Leunig Animated

This is a very poor quality production and wouldn't recommend even the most ardent Leunig supporter to buy it. The most annoying thing is that each animation is sandwiched between opening titles and closing credits (which are exactly the same for each animation) which means half the DVD is redundant padding and you almost go mad watching the same thing 50 times over by the end of the DVD. It would have been much smarter to put opening titles and credits in only once.

The other thing is that the opening titles include a cartoon (one of the animations), which you see 50 times over by the end of the DVD - like any joke, a cartoon loses its magic every time it is reshown and a cartoon that is reshown 50 times in 1 minute intervals is simply irritating.

I saw a live puppet version of Leunig's creations at the Sydney Opera House years ago and it was brilliant (which is why I bought this DVD) but this doesn't work at all. I think the decision to limit each animation to 1 minute was unwise - the puppet production used much longer "dream sequences" and was much more compelling - you really felt like you had been transported into Leunig's world. In contrast, the 1 minute animations are too short (unless you have ADD) and are constantly being interrupted by the titles and credits which makes it hard to get into - you are constantly jerked around from one world to another rather than, say, spending 10 minutes in Curly Flat and then moving to a different Leunig world.

Finally, the dialogue in the animations is almost exactly the same as the original cartoons, which means the animations add nothing to the original cartoons (apart from movement). While this might get marks for being a "faithful reproduction", it ignores the fact that you always have to change dialogue when going from one medium to another (i.e. book to movie) - this is why screenwriters exist. I think they needed to hire a screenwriter to translate the cartoon dialogue (which is very brief because of space limitations on the printed page but doesn't really work on screen) into a credible screen dialogue. As an example, the Dilbert TV series didn't attempt to translate the Dilbert cartoons word for word but to translate them into longer stories/sketches which you need to keep the viewers's attention.