not just talking about the characters drawn to resemble Peter Lorre.

And sometimes, even if the celebrity's voice isn't very distinct, they'll make up for that by actually doing a voice for their character. A good example of this is Mike Myers, who was the one to come up with the idea of giving Shrek a Scottish accent. As a result, Shrek has a memorable voice. When you hear that voice, even without seeing the character, you think "That's Shrek!". Other examples of this include Bryan Cranston as Vitaly in Madagascar 3, Jack Black as Lenny in Shark Tale, and Adam Sandler as Dracula in Hotel Transylvania.

But more often than not, we just have celebrities doing their natural voices and nothing more... and if the celebrity's voice, as is normally the case, sounds very "plain" and indistinct, it renders casting a celebrity as the voice of that character completely pointless. See also Kristen Bell and Jonathan Groff as Anna and Kristoff in Frozen, Justin Long and Hayden Panettiere as Humphrey and Kate in Alpha and Omega, and Sam Rockwell and Awkwafina in The Bad Guys. Even if the celebrity's performance isn't bad, if their voice just sounds like that of any other person on the on the street, what's the point of getting them to do voice acting? My older sister could've done the voice of Mavis in Hotel Transylvania instead of Selena Gomez and it wouldn't have made a difference.

Reason #2: Frequently a Celebrity is Cast as a Character That They Do Not Fit

When casting the voice for your character, one must think hard about whether or not they actually fit the character they're playing. For example, Nick Nolte did the voice of Vincent the Bear in Over the Hedge. And that worked because Nick's grizzled, growly voice fits a big, ferocious bear. Steve Buscemi as Randall Boggs in Monsters Inc. works because Steve's reedy voice and slimy performance fit a slender, chameleon-like monster (I've heard that when he first saw Randall's design, he asked if PIXAR was trying to typecast him). 

Now, let's list some examples of when a celebrity's voice DOESN'T fit the character... Rihanna and Anne Hathaway as characters that are supposed to be kids? Or Sam Rockwell (again) as the Wolf in The Bad Guys - the big, scary wolf just sounds like some easygoing dude? Where's the fun in THAT?

Okay, so he's a wolf. The idea is that everybody is afraid of him, right? You'd expect sort
of a growly voice, a voice with a lot of impact to it... not an Owen Wilson soundalike.

It's especially frustrating when a celebrity is cast as the voice of an iconic cartoon character. Every so often you'll get a celebrity who actually makes the effort to sound like the voice actor who originated the character (Justin Timberlake as Boo-Boo), but more often than not the celebrity just does their natural voice and nothing more - see also the celebrity voices in Scoob!, the DuckTales reboot, Jellystone!, and those horrid live action Smurfs movies. I guess the filmmakers' mindset is that audiences will be too distracted by it being the voice of a celebrity they like to notice that they don't sound like the character, but this isn't always the case. People are going to complain if they don't think an iconic cartoon character's voice doesn't sound right. Well, they USUALLY will - Matthew Lillard's Shaggy gets nothing but praise even though he sounds almost nothing like Casey Kasem. Don't ask me how THAT makes sense.

Did you know that when Disney's 2018 live action Winnie the Pooh film Christopher Robin was in production, Disney cast Chris O'Dowd as Tigger despite already having Jim Cummings voicing Pooh for the film? I guess they thought having a celebrity voice Tigger would sell more tickets. How did that work out for them? It didn't - test audiences complained that Tigger didn't sound like Tigger, so Chris was let go, and they brought in Jim Cummings to voice Tigger like they should've done in the first place. Which is a pretty big indication that people would prefer that the iconic character starring in your movie about them actually, y'know, sound like the character. People know how these characters sound, and it isn't like some celebrity chosen purely for their name.

Reason #3: Half the Time the Celebrity is Just Playing Themselves But Animated

This is the laziest form of celebrity voice-acting, and one of the most prominent - the celebrity isn't even playing a character, they're just playing themselves. Like, the character is even designed to look like the celebrity, and the entire joke is just "LOOK! It's this famous person but animated!".

Again, I point you towards the live action Smurfs movies. Instead of Grouchy Smurf, Brainy Smurf, and Smurfette, we get George Lopez Smurf, Fred Armisen Smurf, and Katy Perry Smurf. Other examples include Bee Movie ("it's Jerry Seinfeld, but as a bee!"), Rover Dangerfield ("it's Rodney Dangerfield, but as a dog!"), and, of course, Shark Tale, where only Jack Black can be bothered to actually do a voice.

Will Smith as a fish is incredibly disturbing.

Now, to be fair, sometimes a celebrity WILL initially intend to actually do a voice for their character, but the filmmakers will tell them to just be themselves. I read that was the case for Emma Stone in The Croods.

Reason #4: Half the Time the Celebrity is Only Cast in the Movie Because They're Popular Right Now and For No Other Reason

It's not just about being a celebrity, no, no... you also have to be a "flavor of the month" celebrity. Somebody who's really popular at the moment. If you were popular in the 1990s but not so much nowadays, you're likely going to get less offers to do animated movies.

This is something that PIXAR is reasonably good at avoiding. Richard Kind isn't exactly a "flavor of the month" celebrity, but that didn't stop them as casting him as Bing Bong in Inside Out. Other animation studios, on the other hand, are obsessed with making sure that every celebrity to lend their voice to their movies is popular right now. Look at Ice Age 5. Modern Family was popular when the movie came out, so the guy who plays Mitch voices a llama. The Big Bang Theory was popular too, so here's Bernadette as a sloth. Adam Devine was popular in 2016, so he's voicing a mammoth. And I can't be the only one who's tired of Maya Rudolph and/or Awkwafina being in every other animated movie that comes out nowadays, am I?

Trolls is basically a cornucopia of celebrity voices chosen purely because they were popular in 2016. James Corden, Gwen Stefani, the guy who plays Raj from The Big Bang Theory, Anna Kendrick, a bunch of random YouTube celebrities (THEY'RE going to draw people into the theater?). It's doubtful that any of them were cast for no other reason than because "well, hey, they're popular right now, right?".

