Gumby 1

Folks, I'll be straight with you. This is not the greatest film ever made. In fact, it's not the best Gumby film ever made (although it's the best--read: only--full-length Gumby film ever made). I attribute this largely to the fact that Gumby and his secondary characters are intended to be digested in five-minute doses. An hour and a half with them is a little bit like a phone call from an old friend you haven't talked to in years, who stays on the phone long after you remember how much better you liked them when they hadn't been chewing your ear off for hours. In other words, as you watch the movie (if you're over the age of 8 at least), you're glad to see Gumby is doing well--he's got a new band, some new friends, even some groupies. And in fact, if you liked Gumby in normal-size episodes as a kid, you almost feel validated somehow because the slightly weird character you liked finally got his own movie. But as the clock ticks forward, you begin to wonder why there needed to be a Gumby cartoon of this length. In fact, you realize, even if you'd really wanted an hour-and-a-half-long Gumby fix, you'd rather have watched 15 or so regular Gumby shorts.

But I must admit, once a Gumby fan, always a shameless Gumby fan. It has its moments, and if you like the little green guy with the pointy head, you'll get a kick out of it. But let me put it this way: I've owned the VHS of it since about 1997 and have watched it twice in the past eight years. It's not a movie you'll be watching again and again if you buy it, no matter how much you like Gumby.

That said, a word about the two new characters: I can accept a guy named Gumby. I can accept, even, that his dad's name is Gumbo. I can accept a horse named Pokey, a girl named Goo, a kid sister named Minga, and even a dinosaur named Prickle. Not to mention a red teardrop with a face that has limbs coming directly out of said face, and the fact that said teardrop is a professor of some kind. I can even accept the fact that everyone in the world looks normal, except for Gumby and his pals, who are highly stylized blocks of primary colors. But I draw the line at two guys named Claybert and Fatbuckle. What kind of names are those?

Gumby: The Movie

Claymation is typically a family run business on account it takes generations to film 8 minutes.

In fact, it took animators 36 years to make this 90-minute stop-motion feature film.

Lead singer and guitarist Gumby, his equine friend Pokey, and they rest of their rock band The Clayboys hold a benefit concert for their farmer friends who are being evicted by Blockhead E-Z Loan for missed mortgage payments.

During the showcase, the Blockheads kidnap Gumby's dog and then replace Gumby and his band mates with robotic replicas that wreck havoc around town.

Released in 1995, forty-years after the clay character debuted on Howdy Doody, this anniversary feature film has the low budget, retro feel of the original shorts. While the mortgage crisis plotline is advanced for younger viewers, the madcap supporting cast keeps everything loosey goosey.

And remember: always put Gumby back in his container or he'll harden and fragment. Yellow Light

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Green humanoid clay boy Gumby (Dallas McKennon) and his red talking horse friend Pokey (Art Clokey) are part of a band called Gumby and the Clayboys. When Gumby's nemeses, The Blockheads, use their loan company to scam a bunch of farmers out of their homes, Gumby decides to put on a benefit concert with his band unaware his music causes Lowbelly the dog to cry pearls which the Blockheads discover and enact a plan to enrich themselves.

Odds are if you were in the right place and right time be it the Howdy Doody Show, the TV series, or Eddie Murphy's SNL parody, you're probably familiar with Claymation figure Gumby created by Art Clokey. While Clokey may not be a household name, he's considered a pioneer in Claymation with his works such as Gumby and the Lutheran children's show Davey and Goliath etching their way into our cultural milieu through homage or (more likely) parody. During the 80s Gumby had experienced a revival of popularity and cultural relevance with Clokey producing new episodes of the series for syndication and also found a new audience following Eddie Murphy's SNL sketch leading to a college aged fanbase who appreciated the surrealism. Production on the film began in 1988 before being completed in 1992 and the film sat on a shelf due to lack of distributor interest. The film was given a very limited run at about 21 theaters by Arrow Releasing in 1995 where it only made $57,000 against an estimated $2.8 million budget, but did much better on home video selling one million VHS units on its run. Critical reception wasn't particularly kind from whatever critics actually bothered to watch the movie with the film deemed by critics as outdated in comparison to the year's other releases like Toy Story or Pocahontas or even recent stop-motion films like The Nightmare Before Christmas. Gumby may have been a first mover with Claymation, but when you step back from whatever nostalgic attachment you have from this film it's hard not to argue Gumby's been left behind by successive talents in the field.

Watching Gumby the Movie (or Gumby 1 as the screen title shows) there's a large variety of sets and elements on display so it's much grander and ambitious than the TV series was. But despite the large size, there's something about the movie that feels like it belongs to the same era of Stop-Motion animation as various Rankin-Bass projects. For comparison, Nick Park released his first Wallace & Gromit short A Grand Day Out in 1989 with production costing roughly $22,000 dollars. Despite some rough spots in the animation or filmmaking elements A Grand Day Out felt large in scope and had a cohesive if weird story (going to the moon because you're out of cheese, it does what it should for 20 something minutes). Looking at Gumby the Movie, its plot doesn't really feel all that grand and it's just a bunch of mini conflicts loosely stapled together that might've worked as 10-20 minute segments on television, but when put into feature film format the stiffness and awkwardness of the story that might've added a certain level of appeal on TV feels drawn out. I will say there's a certain novelty to watching some of the morphing and deformation of the clay models in how the move and interact with each other, but this also leads to problems in establishing any kind of stakes because there's no real way for Gumby to be hurt by the Blockheads and in a movie where anything and everything can happen it kind of makes it hard to keep audience investment up for 90 minutes.

