Diversion 2.0 Thirty Day Song Challenge -- Day 6: A Song That Reminds You of Somewhere

One of my favorite parts of summer is the road trip. To me, nothing beats cramming 2-4 friends in the car and hitting the interstate, arguing over who chooses the music, buck-passing the responsibility of choosing where to eat, and bonding over stupid car games. It hardly even matters where we go, as long we go there together.

Of course, having a sweet ride always helps, and my friend Regi had the sweetest ride of all when we were sixteen: a 1988 Chevrolet Caprice. This car was an absolute beast, nearly as long as a school bus, and better-furnished than the apartment I currently live in. It got maybe 12 miles to the gallon, but who cared when we were travelling on, in essence, a motorized, over-large couch?

It was in this car that we took one of my favorite road trips ever: an afternoon journey to Missoula, followed by a four-day stay at my grandmother’s cabin on Lindbergh Lake. The sun was shining, the A/C was up, and we were locked at 74 all the way there, not giving a toss about who passed us or what hand gestures they were making while they did. Life was good.

On our way home, Regi was sleeping in the back seat, while my other friend Jeff and I sat up front. We listened to a few compilations that we had picked up from the Missoula Hot Topic, and sat in contented silence when they had finished. About ten miles outside of Butte, Regi woke up:

Regi: “Did you guys want to put some music in?”

Andrew: “Nah, we’re good, dude.”

Regi: “Let me rephrase that.”

[Regi hands Andrew a CD]

Coheed and Cambria – “In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3”



What the crap, you may ask, is this “Silent Earth: 3” bollocks? It’s the title track to an album I bought Regi while I was vacationing in Seattle early that same year, and the first non-intro song on the disc. It also happens to be the CD that Regi handed me. The sky was overcast, the road moved by steadily, and aided by the setting around me, it sucked me into one of my favorite records to date, and perhaps the only album from this nonsense “prog” genre that I will actually listen to.

Far from an energetic beginning, “Silent Earth” starts with a bit of a Trojan horse, opening with a slow, plodding acoustic guitar before the main energetic thrust of the song begins. Then as now, this opening compels me—it’s a wonderful combination of aggressive guitars with an air of placidity—or is that the placidity I was feeling when I first heard this song? It’s a long one, but the melodies are well-developed, and, like the rest of the album, I take great pleasure in getting lost in the torrent of sound, emotions, and who knows what else.

Lyrically, I could care less about the specifics of this song. Coheed and Cambria is a concept band (yes, band) whose lyrics are based on a graphic novel penned by the lead singer, which apparently tells some sort of great sci-fi epic. Whatever. I’ve always taken the “feel” of the music and integrated it into whatever experiences I'm having at the time, and this is probably the best way to enjoy Coheed and Cambria.

Even though, thematically, “In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3” doesn’t amount to a hill of beans with me, I still love this song, and the album it’s named for. It reminds me of my first taste of youthful freedom, of friends and highway lines, and the four-wheeled couch that brought us together.

Diversion 2.0 Thirty Day Song Challenge -- Day 5: A Song that Reminds You of Someone

At the beginning of 2009, before Carroll’s spring semester started, I purchased Rock Band 2 for my Xbox 360. I thought it would be a fun way to relive my Guitar Hero glory days and bring together my roommates—it ended up sparking some of the most cherished memories of my college career. From January through May, my life was filled with rock ‘n’ roll, and it wasn’t uncommon to return from class to find my three roommates jamming out “Ballroom Blitz” by Sweet, and for me to drop my book bag and join right in.

We each had our different tastes in music, and they all complemented each other splendidly. Ryan brought his love of classic rock, I had my power pop and emo tunes (someone had to), and Greg listened to basically everything else. We delighted in discovering new music through each other, and reveled in revisiting songs from days gone by (one day we bought “Last Resort” by Papa Roach, specifically so we could cringe at what it was like to be in sixth grade).

System of a Down – B.Y.O.B.



