The Movie Rat

Though branded as a March to Disney post the only discussion of Disney will be at the open, as this film was independently produced and sold to Disney. I got this film as a redemption on Disney Movie Rewards, which is where you can redeem codes and movie ticket points for swag – I usually go for DVDs. It’s a good deal.

As for Where the Red Fern Grows I had not seen this version, but I was aware that it was one of Joseph Ashton’s few follow-ups to The Education of Little Tree – there rare onscreen one as he usually got voice work.

The Education of Little Tree and Ashton’s performance was well-received. Ebert singled him out: “And Joseph Ashton, as Little Tree, is another of those young actors who is fresh and natural on camera; I believed in his character.”

He was also nominated for a Young Artist Award and in my own BAM Awards.

I also have yet to see the original Where the Red Fern Grows (1974) so I was a virtual blank slate going in (which is always a good thing). Essentially, it ends up being a Disney dog-film, one of many. As the film started I wondered if Ashton’s ethnicity would be referenced in the story or if he was just cast for the role in an open casting.

When it comes to casting I have written on it a few times in the past. One casting precept I am fine with is just casting someone “just because.” What I mean by that is exemplified by Love Actually: one of the many characters in the film is Karl, played by Brazilian actor, Rodrigo Santoro. Karl is the unrequited, secretly admired love interest of Sarah (Laura Linney). What I liked about that piece of casting is that it’s a Brazilian actor just cast as the “hot guy,” the crush with no indication from the script or film that he had to be the “hot foreign guy.” It’s incidental and that’s refreshing from time to time.

The reason this is, is that true inclusion and universality means casting actors from all over, as rounded characters and in mixed films. Having all films be a melting pot is utopian, and I get arguments against films for targeted audience, but for the time being they are sadly a necessity. Roles in general for African Americans, Asians, Latinos, women, Native Americans, little people and other groups are limited. Roles for the aforementioned groups in a dimensional piece they play a part of are more limited still. Roles for these groups are usually reserved, in the US, for race-specific films like civil rights tales.

Therefore, when I was under the impression that Ashton was just in the film I was intrigued. However, that only lasted so long as a fractional Cherokee heritage of his mother was referenced. So it does not meet the Love Actually standard, but one thing it did is fully embrace Billy’s heritage. Another thing it does is cast an actor of Native American lineage in a film not ostensibly about his lineage as The Education of Little Tree was.

While I have not read the book there is some American Indians in Children’s Literature did some great research on a post about Native depictions in the School Library Journal’s Top 100 Children’s novels:

On page 10, “The land we lived on was Cherokee land, allotted to my mother because of the Cherokee blood that flowed in her veins.”
Page 43, “I reached way back in Arkansas somewhere. By the time my fist had traveled all the way down to the Cherokee Strip, there was a lot of power behind it.
On page 143, where Rubin says “A long time ago some Indians lived here and farmed these fields.”
On page 254, Billy recalls that he “had heard the old Indian legend about the red fern. How a little Indian boy and girl were lost in a blizzard and had frozen to death. In the spring, when they were found, a beautiful red fern had grown up between their two bodies. The story went on to say that only an angel could plant the seeds of a red fern, and that they never died; where one grew, that spot was sacred.”

With those being the sole references to the Cherokee people in the book clearly the boy-and-his-dog(s) aspect has more impact since his goal is to save up to be able to buy them, he has to figure out how to get them train them, and they build his self-esteem.

So this does not quite reach the threshold that a few Māori actors (Temuera Morrison in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones and Keisha Castle-Hughes in Nativity Story) achieved, but it still is significant. Casting is still a battle. When superheroes ethnicity is changed to anything non-white racist trolls come out of the racist woodwork; whether it is in the best interest of the project or not sometimes actors will be cast to learn a dialect as opposed to being portrayed by a native; even little people have to deal with being digitally multiplied, and now with being replaced by shrunken normal-sized actor; therefore, whenever there’s a Tyrion Lannister, Ellis Redding or Valentin Arregui part it’s notable even more so when it’s a project with many things to say and not just one.

In a utopian world Ashton may have been cast when an actor of Cherokee descent was not a prerequisite, but at least that was a Cherokee cast as a Cherokee.

Introduction This is a post that is a repurposing of an old post. As stated here I am essentially done with running multi-film review posts. Each film deserves its own review. Therefore I will repost, and at times add to, old reviews periodically. This post was originally featured during 31 Days of Oscar and I have decided to include it here for March to Disney. Enjoy! The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) Due in part to the fact that I just didn’t know very much about this title, I expected less from this Disney selection than the above, but in the end I liked it a lot more. It does things a little differently in the end, and with regards to anthropomorphism, but it goes back to the theme of ostracism and has a solitary character effectively drawn, literally and figuratively, that really make this film work. It also by its nature takes on aspects of religion and racism with a lot more finesse than you’d ever expect out of a Disney film, which makes it highly underrated in my mind. Score: 9/10 Oscar Nominations/Wins: 1/0

Upon revisiting Bedknobs and Broomsticks anew, and for the first time in a long time, it occurred to me that some of the more unusual aspects of the film and story should be examined some. The first thing that occurred to me that bared some investigation were the books the film is based on.

The feature-length film is actually based upon two books The Magic Bed Knob; or, How to Become a Witch in Ten Easy Lessons (1943) and Bonfires and Broomsticks (1945). While that fact is not unusual by itself, it was a bit more rare for Disney. Song of the South combine many Br’er Rabbit Tales, but typically while Disney optioned many films in a series they tended not to conglomerate.

Having not read the books I cannot tell you what impact this had on the film. It does bear noting that with its whimsical structure, and flights of fancy, there aren’t too many places where this may show. Furthermore, the link between the mundane and the magical is well-established and broached properly.

Even with no more source material to fall back on it did surprise me that Disney didn’t try to franchise this idea. Granted that notion has only gained clout, but was not unheard of in the 70s. It is a prime candidate for a remake.

In some ways I think that this film has become a fairly overlooked oddity, and it should not be. It should not be, if for no other reason than the fact that “Portobello Road” is one of the Sherman Brothers’ greatest creations. Another interesting footnote is that two of the three young leads (Ian Weighill and Roy Snart) claim this film as their only screen credit. While usually this can be either a very notable or dubious distinction, the results here are somewhere in between with both boys bringing a bit of humor to the film.

Another thing that I think should be mentioned is that Angela Lansbury’s Miss Price and David Tomlinson’s Emelius are not exactly angels, but not antiheroes either and do eventually warm to one another and the wartime-displaced children.

Lastly, while it is another World War II set tale about children ripped from London into the English countryside, but it folds nicely into the rear-view of the proceedings until is necessarily molds the finale. There’s simple magic and tropes that make this tale memorable even when omitting to mention that it’s another live action/animation hybrid.