Dancin' Homer (aka It's The Kind Of Place That Makes A Bum Feel Like A King)

 An oddity, this one.

"Dancin' Homer" (7F05), which first aired on November 8th 1990, has long been one of those Simpsons episodes from show's early years that I'm inclined file away in the Not Exactly vault. Not exactly a bad effort, but somehow not exactly hitting the high mark the series was already setting this quickly into its lifespan. To my mind, it's always stood out as one of the weaker installments of the predominantly robust Season 2 (although "Bart's Dog Gets An F" is firmly at the bottom). "Dancin' Homer" has, nevertheless, persevered, and it's an episode that has consistently surprised me over the years. Every time I've revisited it, it ends up being better than I'd remembered, and I've come away liking it that little bit more - and yet, it's never quite been able to win me over to the point that I'd consider it as successful episode ("Bart's Dog Gets An F", bless it, has just never grown on me to any capacity, no matter how many chances I've given it). It's a fun collection of gags and moments that, somehow or other, isn't the sum of its parts. And I've combed over it enough times, in trying to figure out exactly what it is about it that keeps it from coming together, that you could even say I've grown rather fond of it. "Dancin' Homer" got the better of me in the end. I still don't think it works, however.

My personal feelings aside, "Dancin' Homer" actually has a very significant place within the series' history, for it marks the first instance of what would, in little time, become one of its most notorious recurring gimmicks. Here's a bit of quintessential pub quiz trivia - the first ever celebrity to make a guest appearance on the show playing a Simpson-ised version of themselves was none other than lounge singer Tony Bennett, whom the Simpsons here happen to drive past while entering Capital City. No mean feat, given that some of the show's earliest guests felt uneasy enough about having their names in the credits (so low down in the showbiz food chain was TV animation at the time). And fair play to Bennett - his input ends up being the highlight of the episode (that, and a particular Lisa-ism that we'll touch on in due course). As the family approach the capital, it's almost as if the universe has aligned to bestow a personal welcome exclusively upon them (and to facilitate a particularly rousing game of "diegetic or non-diegetic?") by having the conveniently-placed Bennett croon out an infectious ode to the city that could make a bum feel like a king, and make a king feel like a nutty, cuckoo super-king. Or maybe it's a crime-ridden dive laden with garish neon signage - either way, for the Simpsons it signifies their prospective moving up in the world. Naturally, since the series has applied a strict policy of tactical evasion when it comes to that classically futile question of which state the Simpsons inhabit, we have no way of knowing which capital city Bennett is describing, but perhaps his inability to properly name-check the city adds to that whole sense of disingenuous mystique - for such a swingin' town, Capital City sure does play like any number of generic big cities. (Note: Homer would later return there, briefly, with Home-Wrecker Mindy Simmons in the Season 5 episode "The Last Temptation of Homer", where she referred to it by its apparent nickname, the Windy Apple.)

"Dancin' Homer" could be seen as a somewhat experimental episode, as it's told mostly in flashback, with a framing narrative set at Moe's tavern, where a dejected Homer is regaling an audience of barflies with the story of his family's recent, short-lived relocation to Capital City. We know from the start that things have decidedly not gone Homer's way and where he's ultimately fated to end up, so it's all a matter of us being brought up to speed on his latest misadventure. It wasn't the first Simpsons episode to begin at what is effectively the end of story and then to slowly work its way to the point where we came in - "The Telltale Head" of Season 1 did something fairly similar, with Bart attempting to explain to a mob of Springfieldians how he came to possess the severed head of the town's founder, Jedediah Springfield (or rather, a statue in his likeness). Homer, though, is a much more hands-on storyteller than Bart was before him, with the episode making extensive use of the interplay between the story unfolding and Homer's post factum commentary. Homer makes several biting observations which indicate that, despite all the standard levels of Simpsons solidarity on display here, his family were actually more of an annoyance than a comfort in flocking around him at his lowest ebb ("What a family. My wife and kids stood by me. On the way home I realised how little that helped."). In fact, Homer expresses a surprising amount of bitterness toward his family for being nothing less than entirely supportive of him, even going so far as to refer to Marge as "My big dumb wife" (although he immediately retracts this), which gives the episode a surprisingly bleak undertone. At the end of his flashback, when Homer is forced to retreat from the glitz and glamor of the Windy Apple, his big shot at glory having been cruelly eviscerated, he finds his family all waiting upon the sidelines to greet him. To Homer, they are not welcome reassurance that he'll always be loved and valued among his fellow Simpson, but symbols of his perpetually lowly status. I don't even think that it necessarily reflects badly on Homer - we've all had moments where we're so thoroughly down in the mouth that anybody purposely looking to cheer us up is only going to piss us off further. Often, there is no easy solution to our deepest pain. "Dancin' Homer" represents The Simpsons at its most doggedly unsentimental, and yet it still manages to settle on a conclusion that feels curiously pat...but let's not get ahead here.

The shot at glory in question was an opportunity to become the new mascot for the Capital City baseball team, having spent the bulk of the episode working alongside Springfield's local minor leagues team, the Isotopes, a gig he earned when a bit of Dutch courage enabled him to get up before the crowds and dance in support of the team during a company outing. I should admit upfront that I'm not much of a baseball enthusiast, which potentially limits my ability to relate to certain scenes and observations - although I do know that Homer's farewell speech, on leaving the Isotopes, was taken from a film called Pride of The Yankees, which I have not seen but with which I am vaguely familiar through the magic of cultural osmosis (the film is referenced more explicitly in the Frasier episode "Hot Ticket", where Martin alludes to the exact same speech). Still, I don't think you need a whole lot of knowledge or first-hand experience of the sport in question to be in on the episode's central gag, which has to do with the disproportionate amount of reverence paid to a pursuit built around what is, on the surface at least, the intrinsically goofy business of donning a silly costume and bopping before the masses (no disrespect intended to real-world sports mascots; I've no doubt that it is a very difficult and challenging business getting a crowd warmed up before a game). Homer's shtick involves dancing to "Baby Elephant Walk" by Henry Mancini. These antics prove a hit with the Springfieldians, so much so that Homer's popularity begins to dwarf that of the Isotopes themselves. Eventually, he finds himself courted by the major leagues in Capital City as a possible replacement for their own long-term mascot, the Capital City Goofball, who is getting on in years, the main drawback being that it would require the family to uproot their established lives in Springfield and start anew in Capital City. Bart and Lisa have some reservations, but Marge throws her support entirely behind Homer, so away they go. Alas, the gambit does not pay off - Homer's act is an absolute flop with the denizens of Capital City, giving the family no other option than to go crawling back to their plebeian lives in Springfield. The reason for Homer's failure is elucidated by one of the spectators, who remarks that, "These cornball antics may play in the sticks, but this is Capital City." So either the city slickers are snobs or the small towners are easily amused. You can take your pick. But that does lead me into the big overhanging question I've never quite been able to satisfy regarding this one's resolution - whose side are we supposed to be on? I mean, it's a given that we do feel for Homer, and we recognise that he's putting his heart into this gig, but are we supposed to think that his act had genuine merit and that the reception he gets at Capital City is excessively harsh, or is he getting a taste of a long overdue reality sandwich? Because, let's face it, Homer's act is kind of naff. For all I know, it's naffness is meant to be part of its charm, but he's still a grown man in a cape replicating his own drunken swagger. I'm not sure I can begrudge the crowds at Capital City for noticing that the emperor isn't wearing clothes. Then again, it's not as though we get any substantial insight into what makes the Capital City Goofball so different. Either way, Lisa's objection to the family moving - "We're simple people with simple values. Everyone in Springfield knows us, and has forgiven us" - is borne out by the end of the episode. Perhaps the naffness of Dancin' Homer went down better in Springfield because Springfield itself is (at best) a bit naff.

