Sunday, January 9, 2011

Blast from the 20th Century: The Flintstones Movie

Hi, I'm hardcopy, and yeah, that's a typo according to spell check.

When I was a kid, I really liked watching The Flintstones more than The Jetsons.  They did have a pretty entertaining cross over movie during one time, and the later animated movies, like The Flintstones on the Rocks, still continued to impress me.  But I didn't really know of a live action until the second one where they go to Las Vegas (called Rock Vegas in the movie title).  That was in 2000 and it wasn't as successful.  My dad decided to let me watch the original live action because he thought it was way better, and he was right.

I just watched it again recently, and now that I am older, I have to say this is one of the most impressive movies made in the 90's which I have seen.  The set was just like what you picture it to be, all plastic looking, bigger than life scales, and mammoths used for indoor pluming.  Everything was great about this movie, and I was more impressed with the set and costuming than anything else.  The best kick I got out of the whole thing was not only how HUGE John Goodman's arms were (I'll get into that later) but how the characters were exactly so spot on during the reenactment of the beginning and the ending to the cartoon episodes.

If you haven't watched The Honeymooners before, then you wouldn't where The Flintstones came from.  Fred is basically Ralph Kramden, a lovable but sarcastic husband who drives a bus for a living, and Barney is the delightful Ed Norton, who always manages to one up Ralph on anything and is his best friend.

I had no problem with the characters being influenced by another show when I was a kid.  Now that I am older, I realized how the characters really do resemble them more than I thought in the past, but they are also still their own characters at the same time.  It could be the time frame, the setting, or even the circumstances that can cause me to think that, but hey.  I still loved each episode of both programs.

The big names in the movie really attracted everyone at first before the movie was released.  John Goodman, Elizabeth Perkins, Rosie O'Donnell, Rick Moranis, Elizabeth Taylor, Halle Berry portraying characters in one of the most popular cartoon series in the 60's.  What could go wrong?  Unfortunately I think this movie with such big names and great adaption to the original cartoon is extremely underrated.

The special effects for this time was extraordinary for a movie that was made in 1994.  A lot of movies that were made around 2000 didn't even match with good quality.  The costumes were perfect, and the set, once again, is great.  Getting Elizabeth Taylor to show up in a movie like this was really surprising; I would never have guessed that she would appear, but she was so much fun to watch as Fred's mother-in-law.

Now I want to regard something very funny.  All my life until I saw the movie again, I just thought that John Goodman was just a jolly old fat man, but after really paying attention to his stature, he's now my greatest nightmare if I ever get into a fight with him. Look at his arms in this picture.  THEY'RE HUGE.  I never got over that no matter how many times I saw him.  And for a guy with his own recognizable voice, he did sound a hell of a lot like Fred Flintstone.

My dad told me the reason why he was built up.  In 1992, only two years before Flintstones was released, he played as Babe Ruth in The Babe.  Babe had a build like John Goodman, and it's a pretty good reason for Goodman to be casted as him.  Because he was a pitcher, it was natural for him to get such strong arms.  Plus he had a supposed beer belly.  If you were to look at the movies he was in, you big realize that his happy go lucky characters he plays also have a strong side to them.  For example Disney has a habit of making their characters look like the actors.  In Monsters Inc Goodman did the voicing for Sully, who was top dog of the cooperation in getting scares.  You see him as the big guy but he had so much heart, more than his little green partner Mike.  He's the one who wants to look after Boo and rips apart pipes just for her safety.  Sully is also a little tubby in the movie, but his size and strength was not just influenced by whatever the animator's character design was by creative mind alone.

Ok I think I'm done with this whole John Goodman thing.  Besides what I have mentioned, I was very excited to see a movie pass on being too realistic for creating a live action.  In the 90's when there were live actions to dozens of cartoons, the industry had one thing that they did that sets apart Hollywood today.  In the 90's we had The Flintstones, Ninja Turtles, and Batman.  What sets apart that era from now is that in the 90's the adaptation was very loyal to the original work.  The first Ninja Turtles is probably the one that I would refer to.  Jim Henson was amazing at making the costumes come alive, and the plot in the movie was just a rerun of the cartoon series.  Turtles get discovered, the Foot Clan break into April's apartment, Casey Jones shows up again to help save the day, they go to Connecticut to lie low, all the turtles have a revelation, and Splinter gets the job done.

Now we have movies based on comic books and children's books.  The thing is trying to get as realistic as possible.  I was very surprised about how the interpretation went for Where the Wild Things are to be about this kid's parents instead of him trying to become a leader then just leave to go home.  I liked the movie, but I feel there there are too many personal interpretations rather than going by what the characters would do or the original plot like a lot of the movies from the 90s reminded me of.  Call it a strange intuition, but I really enjoyed watching the new Ninja Turtles than the CGI movie because it was loyal to the original cartoon.

No comments:

Post a Comment