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Doug's 1st Movie
USA 1999
Reviewed by Leslie Felperin
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Bluffington, a suburban town in the US. Seventh-graders Doug Funnie, his friend Skeeter and Doug's dog Porkchop discover a friendly mutant monster living in Lucky Duck Lake, created by pollution dumped by local industrialist Mr Bluff. The monster follows them home and they name it Herman Melville after it licks a copy of Moby Dick. While the friends try to figure out what to do with the monster, Doug pines for Patti Mayonnaise and tries to screw up enough courage to ask her to the school dance at the Funkytown disco.
Meanwhile Bluff and his cohorts, having learned of Herman's existence, plot to kill it to save face. Doug almost reveals the monster at a press conference but stops when he realises it's a trap set by Bluff. His attempts to woo Patti are thwarted by a rival, glamorous eighth-grader Guy Graham. To impress Patti, Doug announces he will reveal Herman at the dance, but Bluff also plots to kill it that night. At the dance, Doug and his friends use a decoy robot to fool the baddies and disguise Herman as a foreign-exchange student. The ruse works and they manage to smuggle Herman to the safety of an unpolluted lake and set him free. Doug wins Patti's heart, and they dance the night away together.
Review
Having fared rather poorly at the US box-office and being unlikely to catch on in Europe where the television series it's based on is hardly known, Doug's 1st Movie is likely to be his last. To be fair, it's just a slightly dull rather than a bad film. Adequately though not strikingly animated There are a few feints at self-reflexive wit, a seemingly mandatory component of cartoons aimed at a young demographic. At one point, Doug slips into a daydream about Patti, the orange-skinned woman he loves, and the transition is marked by a waviness in the image, mimicking the opticals used in live-action films to denote fantasy sequences. Doug's friend Skeeter remarks he knows Doug's thinking of Patti because he's "got that blurry look". Another gag that works has Doug slipping on a virtual-reality headset, only to see an exact recreation of the living room he's actually in. "It's exactly like reality except more expensive," is the comment. Elsewhere, there is a spiky dig at Michael Flatley with Doug briefly becoming Lord of the Polka, and a just-for-the-grown-ups-dragged-along bit which alludes to the wrong-house crosscutting scene in The Silence of the Lambs.
Unfortunately, the blandly prosocial messages lack such humour or even imagination: after realising that he was exploiting the monster he found to impress Patti, Doug pronounces at the end that "it's important to do the right thing." ("Duh!" as any seven-year-old might say.) One could also interpret the hot-pastel palette of skin tones - making some characters green, lavender and turquoise as well as pink - as a politically-correct conceit, a literalisation of 'the everyone is a different colour so labels like "black" and "white" don't mean anything' line. But all the characters are so homogeneously middle- or upper-middle class here that tolerance becomes a necessity only when encountering monsters and therefore merely theoretical. We also learn that reading is cool (Moby Dick serves an important plot point), snobbery is bad, and parents and other advocates of safety will be pleased to see the film also endorses wearing helmets while cycling and not swimming in polluted lakes.