We all had our signature songs; some great, some not so, but none stranger than Greg’s odd infatuation with System of a Down’s “B.Y.O.B.” I have no idea how deep Greg’s affection for System of a Down runs, but he was all about this song; for a guy whose main musical idols include Cake, They Might Be Giants, and Daft Punk, he sure loved his nu-metal.

I really don’t have much to say about this song, other than “It sure is System of a Down.” I was the drummer of the group, and “B.Y.O.B.” is one of the strangest songs I’ve played on Rock Band: the song is approximately 85% chilled-out dance party and 15% mega thrash, and the switch-up can be pretty jarring if you’re not expecting it. The melody is nice, but apart from the novelty of how weird the tempo shifts are, it’s nothing that I would play in my off-time.

Perhaps the most amusing aspect of this song was Greg himself. He was the lead singer of our group, with a deep baritone voice and a surprisingly knack for crooning. All of his singing ability went out the window, though, during the yelling portions of the song, and the sound of my bespectacled, slightly barrel-chested roommate going “LALALALALALALA LALALA!!!” or “BREAK-ING IN-TO FORT KNOX STEAL-ING OUT INTENTIOOONNNNS!!!” never failed to crack me up.

Nowadays, I always think of Greg whenever I hear “B.Y.O.B.” It doesn’t matter if I’m hearing it in a bar, on the radio, wherever; I’ll always get a mental picture of Greg Captain Morgan-ing the couch, mic in hand, emphatically wondering why “they” always send the poor.

Diversion 2.0 Thirty Day Song Challenge -- Day 4: A Song That Makes You Sad

NOTE: This post contains MAJOR spoilers for the TV show Cowboy Bebop, specifically the episode “The Real Folk Blues (Part 2).” That said, it’s been on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim since the programming block’s inception almost ten years ago, so you’ve had time to catch it in a rerun.



During my junior year of high school, I was deeply in love with a girl I met at summer camp (yes, I am that kind of guy, thankyouverymuch). She lived in Dillon at the time, which is a good three hours from Bozeman, but that was no big deal. Why, you ask? Speech and debate, of course! That’s right, I joined an extracurricular activity that would give me years of memories and life skills so that I could chase a girl. Jealous you’re not me yet?

As I was saying, I joined Speech and Debate so that we could see each other during meets. She generally made finals, and I generally didn’t, so I had many opportunities to show her some emotional support during competition (I also learned a great deal about Expository speaking). When state came around, I had a great idea: travel to Corvallis (no mean feat) and watch her perform in what must surely be her finest hour! What could possibly go wrong?!

Long story short: plans went awry, I was forced to return early, and our relationship was never the same again.

The Seatbelts and Mai Yamane – “Blue”



“Blue” is a song from the soundtrack to a TV series called Cowboy Bebop, and is the final moment of the series. During the last episode, the main character, Spike, confronts and his former-friend-turned-foe Vicious, killing him, but dying himself in the process. “Blue” is the song that plays over the ending credits, a haunting, bluesy track of alternating beauty and melancholy, and a perfect accompaniment to such a bittersweet ending.

I had purchased the Bebop soundtrack before going to Corvallis, listening to it much of the way there. I don’t remember actually returning to Bozeman, but I remember sitting in my room, listening to this song on repeat.

What makes “Blue” so powerful is how it isn’t overtly sad—it’s the song’s feeling of finality, of release. For me, it’s the sensation of a new perspective, and of looking back on the old one, better understanding everything, but not able to change anything. It’s the look your first love gives you as she walks towards her new husband at the altar, or a half-smile from your best friend as he leaves forever.

I know for a fact that most people won’t quite connect with this one as much, but this song just gets me right here.