Oddly, only Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake are mentioned
on the poster.

Reason #5: Half the Time the Character That This Celebrity is Doing the Voice of Doesn't Even Have a Very Large Role

What is the purpose of getting a celebrity to voice a character who barely has any screentime or lines? Immediately coming to mind is Neil Patrick Harris as the monkey in Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. Don't get me wrong, I like Neil Patrick Harris, he's delightful, but there was zero reason to cast him as the monkey. Not only did they pitch up his voice so that you can't even tell it's him, but the monkey doesn't even have actual DIALOGUE. He literally just shouts random words: "STEVE!" "CAN!" "GUMMI BEARS!". That's it. Not only is this a complete waste of Neil's talents, wouldn't any of Neil's fans who heard he was in the movie be disappointed to find out that he barely even does anything in the movie?

Another Sony Pictures Animation example? Molly Shannon did the voice of the werewolf wife in Hotel Transylvania... and she has, what, two lines? Yeah, nice use of Molly Shannon, guys. Or how about Zootopia? Disney made such a huge deal out of Shakira being in the movie, hyping her character up and acting like she was one of the main characters (she's the first celebrity voice listed after Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman in the cast announcement at the beginning of the post)... the character barely has any lines outside of the song. She's literally just there to go "LOOK! We have Shakira in our movie!".

And are fans of Harvey Guillen really going to see the Garfield movie just to hear him do dog noises? I'm sure Harvey's great in other things, but I sincerely doubt anyone who goes to see the movie is even going to care that Odie's various barks and growls are provided by a celebrity.

Reason #6: A Lot of Celebrities Are Jerks

Okay, just so we're clear, not ALL celebrities are jerks. If you use Google search, you can find entire lists of celebrities who are really nice. I've heard that Adam Sandler is a nice guy. Henry Winkler, Patrick Warburton, and Jaleel White I know are nice people.

But I'm really getting tired of liking a celebrity's voice acting performance and then finding out that they're a jerk. Andy Dick, Chris Rock, James Woods... could we at least make it a rule from now on that the only celebrities allowed to do voice acting are the ones that are genuinely nice people? Please?

Remember when Chris Rock claimed that voice acting was easy at the 2011 Academy
Awards? Yeah...

Oh, but I can hear the arguments right now... "But celebrities are needed for a movie to be successful! They go on talk shows to promote the movie and draw in people who are fans of them!" This is the most common justification I see for stunt-casting in animated movies. To which I say...

Reason #7: The "If We Have Celebrities Voicing the Characters in This Movie, It Will Automatically Be Successful at the Box Office!" Mindset is Bullcrap

First of all, I sincerely doubt that anyone is going to go see an animated movie or watch a cartoon show JUST BECAUSE a celebrity they like is in it. I like Jim Parsons, but his being in Home wasn't enough to make me go see THAT.

I know this movie still made a lot of money at the box office in
spite of my not going to see it. I sincerely doubt most of the folks
who DID go to see it did so because Rihanna and Jennifer Lopez
were in it.

Second of all, NO. Celebrities lending their voices to a movie does not automatically mean it's gonna make mucho moolah. Allow me to name several animated films, including ones that I went to see in theaters and actually liked, that are proof of that:

- Strange World (2022) - Featured the voices of Jake Gyllenhaal, Lucy Liu, Gabrielle Union, and Dennis Quaid. Was still a box office bomb.
- Lightyear (2022) - Featured the voices of Chris Evans, Keke Palmer, Uzo Aduba, and Taika Waititi. Was still a box office bomb.
- Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return (2014) - Featured the voices of Lea Michele, Kelsey Grammer, Martin Short, Dan Aykroyd, Oliver Platt, Jim Belushi, and Patrick Stewart. Was still a box office bomb
- Rise of the Guardians (2012) - Featured the voices of Chris Pine, Alec Baldwin, Hugh Jacckman, Jude Law, and Isla Fisher. Was still a box office bomb.
- The Ant Bully (2006) - Featured the voices of Nicolas Cage, Bruce Campbell, Regina King, Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, Paul Giamatti, and Lily Tomlin. Was still a box office bomb.
- Arctic Dogs (2019) - Featured the voices of Jeremy Renner, Heidi Klum, John Cleese, Alec Baldwin, and Anjelica Hudson. Was still an enormous box office bomb.
- Turbo (2013) - Featured the voices of Ryan Reynolds, Paul Giamatti, Maya Rudolph, Samuel L. Jackson, Snoop Dogg (or Snoop Lion or whatever his name is right now), Bill Hader, Ken Jeong, and Michelle Rodriguez. Was still a box office bomb.
- Mr. Peabody and Sherman (2014) - Featured the voices of Ty Burrell, Allison Janney, Stanley Tucci, Stephen Colbert, Leslie Mann, and Lake Bell. Was still a box office bomb.
- Penguins of Madagascar (2014) - Featured the voices of John Malkovich, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ken Jeong, and Peter Stormare. Was still a box office bomb (and no, it wouldn't have been more successful if the main four penguins had been voiced by celebrities instead of DreamWorks employees).
- Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003) - Featured the voices of Brad Pitt, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Michelle Pfieffer. Was still a box office bomb.
- Osmosis Jones (2001) - Featured the voices of Chris Rock, David Hyde Pierce, Laurence Fishburne, and Brandy Norwood. Was still a box office bomb.
- Strange Magic (2015) - Featured the voices of Evan Rachel Wood, Alfred Molina, Maya Rudolph, Kristin Chenoweth, Alan Cumming, and Elijah Kelley. Was still a box office bomb.
- UglyDolls (2019) - Featured a ton of celebrities: Kelly Clarkson, Janelle Monae, Nick Jonas, Pitbull, Wanda Sykes, Blake Shelton, Gabriel Iglesias, Lizzo, Ice T, Bebe Rexha, Jane Lynch, Rob Riggle, and Emma Roberts. Was still a box office bomb.
- Norm of the North (2016) - Featured the voices of Rob Schneider, Ken Jeong, Bill Nighy, and Gabriel Iglesias. Was still a box office bomb.
- Titan AE (2000) - Featured the voices of Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore, Nathan Lane, John Leguizamo, and Janeane Garofalo. Was still a box office bomb.
- Delgo (2008) - Featured the voices of Freddie Prince Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt, Chris Kattan, Val Kilmer, Malcolm McDowell, Michael Clarke Duncan, Burt Reynolds, Kelly Ripa, and Eric Idle (who I really hope fired his agent afterwards). Was still an enormous box office bomb.