Leslie Felperin
Credits
- Producers
- Jim Jinkins
- David Campbell
- Jack Spillum
- Melanie Grisanti
- Screenplay
- Ken Scarborough
- Created by
- Jim Jinkins
- Editor
- Alysha Nadine Cohen
- Christopher K. Gee
- Design Supervisors
- Freya Tanz
- Pete List
- Eugene Salandra
- Music
- Mark Watters
- ©Jumbo Pictures, Inc
- Production Companies
- Walt Disney Pictures presents a Jumbo Pictures production
- Associate Producer
- Bruce Knapp
- Production Manager
- Masako Kanayama
- Post-production Supervisor
- Stephen Swofford
- Voice Directors
- Jim Jinkins
- David Campbell
- Kent W. Meredith
- Mouth Direction
- Simi Nallaseth
- Talent Co-ordinator
- Kent W. Meredith
- Script Co-ordinator
- Jim Rubin
- Original characters developed by
- Jim Jinkins
- Joe Aaron
- Digital Effects
- Buena Vista Imaging
- Effects Co-ordinator
- Frank Drucker
- Storyboard Supervisor
- Siobhan Mullen
- Storyboard Co-ordinator
- Deidre Stammers
- Technical Supervisor
- Rudy Tomaselli
- Animatic Co-ordinator
- Charlene McBride
- Animation Production
- Plus One Animation, Inc
- Supervising Director:
- Lee Choon Man
- Overseas Supervisors:
- Kent Laursen
- Ric Machin
- Glenn McDonald
- Layout Directors:
- Lee Kwang-Seok
- Jeong Baik-Ma
- Animation Directors:
- Oh Han-Gil
- Ma Hyeon-Deok
- Shin Soeng-Cheon
- Kim Joon-Bok
- Key Animators:
- Nam Beom-Woo
- Ko Kyung-Nam
- Kim Jeong-Taek
- You Choon-Yong
- Cho Sang-Hyun
- Jeong Seung-Tae
- Kang Dae-Il
- Song Keun-Sik
- Lee Jin-Taek
- Lee Jang-Pil
- Ham Chee-Heon
- Lee Kee-Do
- Lee Chan-Seop
- Park Kyung-Bea
- Son Jeong-Seon
- Jeong Young-Mee
- Choi Jong-Seok
- Kim Hyung-Jun
- Kim Mee-Young
- Shim Seon-Ho
- Kim Kee-Ryang
- Kim Kyung-Sook
- Son Myung-Hee
- Jang Joon-Kyung
- Choi Deuk-Kwon
- Inking:
- Park Soo-Kyung
- Kwon In-Sook
- Jang Mee-Yeon
- Painting:
- Kwon Tae-Seon
- Jeong Jae-Hun
- Lee Hye-Kyung
- Kang Hyun-Joo
- Lee Young-Mee
- Kim Joo-Young
- Kim Hye-Jee
- Lee Hee-Sook
- Sea Youn-Hee
- Jeong In-Yong
- Lee Eun-Joo
- Kim Mee-Jeong
- Kim Jong-Sook
- Kim Joung-Eun
- Kim Eun-Kyung
- Kim Un-Ah
- Noh Young-Mee
- Park Kyung-Mee
- Jeon Hye-Sook
- Lee Jae-Sook
- Model Checking Supervisor:
- Park Hyeon-Sook
- Animation Checking Supervisor:
- Kim Jeong-Ja
- Ink/Paint Supervisor:
- Lee Tae-Jeong
- Colour Mark-up:
- Park Hae-Won
- Inking Checker:
- Kim Hae-Kyeong
- Painting Checkers:
- Kim Myeong-Ae
- Han Yeong-Yea
- Special Effects:
- Jeong Yeon-Kwan
- Lee Kyeong-Yong
- Background Director:
- Ahn Kye-Jeong
- Camera Director:
- Jo Bok-Dong
- Production Managers:
- Kim Ji-Byung
- Han Jang-Ho
- Kim Jean-Seon
- Retake Department Manager:
- Kim Nak-Hoon
- Overseas Co-ordinators:
- Shim Young-Jeong
- Yoon Kyung-Mi
- Yang Hae-Won
- NY Additional Animation
- Animators:
- Mike Foran
- Ray daSilva
- Assistant Animators:
- Irene Wu
- Chris Dechert
- Background Layout Artist:
- Freya Tanz
- Background Painters:
- Michael Rose
- Sophie Kittredge
- Miriam Katin
- Andrei Poteryaylo
- Colour Key Supervisors
- Marina Dominis Dunnigan
- Doris Santos
- Colour Stylists
- John Brandon
- Jason McDonald
- Background Designers
- Nash Dunnigan
- Ray Feldman
- Miriam Katin
- Kim Miskoe
- Don Poynter
- Ray daSilva
- Meryl Rosner
- Character/Prop Designers
- Dick Codor
- Moss Freedman
- Miguel Martinez Joffre
- Tim Chi Ly
- Christopher Palesty
- Irene Wu