What makes this outcome an especially bitter pill to swallow is that none of what happens is Homer's fault. He was set up for humiliation by higher powers who'd convinced him that he had a chance of success, and he did exactly what was required of him. He also never allowed his short-lived fame to go to his head, so it's not as though he was begging for a lesson in humility (the Homer we had at the start of Season 2 was at a very different point on his character's evolutionary ladder to anything post-Mirkin's era - here, he was frequently unsure of himself and not always at ease with being the centre of attention). But then life is unfair, and that's something The Simpsons has always been loathe to sugar-coat, as was demonstrated in the conclusion to "Simpson and Delilah", where Homer's bolstered self-confidence couldn't overcome the fact that his audience wouldn't take him seriously on account of his lack of hair. I suppose this is yet another factor in this episode's disfavour - it is effectively a variation on the exact same scenario we saw just a few episodes prior in "Simpson and Delilah", only minus that installment's big attraction in the form of a Harvey Fierstein-voiced PA. Homer momentarily becomes the toast of a particular circle, and it seems that big things are in his future, only for him to be booted back to square one when he's introduced to a fresh batch of onlookers who form such a damning first impression. It is a decidedly lesser reworking of The Rise and Fall of Homer, being less story-orientated than "Simpson and Delilah", and while its central gag - of clowning being serious business - produces some good jokes (I love Homer's meeting with the Capital City Goofball, and that they introduce themselves to one another by their mascot names, not their real names) - it is a bit thin to carry the entire episode. But perhaps the real tell-tale clue for how we're intended to perceive "Dancin' Homer" is embedded in Marge's winking one-liner, "A Simpson on a t-shirt? I never thought I'd see the day!" If we treat this line as the nexus of the entire story, then suddenly it begins to feel less like a weaker retread of "Simpson and Delilah" and more like a proto "Bart Gets Famous". Both episodes are concerned with the disposable nature of celebrity (something foreshadowed at the opening game in "Dancin' Homer" when Homer and Bart eagerly discuss the prospect of seeing rising young stars rubbing shoulders with washed-up major leaguers), with sly nods to the intense wave of "Bart Mania" that defined the show's early foothold in popular consciousness, albeit from opposite ends of the fad's lifespan. Between 1990 and 1991, Bart was embraced by consumerist culture for his barrage of t-shirt friendly catchphrases and marketable anarchy, something that peaked with the hit single, "Do The Bartman", and which "Bart Gets Famous" had a ball both mourning and skewering from the vantage point of 1994, when those days were firmly passed. "Dancin' Homer" came about when The Simpsons was on its way up, and while it's seldom as on the nose in its satire as "Bart Gets Famous", it conveys every bit as much leeriness toward the perils of being the latest hot thing, and the inevitability that, sooner or later, zeitgeist will move on and you'll find that you've overstayed your welcome. Even before bombing in Capital City, Homer is painfully aware of how little he matters to his ostensibly adoring fanbase at home - on parting ways with the Isotopes, he understands why the door has immediately closed on a prospective comeback: "the fickle fans [were] already forgetting me". From the start, the series had no delusions about its place in the broader scheme of things, and the likelihood that the world's love affair with Bart and kin would be anything other than a passing diversion - to the extent that you might even say that the joke was ultimately on them, because while Bart Mania had a predictably limited shelf life, The Simpsons itself has endured as one of the most significant pop cultural institutions of modern times. "Dancin' Homer" anticipates a very different trajectory, one in which The Simpsons would eventually be forced to take its place as just another castaway in the flophouse of forgotten fads. The hardest part about being forced back in anonymity is, of course, in having tasted how exhilarating things are from the top, as is summed up succinctly in Lisa's objections to the prospect of returning to Springfield - "I can't go back...not after I've seen the bright lights of Capital City!".

 "Dancin' Homer" gets off to a slow start - the first act, which sees the family attending a baseball game as part of a company social organised by Burns in an effort to make a perfunctory connection with his underlings, contains a LOT of padding, which works both in the episode's favour and against it. In the spirit of the series' first two seasons, there are some really nice moments that don't serve to forward the plot so much as to map out the characters' chemistry; in particular, we bear witness to the surprising affinity that blossoms between Homer and Burns when they're seated next to each other during the game, and Homer discovers that Burns, under the right circumstances, can be as uproarious and human as the next spectator (even if his heckling repertoire is a touch antiquated). In narrative terms, Burns is entirely superfluous - he doesn't reappear after the first act, and did we really need the context of the company social just to get the Simpsons out to a ball game? - but the episode definitely feels like it would lose something without him; not least because there's a smidgen of understated pathos in the fact that Homer's forced entry into the spotlight, while it earns him the fleeting admiration of the crowd, seems to cancel out the real possibility of improved understandings with his boss. The one character who is not impressed by Homer's dancing gambit is Burns, who orders that he be banned from all future company outings - much to the delight of Smithers, who felt threatened by the rapport that Homer and Burns were developing (or at least I assume that's how Smithers was feeling - he doesn't get a whole lot of focus during the game itself, but why else would Homer's banning have him giggling with such glee?). Also putting in a welcome appearance is Bleeding Gums Murphy from "Moaning Lisa" (albeit voiced by Daryl L. Coley instead of Ron Taylor), who performs a hilariously elongated rendition of "Star-Spangled Banner", over which, in an adorable sight gag, only Lisa is able to maintain enthusiasm for the full duration. But my favourite first-act offering, hands-down, is the stand an indignant Marge insists on taking for Bart when Flash Baylor, one of those washed-up major leaguers, refuses to sign his baseball. She gets the autograph because Flash thinks she's hot stuff, and neither Homer and Marge seem especially offended by his sleazy attempt at propositioning her into a one night stand, in part because they're still awestruck by his (somewhat faded) celebrity.

The downside to the ultra-padded first act is that, by the time we reach the episode's central dilemma, regarding whether the Simpsons can pack up their lives in Springfield and relocate to the bustling atmosphere of Capital City, it has precious little time to do much with it other than what directly forwards Homer's plot. We don't get any insight into what life in Capital City would mean for Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie, or their attempts to readjust to their new surroundings. The whole excursion is over so quickly, though perhaps that makes Lisa's aforementioned protest at going back to Springfield even droller, given the total non-connection the family have managed to forge with the city in that time. Lisa herself has only a minimal role in this episode (pretty much everyone does apart from Homer and, for the first act only, Burns), but she is on good form throughout as a sort of Greek chorus to the plot's assorted developments, commenting on the action more than directly participating. On seeing Homer in his mascot get-up for the first time, she dryly remarks that, "Our lives have taken an odd turn", while her book-ending comments on either side of the family's ill-fated move perfectly encapsulate the heartbreak that lies in store in both destinations. At the same time, I'm struck by how much underlying despair there is to her reasoning for wanting to stay put in Springfield - her assertion that, "I was born here, and I thought I would die here", has the air more of her being resigned to her fate than of any great emotional attachment to her town of birth (thankfully, Mr Bergstrom would show up before the season was through to assure Lisa that she would one day be leaving Springfield to be part of something bigger). Even her declaration of support for her father is expressed in troublingly morbid terms: "What doesn't kill me can only make me stronger." But the Lisa-ism that really boosts this whole episode for me (along with being one of my all-time favourite Lisa moments, period) is the melancholic farewell bid to her peers at Springfield Elementary: "I can't help but feel that if we had gotten to know each other better, my leaving would have meant something." I can remember seeing this episode for the first time as a child, and frankly never feeling so seen.

Although nowadays, I think a character to whom I can relate all the better is Snowball II, whose expression,on being forced into the backseat of the family's car, conveys even greater despair still.

"Dancin' Homer" is also notable for being the first in a long line of "Homer Gets A Job" episodes - in subsequent installments, we would see him become the manager to a country musician, the driver of both a snowplough and a monorail, an astronaut, a professional Krusty The Clown look-alike, a freak in a rock music roadshow and the voice of a cartoon dog. An issue that's usually not addressed in such episodes, but does come up here, is what happens to Homer's regular 9 to 5 job at the nuclear power plant while he's got this other occupation going on. We saw in "Lisa's Pony" how much Homer struggled to moonlight an additional job, and with a number of these roles it's stretch to imagine how he could reasonably balance them alongside his established working hours, particularly the ones that require him to work outside of Springfield. Over time, it became standard practice in such episodes to ignore the question altogether, but at this point the series was still fairly conscious about maintaining a sliver of realism; when asked to take the mascot gig in Capital City, Homer acknowledges that he'll first have to ask his supervisor at the plant for a leave of absence. In one of the episode's best gags, he discovers that his supervisor is only too happy to be rid of him. So maybe he's been consulting the same individual ever since. I can't recall if Homer's supervisor ever appeared again, but from the mise-en-scene here, I don't exactly get the impression that he's one to point fingers over diligence.

