The American Rabbit

[Picklepower]

I couldn't even finish American Rabbit. And I finish almost every movie I start, no matter the quality, the last movie I couldn't finish was 1313 Hercules Unbound.

 

[Mrs Paul]

For whatever reason when you guys kept mentioning this movie, I thought you were talking about "An American tail". That movie with the immigrant mice. That one actually is a pretty decent movie.

This shit is awful. Just awful.

That's one of my favorites! Don Bluth is awesome.

 

[Mrs Paul]

I have to ask, (no longer being able to watch videos online, as my computer's sound no longer works) just how bad is it really? I mean, are we talking MST3K bad, or Star Wars Holiday Special bad?

 

[Picklepower]

I have to ask, (no longer being able to watch videos online, as my computer's sound no longer works) just how bad is it really? I mean, are we talking MST3K bad, or Star Wars Holiday Special bad?

Poorly made kids movie, straight to video level, with no interesting characters or soul. Very dull, I couldn't finish it, and I finish almost every movie I start. The dude who does the voice of Garfield, Lorenzo something, forgot the name, is the only voice I recognized, but his character does nothing and doesn't say anything entertaining.

 

[GV 002]

Another good talking animal movie is, Rock and Rule. When they went to the club in American Rabbit, it just reminded me that I could be watching Rock and Rule, or Fritz the Cat, instead.

You beat me to it, I actually adore this movie! I could go into full sperg-mode about it, being a massive animation buff, but I'll restrain myself.

EDIT - Can't resist just this one thing - Cow brains. Just...cow brains. Genius!

 

[Trilby]

Though I know I'm late to the party on this one, but I can't help but wax some nostalgic anecdotes on this miserable dreck!

Skip to 8:28 then you can stop watching.

Just being taken away from the family you've loved is a bit emotional letdown! Damn old rabbit geezer and his confounded American ideals!

At the time Chris saw this movie, he wasn't pampered; he was plopped down in front of the TV with bargain-bin movies as his babysitter while his parents went out. It wasn't until the Greene County Shake-Up that Bob 'n' Barb began keeping him sated.

Somehow I keep picturing the opening to the HBO series "Dream On" and Chris'll just keep conjuring up these stock footage clips in his head all the time!

considering how very smooth the animation is, especially for its time period, I shudder to think of how much time, paper, acetate, and paint went into this almost non-exsistent thing.

Toei Animation had better things to do than this, like Fist of the North Star!

That's the same thing I thought, I haven't finished watching this shit yet, but the furry in me says best character is the wolf with the Nazi helmet. They should have made and R rated Fritz the Cat style movie about the biker gang.

Technically they're jackals I believe, but yeah, they should've done that. Instead the guys get ditched by the true villain of this film and we never see 'em again (of course I probably wanted them to side with the good guys at Niagara Falls but tough nipples on that).

I've seen the movie, and it really is... whatever the cinematic equivalent of "shovelware" is. Shovelfilm?
I'm sure this has probably been pointed out somewhere before, but American Rabbit gets his powers just handed to him for free because of what a great guy he is, which is pretty much what Chris expects out of life.

Terrible message to send to kids really (but then I probably fell for it too)

I haven't even finished the first half and I'm already completely lost.
•Is that old rabbit following him a pedophile?

I'm sure he's suppose to be a "guardian angel" of sorts, but that's all I can think of.

•What exactly makes him worthy of having powers?
•Why is he "the American rabbit"? I don't even think it takes place in America
•What's with the fruity roller skates?
•Why does he need skates when he can fly

Plot conveniences and a lot of holes!

•Why does the mom rabbit have such prominent cleavage?

Bored animator perhaps?

•Why was this shitty movie even conceived?

Money.

Man, I don't get why Chris even feels the need to bring up this movie. I'mshocked that someone who is legendary for having exceedingly shitty tastes even enjoyed this.

Takes all kinds I guess. This was Lowest Common Denominator crap at it's worst.

OK, I sat through this entire movie. I have seen worse cartoons (for one, "Elm-Chanted Forest" is worse, don't ever bother watching that), but this one was still a real turd. It's a product of the era when people thought it was fine for a cartoon to be totally retarded because only little kids watch cartoons and it's good enough for 'em. The plot is almost as stupid as something from an issue of Sonichu.

Reminded I know a few who loved The Elm-Chanted Forest. While I barely ever saw it as a kid, seeing it as an adult, the Croatian director behind it really loved the Preston Blair book I noticed. Everyone looks like they came right off the pages in that.

