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All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989)

When Don Bluth and eleven other animators resigned from Walt Disney Productions in 1979, the defection was so stunning that the development was headline news in Hollywood. Bluth’s group (also including Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy) had been with Disney through the 1970s, working on the Winnie the Pooh short films, The Rescuers (1977), and Pete’s Dragon (1977). The defectors chafed under producer Wolfgang Reitherman’s leadership on The Fox and the Hound, accusing Reitherman (one of the Disney’s Nine Old Men, employed by the House of Mouse since 1933) for exerting too much control over artistic decisions cutting costs for training newer animators. Within a year, the defectors’ breakaway studio, Don Bluth Productions, was at work on The Secret of NIMH (1982) – a financial failure for various reasons little to do with the quality of the film itself. With funding from businessman Morris Sullivan and artistic collaborations with Steven Spielberg, the studio reformed as Sullivan Bluth Studios (often referred to without Sullivan’s name). Two animated features later (1986’s An American Tail, 1988’s The Land Before Time) and fatigued with Spielberg increasing control over all creative aspects of these movies, Bluth inked a deal with independent British studio Goldcrest Films to craft three animated features almost entirely free of outside interference.

All Dogs Go to Heaven is the first of these three movies, and the first Don Bluth movie where almost all of the animation took place in Ireland. The film, with a screenplay by David N. Weiss (1998’s The Rugrats Movie, 2004’s Shrek 2), is Bluth’s directorial vision unvarnished, without an esteemed producer there to overrule him. As such, All Dogs Go to Heaven boasts animated sequences unlike anything seen in prior Bluth movies, but suffers in its second half due to narrative indiscipline.

It is 1939 in New Orleans. German Shepherd Charlie B. Barkin (Burt Reynolds) and Dachshund Itchy Itchiford (Dom DeLuise in a fantastic performance and the film’s second best – more on the best later) explosively escape from a dog pound to return to the bayou. There, they head straight for a casino riverboat owned and patronized by dogs. The owner of the establishment is American Pit Bull Terrier/Bulldog Carface Caruthers (Vic Tayback), who orders his assistant, Killer (Charles Nelson Reilly), to intoxicate and execute Charlie. After a macabre execution – the fateful moment thankfully not shown – Charlie, despite his vices, finds himself at the pearly gates of heaven. He learns from a Whippet angel (Melba Moore) that all dogs, regardless of their life’s sins (and because dogs are naturally good and loyal), are guaranteed a place in heaven. But Charlie attempts to cheat death by stealing a special watch that allows him to return to Earth. The angel warns Charlie that this gambit may cost him his heavenly entitlement and that, when the clock stops ticking, he might find himself in hell. Charlie does not pay this much mind and reunites with Itchy, and soon hatches a plot to exact revenge on Carface. Their lives (but not necessarily their plans) change when both of them encounter a seven-year-old orphan girl named Anne-Marie (Judith Barsi), a human slave to Carface.

Just skimming the above synopsis make clear that this is not a children’s movie in the strictest sense. All Dogs Go to Heaven ends as one might expect, with Charlie’s earthly redemption. But the route to that final destination is abound with terrible moral choices from our canine protagonist and grim moments not appropriate for the youngest of children. The film’s first half illustrates the morality play that follows with clarity and narrative flow. Bluth and Weiss wisely keep the focus on Charlie and Itchy and their selfish, materialistic, and hedonistic ways. Even after coming into contact with Anne-Marie, there are aspects to their treatment of her that directly echo Carface’s. Can the audience forgive Charlie and Itchy for their behavior, given the rough-and-tumble (or perhaps, “dog-eat-dog”) reality of the bayou? The value of kindness and reciprocity is foreign to both. Abuse and exploitation are the near-sum of their life experiences. Credit to Bluth and Weiss for not allowing Charlie any simple redemption, even though one could credibly have questions about how the character arc transpires. Without the first half’s emotional and moral intimacy, All Dogs Go to Heaven might otherwise lose its way in its final stages.

A major factor keeping All Dogs to Heaven from crumbling due to its narrative cracks is Anne-Marie. In American animated features and television from the 1970s onwards, too many of these works have their child characters appear too cloying and cute, their eyes and usually-upturned mouths taking up far too much space on their faces, overdone cheek colorations, bodily movements exaggerated to an excessive degree – sometimes averted if the animators intentionally wished to provoke such a reaction (see: Elmyra Duff in Tiny Toon Adventures, Dee Dee in Dexter’s Laboratory). Anne-Marie feels like a throwback, a suggestion of Snow White from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Her rather limited movements, slight hesitations in her bearing, and smooth transitions from one expression to the next (whether radical or subtle in emotional change) is a masterstroke of animation. From the moment Anne-Marie appears on-screen, the viewer empathizes with her – a tribute to the one of the best-designed characters on Bluth’s roster of characters in his filmography.

Much of the genius of her character lies in Judith Barsi’s voice performance, which quivers with youthfulness and vulnerability. Described by Bluth as a natural voice actor who could intuit complicated voice direction and having starred as Ducky in The Land Before Time, Barsi delivers the performance of the movie. For Barsi – abused and later murdered by her father at home – this is her final film. With the foreknowledge of what happened to Barsi before, during, and after her recording sessions on All Dogs Go to Heaven, it paints her turn as Anne-Marie in an agonizing, but soulful light. A heartbroken Don Bluth had Anne-Marie’s physical mannerisms based on Barsi to cope with the loss.

