Holy shit the animal white people movie is actually releasing in the US

Also counts as a furry movie lol

According to Netflix, this film premiered at the Annecy Int. Film Fest in 2017(!!!) and passed through multiple distributors who traded it with each other in a game of “I really don’t want this shitty movie to be my last”.

Relativity Media was about to release it, but got cold feet and gave it to Serafini Releasing. They shut down, and eventually Entertainment Studios (what a fucking name) took the rights to distribute it. That deal got dropped in 2018, about a year after it’s Annecy reveal.

So it swapped between and got dropped by three different companies in 365 days! And now, just a little more than three years after the original Annecy screening, it’s finally getting an official release through Netflix.

Since a release like this costs Netflix next-to-nothing, it’s probably a really good way to distribute it. Not sure how the production company makes money off it here, but whatever.

The production company is owned by IDW publishing. If IDW can stay afloat in this dying comic book industry, they can survive a (relatively) low-budget film ($17 million).

So yes, along the lines of The LEGO Movie or The Emoji Movie, this is a film based on the popular playground snack “Animal Crackers”. They’re simple animal-shaped crackers with some frosting on the side, there’s nothing special about them.

The concept of doing a movie based on them is really weird. They aren’t universal or “cool” like emojis, and they’re much more limited in scope than Legos. Nobody looks at this and goes “Holy shit, it about animal crackers so it must be good!”

The two directors are interesting picks. First is Scott Christian Sava. His link on the Animal Crackers Wikipedia page goes to his all-ages CGI fantasy web comic “The Dreamland Chronicles”, so I’m assuming that’s his most well-known work.

Most of his work is doing CGI animation for other people (some big names including Marvel), but he’s also written some of his own stuff. Most notably (besides Dreamland Chronicles) he wrote the comic book Pet Robots with Diego Jourdan, which Disney picked up the movie rights to.

The critical reception to “The Dreamland Chronicles” seems to be about 80%, with many praising it but some small criticisms about the way characters look and speak with each other. So this person certainly doesn’t mess around, but are they director material?

Second is Tony Bancroft, who actually has his own Wikipedia page. He was actually one of the directors on the original Mulan, so he certainly knows his stuff. However, that was in 1998 and this is now. Does he still have the magic?

He’s also an animator and general animation guru (storyboarding, assisting, vis development, designer, etc.) who worked heavily with Disney basically up until they switched to CGI.

He also created and directed a cartoon short series called Lenny & Sid, with two 22-minute films and two 7-minute shorts. Spoiler alert: it’s a fucking Christian cartoon. Goddammit, what is it with anthropomorphic animals and Christians?

So the two directors are artists themselves, and one of them is one of those Hartman-style “I’m gonna go make a Christian cartoon!” Christians. Hopefully won’t derail the project, but that’s not the point.

Okay, feel like I’m shitting on Tony too much just for making a shitty Christian cartoon. I mean, he worked on Stuart Little 2! He can do no wrong!

The film is written by Scott Christian Sava (mentioned earlier) and Dean Lorey, the latter of whom wrote on Arrested Development and the new Harley Quinn. An impressive lineup! For TV, that is. Never heard of any films they’ve written on. Hopefully this’ll change that.

And, just like any other shitty low-budget animated movie, the cast is filled with people I’ve actually heard of and who take up 60% of the budget. For instance, motherfucking John Krasinski. That guy from The Office, A Quiet Place, and Next Gen (which is underrated btw).

Also Emily Blunt who plays Juliet in Gnomeo and Juliet, hell yeah! Finally, some fuckin’ G&J representation in this movie! She’s also in Looper, Edge of Tomorrow (better known as Live, Die, Repeat), MLP: The Movie, and (once again) A Quiet Place.

Ian McKellen is in this thing. Fucking Gandalf! Magneto! Gus the Theater Cat as seen in the movie Cats (2019)! Zebedee as seen in the movie The Magic Roundabout, known in the US as Doogal! I solely blame Harvey Weinstein for that and nobody else.

And now I know Ian McKellen was (and is) openly gay which means I’m now incredibly proud that he was my 3rd most watched actor in 2019! Even though he tied with Andy Serkis! Sorry, man, you’d be on top if you played the role of C3P0 in Star Wars.

Fucking Danny DeVito. Fucking Sylvester Stallone?! Fucking Raven-Symoné. And, most special of all to me: Patrick Warburton.

You know those actors who play themselves instead of their roles? Like how Will Smith plays Will Smith instead of, say, The Genie? This is the good version of that. He plays roles that seem to fit him really well, and his overacting makes every role 10x better.

I’d say he’s most well known as the guy who gets cucked by his wife over a bee in The Bee Movie. His overacting makes that role fucking amazing! Every single role he plays feels appropriate for him, and he plays his part as Patrick Warburton perfectly.

Something like Kronk from The Emperor’s New Groove, y’know? An utterly idiotic character who’s hilarious, held up with a great voice. His most serious role that I’ve seen is the preshow in Soarin’ (which may have been cut, RIP).

He has a track record of starring in a lot of crap, but I think that’s because he’s such a strict character. If you put him in any role besides one like Kronk, it doesn’t really work out that well.

He’s actually how I found out about Animal Crackers in the first place. It’s one of those things where you scroll through their IMDB or Wikipedia and see all these new projects you’ve never heard of that they’re starring in. For Warburton, this was one of them.

So what exactly did we learn from this thread?
1. This movie probably isn’t gonna be good
2. It’s three years old lol
3. China gets everything first, the lucky bastards
4. Ian McKellen has done 100x more for gay rights than Disney has ever even thought about doing.

5. Shut the fuck up about Patrick Warburton being a bad actor, he’s the best and you can go throw your copy of The Emperor’s New Groove in the trash if you think that because he 100% MAKES that film.

6. The initial screenplay for this movie was written in 2010 so its time between writing and release lasted almost 2x longer than the confederacy, so if you think confederate soldiers should have statues then so should Scott Christian Sava. Or just shut the fuck up.