STUDIO EXECUTIVES: "Kelly Clarkson is Moxy!"

WORLD: "Meh, the film still looks lousy."

I'm obviously not saying that those movies flopped BECAUSE they had celebrity voices (in Delgo's case, I bet most people looked at the ugly character designs and went "No thank you"), but they prove that celebrity voices do not equal box office success. Much in the same way, I sincerely doubt anyone watched any episode of The Lion Guard because Rob Lowe and Gabrielle Union were voicing characters in it. Father of the Pride's countless celebrity voices couldn't save that show from being a flop (and hey, both shows are about lions. That's kind of interesting).

"But wait!" you insist. "There are lots of animated movies that DID have celebrity voices in them but were still really successful!" And, yeah, there are. But what about The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie? It had mostly professional voice actors in it (I say "mostly" because Jeffrey Tambor, Scarlett Johannson, and Alec Baldwin voiced characters as well) and did fine at the box office. Or Space Jam? That was almost all professional voice actors for the animated characters - the only celebrity was Danny DeVito. And yet that was a box office hit. And there's also Barnyard: yes, it had some celebrities, but it also had a lot of professional voice actors like Rob Paulsen, Cam Clarke, and Maurice LaMarche as well. That movie did decently. Hmmm, could this mean that movies with professional voice actors lending their voices to them DO have a chance of being box office successes?

And, finally, perhaps the most important reason of all...

Reason #8: It Contributes to the Amount of Disrespect That the Higher-Ups in the Entertainment Industry Have For Professional Voice Actors

Yeah, this is what REALLY bothers me. Professional voice actors get no respect. Hollywood executives seem to have this idea that voice acting is easy and that professional voice actors aren't "real" actors. And I'm fully convinced that the "voice acting is easy" mindset is at least partly the fault of celebrities dominating voice acting - people see celebrities who aren't even actors like Beyonce and Cee-Lo Green doing it and think "Well, if THEY can do it, it must be easy!".

The disrespect that voice actors receive is incredibly frustrating. I've told this story before, but Billy West once said in an interview that he and the other voice actors in Space Jam weren't invited to the Grauman's Chinese Theater for the film's premiere, instead being invited to the smaller one next door. When Bob Bergen called up whoever it was that was in charge of that, they told him that the big party at the Chinese Theater was "for the actors" (apparently Michael Jordan qualifies as an "actor" but Bob Bergen doesn't? Does that sound fair to you?) - and apparently all the "actors" in Space Jam couldn't even fill that theater, and so the seats that could've been occupied by the voice actors were filled by people who had nothing to do with the movie and were only there because they were famous. And that's just one example!

If you're a professional voice actor, even if you originated the character or have been voicing them for years, the higher-ups will gleefully replace you either because they want celebrities to voice all the characters (the surviving cast of DuckTales in the reboot, Frank Welker as Fred and Grey DeLisle-Griffin in Scoob!), because they think you've gotten too old (Paul Winchell for Tigger, Paige O'Hara for Belle), or just for the heck of it (Cathy Cavadini, Tara Strong, and E.G. Daily in the Powerpuff Girls reboot). Going back to Space Jam, Bob Bergen went up to Joe Pytka, the director of the movie, at the premiere, introduced himself, and explained that he voiced several of the characters in the movie. Joe's response was "What do you want? A medal?", which, I'm sorry, is an incredibly rude thing to say. 20th Century Fox has made attempts to replace the voice actors for The Simpsons and Futurama simply because they "could not meet their salary demands" (how much money does Fox make each year?) - and then they did it AGAIN when they decided to bring the show back, attempting to ditch John DiMaggio as Bender so they could have a different celebrity voice Bender in every episode (which fortunately was settled). How about the Disney Legends awards*? Why haven't Jim Cummings, Tress MacNeille, Corey Burton, and Frank Welker been given the award yet but Christina Aguilera, Anthony Anderson, Patrick Dempsey, Ellen Pompeo, and Tracee Ellis Ross have? Corey Burton does tons of work for Disney but isn't considered a legend, but Anthony Anderson gets one just for starring in Black-ish? Oh, yeah, because when I think of Disney, Black-ish is one of the first things that comes to mind!

Do you have any idea how frustrated I was to learn that Disney once made the attempt to replace Jim Cummings as Winnie the Pooh with Bobby Moynihan of all people? Or how about when A Goofy Movie was in production and the higher-ups at Disney wanted to replace Bill Farmer as Goofy with Steve Martin for some inexplicable reason? Thankfully, no one else involved in production wanted that, but I guarantee you that if A Goofy Movie were made today, they would indeed replace Bill as Goofy with a celebrity. Maybe Chris Pratt or something...

Nothing against Chris Pratt, he's a good actor and all, but he should not be voicing Garfield.

So there we go. I have just listed every reason why we complain when a celebrity is announced as starring in an animated movie or TV show (I love how these companies still make such a huge deal out of it... the novelty, if there was any to begin with, has completely worn off). And yet this trend just won't stop. Will it EVER stop? I doubt it - at some point in April, it was announced that Rihanna, Nick Offerman, James Corden, and Amy Sedaris were all lending their voices to the next Smurfs movie - but it'd be nice if companies became more open to giving professional voice actors a chance. I think more animated movies should do what Barnyard did and have, like, three or four celebrities, and everyone else voiced by a professional voice actor. That way you still have your precious celebrities who go on talk shows and do interviews hyping up the movie and you have professional voice actors giving great performances instead of Maya Rudolph and Flula Borg or whoever acting obnoxious into a microphone.