All in all, there's no shortage of brilliant moments to be mined from "Dancin' Homer". So...why, in spite of everything, do I persist in being so down on the episode? I've already cited the thin plotting and lopsided pacing as obvious negatives, but I don't think those are, in themselves, necessarily so unforgivable. The real deal-breaker, for me, doesn't show up until literally the last seconds, taking us into the matter of that curiously pat conclusion. As with "Simpson and Delilah", Homer has suffered a major setback in life, but discovers that perhaps the situation back at square one isn't as dire as he first anticipated; he has everything he effectively needs there, after all. Here, his salvation arises not from the unconditional love of his family - that has already been rejected as a consolation prize - but in the camaraderie of his fellow losers, who afford him the respect and admiration he's been desperately seeking. His moment of catharsis arrives when he reaches the end of his story and realises that his audience of bums and lowlifes (as Marge would later describe them in "War of The Simpsons") have remained utterly enraptured the entire time, prompting him to reevaluate whether or not the experience has been a total wash. "I wonder," muses Homer, "why stories of humiliation and degradation make you more popular?" "I don't know," answers Moe, "They just do." And that, folks, might be the single biggest factor in why, no matter how much fun I've had in the interim, I inevitably come away feeling somewhat underwhelmed by "Dancin' Homer"; would it seem at all petty if I said that the episode doesn't quite work on account of bowing out on such a hokey final punchline? I think Homer sets it up perfectly well with his "humiliation and degradation" remark, but I can't help but feel that Moe's rather trite response could have been swapped out for something snappier. It's unfortunate that, whatever the merits of "Dancin' Homer", the triteness should be the last thing we're left with. So yeah, blame it all on Moe. Although, once again, I think the episode is at its strongest when viewed from the most meta angle possible - if we keep in mind that we, the viewers, are the real bums and lowlifes who've been hanging on Homer's every word for the episode's duration, and that, as fascinating as it was seeing him rise to stardom as a celebrated baseball mascot, the reason why Homer won our hearts in the first place is because he's the kind of everyman loser to whom we all can relate. Tales of unmitigated success to which we might aspire are all well and good, but humiliation and degradation are heartening reminders that we're all fallible and human. Homer's barstool story might, on the surface, have been one of resounding failure, but he finds that his words have value, if only in keeping his spectators, both within and beyond the fourth wall, entertained for twenty-odd minutes. Homer, then, is reassured of his place in the world, not as nutty, cuckoo super-king, but as a bum whose affinity with his fellow bums is intermittently enough to make him feel like a king.

Oh, and even if Homer couldn't cut it with the crowds at Capital City, he can seek solace in the fact that he has, apparently, already enjoyed a stint of notoriety in the Windy City, albeit with neither his consent or his knowledge. If you look closely during his locker room scene with the Capital City Goofball, you'll notice that the picture of Homer dancing with Princess Kashmir from "Homer's Night Out" has made it as far as the major leaguers in Capital City. Those city slickers took at least one Dancin' Homer to their hearts, even if it was the more licentious of the two.

Mermaids (aka You're Not Listening To All I Say)

Could it be said that Mermaids, the 1990 comedy-drama from Orion Pictures, ends on too happy a note? This seems to be a common charge levelled against the feature, even among critics who were otherwise well-disposed toward it. Roger Ebert opened his generally positive review with the observation that "I had the feeling, watching "Mermaids," that it was originally headed in another direction. The material is "funny" instead of funny, and we don't laugh so much as we squirm with recognition and sympathy." The film intermittently suggests that matters of genuine trauma might be brewing, but ultimately side-steps this in favour of "one of those happy endings Hollywood likes so much right now". It is a sentiment echoed by Mike Massie of Gone With The Twins, who notes that, "by today’s standards, “Mermaids” represents a simpler time with simpler solutions."

Mermaids centres on an all-female family, the Flaxes, and the unconventional lifestyle habits imposed by their matriarch, Rachel (Cher) - or Mrs Flax, as Charlotte (Winona Ryder), her formality-starved first-born, insists on calling her. Directed by Richard Benjamin and adapted from a novel by Patty Dann, the film had a rocky road to fruition. Swedish director Lasse Hallström was originally hired to helm the picture, but dropped out to direct Cinecom Pictures' Once Around (1991). Frank Oz was brought on as his successor, but he also didn't linger long; rumour has it that there was sour chemistry between himself and Cher and Ryder. Also, Emily Lloyd was originally cast in the role of Charlotte, but ousted from the project, reportedly because of concerns Cher raised about a lack of credible biological resemblance between herself and Lloyd; Lloyd later sued Orion Pictures for breach of contract and received an out of court settlement. In Hallström's hands, the film might actually have lived up to those gloomy expectations set by Ebert; according to the film's entry in the AFI Catalogue, his treatment of the material had, at one point, concluded with Charlotte's suicide - although, having read Dann's novel, I can confirm that Benjamin's ending was a lot closer to the original source.

Mermaids is set in 1963, which largely serves as an excuse to kick out a nostalgic soundtrack, with Cher supplying her own cover of the Rudy Clark-penned pop favourite "It's In His Kiss" - here titled "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's In His Kiss)" - though at one point there is an intersection between the characters' personal troubles and the assassination of Kennedy. The pleasures of the film (of which there are many) stem chiefly from the central performances, which are delightful and bring out the dimensions in the four main characters. The narrative is not an especially tight one, but in a way that plays to its merits. It is a particularly charming example of what might now be termed (thanks to Tarantino's vernacular) a "hangout film", which is to say a film to which we feel compelled to return, time after time, not because there's anything particularly riveting about the dramatic action, but because there's something deeply reassuring in the characters' familiarity; they come to seem like old friends with whom we can relive fond memories. And these characters certainly offer a lot of colour, even if it is all window dressing for their neuroses. Mrs Flax has a long history of ill-fated love affairs, and an established pattern of relocating her family to a new community after each relationship's inevitable implosion. Her nomadic lifestyle enables her to retain the kind of character anonymity with which she feels comfortable, but does make things difficult for Charlotte, who never has the opportunity to settle in any one place and develop ties of her own, merely resentment at the realisation that she's spent half of her life in cars, being driven from state to state. Sometimes, Charlotte even handles driving responsibilities herself, for it is established that Mrs Flax taught her how to drive at an unusually young age (Mrs Flax insists that driving is one of the two most important skills a woman can have, although she never specifies what the other might be). Now in her mid-adolescence, Charlotte believes that she has outgrown her mother, her various eccentricities having transmuted into embarrassments, and yearns for a more traditional lifestyle. She is still hopeful that her father, of whom she possesses a single, extremely hazy memory from early childhood, will come back into their lives and redress the balance, and further begrudges the family's non-stop relocation as a roadblock that will only delay his ability to trace them. It is a patently naive belief, and Charlotte's attachment to the idea is one of our first hints that, despite her professions to being the grown-up of her perpetually uprooted household, she is still assuredly a child inside. In that regard, she and her mother are more alike than either would care to admit.

The family's most recent move has brought them to Eastport, a small town in Massachusetts, and Charlotte is unusually buoyant about this particular fresh start, due to their new house being situated beside a convent, which fits in perfectly with her personal ambitions. The lack of formal structure in Charlotte's family life has driven her to seek out substitutes for parental authority, leading to a keen interest in the rituals and discipline of Catholicism, a source of more bemusement than contention from the Jewish (albeit seemingly non-practising) Mrs Flax, and aspirations of being a nun; we presume that a lifetime commitment to celibacy appeals to Charlotte as definitive rejection of the promiscuity modelled by her mother. Unfortunately, the convent turns out to be a mixed blessing, enabling a serpent to enter into her adolescent Eden - a serpent by the name of Joe (Michael Schoeffling), a handsome 26-year-old janitor who works at the convent, and who tests Charlotte's devotion to a life of purity. It's revealed throughout the course of the film that, despite her awareness of her mother's licentiousness, Charlotte actually has a poor understanding of how sexual relations work; at one point she faces a personal crisis spurred on by her erroneous assumptions that pregnancy (which she is inclined to see as divine punishment for lustfulness) could be brought about through kissing. Mrs Flax might have taught her daughter to drive yet she has taught her very little, consciously or unconsciously, about the facts of life. We suspect that this is because Mrs Flax's own knowledge of the world has stagnated in a similar state of infancy, and that her hit and run survival strategy, when it comes to houses and relationships, is indicative of her inability to handle any kind of long-term responsibility (besides her daughters, that is). When discussing her fondness for cars with prospective new beau Lou Landsky (Bob Hoskins), the owner of the local shoe store, she insists that, "If you hate a place, get in your car, and poof, you're gone." Mrs Flax is keen to sell her ostensible talent for ditching her missteps and starting anew elsewhere as the ultimate in freedom and resilience, but it becomes apparent that this is itself a form of entrapment, designed to protect her from ever having to get too introspective about her life choices and their impact upon her children. It is a tactic she has applied to just about any occurrence that might bring negative scrutiny upon the family - her reaction to a teacher expressing concern for Charlotte's mental health was also to move. This points us toward the irony implicit in the picture's title - neither Charlotte nor her mother know how to swim, with both characters constantly teetering on the brink of disaster, symbolised by the ominous stretch of water adjacent to the covenant...although it ends up being Kate (Christina Ricci), the youngest of the family, who takes the literal plunge on their behalf. She, ironically, is a very proficient swimmer.