Diversion 2.0 Thirty Day Song Challenge -- Day 3: A Song That Makes you Happy

As I mentioned in my first post in this series, I prefer music to be sympathetic to my moods, rather than changing them. It is difficult, therefore, to find a song that will turn my mood around outright. It’s easy to find songs that take my happiness and “plus” it, but a song that will turn that frown upside down, as they say? Pretty uncommon. Here’s my best guess:

Eddie Money – Shakin’



I first discovered this song earlier in the year, during the tail-end of a fairly tiring and slightly crappy weekend. I was in Helena filming a deliberately-bad sitcom to submit for Carroll College’s film festival; I was hoping it would take Worst Picture, so I made sure it was awful as I could make it. Unfortunately, it was crappy in all of the wrong ways—rather than memorably bad, it was just bad enough to be entirely forgettable, and not entertaining the way that most of my favorite “bad” pictures are. It was the worst way the project could have turned out: it was mediocre. Not only that, I had spent 36 hours editing the damn thing, forgoing interactions with my friends and bringing myself dangerously close to my wit’s end.

In short, I was in a foul, tired mood. I was about a mile and a half from my apartment when I decided to turn on the radio; perhaps something would distract me from this cranky, miserable feeling. It was at this time the classic rock radio station, my old friend and ally, came to my rescue yet again, giving me one of my new favorite 80’s gems.

Like I said earlier, I’m not usually one who can have his mood altered, so what makes “Shakin’” so great? First off, it’s slow. When I’m sad, I start to shut down, and any of my favorite pop punk track would have been way too fast. Second, the melody is simple, and easy to follow; by the third chorus, I was singing it like I’d known it for years. Lastly, and most significantly, the guitar in “Shakin’” is perhaps one of the sexiest things I have heard in music. Something about the sheer size of those 80’s riffs touches me deep inside, and I hear them as my wants and dreams.

The long and short of it is that when I hear “Shakin’”, it almost acts as a release for me. It’s familiar, it’s comfortable, and, sonically, the song just speaks to me. It lets me unwind when I’m down, but I can rock to it when I’m up. Best of all is the lyrics: it’s a short story about Eddie wanting to get laid in his girl’s car. As a young man in his early twenties, I can sure as hell relate to that, and if I were to give it a shot today, I’d probably start with “Shakin’”.

Diversion 2.0 Thirty Day Song Challenge -- Day 2: Your Least-Favorite Song

Well, this one’s a bit easier than yesterday, though not by much. The song that immediately comes to mind is “Chelsea Smile” by Bring Me the Horizon, because it showed me exactly where my definition of “music” ends and the sound of grinding, shrieking metal-sharpening begins. This isn’t quite fair, though, because BMTH represents an entire subgenre of music just like it, and “Chelsea Smile” isn’t any worse than the hundreds of other bands that all want to sound like Cannibal Corpse. You may think me a wuss for not liking this grindcore bollocks. You’re right. Deal.

Which brings us to my least favorite song, and it’s only grudgingly that I acknowledge it’s even a song:

Hinder – Lips of an Angel

For a while, my least favorite group was Nickelback. I remember liking “How You Remind Me” when I was in 7^th grade, but it didn’t take long before my opinion of them went south like a flight of turbo-charged geese. I suppose their instrumentation abilities are fine, but Chad Kroeger must be one of the worst band frontmen since Fred Durst; his songwriting ability is absolutely horrid, and his Southern fried “‘Merica!”-sounding voice gets on my nerves—it’s the audio equivalent deliberately smashing your thumb with a hammer, then lighting the hammer on fire and doing it again. Imagine my surprise and disgust when I found a band that took the worst aspects of Nickelback and made them even bigger.

Yes, that would be Hinder. Pop pseudo-rock sound drained of all edge and other interesting elements? Check. Song catalog full of vaguely misogynistic tracks about how all women are bitches? Check. Douchey-sounding frontman whose very utterances make me want to find a very tall building and cast myself from its top floor? Ohhhhhhhh check.

I’m pretty sure there must be other, worse songs from Hinder (though I pray that I’m wrong), but this one gets to me the most. From the very first, breathily-sung stanza to the ending chord fades, this song spells sonic misery for one Andrew Testerman. Perhaps there are other songs that piss me off more than this turd of a number three charter, but more than any other piece of music I can think of, this track makes me want to take my radio and throw it on the ground.

