Word: toon
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Each of the five "islands" has its own design appeal. The Lost Continent decor is instant antique: imposing Athenian edifices that seem about to crumble before your eyes. Spider-Man and his Marvel superhero pals inhabit a comic-book-bright boulevard. Toon Lagoon is haunted by old favorites from the rotogravure, like Beetle Bailey and Dagwood. Jurassic Park's primeval foliage conceals a labyrinthine playground, a Discovery Center where you can see a raptor egg hatch, a Pteranodon Flyers ride that lets you soar above the park and a mechanical triceratops that pees and farts on cue. The beast, nicknamed...
...idea was to spice the old format with smart comers--Claire Danes (Romeo + Juliet), Omar Epps (Higher Learning) and Giovanni Ribisi (the medic in Saving Private Ryan)--and a screw-you modernity. Instead, director and co-writer Scott Silver (Johns) gives us a surly anti-toon; it's the Three Sociopathic Stooges with lots of Method mewling. By the time Ribisi has his big shouting scene with Epps ("Dude, your cover's been blown. Your cover's been blown. You cover has been blown!"), you realize these kids just aren't having any fun playing cops. But hang around...
Stately, plump Cyberswine gazes out across a cartoon world, ready to kick some serious toon butt. Cyberswine is both the name and the protagonist of a full-length animated movie, "Part machine. Part cop. Full boar," according to the trailer. You won't find it (him) on film, though--the movie is 100% digital bits, burned onto CD-ROMS and downloadable from the Net, and now showing at a computer near...
...years will see the biggest splurge of cartoon features ever. But after the exclamation point come the question marks. Are there ways to make popular animated films that don't slavishly follow the rules Walt and the boys made up in the 1930s? Are studios jumping on the toon trolley just as the form has shown signs of losing its commercial luster? "I'm a little uncertain," says Chuck Jones, who joined Warner's in 1935 and today, at 85, is the greatest living animation director. "There are so many films in the works now that the market may soon...
Since 1990, Warner Bros. and Spielberg's Amblin have collaborated on the small-screen Tiny Toon Adventures. Ah, TV, where the real money is, and where Paramount went for its 1996 hit, Beavis and Butt-head Do America, which grossed (heh heh, he said "grossed") a robust $63 million. (Next up for Paramount: a Rugrats feature.) "A movie can't compare financially with a successful series like The Simpsons on TV," says Fox's Mechanic. Says Peter Chernin, president of Fox's parent News Corp.: "We should have done a Simpsons movie five years ago." Simpsons creator Matt Groening...