feeling listless

Film A remarkably honest interview with Joe Dante about his career before and after the just about Ok Looney Toons: Back In Action:

"If you're going to make a movie like this starring characters that you've owned for years you wouldn't take all the cartoons off the air for five years before this feature, but that's what they [WB] did! When they got back all their old cartoons, which used to be owned by various different companies, they took them off the networks and they put them on a cable channel that they own - intermittently. So they weren't as fresh in the public mind as they thought they were. So when the picture came out the kids were not that familiar or even interested in those characters as they were in the Powerpuff girls or Japanese anime and some other stuff. And so it was very disappointing attendance."

The main problem with that film is that it can't decide which audience it's trying to service. There are all these funny animals walking around, but there are also a hundred film references which fly over the top of their heads. Clearly as Dante says the kids have moved on from these characters so it would have been more interesting to cater for an older demographic with something nostalgic -- go even further in that direction. But -- oh yes -- they've already done that -- it's called Who Framed Roger Rabbit ...