Diversion 2.0 Thirty Day Song Challenge -- Day 1

Here we go again. I’ve stolen blog ideas from my good friend Jordyn at Popped Density before, and by golly if I’m not about to do it again. This time, as they say, it’s personal, for I am about to start the 30 Day Song Challenge, a fun little game you may notice dominating your friends’ Facebook walls. For me, the 30 Day Song Challenge harkens back to the days when MySpace ruled the social networking streets, before Facebook, Twitter, and Blogger made their way into my life (though after Elftown; let this be the last time I ever speak of that place again).

MySpace had a function called Bulletins, which were special kinds of messages that spammed all of your friends at once. Though they could be used for useful, important functions, most bulletins I received were short, self-centered surveys (“What’s your favorite movie? Who is your idol? Do you have a secret?” Etc.). I will not lie, dear readers, I enjoyed the crap out of those little bits of digital egocentrism, and I’ll be damned if I’m not jumping at the chance to do it again. Plus, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything on the subject of music, so this’ll be a good shot in the arm for my music cred (ha).

Without further ado, let’s get things crackin’:

Day 1 - Your Favorite Song

This series comes out of the gate swinging, doesn’t it? Perhaps this song wouldn’t pose as huge a problem for most others, but I don’t really have favorites; okay, so I do have a favorite game, and my favorite movie will go hidden until another time, but that’s about it when it comes to favorites. At least I’m confident of one thing: no matter what happens in this blog from here on out, they will all be easier than this post.

The worst part about this sort of post is deciding what constitutes as “favorite.” I’m a rather emotional when it comes to my music-listening preferences; I’m much more likely to play a song that matches my current mood than a song that may alter my mood, so my favorite pop punk song might seem wildly inappropriate when, say, I’m at the bottom of a messy breakup depression. At the mo’, though, I’m going to take “favorite” to mean “the one that’s always there.” There may be songs that I like more when I’m happy, there may be songs I like more when I’m sad, but this song is always a constant.

It took a great deal of introspection to find my favorite song. For this is no ordinary list—it’s a list about music, and that means that I take it for cereals. After crawling through my iTunes, Page Down-ing through all 3,800 songs and glancing at every playlist, I had a handful of songs that I knew were “up there,” oddly similar to The Bachelor. But to whom would I bestow my rose of favoritism (which would be a great name for a band, btw)? The answer, like most things in life when you really think about them, was simple:

Autopilot Off – “Clockworks”

Autopilot Off was one of my first “favorite bands,” and I wouldn’t have found them if it weren’t for this song. I first discovered “Clockworks” through SSX3 for the GameCube, a fact whose surprise factor is inversely proportional to how well you actually know me, and was caught off guard by the energetic melody and soaring chorus. Then I heard the real version (the one on SSX was sped-up, for some reason), and that was all she wrote.

Truth be told, the song isn’t terribly special, constructed out of boilerplate pop punk tropes with lyrics that I still don’t understand to this day. I’ve never been one for lyrics, though (or at least as much as one can be into music and not be about lyrics), and the song’s relatively uncreative structure hardly bothers me at all. When I listen to “Clockworks,” I hear an enormous wall of sound; I hear a driving energy that only pop punk can provide; I hear an infectious urgency that I’m not even sure what is urgent about. My favorite songs get me hyped up for tackling life head-on, and I’ll never forget my first slice of pop punk and feeling the notion that, hey, I kinda like this.

How I know it truly passes the test? I put the song on the car stereo, just to see what it was like, and had a car-dancing fit the likes of which I haven’t experienced in quite some time.

Historical significance and involuntary rock spasms? Sounds like a winner to me.