By Mrs Flax's admission, the one area of common ground that she and Charlotte have consistently had between them is their mutual affection for Kate, Charlotte's half-sister - to the point that a low-key rivalry might once have developed between them, with Charlotte encouraging the toddler Kate to call her "Mom". Kate's father was an Olympic swimmer with whom Mrs Flax had a short-lived affair and, in keeping with the picture's general theme about the apple never falling far from the tree, Kate appears to have inherited his talents, with aspirations of being a competitive swimmer herself. Kate is something of a prodigy in the water, and she quickly has her new instructors at Eastport in awe of her abilities. Yet there's a sense that, in spite of Charlotte and Mrs Flax's professed love for Kate, both of them are, in actuality, too wrapped up in themselves to pay much attention to her. For the first half of the film, Kate exists largely on the sidelines, saying very little, with Charlotte and Mrs Flax regarding her more in the manner of a pet; they are amused by her antics, when they notice her at all, but tend to talk more about her than to her, and generally assume that she can keep herself entertained. In one scene, where Kate attempts, in the bathtub, to break the world record for holding her breath underwater, Mrs Flax questions the situation only indirectly through Charlotte, whom she advises to call an ambulance if Kate doesn't resurface in so many seconds; an ostensibly random slice of life from this most unconventional of clans that grimly foreshadows the film's climax, where Kate nearly drowns and both Charlotte and Mrs Flax are forced to confront their mutual negligence on the matter. Kate does not, at first, make her own views on the family's situation known; what finally coaxes her out of her shell is Lou's increased involvement their lives, which emboldens her to start talking a lot more and asserting her place within the unit. Kate's love of all things aquatic begins to manifest itself in the family's various modes of aesthetic expression, with Lou redecorating a bedroom in his apartment to an underwater theme for her amusement, and Mrs Flax dressing up as a mermaid for a New Year's party at her suggestion. Crucially, the Flaxes' shared joy over the mermaid costume is one of the rare instances in the story in which we see all three of them in perfect sync with one another.

Kate is clearly the emotional centre of her family, something that goes acknowledged but is mostly taken for granted, and her proficiency as a swimmer seems symbolic for her ability to survive the indifference and turbulence that is constantly thrust upon her by her elders. I am inclined to see the symbolism of the film's title as an allusion to Mrs Flax's desire to remain elusive, submerged and out of view, with none of her family's messy business bubbling to the surface; Kate's only recourse so far has been to remain an unknown, both to the world and to her family, but throughout the film we bear witness to her surfacing as a character, something that is all the more intriguing for the fact that it happens only implicitly, in the backdrop of Charlotte and Mrs Flax's conflict. As it turns out, Kate has questions about her own father and his persistent absence throughout her life, but these have not been adequately answered by either her mother or sister, whom she regularly asks to regale her with the story of her birth, presumably in the hope that she might, eventually, get closer to the truth. In the meantime, Kate seems open to the possibility of having Lou fill the void, which Lou himself seems more than happy to do, as he sets his sights on the lofty ambition of being the man to finally tame Mrs Flax into putting down roots. Charlotte also responds positively to Lou, and to the promise of stability he brings, but displays knee-jerk aversion to the suggestion that he could replace the absent father she is still anticipating might return some day. Charlotte's conflicting feelings toward Lou are not explored in any substantial depth, but touched on just enough for us to see how they mirror Mrs Flax's own. She too enjoys the fresh possibilities of having a new person in her life, but remains firmly on guard against the danger of allowing herself to become too attached to Lou - she is, after all, attuned to the likelihood that she and the girls will be moving on again soon enough.

A recurring motif throughout Mermaids has to do with the Flaxes' unusual meal routines. Mrs Flax has raised her children on a junk food diet comprised entirely of party snacks, spurring anything more demanding as "too much of a commitment" (somewhat conversely, she irritates the neighbourhood children by handing out tubes of toothpaste instead of candy to trick or treaters), and they do not eat together at the table, but rather scattered in various positions around the kitchen. Mrs Flax's relationship with food quite blatantly mirrors her relationships with men and communities - she's accustomed to fingering (literally and figuratively) but spurns anything more serious - while also revealing something of her fundamentally kiddish nature, which could, depending on your perspective, be perceived as either the sign of a free spirit or a stunted personality. At first, Lou is intrigued by Mrs Flax's knack for creating wonderful finger foods, but is bothered when he discovers that these form the nexus of the family's nutritional intake. Charlotte, naturally, favours the idea of more traditional dining, to the extent that at one point she even runs away from home and inserts herself into the household of a family of clean-cut strangers, marvelling at their entirely prosaic routines. Kate, ever the dark horse, reveals that she has similarly strong feelings - when Lou offers to cook a more traditional dinner for the Flaxes, she responds that: "Anything that's hot and not shaped like a star sounds good to me." Dinner on Lou's terms completely transforms the Flaxes' dynamic, with the family all gathered together and Kate and Charlotte sparring on equal terms, but is perceived as a threat by Mrs Flax, who is just as wary of the possibility of her children forming emotional attachments as herself, lest it hampers their ability to move on along with her.

Mrs Flax's penchant for bolting was ingrained from an early age; she informs Lou that she ditched her own parents the instant she'd received her high school diploma and her first pay-check. In the case of her ex-husband, and Charlotte's father, she was forced to suffer the indignity of being on the receiving end of this abandonment, when he departed shortly before Charlotte's birth, although what really aggrieved her about the situation was that he took her car in the process (given that the car has always functioned as a vessel of escape for Mrs Flax, we sense that this is symbolic for her inability to run away from the incoming responsibility of Charlotte). Charlotte unwittingly demonstrates how strongly she takes after both of her parents during her ill-informed pregnancy scare, when her impulse is to jump in the car and drive away, as if somehow she can outrun her imagined problem. She ends up in Connecticut, with the aforementioned ordinary family, who bemuse her for how greatly they resemble the families she has only seen on TV and that might as well, up until now, have been only fictional. Of course, Charlotte's giddy euphoria at the thought of being able to integrate herself into this band of conventional strangers makes it plain how hopelessly divorced from reality she is; while under their roof, her fictitious pregnancy appears to be all forgotten, and she regales the family with ridiculous tales about her parents' feats, living out the dual fantasy of being both a part of this new, most vanilla of households, and having originated from a much more exotic background, desires that seem almost oxymoronic. A parallel is implicit between Charlotte's delusions that all of her problems could be transcended by commandeering a brand new niche in life and her mother's chaotic lifestyle habits. But then, we're aware that the real issue prompting Charlotte's excursion had less to do with her imagined pregnancy per se than the communication barrier between herself and Mrs Flax. Charlotte had previously attempted to reach out to her mother about her concerns - while her mother was in the bathtub with the curtain drawn, reading a copy of Peyton Place, in case you needed a clearer visual metaphor - but, finding herself up against an instant emotional roadblock, was driven to set out in search of an alternative outlet for her angst. Significantly, it is Lou who eventually shows up to bring her back down to Earth, while Mrs Flax's anger at the situation is expressed more comically, through her psychopathic bludgeoning of a plate of flapjacks. 