For the remainder of the cast, All Dogs Go to Heaven has some of the most expressive canine anthropomorphisms not seen since arguably Robin Hood (1973). The dogs quaff beers out of glasses, wave their paws in frustration as their rat race bets lose them their steak bets, and hold submachine guns like a person trained in firearms. But unlike Robin Hood and several other films from that period in Disney animation history, Bluth and his animators did not recycle any animation effects from a previous film. Directing animator John Pomeroy (character designer of Fievel from An American Tail and Elliot from Pete’s Dragon) designed Charlie, Itchy, Carface, and King Gator. And with Charlie, Itchy, and Carface in particular, Pomeroy sets the balance the canine and anthropomorphic. That style defines almost the remainder of character animation in All Dogs Go to Heaven – never off-putting, and supremely engaging.

Pomeroy also happened to design King Gator, a character who, despite their comedic value, threatens to steer All Dogs Go to Heaven off-course, also representing another glaring weakness to the film – a poor soundtrack. All Dogs Go to Heaven, with music by Ralph Burns (music supervisor on 1972’s Cabaret and 1977’s New York, New York) and lyrics by Charles Strouse (the musicals Bye Bye Birdie and Annie), T.J. Kuenster, Joel Hirschhorn (1972’s The Poseidon Adventure, Pete’s Dragon), and Al Kasha (The Poseidon Adventure, Pete’s Dragon), makes the mistake of having Burt Reynolds sing four times in this movie. This is not saying that Reynolds is terrible (“inoffensive” and “vocally limited” are how I will describe his singing), but he is no one’s idea of a musical star, despite what King Gator says about his howling. With no disrespect intended towards Ken Page as King Gator, King Gator’s song, “Let’s Make Music Together” is a momentum-stopper, screeching the brakes on the narrative at an inopportune time. Yours truly is no opponent of diverting (perhaps even time-wasting) Esther Williams homages, but not when they appear at critical dramatic junctures in the plot. The few songs of note include “Soon You’ll Come Home” (the most organically-placed song in the soundtrack; sung by Lana Beeson for Judith Barsi after the latter broke down during her audition) and the end credits’ “Love Survives” (sung by Irene Cara and Freddie Jackson, composed after Barsi’s death and dedicated to her). Otherwise, too many of the soundtrack’s numbers are plagued with dull melodies that neither do narrative or musical justice to the film at large.

All Dogs Go to Heaven possesses some of the most beautiful animation in the Don Bluth filmography. A vibrant waterfall of colors, the film’s classical backgrounds recall the mastery of earlier Disney animated features. The scene where Charlie dreams he is in hell (the provided link provides a rough cut of the entire scene; MGM/UA trimmed the scene for its theatrical release to avoid a “PG” rating from the MPAA – the film should be rated “PG” anyways) outdoes the demonic art Disney cooked up for The Black Cauldron (1985). Those few minutes are unadulterated nightmare fuel – a breathtaking demonstration of animation effects to flaunt the techniques that Bluth accused Disney of abandoning.

After handily defeating The Great Mouse Detective with An American Tail at the 1986 box office and with ongoing turmoil at Disney, it seemed – for a brief moment – that Don Bluth might become the premier name animation in the United States. Upon the release of All Dogs Go to Heaven and The Little Mermaid to American theaters on November 17, 1989, that possibility became undone. Bluth, who had left Disney after justifiably accusing the studio of deserting its creative foundations, was correct in his assessment when he left Burbank ten years earlier. The Little Mermaid was an instant classic; critics, comparing the two, eviscerated All Dogs Go to Heaven. In the following years, Bluth was regarded as a foolhardy Judas to the House of Mouse – harmful hyperbole that has not helped the reputation of his movies. Interestingly, the legacy of All Dogs Go to Heaven is mostly thanks to home media. The film had one of the highest-selling VHS releases of all time. Its success there and repeat showings on cable television (Bluth films aired on Cartoon Network with regularity in the ‘90s and 2000s) prompted a 1996 sequel (Bluth was not involved, Dom DeLuise was the only cast member reprising his role, and there is no Anne-Marie) and a TV series.

With the exception of Anastasia (1997), All Dogs Go to Heaven – a film that beautifully, though imperfectly, reflects Bluth’s represents the last commercial success in Don Bluth’s filmography. Animation in the 1990s belonged, once more, to Disney, despite the mostly-dismissed incursions from Japanese animation into international markets at this time. One wonders how Bluth perceived the irony of Disney returning to its origins of innovation and cut-no-corners artistry during that decade – a change that might not have happened if Bluth and his fellow eleven other animators never left the studio in protest. Of course, the Disney Renaissance did not last, and Disney shows no indications of returning to hand-drawn animation. Once more, Don Bluth’s vision of hand-drawn animation is dormant at the studio he idolized during his El Paso childhood. Yet his vision persists, shared by more people than he might have realized. Perhaps not in the form or in the places (Cartoon Saloon’s Tomm Moore, Nora Twomey, and Paul Young may never have made The Secret of Kells or Wolfwalkers without first meeting at an animation program set up by Bluth in Ireland) he imagined, but that belief in hand-drawn animation’s expressiveness, versatility, and timelessness survives.

My rating: 7.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

#All Dogs Go to Heaven #Don Bluth #Burt Reynolds #Dom DeLuise #Judith Barsi #Vic Tayback #Charles Nelson Reilly #Loni Anderson #Melba Moore #Ken Page #David N. Weiss #Ralph Burns #Al Kasha #Joel Hirschhorn #Michael Lloyd #Irene Cara #Freddie Jackson #My Movie Odyssey #John Pomeroy

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The Smoke - Cowboys and Indians (1968)

Not the freakbeat Smoke of My Friend Jack fame, but an L.A. studio popsike pop group headed by Michael Lloyd (West Coast Pop Experimental Group). Not far off from things that Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys were doing on Smile.

We must win or die

#The Smoke #Cowboys and Indians #Michael Lloyd #West Coast Pop Experimental Group