Our Feature Presentation (22/50) -- The Sword in the Stone (1963)

I’m about three films shy of the halfway point here at Our Feature Presentation, and I have a bit of a writer’s confession to make: the most difficult films to write about have been the ones that are totally, resoundingly blah. They’re not good, they’re not bad, they simply slide in and out of my mind, leaving little impression at all that they were there. The Sword in the Stone is one of these movies. There are worse films made by Disney, and certainly there are better ones, but The Sword in the Stone strikes just the right balance of pleasant and aggravating to be almost entirely forgettable.

If you’ll believe it, The Sword in the Stone was one of my more heavily-watched Disney films growing up, somewhere between The Great Mouse Detective and Robin Hood. I’m convinced I was a victim of Sword’s Lambda-class mediocrity even at an early age, because unlike many of the other films in this series, I could scarcely remember anything about it. No songs, no memorable bits of dialogue, no nothin’. I was even rather excited going into this review, knowing that, as far as I knew, at least the movie wasn’t terrible. I was half-right.

He may be the once and future king, but how's his Disney debut hold up?

I’m getting ahead of myself. The Sword in the Stone tells the story of the wizard Merlin (Karl Swenson) as he attempts to instruct a young Arthur Pendragon (Rickie Sorensen, Richard Reitherman, Robert Reitherman, yes, really). You see, Arthur is merely an adopted lackey of blustery Sir Ector (Sebastian Cabot), and isn’t much to speak of when we first meet him; in fact, he's known through most of the movie simply as the Wart. Merlin, on the other hand, is quite familiar with the boy’s destiny, and is all too happy to train him in the ways of the Forc—er, world. Together, the two have several misadventures, mostly involving turning Wart into some animal or another. Why, you ask? Good. Ass. Question.

The Sword in the Stone was the second Disney film to use the Xerography process, and it somehow, impeccably, looks less sketchy and messy than several immediate Disney follow-up films, such as The Aristocats. Perhaps it’s the art design (which looks partially carried over from Sleeping Beauty), but The Sword in the Stone looks slightly nicer than I thought an early-60’s Dark Age movie could look. There are even a few nicely-painted backgrounds and ambitious multi-plane shots, such as the opening “this is the Dark Ages” bit.

I'm starting to notice a trend: no matter how cheap or generally underwhelming the movie, Disney backgrounds always seem to look good. Ah, the simple joys of life.

Music continues the blah parade with an entirely appropriate but entirely forgettable score. It sounds like Disney did in the 60’s—string melodies and the odd harp. Like many D-Unit movies from this time period, The Sword in the Stone features songs written by the Sherman Brothers, who must be among the most inconsistent song writers in history—when the Shermans write a good song, they write “Chim Chim Cheree” and win an Oscar for it, but when they write a bad song, well, they write “The Aristocats.” The songs from Sword fall somewhere in between, ranging anywhere from the tenor-riffic “The Sword in the Stone” to a jazzy “Higgitus Figgitus,” a relative favorite of mine, which should come as no surprise to readers who remember my penchant for nonsense songs.

Considerably less-successful (though, as established before, “considerably less-successful” is still “eh, it’s not so great, I guess”) is the voice acting. Swenson isn’t too bad as Merlin, but the rest of the cast is more or less dreary to listen to. Cabot’s bumbling as Sir Ector gets the job done, Martha Wentworth’s Madame Mim is clichéd and crotchety, and Junius Matthews is PANTS ON HEAD AGGRIVATING as the insufferably queen-y Archimedes. My biggest pet peeve has to deal with Wart, though. As you may have noticed, Wart is played by three voice actors, each coincidentally occupying a different and equally-spaced stage of puberty. Wart often switches between voices with little or no warning, quickly transitioning from a young, ten-year-old-sounding chirp to something more akin to the greasy teenager from The Simpsons.

He's a charismatic little squeaker, let me tell you.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about The Sword in the Stone is how little it seems to even exist. Its good aspects aren’t nearly positive enough to be remembered for long, nor are its negative bits awful enough to remain annoying after they’re over. I’ve spent nearly a month in various states of writers block, all because I can hardly find a bloody thing to say about it. It’s the Katherine Heigl of Disney movies.

