fine whine

It could be the fact that I never watched the show nor was I watching any cartoons in 1968 at all, but Wacky Races wasn't all that interesting. Perhaps if I had seen only two episodes a week for seventeen weeks, spread out over two years or so, instead of thirty-four episodes (actually, two so-called episodes comprise a half hour, but I'll get to that later) in under a week, then I might not be so un-enamored with the show, but whatever the reason it just didn't grab me.

It's so much of the same thing, over and over, oftentimes even the same cels pasted onto different backgrounds or the same gags slightly re-drawn. The announcer begins to grate quickly and the repetition moreso. Admittedly (again) the original audience watched a little bit a week, inbetween other cartoons, and not the entire series at once as I do with this DVD set, but even then I think it would've gotten old quickly.

Of course kids eat this kind of stuff up, I guess.

In a more grown-up sense, although admittedly about childish or at least mischevious adults, is Jeux D'Enfants (Love me if you dare) which Jessica and I just watched. Clearly sold and produced as an Amelie follower if not imitator, it matches the former film in whimsy and colorful palette if not quite the same playful and cute attitude that set Amelie so much apart.

This is, I think, a sad thing, as Jeux D'Enfants gains little from cranking up the color saturation quota. It's really a different movie, albiet with a little of the same ideas. To know that one film would not have been widely released if not for the success of the other is to realize that it is pocketbooks and not plotlines that dictate what we end up able to watch.

I wouldn't even be watching this if not for the fact that the trailer for it has been on every Paramount Classics DVD I've watched from Northfork on back. For that matter, I only watched Northfork because of the trailer for it that showed up on an earlier Paramount Classics DVD. Damn that DVD, whatever it was.