The Wikipedia article says

Clubhouse Pictures was a pretty sleazy operation as I noticed. Much of their content often involved a few original stuff like American Rabbit or Will Vinton's "The Adventures of Mark Twain" (a much BETTER work Chris should have seen), and recycled filler like "Heathcliff: The Movie" (really just episodes of the TV show strung together with a thin plot surrounding the cat telling his nephews about his life) or Hanna-Barbera's "Hey There, It's Yogi Bear!" from the 60's. The only good thing Atlantic ever released that wasn't a Clubhouse Pictures film (and it's not Teen Wolf), would be StarChaser: the Legend of Orin, though of course that was a derivative Star Wars flop to begin with, but an interesting one if you got to see it in 3D.

I saw it a loooong time ago, and I hated it back then. It's really inept at what it's trying to be. Like, they build up the villain to really being the vulture, but the movie pretty much just says "whatever" two seconds later. For fucks sake, don't bother to do a (horrible) twist like that if you don't even give a shit about it.

Reminded myself of that buildup of the vulture having a doomsday lever to pull and it breaks in his talons, that's exactly how much this movie hates us!

Chris probably loves it because it's so simple. There is no complex plot, or complex plot twists, nor anything remotely exciting enough to give anybody prickly wricklies. My favorite movie growing up was An American Tail (which apparently came out the same year). I hold it dear to me because the movie convinced me to care about the characters, to worry when they're in danger, and cry at the saddest moment right before the ending. Which of course means that Chris would have cried early on and refuse to watch the rest. Or fail to get the point at all.

My favorite at a young age will always be The Secret of NIMH.

The mid 80s had some fantastic cartoons: The Mysterious Cities of Gold
Mr Rossi
Around The World In 80 Days With Willie Fogg
Ulysses 31
Dungeons and Dragons
Transformers (not that CG shite that Chris loves so much)
The Amazing Spiderman
Flight of Dragons
Thundercats
He Man and the Masters of the Universe.

That's just a few from the top of my head which I can still enjoy today.

There certainly were better stuff in the 80's, you simply had to look for it. In my case, I had cable TV and often spotted stuff showing up on Nickelodeon or The Disney Channel in those days, like the Mr. Rossi films (though I recall other Eurotrash toonage would show up like Asterix). Sadly we Americans missed out on Willy Fog, which I think would've went over big had it been on Nickelodeon in the 80's opposite Danger Mouse and Mysterious Cities of Gold. Cable TV is a joke these days once it became too mainstreamed.

Elm-Chanted Forest? The villain was like some cactus dude. I remember it had some big dumb bear that was always saying he was going to go drink a "light bear" (like "light BEER", get it? ha-yuk!). Chris wouldn't have liked it cause the protagonist was human. It was made in some East European shit-hole around the same time as American Rabbit. Maybe the story wasn't so dumb in the original commie language version, but it probably was.

Technically it was made in the Croatian section of Yugoslavia, which while being communist, wasn't part of the Soviet Bloc, though I would say I enjoyed what use to be done there long before the breakup of the country. A sequel of sorts to The Elm-Chanted Forest was also produced a few years later called "The Magician's Hat", though it was never brought over here (someone subbed it on YouTube so there's that for anyone curious to see what they did there).

Sorry to bring up an old topic, buuuuuut

In second grade at school I remember being forced to sit through a horrible Eastern European cartoon over a great deal many days when we couldn't go outside to play after lunch. It was called Willy the Sparrow. Basically in order to teach this kid to be kind to all animals, he's turned into a sparrow and has to live as one for a while. It's dumb and boring. I was pissed every day we had to watch another ten or fifteen minutes of it since nothing really happened. I don't think the European version was really different either. Like, the only changes they made between the two versions is that one of the sparrows didn't willingly get drunk (or something like that) and the cat only wanted to "get revenge" on the kid-turned-sparrow for hitting it with a water balloon or whatever in the American version. Because he can't have alcohol or death in American cartoons according to everyone who thinks kids can't comprehend or handle anything.

Too often that is the same with bringing over something from another culture to the US. We've had the same thing with Japanese cartoons often getting changed extensively over things like violence or foods or names of the characters. The US version of Willy The Sparrow wouldn't have you think this was taking place in Budapest (the film was from Hungary), but perhaps somewhere in Boston.

North Korean cartoons look fucking awesome.

Would you believe this series is almost 40 years old! Here's the latest episode!

One more clip and I'm done, anyone remember seeing this Dutch classic on The The Disney Channel?

I'm sure after this the thread will be closed for good, I'm just glad I got my two cents in.

 

[Coldgrip]

I can see why Chris would like the American Rabbit. Extremely basic story and a minimum of character development (if you could even call it that). Something that wouldn't confuse his little autistic brain.