Still, it’s not like The Sword in the Stone is bad, and in the most stark, “I must watch something” frame of mind, forgiving viewers can enjoy it with very little backlash. For my money, though, The Sword in the Stone is almost entirely empty calories, akin to eating a box of Quaker Rice Cakes—halfway through, you’ll wonder why you’re still going, but you figure you may as well finish what you started.

Top 3 Songs:

1. “Higgitus Figgitus”
2. “The Sword in the Stone”
3. “A Most Befuddling Thing”

Favorite scene:

• The female squirrel discovers Wart isn’t like her after all

Favorite character:

• Merlin

The Jar Jar:

• Archemedes

How I Watched It

Usually, when a DVD has a special “X-year Anniversary Edition,” it’s reasonable to expect the picture of the movie to look prettier than usual, or at least cleaned up. It’s a shame, then, that my low expectations were unmet by The Sword in the Stone’s 45^th Anniversary Edition. Numerous times throughout the picture, I noticed white splotches or scratchy pictures, and the colors were rather more faded than I expected. Given that it’s a Disney Xerography flick that hasn't accumulated the legacy of, say, 101 Dalmations, it's more-or-less understandable why The Sword in the Stone gets a reasonable shaft (I certainly don’t expect it on Blu-ray any time soon), but I was disappointed all the same.

The 45^th Anniversary Edition comes with a few extra goodies. The first is an excerpt from the Disney TV show, Walt Disney Presents…, which is a bit on the many magic props and such that are kept at Disneyland (“Behold: the decapitated princess. Instead of flower petals around her head, you could put hors d’oeuvres.”). Next is a small documentary on the Sherman Brothers and their songwriting process, which includes snippets from an unused song that I happened to enjoy. Rounding out the package are two Disney shorts: “A Knight for a Day,” a Goofy short about jousting, and “The Brave Little Taylor,” a Mickey Mouse short retelling the old Brothers Grimm story. It’s not much, but considering how Disney has treated other releases from the same time period, I’d say it’s just fine.

Our Feature Presentation (21/50) -- Treasure Planet (2002)

As I mentioned in my Atlantis: The Lost Empire entry, I was a pretty faithful Disney viewer when I was a lad. I went to every single Disney movie released from when I was five to when I was twelve (Aladdin through Fantasia 2000, for those keeping score at home), and owned a good chunk of the canon on VHS. After the new millennium hit, though, a whole host of happenstances prevented me from seeing any more Disney movies theatrically until 2008. I had just turned 13, the precise age when pre-teen boys (in all of their tough guy glory) decide that, eh, Disney’s just not cool no mo’. Y2K also seemed to usher in a new breed of Disney film, a breed that somewhat suffered from an identity crisis, and never felt particularly “Disney;” from 2000 to 2004, Disney fans were treated to transmogriphied llamas, Jules Verne-style adventure stories, and heroic bovines. I sure as hell didn’t know what to make of them, and neither did audiences, for the studio (save for one property) went without a major hit for the better part of a decade.

Because of this perfect storm of circumstance, the Disney films released during the first five years of the 2000’s have a fascinating, alien feel to me—the Disney craftsmanship is clear and present, but the movies simply don’t feel like they gel well with the rest of the Disney canon, giving the seven features an Island of Misfit Toys-esque feeling of deviance. Perhaps no film typifies this better than 2002’s Treasure Planet, directed by Ron Musker and John Clements. History has made it well-known that Planet was Clements and Musker’s dream project, having consistently pitched the idea since they were first handed the director’s chair to The Great Mouse Detective in 1986. Planet is a mix of Renaissance-era Disney tropes (yearning hero, comic side companions, super-obvious joke timing, etc.) and new-school, post-Linkin Park changes (unconventional art style, heavy doses of action, no singing, etc.), and its mish-mash of disparate parts, Frankensteined together into one 95-minute spectacle is, frankly, unique and oddly compelling.

