Five Great Cartoons That Made for Terrible Live-Action Movies
Hot take: The 1994 Flintstones film isn’t good. I’ll admit that John Goodman was a fantastic choice for Fred Flintstone and that the production design was top-notch (minus the early CGI Dino). But it just wasn’t all that funny compared to the original cartoon, which was intended for adults whereas the 1994 film was very clearly for children.
Worse yet, the movie’s success led to a slew of cartoon-to-live-action adaptations in the ‘90s that made The Flintstones look like Citizen Kane by comparison. Here are five of those absolute stinkers that tried (and failed) to match the fairly overrated success of The Flintstones…
Casper (1995)
Like The Flintstones, there are some things about the 1995 Casper movie that are legitimately great. For instance: The ghosts in Casper still work extremely well, even with the limitations of ‘90s CGI. It was also smart for the film to make 3D versions of the models from the original 1940s/1950s comic strip rather than trying to modernize them, thus losing their original charm.
None of that can keep the movie from being a boring slog, though. I guess it’s just hard to make a film about a dead kid enjoyable.
Mr. Magoo (1997)
After his incredible success in comedies like Airplane! and The Naked Gun, Leslie Nielsen signed onto whatever comedic garbage was thrown at him, from Dracula, Dead and Loving It to Surf Ninjas. Among Nielsen’s mid-to-late-1990s parade of putrescence was Mr. Magoo, an adaptation of shorts from the 1950s about a senile, jabbering old man with poor eyesight whose gags were all about trouble almost befalling him. Although Nielsen was a fine choice for the character, the main problem is that Mr. Magoo is too one-note to hold any movie.
This isn’t a knock on the character, either. My favorite Looney Tunes character is Foghorn Leghorn, but I’ll be the first to admit that no one needs 90 minutes of Foghorn Leghorn in a Southern-fried Smokey and the Bandit-type chase movie. And nobody needed 90 minutes of Nielsen falling down elevator shafts either.
George of the Jungle (1997)
What if Tarzan was an idiot? That’s pretty much the idea behind the Jay Ward 1960s cartoon George of the Jungle. And while the original cartoon looked cheap as hell, it was funny in short bursts. But much like Mr. Magoo, no one needed 90 minutes of a brain-damaged Tarzan knockoff smashing into trees.
Dudley Do-Right (1999)
Look, we’re all happy Brendan Fraser is back, but let’s not pretend like he didn’t star in some absolute garbage in the late ‘90s. In addition to donning a loincloth as George of the Jungle, Fraser wore a Canadian Mountie uniform to inhabit another cheaply-made Jay Ward cartoon called Dudley Do-Right. Dudley Do-Right is a dim-witted Canadian Mountie who had short segments during The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle that once again wear thin after a few minutes, much less an hour and a half.
Also, Dudley Do-Right should be played by a Canadian. Sorry, if saying that makes me “woke,” but it needed to be said.
Inspector Gadget (1999)
In fairness, Inspector Gadget probably could hold a whole movie together. He’s a funny character who supported a solid show across many episodes, and his wide array of gadgets lend themselves to being spread out over the course of an entire film. All of that is undone in Inspector Gadget, though, by two things: 1) the effects look like shit; and 2) Matthew Broderick was all wrong for the part.
Inspector Gadget was an overconfident detective who was rigged up with devices that he didn’t know how to control. But Broderick was always better at playing wry, smart characters like Ferris Bueller, or insecure, anxious ones like Leopold Bloom from The Producers. And so, Inspector Gadget was much better suited by someone like French Stewart, who played him in the slightly better, but still terrible sequel.
