When it comes to animated films, stardom speaks loudly
While A-listers grab the big roles, lesser-knowns sometimes steal the show
When my daughter was young, one of our favorite movies to watch together was “The Emperor’s New Groove” (2000). It’s an animated film about haughty young Emperor Kuzco, voiced by David Spade, who is transformed into a llama by his scheming adviser, Yzma. After that, Yzma seeks to finish him off and secure a permanent hold on the throne.
Spade puts his trademark snark to good use as Kuzco, but the chief delight for me back then was the discovery that Yzma was voiced by the sublime singer-actress Eartha Kitt.
In the late 1980s, I’d seen Kitt in a production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies” in London’s West End, where her performance of “I’m Still Here,” the ultimate showbiz survivor’s anthem, was nothing less than shattering. In 2000, Kitt was having a moment — she also earned a Tony nomination that year for her performance in the Broadway musical “The Wild Party” — but you certainly couldn’t call her a household name.
But there she was, at age 73, bringing a fiendish, cackling glee to a cartoon character in “The Emperor’s New Groove” as if she’d been doing it all her life.
Out-of-left-field casting surprises like that are rarer these days, alas. Studios are more inclined to play it safe by casting animated films with A-listers, including the newly released “Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio” (Ewan McGregor, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, John Turturro), and “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” (Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Olivia Colman, Florence Pugh, John Mulaney).
Over the past couple of decades, animated movies have become just another star vehicle, heavily populated with the same actors who dominate the multiplex and celebrity magazines and late-night talk shows.
When big names hold sway in voice acting, it can shift the focus from what we’re seeing to who we’re hearing. Moviegoers are drawn into a game of “Is that ...?”
From time immemorial, theater performers have seethed as they’ve watched roles they originated onstage get snatched away in film or TV adaptations by actors who possess a 10th of their talent. I’ll bet that professional voice actors feel much the same about being big-footed in their field by celebrities. They’ve spent years honing their heardbut-not-seen craft, only to be displaced by stars whose primary claim to a role is that they’re famous, and who see voice work as a lucrative sideline rather than a career.
As the voice of Sebastian J. Cricket in “Pinocchio,” McGregor is . . . fine, but nothing special. And was a performer of Blanchett’s all-world caliber really needed to play a hyperkinetic monkey named Spazzatura who mostly makes unintelligible sounds? In a behindthe-scenes documentary about the making of the stop-motion animated “Pinocchio,” Del Toro said that when he was directing Blanchett in “Nightmare Alley” (2021), they were “having such a good time that she said, ‘You gotta give me a part on ‘Pinocchio.’ I go, ‘The only part left is a monkey.’” Added Blanchett: “And I went, ‘I would do anything. I would play a pencil in a movie for you.’”
The sound you hear is the grinding of teeth by myriad voice actors who would also be happy to play a pencil. But at Blanchett’s level of fame, you ask for it, you get it. It’s the deflating experience, familiar from other spheres, of watching the rich get richer.
Now, obviously the presence of big-name stars can help to market a movie, and often is enough to get it green-lighted in the first place. It’s not news that in Hollywood the bottom line is the bottom line. And yes, there are times when an A-lister turns in a vocal performance in an animated film that is so good it becomes a significant entry in their overall body of work.
Even without seeing his face, the shape-shifting genius of Robin Williams was seldom on better display than in his vocal performance as the fast-talking genie in “Aladdin” (1992). (In an inspired stroke, Williams even managed to incorporate an impersonation of William F. Buckley!) As the evil Scar and the noble Mufasa, Jeremy Irons and James Earl Jones created a memorable portrait of brotherly enmity in “The Lion King” (1994).
Tom Hanks and Tim Allen’s vocal performances as Woody and Buzz Lightyear brought an enjoyable buddy-movie flavor to the other delights of the “Toy Story” franchise. Eddie Murphy reminded us how funny he could be as Donkey in “Shrek” (2001).
But in general, star turns in animated films are less of a treat for me than when a less-known performer gets an opportunity and seizes it. Take Stephanie Beatriz. I knew her from her supporting role in “Brooklyn NineNine” as ultra-terse, tough-asnails police detective Rosa Diaz, but that didn’t prepare me for the expressive range Beatriz brought to her voice work as insecure, empathetic, 15-year-old Mirabel in last year’s animated hit “Encanto."
Big-name voice acting is a relatively recent phenomenon. Major stars were scarce in many Disney classics, which primarily employed voice actors or character actors: “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937), the original “Pinocchio” (1940), “Bambi” (1942), “Cinderella” (1950), “Lady and the Tramp” (1955), “Sleeping Beauty” (1959), “One Hundred and One Dalmatians” (1961), and even the film that kicked off the so-called Disney Renaissance, “The Little Mermaid” (1989). The animation, the stories, the songs, and, yes, the voice acting were the main attractions.
Then “Beauty and the Beast” (1991) came along, featuring the voices of Angela Lansbury (as Mrs. Potts, the teapot) and Jerry Orbach (as Lumiere the candelabra). That was followed a year later by “Aladdin” (1992), with the unstoppable Williams. “The Lion King” (1994) tapped the talents of not just Jones and Irons but also Matthew Broderick, Whoopi Goldberg, Nathan Lane, Cheech Marin, Rowan Atkinson, Robert Guillaume, and, as young Simba, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, a cast member from the ABC sitcom “Home Improvement.” The voice cast of “Pocahontas” (1995) included Mel Gibson, Linda Hunt, and Christian Bale.
But it was when the 21st century dawned that stars really took over the screen in animated films.
Pixar’s 2001 hit “Monsters, Inc.” starred Billy Crystal and John Goodman along with Steve Buscemi, Jennifer Tilly, and James Coburn. That same year “Shrek” showcased the voices of Murphy, Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, and John Lithgow.
Then it was on to “Ice Age” (2002), with Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, and Denis Leary; “Finding Nemo” (2003) with Ellen DeGeneres and Albert Brooks; “Ratatouille” (2007) with Patton Oswalt and Peter O’Toole; “Up” (2009) with Ed Asner and Christopher Plummer.
Not to mention “Fantastic
Mr. Fox” (2009) with George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, and Owen Wilson; Steve Carell and Jason Segel in “Despicable Me” (2010); Kristen Bell in “Frozen” (2013); “The Lego Movie”
(2014) with Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, and Elizabeth Banks; “Moana” (2016) with Dwayne Johnson . . .
Big names will doubtless continue to hold sway in the world of animation, but there are occasional signs of a backlash.
For decades, Charles Martinet has been the voice of video game character Mario, an overalls-wearing plumber who speaks with a stereotypically Italian accent. But when fans learned that Chris Pratt had been cast as the voice of Mario in “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” due out next spring, some were not pleased.
And they were even less happy when a trailer for the movie was released online. One fan’s verdict on Twitter: “Chris Pratt as Mario is a prime example of why you should hire voice actors for voice acting roles because what the hell is this.”