Set sail for high adventure! Er, set rocket thrust! Actually, is there a verb used for space travel that one "sets?"

Treasure Planet starts with a narration about the Dread Pirate Roberts—no, sorry, Captain Flint—and his murderous crew of space scalawags, who plundered the stars for many years until he mysteriously disappeared. Legends say that Flint hid his massive treasure trove on some uncharted world, though in these enlightened days, of course, no one believes a word of it. We then cut to young Jim Hawkins (Joseph Gordon Levitt), a teenager with a delinquent streak and knack for getting into trouble, much to the chagrin of his single mother (Laurie Metcalf). Jim wants more excitement in his life, and soon gets it when a, er, lizard named Billy Bones crash lands at his mother’s inn and dies shortly thereafter, but not before bequeathing a small chest to Jim and giving him a whispered warning about a cyborg.

In what is surely not coincidental timing, a group of pirates show up and trash the inn while Jim, mother, and family friend Dr. Doppler (David Hyde Pierce) make their getaway. After their escape, Jim opens the chest given to him by Bones, and discovers a map to a small, remote world—Treasure Planet! Jim’s mother is hesitant about letting him go, but relents after some convincing on Dr. Doppler’s part. The two make their way to the nearest space port, and manage to hire a ship, helmed by Captain Amelia (Emma Thompson) and Mr. Arrow (Roscoe Lee Brown). They also hire a crew; sketchy, thuggish, and led by the enigmatic John Silver (Brian Murray), a cyborg with a mechanical arm, eye, and leg (could this be the guy?!). Silver wants to keep Jim from asking too many questions about the crew, so he takes him under his wing, and the two develop a bond so deep, it could only be presented to us as a montage.

The time comes, however, when the crew shows its true colors: they’ve been waiting to mutiny and take the treasure for themselves. Jim, Doppler, and Amelia manage to escape, and the race to find the mother lode is on. Silver wants the treasure, but he cares for Jim as well. Will the two be able to make up and find the treasure together? Or will they kill each other until there is nothing left?

Can't we all just get along?

Out of all of the films in the Disney Animated Features canon that I’ve seen (and I’ve seen almost all of them), Treasure Planet is by far the strangest, most Out There of the lot. It’s not a Bad film, and there are certainly worse in the canon, but I am not at all shocked that the film did poorly in the box office (nothing brings the family together like a Robert Louis Stevenson novel set in space, amiright?).

One of the more divisive elements of Treasure Planet that I rather happen to enjoy is the art style. Musker and Clements employed what they called the “70/30” rule, where 70 percent of the art is informed by Victorian England, and sci-fi elements comprised the remaining 30. The result is an imaginative blend familiar and fantastical, whose highlights include enormous sea-faring galleons (wildly impractical-looking, but who cares?) and a crescent moon that slowly reveals itself to be a harbor/space port.

Elsewhere, the film’s art can be a bit more hit-or-miss. Treasure Planet’s universe is inhabited by a slew of interesting-looking creatures, but the designs are a bit over-the-top in places (e.g. the dude with a torso for a face, or that stupid, stupid Flatulan character). Many of the characters are well-animated, with Dr. Doppler acting rather expressively, and John Silver’s cyborg arm looking totally effing sweet, but both Jim and his mother look just plain weird, as though the Disney team forgot how to draw human beings. Also, I’ve decided that I have as much use for Musker and Clements’ slime effects as I do for Don Bluth’s smoke effects (i.e. they both annoy the crap out of me).

The humans just plain look weird. Look at how far down on his face they put his nose!

For all of the liberties that it takes with the art style, Treasure Planet is a surprisingly faithful adaptation of the novel, or at least as faithful as other adaptations. Most of the elements are here: Billy Bones, Long John Silver, Ben Gunn (whose shipwreck-induced madness is handled rather cleverly in the film), the stockade, and Jim’s back-and-forth travels between ship and shelter. The ending is handled differently, several characters are combined or changed, and much of the violence has been toned down, but Planet is closer to its source material than, say, Oliver & Company, and open-minded fans of the book may enjoy spotting the similarities.