- Background Colour Supervisor
- Michael Zodorozny
- Background Painters
- Tony Curanaj
- Sophie Kittredge
- Adrian Newkirk
- Michael Rose
- Pre-production Editor
- Meredith Watson Jeffrey
- Design Co-ordinator
- Marcus Pauls
- Storyboard Artists
- Liz Rathke
- Barking Bullfrog Cartoon Company
- Jean Charles Finck
- Victor Glasko
- Tapani Knuutila
- Jean Lajeunesse
- Storyboard Revision Artists
- Otis L. Brayboy II
- David Concepcion
- Christopher McCulloch
- Nate Kanfer
- Maurice Fontenot
- Prentis Rollins
- Willy Hartland
- Storyboard Slugging/Sheet Timers
- Gary Blatchford
- My Bushman
- Kieran Dowling
- Sheet Timer
- Anthony Power
- Title Design
- Susan Bradley
- Titles/Opticals
- Buena Vista Imaging
- Title Animation
- Animator:
- Kieran Dowling
- Inbetweeners:
- Trevor Murphy
- Aveen O'Reilly
- Ciaran Bonass
- Effects Animator:
- Robert Byrne
- Production Manager:
- Jason Edward
- Technical Supervisor:
- Rudy Tomaselli
- Digital Paint/Compositing
- Tape House Toons
- Digital Cinematography:
- Tape House Digital Film
- Graphic Designer:
- Alisa Klayman
- Orchestrations
- Harvey Cohen
- John Bisharat
- John Given
- Ira Hearshen
- Christopher Klatman
- Alan Steinberger
- Supervising Music Editor
- Dominick Certo
- Music Mixer
- John Richards
- Soundtrack
- "Mona Mo" by/performed by Dan Sawyer, Fred Newman; "Deep Deep Water" by/performed by Dan Sawyer, Kristyn Osborn, Linda Garvey, band version performed by Dan Sawyer, end title version performed by Shedaisy; "Someone Like Me" by William Squier, Jeffrey Lodin, performed by Michael Africk; original theme for "Disney's Doug"" by Dan Sawyer, additional vocalization by Fred Newman
- Additional Sound Design
- Pomann Sound, Inc
- Pre-production Sound Co-ordinator
- Darryl Jefferson
- Dialogue Recording
- Juan Dieguez
- Jerome Hyman
- Recordist
- Neal Porter
- Re-recording Mixers
- Andy D'Addario
- Tom Dahl
- Supervising Sound Editors
- Ron Eng
- Louis L. Edemann
- Sound Editors
- Rick Franklin
- Leonard T. Geschke
- Chuck Neely
- Jeff Clark
- Scott G.G. Haller
- Gail Clark Burch
- Howard S.M. Neiman
- Dialogue Editors
- Joe Gauci
- Dave Chmela
- ADR
- Recordist/Editors:
- Marc Bazerman
- Aria Boediman
- Foley
- Walkers:
- Ken Dufva
- Joan Rowe
- Mixer:
- Lee Pinkham
- Voice Cast
- Thomas McHugh
- Doug Funnie/Lincoln
- Fred Newman
- Skeeter/Mr Dink/Porkchop/Ned
- Chris Phillips
- Roger Klotz/ Boomer/Larry/ Mr Chiminy
- Constance Shulman
- Patti Mayonnaise
- Frank Welker
- Herman Melville
- Doug Preis
- Mr Funnie/Mr Bluff/Willie/Chalky/ Bluff agent 1
- Guy Hadley
- Guy Graham
- Alice Playten
- Beebe Bluff/Elmo
- Eddie Korbich
- Al Sleech/Moo Sleech
- Eddie Korbich
- RoboCrusher
- David O'Brien
- Quailman, stentorian announcer
- Doris Belack
- Mayor Tippi Dink
- Becca Lish
- Judy Funnie/Mrs Funnie/Connie
- Greg Lee
- Principal White
- Bob Bottone
- Bluff assistant
- Bruce Bayley Johnson
- Mr Swirley
- Fran Brill
- Mrs Perigrew
- Melissa Greenspan
- Briar Langolier
- Rodger Bumpass
- Paul Eiding
- Jackie Gonneau
- Sherry Lynn
- Mickie McGowan
- Phil Proctor
- Brianne Siddall
- Claudette Wells
- additional voice artists
- Certificate
- U
- Distributor
- Buena Vista International (UK)
- 6,948 feet
- 77 minutes 13 seconds
- SDDS/Dolby digital/Digital DTS sound
- In Colour
- Prints by
- Technicolor