Not every celebrity is Robin Williams, Jerry Orbach, or Martin Short.

* To be fair, there are a couple of voice actors who HAVE been named Disney Legends... specifically, Wayne Allwine, Russi Taylor, Bill Farmer, Tony Anselmo, Kathryn Beaumont, and Jodi Benson. Still, Anthony Anderson gets one before Corey Burton? That seems unfair to me.

The History of "Home on the Range": Everything You Might or Might Not Have Wanted to Know About Disney's 2004 Animated Movie

In 2004, Disney released the forty-fifth entry in their Animated Canon, a little movie called Home on the Range. The movie focused on three cows voiced by Roseanne, Jennifer Tilly and Judi Dench who pursue a yodeling cattle-rustler in the hopes of using the reward money to save their farm. It received mixed reviews from critics and wound up bombing at the box office (somehow, the sequel to that awful live action Scooby-Doo movie managed to perform better than it). For years folks looked at it as a "black sheep" (ha ha, farm animal joke) of the Disney Animated Canon, along with other 2000s-released animated movies of theirs like Brother Bear and Chicken Little. However, around 2013 (maybe 2012, actually) many folks online came out of the woodwork and revealed that they actually like it. As for me, I personally have never had a problem with the movie. Though admittedly I haven't watched it in years...

However, it would interest all of those that DON'T like the (now twenty years old?!) movie to know that it got its start as a very different, much darker movie. A movie so dark that it had the word "Bullets" in the title!

Sweatin' Bullets, as Home on the Range was originally called, was thought up by Disney animator Mike Gabriel before he directed Pocahontas - heck, it was before he PITCHED Pocahontas. According to Mike, he was "trying to think of an idea that might combine Captains Courageous with a Western. Something simple like that, I thought, would make a hell of a movie." So he pitched it, and it went into production... and then wound up being taken off the project five years later. Ouch.

The initial idea for the film was this: a rich young guy from the east coast is sent out to the west and gets shoved into a cattle drive. Lucky Jack, the rabbit sidekick in the movie, was still part of this version. The villains were to be cattle-stealing ghosts. Then at another point, the main character was a timid cowboy who visited a ghost town and confronted a ghostly cattle rustler named Slim and his gang, the Willies. The ghosts wanted revenge on cows because being trampled by cows is how they became ghosts in the first place.

When they pitched this idea to Michael Eisner, he said, "Oh... well, I thought this was gonna be a movie about cattle. Why don't you make the movie about one of the cows?". So the filmmakers said "Okay." The cowboy was replaced by a calf named Bullets, who wanted to be more like the horses that led the herd.

Concept art for Bullets and another cow who I'm guessing was going to be the love interest.

From there, characters were constantly being inserted into and removed from the movie. One minute there were more human characters, then the human characters were taken out, then there were more animals. I personally would've preferred more animals than humans, but that's just me. I love animals.

I was initially going to make this an edition of Back to the Drawing Board, but one thing stopped me from doing that: see, with Back to the Drawing Boards about movies that actually did wind up getting made, I like to go into detail about these early versions of the movie - an early draft of the film's script with a lot of differences from the film we got, for example. Problem is, not much in the way of plot details about this early version of the movie has been posted online. No story reels, no early script drafts, no interviews that go into detail about it, nothing. However, I do have a book - I believe one of those They Drew As They Pleased books, which I highly recommend getting your hands on - that features concept art for it, such as some early versions of Lucky Jack and Alameda Slim, and one piece that features another character, a vulture named Uriah, who is shown protecting Bullets from the hot desert sun. A good guy vulture? We don't have enough of those in animation. Vultures get a bad rap...

Mike Gabriel posted some storyboards for the movie on his Instagram page. The storyboards feature some two female cows (perhaps early versions of Maggie and Grace?) and another vulture, this one clearly a bad guy.

More concept art.

At another point, there was a mutiny of sorts with the story department on the film. They were having difficulty with the villains being ghosts because, well, how do you kill a ghost? I suppose you could call up the Ghostbusters, but they're not owned by Disney. As a result, the story hadn't gotten past Act 1.So, eventually, management said (and I'm paraphrasing here), "Okay, this clearly isn't working. Everyone just go away until you have an idea to fix this movie."

Finally, in 1999, story artist Michael LaBash suggested that the film focus on three dairy cows becoming bounty hunters to save their farm. Other story artists and writers honed the idea, and in 2000 Will Finn and John Sanford stepped in to direct it. The film started production in April 2001. The rest is history, right?

Not quite - the film still had a lot of developing to do. For example, Alameda Slim was considered to be a gold miner before they decided to make him a cattle-rustler again. Alan Menken suggested having Slim yodel to hypnotize the cows.

Incidentally, I've also heard that Will Finn and John Sanford originally pitched the film as an animated adaptation of the story of the Pied Piper. Maggie was going to be a deaf girl immune to the Pied Piper's piping. Michael Eisner hated the idea, pointing out that nobody would take their kids to a movie where children are murdered, so it was reworked into a film where a cattle rustler hypnotizes cows with his yodeling. However, I haven't been able to find solid proof of this, and it contradicts most of the information about Sweating Bullets that I've seen (including the aforementioned "Slim's hypnosis-inducing yodeling being Alan Menken's idea" fact), so let's take this with a grain of salt.

Concept art for Lucky Jack.

According to John Sanford, "The film had been through countless iterations. It started as a sort of Captain Courageous in the old West where this rich kid learns how to be a cowboy, to the story of a little bull on a cattle drive who encounters a ghost town, to ultimately, the story of three cows trying to save their farm. They were still struggling just to get the movies up on reels."