Having said that, Chris needed to watch Wizards

 

[Trilby]

I can see why Chris would like the American Rabbit. Extremely basic story and a minimum of character development (if you could even call it that). Something that wouldn't confuse his little autistic brain.

Shame really, but what could you do? It was a hopeless case.

Having said that, Chris needed to watch Wizards

Excellent choice!

 

[Meowthkip]

Holy shit this thread is my speed. Fuckin' animation geekery all over the dang place.

But yes, I watched this movie before I came across this thread, like a couple years ago? I found the full version of it linked on the CWCki. It's a very strange movie but it's not interesting enough to really hold your attention. But given how Chris has shit taste in almost everything, I guess that might be why he liked it.

I also like how the rabbit decided to give those weasels a chance despite his friends being racist against them and it turns out their prejudices were right. Perhaps that says a lot about why Chris is so hard to budge on his own bigotry.

I vaguely remember American Rabbit, Elm-Enchanted Forest, and Sebastian Star Bear. I hate to admit it, but I actually liked Sebastian Star Bear ... of course, I was, like, 8-10 at the time. I remember watching it on the Disney Channel during the channel's earlier years. I probably couldn't sit through it now.

Speaking of obscure cartoons, how about The Bluffers? I vaguely remember the dumb musical numbers, the cruddy character design, cut-out characters (and, hey, one of the main characters was a blue squirrel who could run really fast!)... yeah, it was a bargain bin toon. Something that might have appealed to Chris.

OT: But if you're interested in The Bluffers, do check out the pilot, which differs vastly from the cartoon. And is all kinds of nightmare-inducing. And Count Clandestino's got some gams, yo.

I only know about the Bluffers because of this song, and I kind of want it as a ringtone.

Another good talking animal movie is, Rock and Rule. When they went to the club in American Rabbit, it just reminded me that I could be watching Rock and Rule, or Fritz the Cat, instead.

Fuck yes, I love Rock & Rule. In fact, a lot of people in this thread have good taste in cartoons.

 

[Seattle Trip to Neverfree]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=WEZUXudT63Y

 

[Meowthkip]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Va5_rn3vG3A

I don't know but I am weirdly fascinated by this inexplicable fucking thing.

 

[Jozef]

Well, I can see why this piece of shit never became a classic.

 

[Le Bateleur]

This film was produced for the lower end of the home video market. Barb probably bought it because it was on sale for a dollar and she needed a cartoon to stick Chris in front of while she and Bob went out drinking.

Chris latched onto it because of the colourful anthropomorphic characters which autistic children show a preference for.

Basically, I'm guessing that Chris's attachment to this film came about through chance exposure - rather than him having a multitude of cartoons to choose from and somehow picking this one as his favourite.

 

[SteelPlatedHeart]

When I was in fourth grade, my dad got us satellite tv for the first time. And this was early satellite tv, where the dish itself was huge and had to preposition itself whenever you switched to a new group of channels so it could get the signal. The first thing I ever saw on it was The American Rabbit at like two or three in the morning on whatever the earliest version of The Disney Channel was. I think at the time I was just happy to find cartoons on at times other than weekday afternoons and Saturday mornings, but man oh man is is that movie a chore to sit through.

 

[pickleparty]

It reminds me of this

 

[EnsignDisposable]

Chris latched on to The American Rabbit 'cause kids latch on to weird things, and Chris is still a kid emotionally and in entertainment tastes.

On the topic of animation nostalgia: I know I loved Felix the Cat: The Movie as a young'n, another Disney Channel rerunner! If you never heard of that one, it's the one where Felix has to save a dystopian alternate reality from Dr.-Wiley-meets-Mysterio. As a kid I loved it 'cause it was strange (and "Who Is The Boss?" is catchier than the flu). As an adult I can tell it's a nonsensical and vaguely nightmarish series of almost entirely-unconnected story events slightly based on a classic cartoon, and that's why I still love it.

For cartoons that have aged well: The Real Ghostbusters still holds up, and what doesn't is still an interesting example of what geek humor was like at the time. Also, there was an episode with friggin' Great Cthulhu as the bad guy of the week!

 

[Trilby]

Holy shit this thread is my speed. Fuckin' animation geekery all over the dang place.

I guess I'm glad to have bumped it for you!

But yes, I watched this movie before I came across this thread, like a couple years ago? I found the full version of it linked on the CWCki. It's a very strange movie but it's not interesting enough to really hold your attention. But given how Chris has shit taste in almost everything, I guess that might be why he liked it.

