The Bottom Line: Not So 'Little' Voices Are Heard But Not Seen
By Robert Sims, Special to Hollywood.com
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Friday, October 28, 2005
Zach Braff |
Forget Sinbad.
That’s what DreamWorks did while promoting 2003’s Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Sea, a pricey animated voyage featuring the scimitar sword-swinging sailor. Instead, the studio banked on an A-list voice cast--including Brad Pitt, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michelle Pfeiffer--to persuade parents to let their kids set sail with Sinbad. The ploy flopped: the bad buzz surrounding Sinbad was loud enough to drown out any shrieking siren out to shipwreck the Chimera.
Sinbad wasn’t the first animated feature--and it won’t be the last--with a publicity campaign built around its voice cast. You can still market a brand name--Pixar’s the 21st-century Disney--but putting a famous face to the voice has been essential ever Robin Williams’ gabby Blue Genie turned Aladdin into Disney’s first animated offering to surpass $200 million.
Check out Disney’s first non-Pixar CGI endeavor, Chicken Little (Nov. 4). You can’t escape knowing that Chicken Little features the vocal talents of Scrubs’ Zach Braff. Or that he replaced Holly Hunter when the frightened fowl underwent a sex change.
And, in 2006, you won’t avoid be able to silence the voice casts of, among others, Ant Bully (Julia Roberts, Nicolas Cage), Cars (Paul Newman, Owen Wilson), Happy Feet (Elijah Wood, Nicole Kidman, Robin Williams), Open Season (Ashton Kutcher, Martin Lawrence) and Over the Hedge (Bruce Willis, Garry Shandling).
Talk isn't cheap in Hollywood--Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy and Cameron Diaz each reportedly earned $10 million for Shrek 2--so no wonder the following stars often prefer to be heard, but not seen.
Robin Williams
Aladdin $217.3 million
Robots $128.2 million
Ferngully: The Last Rainforest $24.6 million
The Bottom Line: The big mouth that started it all. If The Little Mermaid revived traditional animation as an art form, then Aladdin legitimized the casting of a superstar in a lead voice role. How important was Robin Williams’ whirling dervish of a Genie to Aladdin’s success? Williams’ presence was so sorely missed in the direct-to-video sequel The Return of Jafar that he and Disney resolved a financial dispute, allowing him to participate in Aladdin and the King of Thieves. Williams’ has toned down his wild and crazy ways in recent years with Final Cut and House of D. But audiences obviously prefer the manic Williams of old, so much so that they made Robots his biggest hit since 1998’s Patch Adams.
Eddie Murphy
Shrek 2 $441.2 million
Shrek $267.2 million
Mulan $120.6 million
The Bottom Line: After falling out of favor with Beverly Hills Cop III and A Vampire in Brooklyn, Murphy shut his potty mouth and reinvented himself as a family friendly funnyman. The gamble paid off, with Murphy proving to be the source of much amusement as Mulan’s high-strung Mushu and Shrek’s clingy but loyal Donkey. He even created his own short-lived animated TV series, The PJs. But Murphy’s paying the price for going PG with his animated and live-action roles: he’s completely lost his comic credibility with adult audiences. No wonder he’s climbing on Donkey’s back once more for Shrek 3 (2007).
Tom Hanks
Toy Story 2 $245.8 million
Toy Story $191.7 million
The Polar Express $162.7 million
The Bottom Line: No one does folksy better than Hanks, so that made Toy Story’s skittish cowboy Woody the perfect foil to Tim Allen’s blustery spaceman Buzz Lightyear. Ten years ago, Allen was just a TV star, and few knew of Pixar. So it fell on Hanks to sell--quite easily actually, considering its warmth and humanity--the first fully CGI-produced feature film. He also climbed aboard The Polar Express, the first film made completely using performance capture (digitally generated images via an actor’s motions and facial expressions). The Polar Express felt terribly mechanical compared with Toy Story, but it established Hanks--who’s producing the CGI Ant Bully--as a true pioneer in animation.
Mel Gibson
Pocahontas $141.5 million
Chicken Run $106.8 million
The Bottom Line: Lethal Weapon, Hamlet and Conspiracy Theory reveal Gibson’s penchant for playing flawed heroes with tortured souls. So it was a no-brainer that he would voice the conflicted English colonist John Smith in Disney’s romanticized retelling of his encounter with Pocahontas. Or the cocky Rocky the Rooster in Chicken Run, a Great Escape satire from the creators of Wallace and Gromit. At least Rocky allowed Gibson to have a little fun. That’s certainly something that’s sadly been lacking from his films since Chicken Run and What Women Want in 2000.
Ewan McGregor
Robots $128.2 million
Valiant $19.3 million
The Bottom Line: Since when was Obi- Wan Kenobi all talk and no action? Robots was a smash, but McGregor was overshadowed by Robin Williams (who isn’t?). With its stiff upper lip, the World War II-era Valiant proved too English for kids weaned on Finding Nemo. Not that McGregor showed much color or personality--especially when stripped of his Scottish accent--in either animated adventure. If this and the failures of The Island and Stay are a sign of things to come, then life after Star Wars is going to be get extremely tough for McGregor.
Helena Bonham Carter
Corpse Bride $50.5 million
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit $43.9 million
The Bottom Line: What better way to work while pregnant than to strain nothing more than your vocal chords. Of course, it helps that the director of Corpse Bride happens to be Tim Burton, the father of Carter’s 2-year-old son, Billy. Nepotism does pay off: Carter’s so sultry and becoming as the marriage-minded bag of bones that it’s hard to understand why Johnny Depp doesn’t slip a ring on her decomposed wedding finger. And she’s suitably refined--hardly a stretch, considering her aristocratic lineage--as a noblewoman who serves as Wallace and Gromit’s sole ally in their battle to capture the dreaded Were-Rabbit. Seems like being in the family way definitely agrees with Carter.
Photo(s) by Adriana M. Barraza- © 2005- Hollywood Media Corp.- All Rights Reserved