John admitted in a 2018 podcast, "I hate westerns. I really think they're stupid and, uh, I'm not exactly a city boy, but I'm definitely someone bound for the great indoors... I kind of like the Italian spaghetti westerns because they're so off-the-wall... so I was intrigued because I thought we could make an 'inside-out western'... an 'anti-western'... cows are the heroes and the cowboys are the bad guys. I thought that was really funny. But in order to do that, you have to understand what a western is and it took me over a year to learn what a western is... frantically, on my own time, thinking about them and watching them... and basically, a western is, the lone individual against the group and the wilderness. And when I got that, finally, I said 'Okay, everything in this movie will be about the opposite of that.'" It would be about a group against lone individuals - mercenaries. The filmmakers also wanted to do a film without "grandeur" and "gravitas" like the phenomenally dull Pocahontas - something more in line with Woolie Reitherman's films. Which turned out to be its downfall... Disney fans, it would seem, WANTED "grandeur" and "gravitas" (even though Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame were considered box office disappointments by Disney, so...).

After finishing work on The Emperor's New Groove, Nik Ranieri was asked to join the project. He was to be the supervising animator for Duke, a horse voiced by Cuba Gooding Jr. This character, of course, was eventually renamed Buck - though at one point he was also named Jake.

Here's some storyboards from Sweating Bullets featuring an early version of Buck.

Nik wound up leaving the project after Will and John joined - on Facebook, he said that "The problems that I had in the past working with Will colored my decision to leave the project. Working with him, I could handle. Working for him was another story. I wasn't sure what to expect and frankly, a little afraid so I quietly bowed out... as a postscript to this, it needs to be noted that no one expressed any problem working with Will. So most likely it was more about my insecurities than it was about Will's abilities and demeanor."

A 2003 summary of the film from ComingSoon.com gives us some idea as to how else the film evolved - the plotline isn't too different from the one in the finished film, but it claims that Buck is the "family horse", that he used to belong to a bounty hunter, and that it's his idea they go nab a bandit and use the reward money to save the farm. For those that haven't seen it, in the movie we got, Buck belongs to the town sheriff, not Pearl. And it's Maggie's idea to go nab a bandit and use the reward money to save the farm. Will Finn turned Buck from a genuine hero horse who had seen it all into an ambitious horse who was eager to take a shot at heroism. He felt that this made him more vulnerable.

As a result of the film's reworking, Alan Menken had to scrap several songs. But they loved the title song, "Sweating Bullets", so much that they reworked it into "You Ain't Home on the Range". Will Finn and Alan Menken wound up getting into an argument at one point - according to him, "I'm not a fan of musicals. I don't like musicals. And I don't like songs in movies. For eleven years, I worked on musicals, even though I hated musicals. I could tell you how to set up a song, how to ramp into a song, I can tell you how to board a song, and how to get out of a song, but I don't like them." Here he was working with a guy who writes songs for movies, and he told him he didn't like it when characters in movies burst into song. He was basically told by the higher-ups not to argue with Alan Menken.

Sarah Jessica Parker was originally supposed to voice Grace (some sites claim she was going to voice Pearl, but the directors said otherwise in the aforementioned podcast). Apparently when they rewrote the character, Sarah wasn't working, so they recast her with Jennifer Tilly. Ja'Net DuBois was originally the voice of Maggie (maybe they would've been better off sticking with her than getting the now very controversial Roseanne Barr). One of the directors asked if the film could be made in CGI, but for some reason was told no. After a test screening, Michael Eisner suggested having the Willies tell the story to the audience, via flashback, in jail, but by that point the film was almost done so the crew rejected the idea. 

Concept art for Alameda Slim.

And of course, then there was the executive meddling. Lots and lots of executive meddling. We could dedicate a whole article to the meddling that higher-ups at Disney did during production of some of their most popular animated movies. For example, the title was changed from Sweating Bullets to Home on the Range because Disney knew parents wouldn't take their kids to see a film with "bullets" in the title. The film wasn't allowed to have guns in it either. In addition, John Sanford claimed in an interview that the studio felt they should be aiming their films at very young children - which meant a somewhat more juvenile tone - as a result of Atlantis: The Lost Empire's being a box office flop. He said, "We’d have screenings with the crew, and we’d have gags and jokes that got big laughs. Then, we’d have a screening for a bunch of school kids and the kids wouldn’t laugh, so we’d cut the jokes! Horribly frustrating!"

Did you know that originally, they were going to explain just what, exactly, Slim planned on doing with the cattle once he'd rustled them up? Well, originally the idea was for him to sell the cows for slaughter. There was just one problem with that: you see, Home on the Range was developed and released during that time period where Disney had a partnership with McDonald's going. McDonald's was required to promote Disney's movies, theme parks and VHS releases...

And in return, Disney could open up McDonald's locations at the theme parks.

Including locations that just sold McDonald's French Fries.

It only made sense that this film would get a McDonald's tie-in as well, right? Because of this, the higher-ups at Disney didn't want the film to say the cows were being sold for slaughter because they were afraid that if it did, children who'd seen the film would go to McDonald's and put two and two together. Like, let's say a kid goes to see Home on the Range. When they leave the theater, it's lunchtime, so their parents take them to McDonald's. They get a Happy Meal, and inside is a toy of Maggie. Then as they're munching on their hamburger the kid thinks, "Wait a second... am I eating Maggie?!"

And then, when Disney approached McDonald's with the idea of doing a Happy Meal tie-in for the movie, McDonald's turned it down. Do you know why they turned it down? Because they were concerned that kids would realize that beef comes from cows after seeing the movie and not want to eat their hamburgers. Oh, the irony.

After being told that they couldn't have the cows sold for slaughter, the crew came up with another, much funnier, idea. Get this... he was going to use them to STORM WASHINGTON D.C. and overthrow the president. The higher-ups weren't thrilled by this idea either, dubbing it "too political". So in the movie, I don't think it's ever said what Wesley (the Steve Buscemi-voiced guy who Slim sold the cows too) was going to do with the cattle.

