FANTASTICAL CREATIONS: THREE CLASSIC KIDS’ MOVIES
PINOCCHIO (1940)
This Disney classic built on the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and brought to life a stylised world which more than held its own against the live action films of the day. It came at a moment when animators, rather than today’s celebrity voice talents, were the stars, and they innovated in myriad ways, hinting at the action offscreen and using multiplane perspectives. But the enduring power of the movie is the timelessness of the story, a parable about the danger of telling lies. At a gut level, it was a narrative about becoming, and the climax, when Geppetto is captive in the belly of the whale and Pinocchio proves himself at last, is a fireworks show of visual brilliance.
LABYRINTH (1986)
Three geniuses, George Lucas, Jim Henson and Monty Python’s Terry Jones, combined to blow the minds of 1980s’ children with this dark, musical story about a Gen X Dorothy (Jennifer Connolly in her film debut) who must rescue her little brother from a goblin prince (David Bowie). Henson’s gloriously gnarled puppets, and sparkling, sepia backdrops, were a huge leap forward from his previous film (The Dark Crystal), and ensured that the film would never really date. Bowie’s mullet-wearing wizard, one moment brooding, the next playful, was just the right side of scary (adults could quake at his revealing tights) and his raucous contributions to the soundtrack were enough to make anyone believe in magic.
SPIRITED AWAY (2001)
Hayao Miyazaki, who wrote and directed this, was a huge influence on the folk at Cartoon Saloon, and while the Japanese animator hit vertiginous creative peaks both before and after (with Princess Mononoke and Howl’s Moving Castle), this film might well be his masterpiece. It’s a phantasmagorical feast, set in a bathhouse underworld which shifts and morphs as fast as its bewildered young fugitive-heroine can absorb it. There’s a buffet of slobbering pigs, a demented flying crone and a slime creature. The whole thing has a hallucinatory quality, and, like the great children’s classics, a beguiling wit and playfulness.