‘Animals’ Crackers
Next stop: those goldfish things.
Dream Animals
Director: Hitoshi Takekiyo • Writer: Tetsuhiro Ikeda, based on the Ginbis snack
Starring [Japanese]: Genta Matsuda, Akari Takaishi, Liliana Ono, Tomokazu Seki, Akio Otsuka
Japan • 1hr 30mins
Opens Hong Kong July 11 • I
Grade: B
That’s it. I truly give up. The limits of what can be adapted into a film have finally reached a pinnacle, a height that baffles to a degree that leaves me speechless – and trust me. That’s not easy to do. But when you really sit and think about it, is an animated fantasy about brightly-coloured rock star animals based on a beloved childhood biscuit any more bananas than, oh, say, a brightly coloured fantasy adventure based on a beloved childhood doll? It’s not, and news flash: the biscuits didn’t cause body dysmorphia. Product being turned into product – content in the modern parlance – shouldn’t surprise us. Were any of us really surprised that Mattel took entirely the wrong message from Barbie’s success and announced a slate of toy-based movies, among them Jon M “Wicked” Chu doing a Hot Wheels pic, John Cena in a Matchbox movie and a reboot of Masters of the Universe starring – hold on to your fuckin’ shorts – Jared Leto (!), Idris Elba (!!) and directed by Travis Knight, he of Kubo and the Two Strings (!!!)? No. No, we were not.
So here we are, with Japanese snack maker Ginbis – which also makes the Caramel Ginza Waffle, the Ginza Rusk and the Shimi Choco Corn – leveraging its 1970s flagship Tabekko Dobutsu into Dream Animals | たべっ子どうぶつ The Movie. If you learnt the English words for various animals as a kid before school, it may have been thanks to Ginbis. But this is the funny part: Dream Animals director Hitoshi Takekiyo and writer Tetsuhiro Ikeda have put more effort into this film than is necessary, mabye even a little subversion; it feels like something from a fever dream that demands a gummie on occasion. And also? Ka-ching.
If Mattel can do it…
Dream Animals begins with the Dream Animals super group playing a concert to a jam-packed stadium on its latest world tour. The group’s de facto leader – its Timberlake or Styles or RM – is the king of the beasts, Lion (voiced by Genta Matsuda), but a rivalry with fast-emerging fan favourite Pegasus (Akari Takaishi) is developing. She’s a flying unicorn or something, and Lion is feeling jealous and overshadowed and he don’t like it. Anyway, Dream Animals is on the way home to Sweets Land (Okashiland?) for their last show – humans and living snack creatures co-exist in harmony there, I know, grab a drink – when their private jet (with spa facilities and bar) encounters great globs of cotton candy, or gotton, and forces the plane into a crash landing. The streets are empty, the town has been taken over by King Gotton (Hochu Otsuka) and the humans enslaved to make gotton, which the King is on a mission to make the only sweet in the world. He almost traps DA in his castle, but a kid called Pero (Liliana Ono) sneaks them out thorugh a Star Wars style trash compactor. Pegasus, however, is captured and imprisoned in the tower. Pero takes Lion, the elephant Zo-kun (Koshi Mzukami), Kaba-chan the hippo (Shouta Aoi) and Saru-kun the monkey (Shingo Fujimori), among others, to meet with the rebels (da fuq?) who are aligned with professor Macaron (Akio Otsuka). And yes, the rebels look like rejects from Sly and the Family Stone. Also hanging around is one of the King’s agents, Gotchan (Tomokazu Seki), who the band may be able to turn into an ally. Dun, dun, dun!
Ikeda crams a ton of plot turns, action sequences, flashbacks and psychology into Dream Animals’ lean runtime, and as bonkers as it is – frequently hilariously so – he and Takekiyo keeps the core ideas about trauma, regret, grudges, tyranny and living authentically shockingly clear. Very little kids will absorb the messages by osmosis and older ones will have a bit more to ponder. What anyone makes of the Dream Animals turning into cookies whenever someone says “Itadakimasu” (oh dear) and then back when they actually get eaten is anyone’s guess. I still don’t know what to make of that. But it doesn’t really matter. Against all odds Dream Animals is a colourful, energetic, considered – no one is half-assing it here – family entertainment that clips along at a good pace, boasting polished, fluffy images and some legit good jokes for the olds that remember eating the biscuits as kids. This could have been much, much more cynical, but there’s a sweet (see what I did there?) layer on top of the whole affair that makes the cash-grab go down easy. Or at least it doesn’t feel like a cash-grab.
And now I need to go find those damn Ginza Rusks…