Occasionally, the theme of apathetic parenting is reflected in the broader atmosphere. The assassination of Kennedy prompts the observation from Charlotte that, "It felt like there wasn't an adult left in the world", alluding to the fact that most adults are now indoors, glued to their radios and television sets for the latest news, but also to the complete breakdown of cultural stability the event seems to epitomize. Crucially, it is while the world is busy reacting to the president's death that Charlotte is compelled to seek out more dubious authority in the form of Joe, and she experiences her first degree of physical intimacy in sharing a kiss with him. It should be noted at this point that if you thought the scenario in Licorice Pizza was a bit squick, you might have similar problems here - Mrs Flax encourages the teenaged Charlotte to romance the 26 year-old Joe, and the appropriateness of this relationship is not, in itself, called into question. Mrs Flax later reacts badly to the news that there has been sexual intimacy between Charlotte and Joe, but it's not clear if her indignation stems from the sex itself or from its public nature (since everybody in Eastport finds out) or possibly even jealousy, Mrs Flax herself having recently come onto Joe following a dispute with Lou, something that has prompted Charlotte to up her game ("You want to drive Lou away, that's your business. You want Joe, that's war."). Joe is played by Schoeffling with a quiet melancholy that suggests murkier, potentially more hazardous depths, much like the convent river itself; an allusion that is reinforced when Charlotte surrenders her virginity to Joe, and this is juxtaposed with Kate's own literal fall into the river, which occurs when Charlotte was supposed to be watching over her. The implication is, of course, that both are wildly out of their depth, with Charlotte's failure to look out for Kate echoing her mother's own failure to adequately prepare her for the world ahead, other than equipping her with her own go-to survival mechanism of fleeing at the first hint of contention.

Kate is saved from drowning by the nuns, but the awareness that disaster was only narrowly averted while her mother and sister's attentions were each turned comes as a violent blow to Charlotte and Mrs Flax, who finally have the heated confrontation that has been simmering away this entire time. Mrs Flax's knee-jerk reaction to the incident is, unsurprisingly, to start packing her bags, explicitly blaming this latest move on Charlotte and the fact that everybody in town now knows about her dealings with Joe. This angers Charlotte, who has come to feel settled in Eastport, and Mrs Flax finds that, because Charlotte's compromised behaviours are so conspicuously a reflection of her own, it is difficult for her to claim the moral high ground in this situation. She does, however, question why, if Charlotte thinks so little of her life choices, she seems so determined to emulate the mistakes she made - by which she alludes principally to her misplaced trust in Charlotte's father, whom she married too hastily. Mrs Flax has a candid discussion with Charlotte about her father for what appears to be the first ever time, revealing that he did return, briefly, when Charlotte was four - her hazy memory of having encountered him around that time might not have been so misleading after all - but was only there to secure a divorce so that he could remarry, and had no intention of rekindling their relationship. Amid this catharsis, each of them reaches a compromise that opens the door for some degree of personal growth on either side; Mrs Flax agrees that, despite her misgivings, the family can remain in Eastport for the time being, while Charlotte finally lets go of her long-standing assumption that her father will one day come back.

Returning to my original question, does Mermaids end a little too happily, given the messiness that precedes it? I think it's certainly fair to say that the story is wrapped up a little too abruptly, through an epilogue where Charlotte gives us a glib rundown on each of the narrative loose ends. Her relationship with Joe concludes ambivalently - we learn that, while the Flaxes stayed put, he has left Eastport to start a nursery in California (already the subject of local rumour regarding his high school sweetheart, whom he may have gotten pregnant, it seems that this latest humiliation was too much for him to bear). He has not completely deserted Charlotte, however, continuing to keep in touch through postcard correspondence - in that regard, he has possibly graduated from ill-fated love interest to fulfilling the role that her estranged father might have had under better circumstances. Charlotte has lived with her own newfound notoriety, which she finds tolerable, and developed a fresh fascination with Greek mythology that seems to have supplanted her interest in Catholicism (implying either that her foray into sexual activity has impeded her ambitions of becoming a nun, or that it was only ever a passing phase to begin with). Kate has mostly recovered from her accident, although the implication that she might have suffered permanent hearing loss as a result of it is not treated too seriously. Finally, Mrs Flax has remained in her relationship with Lou; still, lest we fear that shes in danger of becoming too conventional a parent, it's confirmed in the final sequence that she has yet to bend to the orthodoxy of main courses, as we see Mrs Flax, Charlotte and Kate preparing their latest dinner, comprised of plates of assorted party food.

What does appear to have progressed is that the Flaxes are now accustomed to eating their finger food together as a family, as indicated in the places being set at the table, suggesting that they feel settled and united in their life in Eastport, while still retaining and relishing their fundamental kookiness as a unit (in that regard, it might be seen as an ending that aspires to have its cake and eat it). They also appear to perfectly contented in one another's company, for the first time since the brief interlude involving Mrs Flax's mermaid suit. All the same, it seems to me that the glibness of this ending is not entirely lost on the film, the closing images of which show Charlotte and Mrs Flax dancing in sync to "If You Wanna Be Happy" by Jimmy Soul (the lyrics of which caution us that glamorous women are typically not bearers of happy endings), while Kate has slipped outside into the yard and is grappling with the fiddly task of dragging her inflatable pool up the porch and into the house for some indoor swimming. Charlotte and Mrs Flax might finally be seeing eye to eye, but there's a sense that their focus is still not entirely fixed on Kate, who is once again being primarily left to her own devices (Lou's absence from the final sequence, meanwhile, creates ambiguity regarding his long-term footing within this unit). This family, and their newly-established sense of stability, has the potential still to either sink or swim. For now, though, we have, much like the characters themselves, eaten our fill of bite-sized nibbles, and we sense that our welcome, as spectators, may be overstayed.

The Angel and The Soldier Boy (aka Danger Surrounds, So Blue)

I noted a short while ago that it took just shy of a decade for The Snowman, Dianne Jackson's acclaimed 1982 adaptation of Raymond Briggs' 1978 children's book, to receive any kind of real successor, in the form of Dave Unwin's 1991 animation Father Christmas. When I said "real successor", I should specify that I was thinking very strictly in terms of festive entertainment based upon the works of Briggs (and, in the case of The Snowman and Father Christmas, an overlapping narrative universe). What I did not then take into consideration is that there were, in the interim years, a selection of noteworthy animated specials that were clearly riding on the coattails of The Snowman - among them, Granpa from 1989, which was also directed by Jackson for Channel 4 and, much like The Snowman, boasted a score composed by Howard Blake. Less directly connected, but no less a product of the "Snowman effect", was Grasshopper Productions' The Angel and The Soldier Boy, which also appeared during the 1989 festive season, but on BBC One, and might be seen as a rival production to Granpa. Directed by Alison De Vere, the film was adapted from a 1987 picture book by Peter Collington, which, much like Briggs' The Snowman, was comprised entirely of wordless images. The ingredients that made The Snowman such an enduring classic are all here, and honestly, they work just as effectively. Both films assume a child's eye perspective of the world, in which all manner of wonderful things could potentially occur wherever adult attentions are diverted, but with a distinctly melancholic tone; the beauty and the curiosity of the narrative worlds therein are matched by their vulnerability, the wistful sense that their treasures are only ephemeral and, like childhood itself, will evaporate all too soon. In both films, the soundtrack plays an indispensable role in determining this other-worldly mood and character; in the case of The Angel and The Soldier Boy this came courtesy of Irish folk group Clannad (whose previous soundtrack credentials included the 1984 series Robin of Sherwood and the 1989 documentary Atlantic Realm). Clannad also composed an original song for the film, the lovely, haunting ballad "A Dream In The Night", which to my ears stands shoulder to shoulder with "Walking In The Air" (the one area where The Snowman has it beat, however, is that The Angel and The Soldier Boy has no obvious equivalent to the "Walking In The Air" sequence itself, an animation moment so epic and transcendental that it thrills us no matter how many times we've seen it). Both films also received soundtrack releases containing spoken word versions of the story - for The Snowman, narration was supplied by Bernard Cribbins, while the audio version of The Angel and The Soldier Boy was narrated by Tom Conti.

The plot of The Angel and The Soldier Boy could be described as a non-verbal, more ethereal version of Toy Story, in following the nocturnal adventures of a pair of miniature dolls belonging to a small girl. The dolls, the titular angel and soldier, are deeply devoted to one another, something that is put to the test when a disturbance to their peaceful equilibrium causes them to be torn apart and pit against the wider world beyond their owner's bedroom. While the girl is sleeping, her piggy bank, containing a single pound coin, is attacked and looted by a band of pirates, who have materialised from the pages of the picture book she was reading on the preceding evening. The soldier boy intervenes and attempts to stop them, but is overpowered and carried off by the pirates. When the angel awakens and discovers he is missing, she journeys out into the vast unknown, determined to reunite with her beloved companion and retrieve the stolen treasure. She is helped in her mission by a couple of resourceful plush toys, a mouse and a bear, and hindered by the family cat, who reacts much as you would expect a cat to react toward any miniature being unlucky enough to cross its path. At the end (and very much unlike Toy Story), there is ambiguity as to whether the events of the film were real, or a dream of the sleeping girl, who awakens with what appears to be intuitive knowledge of how the angel and the soldier boy have assisted her.