Still more concept art.

Here's an amusing anecdote: in 2003, David Koenig (the author of books like Mouse Under Glass and Mouse Tales) wrote an article for Mouseplanet.com implying that early previews for Home on the Range had been overwhelmingly negative. That's not the amusing part. No, no, the amusing part is that Will Finn wrote back to David, giving him a piece of his mind. This is what he said - "Who does it help to start a negative buzz on Home on the Range more than half a year before its release, other than yourself and the 'insider' pipsqueak who predicted it will be 'the biggest bomb since Black Cauldron'? Every feature from Great Mouse to Finding Nemo has been tarred with this tired brush by somebody and the sky hasn't fallen yet. No wonder Disney is so keen on producing Chicken Little! Secondly, you report an audience preview quote that called Home 'more boring than church,' which your source could only have heard from either John or myself. We quoted this remark liberally as one of only two negative notes out of hundreds of favorable ones given at a preview last October. John and I found the quote funny enough to repeat, but by isolating it you have thrown it way out of context. You could just as easily write a one-line bio of Adolph Hitler that reads: 'He was a German guy who loved his pet schnauzer' and say you are not being inaccurate, just selective. For the record, the response to Home previews in October, April and one just two weeks ago were overwhelmingly positive, literally--unequivocal raves from parents and kids who laughed, cheered and applauded throughout. One typical one was from a lady who begged us to 'keep making 'em just like this one!' At the end of the recent screening kids were bouncing off the walls with glee, quoting lines and re-enacting scenes from our film. It was like a dream come true for those of us who have worked so hard on this film, which admittedly got off to a rocky start and has had its share of chaos through the years of production. What film hasn't, animated or otherwise?"

Home on the Range was made and released during a time when Disney animation wasn't in a great place, but the filmmakers did their best with the restraints put on them and the chaos flying around them. And their reward for all of that hard work? Bombing at the box office, having their film brushed off as crap by critics and Disney fans, and being blamed for Disney abandoning traditional animation. That third one is especially unfair, because actually, Disney decided to stop making hand-drawn films after Treasure Planet - they were under the impression that because Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet bombed while CGI films like Shrek and Monsters Inc. were big hits, audiences didn't like hand-drawn animated films anymore (even though Lilo and Stitch was successful at the box office and it was ALSO hand-drawn)... apparently, it never occurred to them that maaaaaaybe Treasure Planet actually bombed because they put it up against the second Harry Potter movie and barely advertised it. I also have a book about the Florida animation studio that claimed they began to think hand-drawn animation wasn't profitable anymore immediately after the first Toy Story was released in 1995. Make of that what you will.

In fact, Home on the Range's bombing could ALSO be because it wasn't advertised very well. Disney insiders have theorized that the company did this deliberately in order to sabotage the film, then when Chicken Little was released and did better they'd have "proof" that people don't like hand-drawn animation anymore. Consider this as well - when a movie studio wants a movie to reach the widest possible audience, they usually release it during the summer or in November or December. April isn't a popular month for studios to release movies. It doesn't help that many of the people in the company looked down on the film. Thomas Schumacher said that "it appealed to young and dumb." Would Treasure Planet, Brother Bear, and Home on the Range have been more successful if they were CGI? Maybe, maybe not. They might've been given better release dates, if nothing else. It's worth noting that the CGI-animated Meet the Robinsons was a box office disappointment as well.

Will Finn and John Sanford also had to deal with David Stainton, who was the president of Walt Disney Feature Animation from 2003 to 2006, apparently blaming them for the film's failure. Suddenly, they weren't being invited to meetings, and whenever they tried to pitch another movie David wasn't interested. Ouch.

So the next time you're looking for something to watch on Disney Plus, I'd recommend giving Home on the Range another look. It's a film that could become a cult classic if enough people give it a chance instead of just brushing it off as "that one really lousy Disney movie" based on everyone's complaining about it online. It's no Beauty and the Beast, but there are far, far worse Disney films.

Like this one, for example!

One more thing: remember that short film on the Home on the Range DVD? "A Dairy Tale"? Which was about Mrs. Calloway trying to tell the story of "The Three Little Pigs", only for the other characters to barge in and mess things up? According to John Sanford, they were planning to do more shorts starring the characters - parodies of "The Wise Little Hen" and "The Ugly Duckling", one about the Willie Brothers in jail telling the film's story from their point of view (as was previously suggested for the film - apparently whoever suggested it really liked that idea)... alas, when the movie underperformed, the shorts were cancelled.

Sources:
- https://lookbackmachine.libsyn.com/home-on-the-range?fbclid=IwAR3Arw75GivluaQrKJC8Ev5h2ragcldUK_kyxpLhr1tehEsz9CDOJ1LPGqI

Let's Watch This: An Episode of "The Little Mermaid"

As you know, The Little Mermaid is the film that pulled Disney out of its slump and got the Disney Renaissance up and running. The Great Mouse Detective and Oliver and Company helped as well, but The Little Mermaid - THAT was the film that really got theatrical animated movies seen as something worth doing again. If it weren't for The Little Mermaid, we might not have gotten The Lion King. Or Beauty and the Beast. Or Frozen, or Tangled, or maybe even Toy Story.

So let's go back in time to 1992. The Disney Renaissance is going on, Beauty and the Beast was successful, Aladdin is going to be released in November. Disney knows that people love The Little Mermaid, I'm sure Ariel dolls were still flying off the shelves. Surely there's a way to keep the movie's hype going. And Disney was just dipping its toes into making TV shows based on their animated films - The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and TaleSpin were both successful. So why NOT make a cartoon show starring Ariel?