I only saw it at least once as a kid someplace, and put it out of my head for a long time until someone sent me a tape with it on it and it reminded me why I forgot it in the first place. I will say there's one moment I kinda liked in the film, that's when the jackals harass some dog who's just trying to get by while drinking his hooch out in an alleyway (his ID card even shows he's a drunk), the only 'adult' thing in the entire film, unless I'm reading too much into this. Strangely the version I recall watching from The Disney Channel never showed this scene so I guess they edited it out like they had done to a few films they use to show on there in the 80's.

Speaking of the film, for anyone in the US (including those outside with VPN), a cleaner copy of the film can be watched on Hulu if you must (courtesy of MGM, because they hate us).

I also like how the rabbit decided to give those weasels a chance despite his friends being racist against them and it turns out their prejudices were right. Perhaps that says a lot about why Chris is so hard to budge on his own bigotry.

No wonder the jackals never had a chance to reform (and I thought it was just bad writing, of course there's that).

I only know about the Bluffers because of this song, and I kind of want it as a ringtone.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=WEZUXudT63Y

I recall this robot's name is 'Sillycone". Why hasn't Shout! Factory brought this one back to the public consciousness! Someone once brought up the possibility, despite the fact the show only has 13 episodes and not much in the way of continuity, that the Bluffers were killed off by Clandestino anyway, and that would be a good lesson to teach kids in my book!

Fuck yes, I love Rock & Rule. In fact, a lot of people in this thread have good taste in cartoons.

You should also have good taste to know Nelvana also produced this fine classic of daytime television!

(please mind the stupid horrible YouTube Filter the user had to put on this vid, people should NEVER use it at all unless they took the vid with their shaky hands)

This film was produced for the lower end of the home video market. Barb probably bought it because it was on sale for a dollar and she needed a cartoon to stick Chris in front of while she and Bob went out drinking.

I'm sure there's plenty of Chandlers out there in America that did the same thing to their kids, I think my mom drowned me on cable TV and a steady diet of pre-recorded toonage throughout my childhood.

Chris latched onto it because of the colourful anthropomorphic characters which autistic children show a preference for.

Basically, I'm guessing that Chris's attachment to this film came about through chance exposure - rather than him having a multitude of cartoons to choose from and somehow picking this one as his favourite.

Sounds like slim pickings to me, of course I wonder if Chris would've liked "Animalympics" had he saw that instead of American Rabbit?

Chris latched on to The American Rabbit 'cause kids latch on to weird things, and Chris is still a kid emotionally and in entertainment tastes.

It happens.

On the topic of animation nostalgia: I know I loved Felix the Cat: The Movie as a young'n, another Disney Channel rerunner! If you never heard of that one, it's the one where Felix has to save a dystopian alternate reality from Dr.-Wiley-meets-Mysterio. As a kid I loved it 'cause it was strange (and "Who Is The Boss?" is catchier than the flu). As an adult I can tell it's a nonsensical and vaguely nightmarish series of almost entirely-unconnected story events slightly based on a classic cartoon, and that's why I still love it.

Some people do, some don't. I'm actually friends with the guy who had to animate Felix's head at the beginning of the film (that CGI abomination).

 

[LazarusOwenhart]

Has anyone told that rabbit that he should have plugged the damn from the back? I mean the water pressure will just blow that rock straight back out again, don't they research this shit. Lets start a massive facebook campaign about incorrect rock placement and boycott the studio!

 

[Uzumaki]

the voice of the american rabbit played a ferengi on deep space nine...

I knew I recognized it from somewhere! I thought it was Billy West at first, just because every animated voice is, but this would have been too early for him. He was still imitating racist old ladies on Howard Stern at this point in his career, I believe.

Seriously though we should all stop watching this stupid movie. We each only have so many hours to live and they're all precious.

I'm putting it back on now.

I thought he was basing that idiotic idea more off of 'Cool World'.

Cool World is to Roger Rabbit what Shark's Tale is to Finding Nemo.

You actually kind of have to know a bit about movie history to get that, but I assure you I'm being as impressively insightful as ever.

 

[Trilby]

I'm surprised no one here has ever heard of David and the Magic Pearl, another low-budget animated feature from the Eastern Bloc (Poland to be exact) that IMO has even worse animation and writing yet still has its entertainingly trippy moments. I'm sure Chris would have latched onto it what with the simplistic plot, the badly drawn, brightly colored animal characters, and especially all dem exaggerated boobies and china. I still find it hard to believe that this was where Babe/Chuckie Finster/Dexter's voice actress started.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=CQ2BKZ2jnzA

Oh yes, that film! I suppose in those cases, you have to start somewhere. At least she managed to climb up that ladder well. Don't forget she was also the voice of Gosalyn in Darkwing Duck. Mrs. Cavanaugh certainly had a thing for voicing freckle-faced, four-eyed redheads . A shame she retired from it, but I'm sure it was for the best.