Although faithful to the set-up and imagery of Collington's book, De Vere's film makes a number of notable changes to the original story, which seem largely geared towards making it a fuller narrative with a more conventionally dramatic climax. Whereas Collington's book opens with the girl and her mother already in the process of reading the pirate book, the film contains an expanded prologue establishing that the narrative events take place after the girl's birthday, and that all of the key items - the angel and the soldier boy, the pirate book, the piggy bank and the pound coin - were given to her as presents. The film omits the single interlude of Collington's book that frankly never sat well with me - the gratuitously brutal part where the angel fends off and kills an attacking wasp by lancing it with the soldier's sword - and instead has her be attacked by a couple of flies and a spider, all of whom survive the experience. Finally, the third act differs quite significantly (even if the ultimate conclusion is effectively the same); in the book, the angel rescues the soldier boy while the pirates are sleeping, and the two of them manage to uncover the coin and transport it back to the girl's bedroom without attracting the attentions of either the pirates or the cat, but in this version of the story they are noticed and relentlessly pursued by the pirates the entire way back. The plush mouse and bear were seen in Collington's book, but did not come to life to assist the title characters as they do here. The pirates are also clearly vanquished in De Vere's film, something that does not happen in Collington's book, with the angel and soldier boy managing to banish them back into the pages of the book from which they came (in the book, there is nothing to suggest that the pirates, whether real or constructs of the girl's imagination, will not return to strike again on a different night, but perhaps the reassurance of that final image is enough to counteract our concerns).

Much of the appeal of Collington's imagery comes from its clever use of perspective, as the dolls navigate the assorted features of an ostensibly mundane household, which from their eye-view appear vast and overwhelming (recreated from Collington's illustrations, in De Vere's film, is an image the of the girl's bed, which seems to stretch out into infinity as the angel leaves the raided piggy bank and first sets out on her journey). A certain tension develops between the reader's recognition of the obstacles in question, and their evident unfamiliarity to the heroes. Sometimes the reader's knowledge is a step ahead of that of the characters - for example, the reader is aware of the cat stalking the angel before the angel herself becomes aware, and the nature of the threat is immediately comprehensible to the reader (note that this is not the case in the spoken word version, where Conti introduces the cat as a "monster with slanting yellow eyes"). At other times, the readers' perspective is more closely aligned with the limited scope of the characters, such as when the angel, pursued by the cat, seeks refuge beneath a piano; initially, only the pedals of the piano are shown, so the reader might not instantly recognise the object as a piano. The ordinary, Collington posits, can take on dynamic new life when presented through fresh eyes. Still, for all of the hostility the dolls encounter in the animal life lurking around the household, the greatest adversity comes from their pirates nemeses who originate from the same realm of childhood fantasy, but are presented as intruders who threaten the peace of both the dolls and the girl, tearing the angel and the soldier boy apart and stealing the girl's savings. They are a contaminating presence, intent on disrupting the girl's childhood idyll by subverting it into something more precarious and fraught with peril; it is perhaps fair to say that the dolls and the pirates represent opposite sides of the same coin. As to the literal coin at the centre of their dispute, in both the book and the film there is humor to be found in seeing the dolls and the pirates grapple over what is, in the wider scheme of things, a pretty insignificant treasure, yet it clearly seems much greater to their miniaturised world; we suspect that the pound coin's value is similarly magnified in the eyes of the girl, for it is all the money she has in the world. When the coin is deposited inside the piggy bank, it represents an investment in her future; as such, it takes on far more than its immediate worth, and when the dolls and the pirates fight for ownership of the coin they are effectively battling for dominance of the girl's blossoming psyche. Similarly, the angel's need to confront the world beyond the girl's bedroom can be seen a a projection of the girl's own mounting awareness of the world beyond her own unfledged scope. As with The Snowman, the real underlying threat throughout appears to be time, and the certainty that, eventually, all things must change.

I have long interpreted The Snowman as a celebration of the beautiful moments in life that cannot last, with the final, tragic images serving as acknowledgement of their impermanence. There are no villains in the film, except for our intuitive understanding that when the sun comes out, the snowman will inevitably disappear. The destruction of the snowman, and the grief exhibited by his young creator, could be interpreted as a metaphor for the loss of a loved one, or alternatively the waning of childhood innocence, with the boy's soaring fantasies ultimately proving no match for the harshness of reality. Of course, the film closes with the boy discovering that he still has the scarf he received from Father Christmas during his adventure with the snowman, suggesting that a part of what he has lost has survived, and will stay with him (note that this aspect of the story is exclusive to Jackson's film; the scarf did not feature in Briggs' book). The film could thus be read as a meditation on the successful navigation of change, and the preservation of emotional integrity, even if it closes at the rawest possible moment. The Angel and The Soldier Boy, which entails a similar intersection of the domestic and the fantastical, but takes the form of a more conventional struggle between the forces of darkness and light, shares a similar preoccupation with the ephemeral nature of childhood, something that is more pronounced in De Vere's film. The decision to make the girl's birthday the narrative starting point links the events therein more obviously to her personal growth. Judging by the number of candles on her cake the girl has just turned six - she still has a long way to go before puberty and adulthood is certainly nothing more than a vague flicker on the far horizon, but already she is beginning to feel the threat that her world is slowly evolving, with the presents she receives - the dolls, the pirate book, the piggy bank and the coin - all being tokens of this incoming change. Unlike in Collington's book, in which the girl is seen reading the pirate book with her mother and falls asleep immediately after, De Vere's film makes the noteworthy alteration of having the girl continue to read in secret after her mother has left the room. Here, she falls asleep while reading, causing the book to slip from her hands and land upon the bedroom floor, and enabling the pirates to emerge from the sprawled-open pages (in the original story, the pirates seem to have no difficulty crawling up from the book while its pages are closed). This encroachment on the girl's childhood utopia is thus linked to an overstepping of her own bounds; the pirates enter in because the girl grows a little too curious about the darker world beyond her own callow existence, and chooses to explore it without the guidance of adult authority. At the end of the film, when the pirates have been returned to the book, the awakened girl is contented to leave it lying on the bedroom floor, even as she restores the dolls and the piggy bank to their proper places (something underscored in the audio version, where Conti states that, "The pirate book could stay there"); she has decided that the darkness and danger of the world, enticing as it is, should remain untouched for now. It is, nonetheless, lying dormant, waiting to be picked up and rediscovered on a subsequent evening.

Unlike the hero of The Snowman, the girl is ostensibly given a reprieve at the end of the story; the intrusion is fought off and the purity of her childhood utopia is apparently preserved, as is signified in her being permitted to sleep once again with her fantastical protectors by her side. Yet it is not exactly an ending in which the status quo has been restored. The final images of both Collington's book and De Vere's film emphasise that a vital change has taken place; whereas the girl had previously slept with the angel and soldier boy close by upon her pillow, their position has now shifted so that they are kept firmly within her hands while she sleeps. This represents a solidifying of the bond between the girl and her dolls, while also being indicative of the girl's newfound attunement to the dangers of her world. It is evident that a disturbance has been felt by the girl, and that she has adjusted her outlook accordingly. Though she is shown returning to sleep at the end of the story, the girl has undergone an awakening, one less dramatic than that experienced by the boy in The Snowman, but indicating a similar development in her understanding of the world. Unlike the boy, the girl has not experienced loss, but she has experienced the fear of loss (perhaps vicariously, via the temporary separation of the angel and the soldier boy), and has assumed the role of protector. This leads us into the crucial question dangled at the end of the story - did the dolls and the pirates really come to life and battle for the ownership of the girl's coin, or did the girl simply dream it following an overindulgence of pirate lore? In both the book and the film, this particular narrative possibility is implemented so subtly that it may go altogether unnoticed by younger audiences, who are presumably more liable to read the story at its surface level. At the end of the book, the angel and the soldier boy manage to restore the coin and piggy bank to the girl's bedside table and find their own way back to the pillow before the girl awakens. Nothing has changed physically about the arrangement she discovers on awakening, but the girl is visibly unsettled, and she checks, seemingly by reflex, that both of her dolls are still present. She kisses them appreciatively, before reaching across for her piggy bank, which she keeps similarly close in the final illustration, presumably to protect it from any additional pirate attacks. The pig, curiously, is not included in the final embrace in De Vere's film, where the girl seems quite content to leave it in its designated spot on the bedside table (perhaps as further reassurance that the pirates have been defeated, at least for the time being). In the film, the girl also awakens to more of a physical disturbance, with the book, dolls and piggy bank all having been displaced to her bedroom floor - arguably, this detracts from the interpretation that the story, in this particular retelling, was merely a dream, as it is not clear how the dolls and pig might then have found their way to the floor (unless the girl did a heap of tossing and turning in her sleep). Nevertheless, the Clannad song that plays during the end-credits, advising us that "Dreams can be so real and so true", does appear to connect the events to the girl's nocturnal fantasies and the persuasive life they assume.