And thus was created The Little Mermaid... the TV show. Premiering on CBS in September 1992, the series was a prequel to the movie, taking place before Ariel met Prince Eric (since, y'know, it wouldn't make sense to call the show The Little MERMAID if the main character had legs). Jodi Benson, Pat Carroll, Samuel E. Wright, and Kenneth Mars reprised their roles as Ariel, Ursula, Sebastian, and King Triton for the show. Flounder was now voiced by Edan Gross, then Bradley Pierce (who you might recall as the voice of Chip in Beauty and the Beast), and Scuttle was now voiced by Maurice LaMarche as opposed to Buddy Hackett. There were songs, there were bad guys for Ariel to fight, there were presumably also increased sales of Ariel dolls and Flounder plushies. They even had an episode where Ariel met Hans Christian Anderson, who for those unaware wrote the original Little Mermaid story. Neat, huh?

Three seasons, making for a total of thirty-one episodes, were produced of The Little Mermaid. Since its run on CBS, reruns have aired on Disney Channel, Toon Disney, and Disney Junior. A couple episodes were released on VHS and DVD, and now you can find the whole show, except the pilot movie for some reason, on Disney Plus. I've watched the show before - first via reruns (I recall my older sister loved The Little Mermaid at some point, it might have been her favorite Disney movie but don't quote me on that) then at some point in the 2010s I found episodes of the show on YouTube. From what I recall, it's a pretty good show. Since I'm probably going to be looking at all of these Disney shows adapted from their movies at some point on this blog (I already did Aladdin, 101 Dalmatians, and Hercules, you'll recall), I might as well give this show a review too. I'm tempted to do a review of the episode where Sebastian turns into a giant, or the one where Ariel encounters dinosaurs (this show could get pretty out there), but nah, I'll do the seventeenth episode, "Save the Whale", instead. This is The Little Mermaid!

First of all - no, this episode does not focus on Ariel becoming a member of Greenpeace or trying to prevent whales from beaching themselves. A shame, because the more we can do to spread awareness of whale conservation, the better. To learn more about saving the whales, visit this website.

The episode starts off with Ariel, Flounder and Sebastian on the surface of the water... which, as the movie establishes, is a big no-no for Ariel because her father does not want her to get caught by humans, lest she wind up served as an entree at a Red Lobster or mounted to a plaque on somebody's wall singing novelty songs (you're welcome for that mental image). But then a shark fin pops out of the water and comes their way!

Dah-dun, daaaaaaaah-dun, daaaaaaaaaaah-dun...

Oh, wait. It's not a shark fin. It's the fin of an orca. And not just ANY orca - Spot, the orca who Ariel met in the aforementioned pilot movie. One look at his Casper the Friendly Ghost-shaped head and his weird bulbous human-esque nose (which Flounder also has, have you ever noticed?) and Ariel is overjoyed.

Y'know what this reminds me of? Did anyone else have Brother Bear on DVD? I recall there was a game part of the bonus features where you could put together fossils, and then once the fossil was complete, the narrator would tell you about the animal that fossil came from accompanied by clips of a Disney production featuring that animal. One of those animals was an orca, and the clips you'd receive were of Spot from this show. If you also had that DVD and played that game, well, there's your daily dose of nostalgia for the day.

He reminds me of the octopus from that animated Titanic movie.

King Triton shows up, and he says that he hopes they don't have a repeat of the previous time Spot visited. Ariel assures him that this time, Spot will stay outside the palace. "Good. Better make it outside of Atlantica as well," King Triton suggests. Ariel asks why everyone is so afraid of orcas.

Well, Ariel, orcas might look cute - particularly when they have big round heads and bulbous human noses like Spot does - but they are carnivorous. They are sometimes referred to as "wolves of the sea" because they live and hunt together in pods (which is what a group of whales is called) much like a pack of wolves. Among the things an orca can and will eat include fish, walruses, seals, sea lions, penguins (as Happy Feet showed us), sea turtles, sharks, and even other kinds of whales, and the average-sized orca can eat about five hundred pounds of food a day. There. Now you can't say you've never learned anything from one of my reviews.

I don't think orcas eat human beings, but I imagine Ariel's being half-human half-fish makes things
a bit more complicated. Maybe he'd just eat her tailfin?

"I know Spot wouldn't hurt anyone. I'm just not sure Spot knows it," King Triton tells her. Ariel seems pretty sure, though, and starts teaching Spot how to do fancy leaping-out-of-the-water tricks. After this, Spot went on to star in Free Willy.

Boy, that's the chubbiest orca that I've ever seen. He should really lay off the walruses...

While leaping out of the water, Spot is spotted (see what I did there?) by two sailors, one of whom looks very much like Jasper from One Hundred and One Dalmatians. "Just what I've been looking for," the Jasper lookalike says. "Something to make Pettigrew's Penguin Park a real money-maker." Then he lets out an evil chortle, making it pretty clear who the episode's bad guy is going to be.

Dr. Doofenschmirtz, before he went crazy and devoted his life to fighting a platypus.

Ariel wants to introduce all of Atlantica to Spot, but King Triton isn't sure - most of Atlantica's residents are afraid of orcas (since most of Atlantica's residents are sea creatures, and orcas are also sea creatures, would this be considered some sort of underwater racism?). Ariel says that if everyone sees Spot perform tricks, they'll see that they have nothing to fear. "We'll do it out in the Shallows! Away from Atlantica!" she insists. "Oh, it'll be great!" King Triton agrees to let Ariel have her little undersea carnival, with Flounder as a shark-tamer and Sebastian as the ringmaster.

The carnival... well, technically it's more of a circus, but apparently the writers thought circuses and carnivals were the same thing... begins with a kickline of octopuses.

I wonder if they had any difficulty deciding which tentacle to kick.

A squid juggles sea urchins, Flounder attempts to tame a tiger shark (and fails at it), and Spot performs his leaping-out-of-the-water tricks. I'm trying so hard not to make another Free Willy reference... you know what, I'll make a reference to Moby Lick from Street Sharks instead. In hindsight, isn't it kind of funny that Moby was an orca and yet it was another character on that show, the whale shark mutant, who was named "Slammu"? Wouldn't it have made more sense to name the orca "Slammu"?