Gumby the Movie is the kind of film that defies review because it's divorced from logic and rests itself primarily on the surrealness of its animation and world. The movie tries to anchor itself to some kind of narrative (even if it's paper thin) for the purposes of giving some kind of engine to keep the audience invested, but it's basically window dressing as Gumby's capable of doing anything and everything the animators will allow him to do. There's a certain level of charm to Gumby and his movie, but it also feels like while stop-motion has moved forward with the likes of Phil Tippett, Nick Park, and Henry Selick, Gumby has stayed exactly where he is.

First let me say that my recollections of Gumby from childhood are very hazy. It's much easier to recall those skits of Eddie Murphy playing Gumby on Saturday Night Live, but that's because I see those re-runs on Comedy Central all the time. So as I saw Gumby: The Movie on the shelf at the video store, I wasn't interested in reminiscing my own early years, but more an idea of what that's supposed to be like.

When the tape went in and the movie came on, it was sheer joy from beginning to end. I watched this with several other people also, and made this observation: People who enjoyed Eyes Wide Shut (such as myself) also enjoyed Gumby: The Movie. People who did not enjoy Eyes Wide Shut... well you can guess. I am convinced that much of Kubrick's inspiration for his last work of art, came from Gumby: The Movie. You may think I am joking, but I am as serious as brain surgery.

The entire tone set in the beginning of the FILM, is dark and oooh oooh oooh mysterious. There's a darn drive-in theater on the moon. What does that say to you? Come on now. Gumby is nowhere to be found and Pokey is naturally upset. (Though not as upset as he will be when he melds with two other characters as a result of a tube slide accident.) Yet, even as he is upset, he delivers his lines with the same lack of panache as any other line in the screenplay.

Look at him! Pokey knows that Gumby will turn up somewhere, and they've been in a relationship for so long that you must appreciate the knowledge on their part of the routine. Pokey's been worried before and he recognizes that. Gumby and Pokey have done everything together, yet they somehow manage to honorably "sell-themselves" out one last time here. Old buddies out to make the world honest and pure.

It is entirely too complicated to go into the depth of what every single word from their clay mouths' implies, but it offers the questions and the answers are for you to figure out. Let me ask you this, Why is it that Gumby's dad is red? Shouldn't his parents be yellow and blue? What does this tell you? Gumby's dad is not actually Gumby's dad! But then who is he huh? And NO I was not intoxicated in any way while watching this film, I'm straight edge!

I'm positive that if you are interested in delving into the inner workings of films and not interested in taking things at face value, you will thoroughly enjoy Gumby: The Movie. So watch it again and again. By the way, Would you know you were human if nobody told you? And what kind of shock would it be if you happened to come across the word human in the dictionary?

When I was around ten years old, I watched some episodes of "The Gumby Show" on video. Since I liked what I saw, I then watched this full-length feature, which came nearly four decades after the birth of the stop-motion character's original TV show. "Gumby: The Movie" was not a disappointment for me, and the first time I watched it during my childhood wasn't my last. I have watched it again three times, I think all within the past year, and thought it was pretty good the first couple times, but it went slightly downhill for me with my latest viewing. While I watched "Gumby: The Movie" last night, I wasn't quite as impressed.

In this movie, Gumby is a member of a rock band called the Clayboys. The band has a studio on a farm, where they rehearse. As the band are on their way to their studio, along with Gumby's friends (Pokey, Goo, and Prickle), they learn that farmers are about to lose their homes, due to the fact that they cannot pay their debts. The Clayboys decide to hold a benefit concert for these troubled farmers. Unfortunately, the evil Blockheads, the ones who delivered the letters to the farmers, informing them of the bad news, are at the concert. When these two notice Gumby's dog, Lowbelly, crying pearls, they begin to record the music. After the show, the Blockheads kidnap Lowbelly, so they can play the recording they have of the Clayboys' music, and have him cry more pearls so they can get rich! However, they discover that Lowbelly will only cry pearls when he hears the music live, so the two villains now intend to kidnap the band members as well!

"Gumby: The Movie" may have more for kids than for adults, but it's not strictly for kids. During previous recent viewings, I certainly wasn't blown away, but thought it reasonably entertaining, with some mild excitement, an occasional funny scene (such as the clumsy robot waiter in the café), and some interesting places the characters find themselves in when they enter books. When I last watched the film, I was entertained by these things for a while, but eventually, I found that it got tiring. I also found that some of the voice-overs are poor, although most of them are alright. I don't know, maybe I have now seen it too many times. However, since I liked the film more during previous viewings, and enjoyed a bit of it this time, I have to give it credit, and do recommend it for stop-motion fans of all ages. You just might not want to expect a masterpiece.