There is, likewise, ambiguity in the closing imagery - although the girl holds her toys in a final protective embrace (implying that she has graduated to being a parental figure of sorts), we sense that there is mutual reassurance in their arrangement, with the girl drawing confidence from the knowledge that the angel and the soldier boy are safely at her side. They have, much like the pirates, entered the girl's life as souvenirs of her ongoing progression, but they represent a counterbalance to the precariousness introduced by the pirates. As she is exposed to the darkness of the world, so too does she develop the strength and resilience to rise to whatever challenges are thrown her way, with the angel and the soldier boy serving as totems for these qualities. This mastery of her insecurities is conveyed differently according to medium - in Collington's book, the house becomes less terrifying on the return journey, with little stirring other than the angel and the soldier boy, and the cat who previously menaced the angel now dozing peacefully, while in De Vere's film every step of the return journey becomes a struggle, but the pirates suffer a more conventional defeat at the end. That the girl may not, in either case, have seen the last of these pirates does not matter; her ability to weather the adversity they bring is also flourishing. At the end of the spoken word version, Conti informs us that she will "wake up properly and play with [the dolls] in the morning", indicating that she relishes the prospect of whatever lies ahead in her continuously changing world.

Finally, I want to make note of the title sequences in De Vere's film, which do something that Collington's book did not - they offer us an exterior view of the house in which the entirety of the narrative action unfolds. In Collington's illustrations, our only window into the outside world was through the vague, distant glimpses through the literal windows during the portion of the story in which the angel scouts the various upstairs rooms for signs of the soldier boy, passing several sleeping family members; presumably, from the dolls' perspective the whole notion of a larger outside world would be utterly incomprehensible. In De Vere's film, the exterior shots serve an additional narrative purpose, in establishing an important transition; at the beginning, the girl's friends are seen leaving after her birthday celebration, signifying the onset of evening and the time in which the dream world becomes active. As the end-credits roll, and Clannad are heard singing about the beauty of dreams, we again see the house from the outside, surrounded by the dark of night, cluing us in that the dream world has not yet subsided and that the girl's imagination potentially has more wonders in store before the night is out. The glimpse of the house from the outside also acts as a reminder of the wider perspective; having spent the film immersed in a vigorous struggle between miniature beings that, for as long as it lasted, might as well have been the centre of the entire universe, seeing the house from the outside calls to mind just how small and fragile these dolls - and indeed the house's human occupants - are in the grander scheme. From an outside perspective, very little of real significance has occurred throughout this dream in the night. But it sure did mean the world from within.

The World's Most Horrifying Advertising Animals #40: Dolittle Auditions (featuring Robert Downey Jr)

Dolittle (2020) is one of those movies that always seemed destined for oblivion. The Robert Downey Jr vehicle (cinema's third incarnation of the mega-talented, multilingual veterinarian who first appeared in the writings of Hugh Lofting), was released to theatres on 17th January (the traditional dump month) to tepid box office and unsympathetic reviews. There were a few articles noting the production's bloated budget ($175 million) and the reported barrage of behind-the-scenes headaches, general bemusement that all of this be in aid of such a disposal end product, a few Twitter jokes along the lines of "Tony Stark did not die for this!", and then the world promptly forgot about it in less than a week. Oh sure, it was remembered in time for the following year's Razzie nominations (of which it raked in a generous six, winning one), but I doubt that anybody was rooting terribly hard against this throwaway kiddy flick when Sia's Music was much fresher on their minds. Unlike Cats, it was not the type of bad movie that merited memetic infamy, just overall indifference. Frankly, I suspect that would have been the outcome no matter what the film's fortunes. It could have been a modest hit and all cultural memory of the thing would still have evaporated by the time of The Call of The Wild. In an alternate universe where there was no global pandemic to immediately distract us from whatever cinematic train wrecks might have gone down in our last fleeting days of normalcy, I still couldn't see this leaving much of a footprint. It seemed the textbook example of an expendable production, with no greater enthusiasm behind its being other than, "Nobody's used this IP in a while...surely something can be done with it?"

All true, but that doesn't do justice to what a wholly confounding experience Dolittle is. It's been well-documented that the film underwent extensive retooling in 2019 when test audiences weren't having much fun with director Stephen Gaghan's original presentation; an assortment of comedy writers were brought in to pepper the script with new gags, including Chris McKay, Seth Rogan, Brendan O'Brien and John Whittington, but their involvement didn't stick for various reasons. The reshoots wound up being overseen by director Jonathan Liebesman, with Downey reportedly having a lot of input with the new material. The film's troubled production permeates every last inch of the final product, which has been edited and re-edited so many times over that absolutely no one moment feels like it's flowing cogently into the next. It seems profoundly curious that the original cut's lack of humor was apparently such a major sticking point behind the scenes, because by far the biggest problem with the version we got is that it feels the obligation to be funny. If it had focussed less on the comedy and more on the adventure/discovery aspects of the story then it might have been a decent (if still ultimately rather forgettable) family feature. Instead, the plot gets put on hold every few seconds so that the animals can make anachronistic quips - quips that have been conspicuously crowbarred in after the fact and fail to gel with anything else that's going on around them. It's a too-many-cooks situation on screen as much as it was off, with none of the cluttered animal cast working in unison with one another, toward a bigger picture that's in any way cohesive. Humor ranges from the confusing (I'm not exaggerating when I say that one such gag involves a random orangutan appearing out of nowhere and doing a non-sequitur dance for no reason) to the twenty years too late (there's something despairingly old hat about inserting Godfather references into children's movies in 2020, particularly when it's that same Godfather moment we've seen parodied countless times already). Universal clearly felt that a straightforward treatment of Lofting's stories would be too old-fashioned for contemporary viewership, and desired something more akin to the rapid-fire, improvisational flow of The Lego Movie, yet the movie still feels hopelessly behind the times, a throwback to an earlier age when we might have found the idea of a bunch of talking animals doing wacky improv humor more charming in of itself. In other words, it seems to be looking to exploit the mentality that enabled the 1998 Dr. Dolittle with Eddie Murphy to be a big enough hit back in the day (despite not being all that great either).

The oddly dated nature of Dolittle stretched all the way to the film's teaser, which revolved around Downey auditioning the cast of animals and getting them to re-enact lines from "classic" movies (I personally am reluctant to accept Notting Hill as a classic). None of the footage therein shows up in the film itself, yet it's an entirely accurate little snapshot of what watching the film proper is like (but for the fact that Downey himself is not in character, so we get no preview of the Welsh accent that had critics so baffled). The whole thing feels like a relic from the 1990s, the presence of CGI animals and quotes from a few post-90s movies notwithstanding. It's the kind of thing which, if they had done it with the cast of critters from the Murphy Dr. Dolittle, I would envision critics and audiences alike going absolutely wild over. At the time, the spectacle of seeing movie animals talk and their mouths actually moving was still novel enough that people could be wowed by it. More importantly, in the pre-DreamWorks era we weren't quite so overdosed on the incongruity of seeing characters from family films regurgitating lines from R-rated entertainment their target audience presumably hadn't seen (if they'd had that Chris Rock-voiced guinea pig from Dolittle '98 doing that same Scarface routine, I guarantee it would have gotten a stronger reaction - by contrast, the moment in the 2009 film G-Force where the Sam Rockwell-voiced guinea pig cried out "Yippee-ki-yay, coffee maker!" elicited mainly groans). I can actually think of a more contemporary example that offered more-or-less the same premise - in the early 00s, shortly after the release of Cats & Dogs, there was some chatter about a promotional video (issued with the press kit and not actually used in promoting the film to the general public) purporting to be the "audition tape" of lead cat Mr Tinkles, in which he recreated several iconic movie moments. Those who had seen it seemed to find it hilarious, funnier than the movie itself (admittedly a low bar?). I was intrigued, but this being a little before the days of YouTube, I had few options for accessing it myself (reportedly it was included on the film's DVD release, but this wasn't a title I was inclined to buy). A few years ago, I finally took the trouble to look it up and...honestly, given the reception at the time I'd expected more than just a bunch of scatological cat puns (one article I'd read claimed that Tinkles got "increasingly irate" as the auditions went on, but...he does not). Still, while there's nothing particularly witty or inventive about the featured parodies, there is, perhaps, something about the recognition-trading that comes off as more playful than it does cynical (even if it ultimately plays as more of an in-joke between the production crew). Better than the movie itself? Possibly, but then I wasn't that keen on Cats & Dogs to begin with, so...

