Tim Wick's Top Ten Toon List

Here's my list. I will confess that it is Anime-free because I am not a big enough fan to have seen more than a few titles. I have no doubt that others will decry me for omitting "Princess Mononoke" , but I haven't seen it yet - so there. These are not in any specific order.

• "The Iron Giant"
  What a breath of fresh air this film was after two decades of Disney. I love Disney animated features - as the rest of this list will show, but I have tired of their formula. I want to see Disney break from type a little. Make a serious film without any singing for one thing. How about tackling a really serious subject for once? Disney has the ability to make serious animation mainstream and it was Warner Brothers that made the film that could have done it. Sadly, Warner Brothers did not promote this film properly so it dissappeared almost as quickly as it had come. Everything about this film is perfect from the voice work to the animation. Buy the DVD. Convince Warner Brothers they MUST make more films like this instead of crap like "The King and I".
  
  
• "Duck! Rabbit! Duck!", "Rabbit Seasoning" and "Rabbit Fire"
  The only three Warner Brothers shorts featuring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd. I think it's OK to count these as one because the story is the same in all of them. Daffy tries to convince Elmer to shoot Bugs, Bugs inevitably gets Elmer to shoot Daffy and Daffy's beak is comically disfigured. The immortal line "A-HA!!! Pronoun trouble!" is found in "Rabbit Seasoning" and only serves to remind us that Warner Brothers was making these cartoons for adults, not children. Finding an un-modernized copy of these 'toons is tough. Our PC modern society has dicated that the cartoons be edited so we never see Elmer shoot the gun. Imagine seeing a punchline without the setup. That is what such edits do to these cartoons.
  
  
• "Fantasia"
  Rumors about "Fantasia 2000" abound and I for one can wait. The original can never be outdone. True, it is a rollercoaster movie and everyone has their favorite part. I find the "Pastoral Symphony" section a bit tiresome but love the whole product even so. This film showed everyone what animation could do if you didn't have any limits. I honestly believe that animation would not be a viable art form had Disney never chosen to make this film. It was alwasys a viable form of entertainment, but not art. My personal favorites are the "Rite of Spring" and "Night on Bald Mountain" segments, but I don't want to take anything away from the others.
  
  
• Animaniacs
  If there was ever a show that reminded us what it must have been like in the "Golden age" of Warner Brothers cartoons, this is it. Oh, I could carp on the show for it's tiresome Goodfeathers sections but when you get such fantastic segments as Karaoke Dokee and Pinky and the Brain, you can ignore the lesser sections of the show. I will grant the show has gone downhill since the first few seasons - mostly because Pinky & the Brain spun off and got paired up with Elmyra for reasons we are not meant to know or understand - but the first few seasons alone are enough to make this show a favorite for me.
  
  
• "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"
  I know someone is going to yell at me because this is not a purely animated film. WHO CARES??? If you want to be sooooo picky then let me observe that the Baby Herman/Roger Rabbit cartoon at the opening of the film would be enough for me to pick this movie. The nearly seamless mixture of animated and real characters combined with great performances by the like of Bob Hoskins and Christopher Lloydd make this a gem that narrowly misses my list of top ten films of any type. The movie is such a tribute to the classic animiation era, right down to it's ending combining the Looney Tunes and Disney endings into one. I hope that everyone reading this has seen this movie. If you haven't - shame on you! Go see it right now!
  
  
• "What's Opera Doc?"
  In a book I own, this is rated as the greatest cartoon ever made and it's hard to argue. How many people don't know the tune to "Kill the Wabbit?" I mean, this cartoon reduces the 18 hour Wagner ring cycle to just over five minutes. That has to be some sort of record. The details are what make this cartoon. The corpulent horse, the ballet between Bugs and Elmer and the use of music to perfectly accent the action are just a few examples. This one is in the National Film Registry and it really should be.
  
  
• "Mulan"
  To pick this one over such wonderful modern Disney releases as "Beauty and the Beast", "The Lion King" and "The Little Mermaid" may seem a strange choice to some. But there was something about this film that I found far more compelling than the others. The heroine was capable of succeeding alone, without any help from her "boyfriend". In fact, she saved his butt twice. Here is a role model for modern young women that shows them you can be female and still be powerful and successful. The villain is also a great part of this movie. He is just evil. They didn't try to make him funny or give him comic relief sidekicks. When you see that he decimated an entire army, you realize this guy is for real. The only thing Ursula the sea witch managed to kill was her own Moray eels.
  
  
• Road Runner cartoons
  Now I know I am really cheating with this one, but they all have the same plot! Wile E. chases the Road Runner (who says "Beep beep" a lot) and gets himself hurt again and again. Some are better than others, but all have their moments. My favorite moment is the one with the catapult that puts the rock on Wile E. no matter where he is standing. Don't we all feel like Wile E. sometimes? We are busting our asses to get what we want and can never get it even though our plan seems perfect. No, I'm not getting deep here. I laugh just as hard as anyone when a stick of dynamite blows up in his face - again.
  
  
• "Bambi vs. Godzilla"
  Where but in animation could such a wonderful short be made? I could heap superlatives on this cartoon for more time than it would take you to watch it. The only word that really counts is "hilarious".
  
  
• "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"
  Dr Seuss will have a huge presence in my childs mind because he understood the mind of a child better than anyone. I am horrified at what will happen with the live version of this classic as the animated version will always be the yardstick for me. The Children's Theatre did a production of it a few years back and I went only to emerge bitterly dissappointed. Oh, it looked close enough to the real thing, but were was the music? Where was the voice of Boris Karloff as the Grinch? Where was the cute as a button dog with the comical antler? This was the first and always the best. Sorry Jim Carrey.

I left off a bunch of shorts and films most certainly deserving to be on this list. None of the Wallace and Grommitt series made it. Warner Brothers classics like "Duck Amuck", "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century", "The Rabbit of Seville" and others aren't here either. And of course Disney masterpieces like "Cinderella", "Bambi", "Aladdin" and "Steamboat Willie" are missing as well. Also absent are any computer animation titles, "Wizards", "Heavy Metal", Betty Boop, South Park and the Batman & Superman animated series. As I said above, my list doesn't include a single Anime title either. Well, that is the risk of a top ten list - it makes you think about everything that should be on it.