THE ADVENTURES OF MARK TWAIN

[m.r.leeper]

THE ADVENTURES OF MARK TWAIN
A film review by Mark R. Leeper

Capsule review: Some of the possibilities of claymation
are demonstrated, but this tribute to Mark Twain--timed to
correspond with the return of Halley's Comet--is really only
children's fare and introduces youngsters only to less
important works by Twain.

Claymation is an animation technique like stop-motion animation except
that the models are made out of clay and are re-molded for each shot. This
combines the texture of shooting three-dimensional models with a versatility
in presenting images almost equal to that of cartooning. You can see a
human transform into a globe of the Earth in about one second.
Unfortunately, the feel of claymation is cartoonish and just not real.
Otherwise it would be a perfect medium for doing a story like John
Campbell's "Who Goes There?" Thus far, claymation has been used mostly for
shorts like "Closed Mondays" and "Sundae in New York." The first full-
length film in claymation is THE ADVENTURES OF MARK TWAIN BY HUCKLEBERRY
FINN.

Twain claimed that he came in with Halley's Comet and would go out with
Halley's Comet. This story takes the prophecy a step further. Twain plans
to go out ON the comet. He is taking a flying machine that looks like a
riverboat that swallowed a hot air balloon. Stowed away on board are Tom
Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Becky Thatcher (who has a heart-shaped head--gag!).
Through a device on board called an "indexevator," the young characters can
get a glimpse into some of Twain's shorter and less interesting works. Far
too much of the film is taken up with Twain's "Diary of Adam and Eve." It
is a delightful piece of humor in print but it is far from worthy of the
proportion of screen time it is given. The short story adaptations are the
best part of the film, but the story of the trip to Halley is not even
Twain-like. It is more ERSATZ Verne.

In the final analysis the film's few good moments--and some of them are
quite good uses of claymation--are insufficient to justify the overall
production effort. Though some of the humor is on an adult's level of
subtlety, we were the only group in the theater that didn't have children,
and young children at that. This film is not going to find its proper
audience and future full-length claymation films will probably set their
sights a little lower. Rate the film 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.

Mark R. Leeper
...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper

[rei...@ucla-cs.uucp]

I saw this film almost a year ago at Filmex. It may have gone through
some editing since then, but the version I saw I liked quite a lot.
I saw it with an audience of adults, and most of them seemed to enjoy
it very much. There was an enthusiastic question and answer session with
Will Vinton, the director/chief animator, and much applause. I would
call the Claymation fantastic rather than merely interesting in spots.
--
Peter Reiher
rei...@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU
{...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher

[to...@ucla-cs.uucp]

Like Peter Reiher, I saw this film last year at LA's FILMEX
(and at a different screening, too). The audience was mosty
adult, loved the film, cheered Will Vinton, asked intelligent
questions, the most common of which was "will this film be
released commercially so we can take our friends?", etc., etc.

Unless this film has been seriously edited since then (which
is possible: it's being released as part of a "take-the-kids"
series and there were parts of the original that were pretty
scary for kids), I can't agree more with Peter that this is
a very special film, one which anyone interested in Twain,
animation, Halley's comet, laughter, early aviation :-),
life, death, the universe, and jumping amphibians should go
see before it disappears.