The puns in the Tinkles video might be corny, but they at least take coherent advantage of the fact that that the character reciting them is a cat. In the case of the Dolittle auditions teaser, I really am scratching my head in trying to suss out the logic behind the allocation of each quotation to the species in question. The only two instances in which I can vaguely comprehend the thinking behind the alignment are the gorilla and the sugar glider and the mouse and the squirrel. But what exactly is the joke in having the duck perform a one-liner from Jaws? Or throwing in a misplaced "shark", for that matter? What did the ostrich in leg warmers do that caused him so much embarrassment? He's a male ostrich, so I'm going to hazard a guess it had to do with reading one of Roberts' lines when he was supposed to read one of Grant's - but if that is the joke, then I don't think it comes across very well (Plimpton's kind of androgynous anyhow...he's got male plumage, but then a) so do the otherwise femininely-coded ostriches from Disney's Fantasia, so Hollywood doesn't have the best track record on this point and b) how much do the people who made Dolittle even care about ostrich biology anyway? If they're still pushing that tired old misconception that they bury their heads at the first sign of trouble?). And then there's the most puzzling question of them all - what on earth is going in the skit with the polar bear reading from the script for Meet The Parents, a moment so flagrantly disconcerting that Downey doesn't even have a punchline to offer? I mean, that particular Robert De Niro line sounds enormously questionable when taken out of context, not eased by the rather sensual pose the bear is assuming and the downright disturbing way it keeps licking its lips. And Downey has the nerve to berate the squirrel for not appreciating that it's a family movie? (The "No humans allowed (except one)" gag is charming enough, but the trailer immediately contradicts it in showing another human operating the clapperboard.)

I find myself asking what just about anything happening in the Dolittle teaser has to do with anything else. But then I was asking that exact question about so much of Dolittle itself. As it happens, the teaser is confusing and awkward and filled with a hunk of dead space where jokes are apparently being tossed up but just not landing...which is what makes it such perfectly dead-on promotion for the film it's representing. Make no mistake, Dolittle is a catastrophic (if basically harmless) mess of a picture, but the sheer amount of chaos to be squeamishly autopsied from the thing has, in all fairness, given me way more bang for my entertainment buck than I ever received from the aforementioned Murphy Dolittle - which, more than anything else, was just kind of banal.

The World's Most Horrifying Advertising Animals #39: Dogs & Cats Living Together (J2O)

Cats and dogs are fundamentally incompatible. At least, according to traditional assumption. The fact that, as I write this, innumerable Fidos and Cleos the world over are occupying the same porches and kitchen floors without skirmish is not going to deter us from seeing the two as diametrically opposed; forces of nature as irreconcilable as fire and ice. It's certainly the case that wild felids and canids have long competed with one another for food sources and apex predator status, but when it comes to domestic dogs and cats, the nature of this heated rivalry may be more a reflection of human vanity than anything else - dogs and cats are the two most popular varieties of house pet, and what they are now in inadvertent competition for is our favour. Wherever our own allegiances fall in this ongoing stand-off (whether we identify as dog people or cat people, if either) inevitably ends up saying something about our own personality clashes. On top of which, there is something endearingly Odd Couple about the notion of two species that would not ordinarily be inclined to mix being made to co-exist within the same confined, highly artificial spaces; it seems unavoidable that the pair would end up getting on one another's nerves. Cats and dogs are like the ultimate sitcom roommates, their enmity both a perfectly mundane fact of life, and a perfectly neurotic emblem for the intrinsically chaotic nature of the universe.

That's the thinking behind this 2012 campaign from Bartle Bogle Hegarty, in which a pack of dogs gains entry into an all-cat party thanks to the one patch of common ground shared by the two ancient adversaries (at least, in the context of this advert) - a weakness for fruit-based soft drinks. The instant the dogs walk through the door and find themselves surrounded by a sea of suspicious feline peepers, we know that these would-be party animals are well out of their element. Fortunately, these dogs had the foresight to come with a pack of Brtivic J2O, which melts the cats' hostilities, and the two tribes manage to put aside their differences for the sake of having a really top notch gathering. Some of the cats and dogs even appear to begin tangling in a romantic sense, which might be the ultimate transgression of the established norm (one of the dogs seems to draw the line at being encouraged to eat cat food, though). This breakdown of canine/feline antipathy could only represent the tip of the iceberg in an incoming age of interspecies harmony - at the end of the ad, the door bell rings, and that other well-known enemy of all things feline enters the party, bearing their own crate of J2O (there is, nevertheless, something a little ghoulish in the way the British Blue keeps licking their lips while greeting them). The obvious teaching being that J2O stands for fun and celebration; a reminder that our shared love of a good time should take precedent over whatever compulsion we have to scratch each other's hair out. And what better way to illustrate that than with a miraculous, Britvic-facilitated truce between our own longtime feuding companions?

It sounds like an utterly adorable scenario on paper, but what makes the ad unnerving is the surreal visual strategy used to animate the dogs and cats, in superimposing animal faces onto human bodies - a choice registered with startling dissonance in the opening moments, when we see a human hand wipe away the vapor from a taxi cab's window, shortly before our protagonist's pug features emerge into view. The freakiness of the spot is merely reinforced by that rather...suspect song playing in the background ("Pussy cat" by DJ Yoda). The obvious temptation nowadays, when contemplating efforts to represent house pets through distortions of the human form, would be to compare it to the eyeball-searing visuals in Tom Hooper's 2019 adaptation of the Broadway musical Cats, but I think that does a tremendous disservice to the flesh and blood critters featured here, who are as charming as you would imagine. The only point in the ad where I detect that level of skin-crawling uncanniness is during a background gag, when one of the cats dunks their distinctively human hand into a goldfish bowl and pilfers one of the unfortunate orange carps swimming around therein. That might be taking the joke a mite too far. Otherwise, the ad's off-centre flavour derives from the conspicuous mismatch between the fundamental cuteness of the faces of the real animals and the confounding wrongness of the human frames to which they are apparently affixed, so that it looks, appealingly, like one of those collages you create by cutting up and rearranging pictures from magazines. The human mannerisms handle much of the narrative weightlifting - even before we've reached the cats' party, tension is established in the the offhand manner with which the pug is charged with carrying the J2Os, indicating that he is the omega of this particular pack and setting up for a moment of catharsis when the items in question end up being the all-important tension dissolver - but it's the expressiveness of the animals (the nervousness of the pug, the by turns standoffishness and playful curiosity of the cats, etc) that has the real emotional resonance.

What I'm most inclined to liken it to is the works of William Wegman, a visual artist famed for his photographs of Weimaraners with human bodies (Wegman, working in the age before digital manipulation, had to be deeply creative in how he pulled off the juxtaposition). Like Wegman's Weimaraners, these juice-swilling party animals provide a distorted mirror image - one that's eccentric and endearing on one level while on another hammering home the intrinsic freakiness of the human form; how familiar and yet weirdly monstrous it looks when taken out of place. Our canine and feline friends have long served as reflections of who we are - in this instance, what else are they saying but that we're all one another's neurotic sitcom roommates, slowly chipping away at each other's nerves in our confined, highly artificial environs? But we'll keep dreaming of the day when we can throw all our differences to the wind and just get down together.