Chuck Amuck: The Movie

This movie is a good film about the life and times of esteemed animator Chuck Jones. The one who made many of the cartoons that we know today (Wile E. Coyote, Road Runner, Pepe LePew, Sniffles the Mouse, and the list goes on.) He also contributed to every major Looney Tunes character we know today except Tom & Jerry. This movie is like Chuck Jones: Extremes and In Betweens, so all those who enjoyed that will most likely enjoy this. This would be a film recommended to all cartoon-lovers or people interested in anything about Chuck Jones. This might also be a good family film for those who wish to know and enjoy the "Merry Melodies" characters created and contributed by Chuck Jones. This is an o.k. movie that gives a good account of Chuck Jones life and I would recommend it to anyone interested.

Ostensibly a documentary about legendary animator Chuck Jones (made for British TV at the time of the opening of the Museum Of The Moving Image - which I visited in 1999, when it was about to be closed down!), the film is something of a mixed bag as, despite the title, it isn't really an exhaustive biography of the man but a generic documentary about the art of animation. Having said that, his explanations into the design of the various classic cartoon characters was undeniably illuminating but it deals only intermittently with his career and his numerous collaborators - spending too much time on childhood recollections and an over-extended introductory sequence, which serves as an advert to the Museum more than anything else! - though we do get to see some shining samples from his celebrated work for the Warner Bros. studio during their 1940s and 1950s heyday (mainly from DUCK AMUCK [1953], appropriately enough). Therefore there is, perhaps unsurprisingly, no mention of Jones' rather disastrous move to MGM in the next decade - where he was involved with the substandard latter-day Tom & Jerry cartoons (though he also contrived to make THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH [1970], a quite good intellectual animated feature in the vein of "Alice In Wonderland" and "The Wizard Of Oz").

Right after Chuck Jones died in February, 2002, PBS ran a documentary about him. I watched it, but didn't catch the title. When I saw that one of the Looney Tunes DVDs carried "Chuck Amuck: The Movie", I wondered whether that was the same one. It turned out to be a different one. This one starts out with an exhibit in London's Museum of the Moving Image, which was at the time featuring Chuck Jones's work. From there, the documentary focuses on Jones, but he uses much of it to talk about the art of animation in general. There are of course plenty of scenes from the Looney Tunes cartoons to move the action along, but also stuff from Jones's childhood and how it influenced his work.

OK, so maybe the documentary is sort of advertising the museum, and maybe there is more focus than necessary on Jones's childhood. I, for one, find it fascinating to hear about how a person's experiences in life contribute to his/her work. Of course, I like hearing all about the classic Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons, so maybe I'm too biased about all this. The overall point is that even if this documentary isn't the greatest ever made (for ones of this nature, you can't beat "Bugs Bunny Superstar"), it should still be of interest to Looney Tunes fans. Worth seeing.

I wonder what the other Chuck Jones documentary was called.

This tribute to Chuck Jones, the least threatening Warner Brothers animation genius around and no less brilliant for it, gets off on the wrong foot, meandering toward its subject with insipid BBC narration. But after five minutes the decks are cleared and Chuck is given a platform to reminisce, to expound, and to theorize. His words are rehearsed and calculated as well as insightful - the recent TCM doc "Chuck Jones: Memories," based on an interview he gave over a decade later, reiterates many of these anecdotes almost down to the phrase. The latter work is more artful and more intimate, but this one gets the edge - for his comments on the need to 'respect the single frame' which is just about the most essential quote on film-making I've ever heard from anybody, and for the generous nods to the team that worked behind, above and alongside him - to isolate Chuck Jones from this milieu is like writing a one-man show about Tommy Douglas, and there are gems galore to be found here.