Let me take you back to the first month of the Sunday “Bad”
Movies. During the second week, I was
polling for a movie to watch. The three
options were A Car’s Life, Spider’s Web: A Pig’s Tale, and The Ugly Duckling and Me. They all came from the same 4-pack of
animated movies. The fourth movie, An Ant’s Life, I had seen previously and
therefore didn’t include in the poll. I
ended up watching A Car’s Life and
writing about knock-off movies for the first of many times throughout the
history of these posts. Since that time,
I decided to rewatch An Ant’s Life. It never worked out too well until this
point. The movie bounced in and out of
the schedule more times than Michael Jordan bounced in and out of a basketball
career. Finally, its time has come.
It seems only fitting that the topic of this week’s post is
similar to that of A Car’s Life. The difference is that I’m going to take a
look at it on a more personal level and it will be a little bit more specific
than that original post. Whereas the
original was about the idea of direct-to-video and television knockoffs in
general, this week I’m going to tell the tale of how I came to know a bunch of
animated knockoffs of animated films.
So, basically, while the topic plays in a very similar territory as that
second post of the Sunday “Bad” Movies, it is much more similar to the post I
wrote for Snakes on a Train. In that post, I gave my personal history with
The Asylum as a production studio. This
post will be my personal history with animated knockoffs.
Before I get into the full on history that I have with these
kinds of movies, I feel like I should specify what I mean by animated
knockoffs. Much like Snakes on a Train is to Snakes on a Plane, I am sticking to the
more direct knockoffs. Two similar
movies that come out at the same time are not necessarily knockoffs. Antz
and A Bug’s Life came out around the
same time. They are both about
ants. But I wouldn’t say that either
movie was trying to use the other’s popularity to make money. The same could be said about Madagascar and The Wild. Both are about zoo
animals ending up in the African wilderness but neither seemed to be trying to
use the other for profit. The movies I
will be discussing are the ones that are clearly trying to make money off of
others. Going back to A Bug’s Life… How similar is the title An Ant’s Life? Both are 1998, one is practically using the
name of the other, and An Ant’s Life
was direct-to-video, and likely to confuse parents who were looking to rent a
movie for their kids to watch. That’s
the kind of stuff I’m going to be writing about. Blatant capitalism.
It all starts with An
Ant’s Life, I guess. And to talk
about An Ant’s Life, I need to talk
about discovering the DVD package that includes An Ant’s Life. One of the
places I go to often when I’m searching for bad movie DVD sets is Walmart. It’s not that I love Walmart as a store. It’s always overcrowded, messy, and the
parking lot is horrible to drive through.
The one good thing about the place is their cheap movie bins. Whether it’s the $5 DVDs or the $7 blu-rays,
you can usually find some really good deals.
In the DVDs, I’ve found numerous ten movie packs that I’ve used for
movies in this blog. Backwoods Bloodbath? It came from one of these packages. Dig
Your Grave Friend… Sabata is Coming?
That’s right. It was in one of
these DVDs. So I guess you can figure
out where I’m going with this.
One day I was in Walmart.
What for? I do not remember. It was likely cheap shoes or cheap work pants
that I would use until they died slow, painful clothing deaths. Yes, I buy shoes and pants at Walmart. Say what you want, but that stuff does its
job for the time that I have it. I
decided to check out the movie bins during my time in the store to see if there
was anything worth picking up. Maybe
there would be a cheap copy of The
Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford or something. I’ve seen that movie in the bin before. As I searched through the bin, I found the
DVD with the four animated movies on it.
At first, I threw that back in the bin.
However, the more I thought about it, the more I wanted that DVD. The movies intrigued me. They looked terrible, but they intrigued
me. I grabbed the DVD, tossed it into my
cart and went to the checkout.
The first movie on the DVD is An Ant’s Life. It’s playing
off of A Bug’s Life, as I’ve already
said multiple times. The second one is Spider’s Web: A Pig’s Tale. This one is a 2006 animated movie that I can
only is playing off of the live action Charlotte’s
Web movie that came out that same year.