The Atlanticans like Spot - they really, really like Spot.

Hey, look, it's that fish from Pinocchio.

But then a b-b-b-b-BOAT shows up overhead. Sebastian tries to stop Spot from getting too close, but they both wind up getting caught. Ariel and Flounder swim off after the boat.

Is it just me, or does the water look really polluted?

The boat, of course, belongs to the Jasper lookalike, Pettigrew, and the other sailor, Tom... who is revealed to be Pettigrew's son. Pettigrew has a son? So somebody actually married this guy? Boy, and I thought Bluto having a wife was hard to wrap my head around...

They bring Spot (and Sebastian) to Pettigrew's Penguin Park, which is kind of like SeaWorld, except it's EEEEEEEEEE-VIL! They've also captured the penguins from Mary Poppins. Good to know they survived when the rain washed away that chalk drawing...

"I told you guys we should've stayed in the chalk drawing. But NOOOOOOOOOO... 'Let's take
a vacation,' you said. 'We could go to Denmark, I hear it's nice this time of year,' you said..."

"Look on the bright side, David. It could be worse."

"Yeah, we could be forced to appear in a direct-to-video sequel with a walrus who's just Pumbaa
from The Lion King in all but name and species."

"...how do you even know who Pumbaa is? This is 1992. The Lion King hasn't been released yet."

"I'm telling you, Tom, once we get this big fella trained, he'll make my penguin park a WHALE of a show!" Pettigrew declares. Tom thinks that Spot is too young to train, but Pettigrew claims that the younger a whale you capture and try to turn into the next Shamu is, the sooner they forget about the ocean and the sooner you get rich, rich, rich. It should be clear by now what Pettigrew's motivation is...

...aaaaaaaaaand now I wish they'd gotten Eric Idle to do this guy's voice. And given him a musical number.

He doesn't have that whip because he's a fan of Devo.

"Dad, don't you care about anything but making money?" Tom asks. "Of course I do! I care about PENGUINS!" Pettigrew insists. And speaking of penguins, they comfort Spot over the whole "stuck in an evil version of SeaWorld" thing. Isn't it kind of funny how in this show, the crabs and fish can talk, but the whales and penguins can't? Of course, in the movie there was a shark who didn't talk... I wonder why some sea animals are capable of speech but others don't seem to be.

Ariel and Flounder make it to Pettigrew's Penguin Park (I'm tempted to start calling it "PPP") by nightfall. Now they just have to figure out how to get by that big wooden fence... the obvious answer is "just swim under it", but for some reason they don't think of that. Maybe it's because they're too distracted by the fireworks...

Wow, Ariel, that's quite a sunburn you've got there. Even mermaids have to use sunscreen,
ya know.

Fortunately, the gate opens up so a boat full of people can enter the park, allowing Ariel and Flounder to swim inside.

Which is good, because apparently swimming under the gate isn't an option after all...

Pettigrew puts on his show, forcing the penguins to do tricks for a cheering crowd. Ariel finds a glum-looking Spot. Where's Sebastian? Pettigrew decided to make him part of the show as well - as Crabby, the ever-so-creatively-named Tap-Dancing Crustacean. Don't worry, Sebastian, this ISN'T the most humiliating moment of your life. You still have two lousy direct-to-video sequels to appear in.

Sebastian's Michigan J. Frog impression is always a crowd pleaser.

Then it's Spot - or, as Pettigrew calls him, "Gargantua" - to perform. Sebastian is horrified to discover that Ariel and Flounder are there, presumably because he believes that if Pettigrew sees them he'll force THEM to be in the show as well. Or maybe he'll sell Ariel off to a circus sideshow or something.

Fortunately, seeing Tom turn the wheel that opens and closes the door to Spot's corral gives Ariel an idea. They'll wait until they open the gate to let the boats out, then Ariel will somehow get the door to Spot's corral open, then Spot - with Sebastian sitting on his back - will make a swim for it, with Ariel and Flounder right behind him. It all goes off without a hitch, but wouldn't you know it, Pettigrew sees this going on and he's all "THE WHALE, IT IS GETTING AWAY!"

"AND HE'S GOT MAH DENTURES!"

And on top of that, Spot can't bear to just leave those poor penguins behind. Fortunately, Tom decides to let the penguins go.

"So long, Pettigrew! We're going back to our chalk drawing!"

But Pettigrew decides to actually do something instead of just standing there looking agitated in his purple suit and closes the gate. Gee, I wonder if Spot will use one of his leaping-out-of-the-water tricks to just jump over the gate... yep, that's exactly what he does. I don't know if an orca can actually jump that high, but it's a cartoon, just go with it.

Is this supposed to be an E.T. reference? Probably not, since nobody's on a bike...

"That was one WHALE of a LEAP!" Sebastian exclaims. The episode did that joke already, Sebastian. And then guess who shows up? King Triton, making a hilarious facial expression.

"I am not amused."

Fortunately, all it takes for him to calm down is for Ariel to say that she had to save Spot to save him the trouble of doing it. Then they find a pod of orcas, meaning that it's time for Spot to go back to his own kind. The penguins go with him... I sure hope none of those other orcas are hungry. And that's about it.

What's the Verdict?

Like with the other Disney cartoons based on their animated movies, I personally think The Little Mermaid holds up quite well. The animation, while obviously a downgrade from the movie, is still pretty good. Everyone is in-character. The voice actors all do a good job. And the Mary Poppins penguins showing up is a nice touch. If I do have one complaint, it's that the villain is kind of a bore, and Tom's arc isn't given much focus. Does Pettigrew even get any sort of comeuppance? Aside from, y'know, his penguins all leaving. Surely he can find MORE penguins, or another orca for that matter. But those are nitpicks. As a whole, I enjoyed this episode.

If you're a fan of the movie, give the series a watch. If you haven't seen the movie, watch it first and then check the series out. And remember - places that force aquatic animals to perform are the scum of the earth. Way to make kids feel bad about visiting the aquarium, Disney.