Treasure Planet’s cast is split right down the middle between well-characterized and pants-on-head aggravating. I enjoyed John Silver, who is made slightly more sympathetic than in the book, and is more compelling as a result; he’s definitely one of the film’s antagonists, but his relationship with Jim puts him in a more positive light, and his conflict between being Jim's mentor and becoming obscenely wealthy is a rewarding one to watch unfold. Captain Amelia is a fun slice of dry, British sarcasm (Emma Thompson seems to be channeling the same well of stuffy, Victorian mannerisms that Minnie Driver did in Tarzan), and I liked how David Hyde Pierce works his Niles bit for the ruffled, uptight Dr. Doppler.

Perhaps I just have affection for dorky characters, but I really got a kick out of Hyde Pierce's performance as Dr. Doppler.

On the other side of the coin stands the non-John Silver members of the mutinying crew (that stupid, stupid Flatulan character), Morph (the stand-in for Silver’s parrot, who spends most of the film being obnoxious, rather than cute), and one of the most annoying Jar Jars in a Disney picture (that he’s voiced by Martin Short certainly does not help his case). Most disappointing is the movie’s portrayal of Jim, who is a total caricature of late 90’s/early 2000’s angst; he un-ironically scoffs “Whatever,” and smolders with generic rage, making him a less-than-compelling protagonist.

Speaking of late 90’s/early 2000’s, I wonder if anything in this movie could entrench it as firmly in the era of the Dot Com bubble as Goo Goo Dolls-frontman John Rzeznik’s two contributions to the soundtrack. Both “I’m Still Here” and “Always Know Where You Are” are alternative, pop-rock songs reminiscent of Creed and Vertical Horizon, poppy in an “Are you ready to soft rock?!” sort of way, and featuring breathy, vaguely emotional lyrics about, I dunno, not fitting in or something. Apparently “I’m Still Here” went on to chart reasonably high on the Adult Contemporary charts, which is less and less surprising the more I think about it.

The two songs work well for their respective moments in the film, but don't be surprised to hear them in the dentist's office at some point.

For all of its rough edges and eccentricities, though, I like Treasure Planet. It’s uneven, over-eager to be cool and different, and just plain doesn’t work in places, but its imperfections make it fairly endearing to me, and I appreciate the risks it takes. It’s not a film that absolutely needs to be seen, but curious Disney fans should give it a shot, if only to experience one of the weirdest films in the entire canon.

Top Three Songs

1. “I’m Still Here”
2. “Always Know Where You Are”
3. —

Favorite Scene

• Jim’s opening Solar Surfer sequence

Favorite Character

• John Silver

The Jar Jar

• B.E.N.

How I Watched It

The nice thing about post-Renaissance Disney movies is that they’re exceptionally cheap on Amazon. I snagged my used copy for somewhere around $6, including shipping, and I’m fairly confident that demand for the film isn’t going to spike any time soon.

Treasure Planet looks reasonably good on DVD, with anamorphic widescreen and a decent-looking transfer. As always, I failed to engage the surround sound during my viewing, but the DVD was released sometime in 2003, so it’s reasonable to assume that Disney had a handle on the home theater basics (the movie is presented in THX, for what it’s worth).

The supplements are meager, which is not surprising considering how spectacularly the film tanked at the box office, but there are a few neat bonus features. Animation buffs will enjoy learning how John Silver’s eye, leg, and arm were first generated in a computer, then transferred over to the finished product. There’s also a few small bit on how the illustrations for Treasure Island informed part of the film’s look, and Clements and Musker explain how the 70/30 rule works (though, because you’ve read this far, you already know. Lucky you). The extras are slight, but it’s not like the film needs a second disc for more goodies, and overall, the package feels whole and complete, rather than woefully lacking like some releases.