In fact, based on the description, it is about a spider and a pig who
are friends. Much like in Charlotte’s Web. The third movie that is on the DVD is A Car’s
Life, the Cars knockoff I watched for
the second week of the Sunday “Bad” Movies. The fourth and final movie on the DVD is The Ugly Duckling and Me. That one’s just an animated retelling of the
story of The Ugly Duckling. There’s no
movie from around that time that it was using to make money.
That DVD was my first foray into the world of animated
knockoffs of mainstream movies. I had no
idea before finding it in the Walmart bin that there was an industry in
animated knockoffs. It makes sense that
there is, though. Parents want to find
anything that could capture their child’s attention so that the kid behaves or
doesn’t cause a ruckus. If you don’t
want to take the kid to the theater to see the new Cars movie, you can rent/stream the knockoff A Car’s Life series. It’s as
easy as that. The movies on this DVD
haven’t been the only animated knockoffs I have encountered however.
I’m not sure I’ve mentioned before (because it is pretty
much completely unrelated to bad movies) how much I love chocolate milk. I will look for any sales on the stuff then
storm the store looking for it. Dollar
for a liter? Count me in. I’ll be all over that like white on
rice. Or brown on rice. It all depends on the rice. Anyway, the story continues with me being on
one of these chocolate milk runs. The
store Giant Tiger had it on sale so I made my way over there to pick some
up. Much like Walmart, Giant Tiger has a
bargain bin for DVDs. I always look
through it before I leave the store to see if there’s anything worth picking
up. Usually the bin has some decent
television shows or SNL compilations
for me to grab. I got the first four
seasons of Mad Men out of that
bin. Eventually, the quality
deteriorated.
After a few trips to Giant Tiger for chocolate milk, I
noticed a clear decline in the quality of the movies and television shows that
were on sale in the bargain bin. No
longer was King Kong on sale at a
cheap price. Instead, there were a bunch
of different animated knockoffs. Yes,
they were back and they were abundant.
This is where I found Tappy Toes,
a knockoff of Happy Feet that I’ve covered
for the Sunday “Bad” Movies in the past.
The other notable knockoff that I saw in the bin was a hilariously
titled Kung Fu Panda knockoff. The title?
Chop Kick Panda. That’s right.
They decided that the right name for their knockoff would be Chop Kick Panda. I haven’t seen that one, but I can say that Tappy Toes is the best of the three
animated knockoffs I have seen.
There are numerous other examples of animated knockoffs out
on the market. In the mid-90s, many
knockoffs of Disney animated classics were released. More recently, there are the ones I
mentioned, as well as Ratatouing (Ratatouille), Tiny Robots (Robots), Little and Big Monsters (Monsters vs. Aliens), What’s Up (Up), and Frozen Land (Frozen).
It doesn’t look like they will be stopping anytime soon. With more movies animated movies being
released every year, more animated knockoffs will be released. These companies are trying to make money off
of the confusion that their names will bring to potential viewers. I, for one, enjoy seeing all of these movies
out there. It gives me a good
laugh. And laughter is the best
medicine, right? Not really, but it’s
fun to laugh.
I’ve got a bunch of notes for you this week:
- Here are the movies I mentioned in this post. A Car’s Life. Snakes on a Train. Tappy Toes. Backwoods Bloodbath. Dig Your Grave Friend… Sabata is Coming.
- Some other animated movies I have covered are The Hero of Color City, Roxanne’s Best Christmas Ever, and Jonah: A Veggietales Movie.
- Other knockoff movies I’ve covered are Paranormal Entity, Nazis at the Center of the Earth, and Metal Man.
- Corinne Orr was in both An Ant’s Life and A Car’s Life. By in, I mean she did voice work in each.
- The director of An Ant’s Life was Michael Schelp who also directed A Car’s Life.
- Have you seen An Ant’s Life? Have you seen any animated knockoffs like what I’ve been writing about? What do you think about knockoff movies? Use the comments section below to let me know.
- If you have a movie that you think I should cover for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, let me know in the comments, on my Twitter account, or in my email sundaybadmovies@gmail.com
- Next week’s movie is going to be Zarkorr! The Invader. I’ve never seen it before, so this should be interesting. I’ll see you then.
