Howdy!
This is PhantomStrider! And this is boo!
Though you don’t really do much, do you boo?
*Boo is sad...* But you’re my friend, so I like having you here anyway.
*Boo is happy!* But Boo certainly isn’t the first case of
animation stepping into our world.
In fact, let’s look right now at when cartoons stepped through the fourth wall and into our
reality.
Interestingly, combining cartoons with real life movies goes back to as early as 1914!
With.. gertie the dinosaur!And while it has sometimes resulted in a bizarre sometimes
even *smutty* mess..
It occasionally is so powerful and compelling that it can blur the lines of reality.
Whether subjectively good or bad, nothing quite grabs my attention like these mixups.
So prepare for a.. stranger list than usual, as we check out the top 3 weirdest and best
cartoon live action mixups!
For this list, I’ve tried to stick to movies where cartoons directly come to our real world.
Not just a segment of dancing penguins, as much as Iove that movie :)
Anyway, onto the countdown!
#3 Weirdest Osmosis Jones
I have NEVER been so TORN between animation and live action!
If you only look at the animation of this movie, you get something creative, refreshing,
and even somewhat educational!
But when they combine it with the real world?
Well… the live action integration is horrendous!
Basically, Frank (AKA Bill Murray) is affected by a deadly virus.
Leading to this wide ranging labyrinth of ideas, socio-political
jokes, and surprisingly educational scenes on the human body!..
In the cartoon!
But when we get the OTHER live action half… we have to wade through a bunch of gross-out,
snot, vomit or other bodily fluid jokes.
Even the jokes that AREN'T related to gross-out are weak groaners.
“The doc says he has a brain the size of a tangerine”
Whenever Frank’s on screen, it just feels like this constant string of cringe-worthy
scenes attempting to embarrass the already reluctant actor, Bill Murray..
Maybe the writer and director hated him and just got him to be obnoxious and gross on
camera to try and hurt his career.
But what bothered me the most is seeing the hurt and disgust in Frank’s daughter’s
eyes.
Frank is childish, oblivious, neglectful, and has trained his daughter to wait on him
hand and foot.
Constantly embarrassing and disappointing her.
Rather than being heartfelt its just kinda..
Revolting.
But on the animation half, it’s like a whole different movie!
It’s clear as we delve into this human body’s sentient cartoon world, a way higher level
of creativity went into this.
Ignoring the live action half, this is a much better movie and actually too unique a piece
of cartoon history to not acknowledge . There's just too many creative ways our complex
bacterial powerhouses of bodies are turned into vibrant, intricate worlds subtly reflecting
our own society.
I would’ve liked this Osmosis Jones a lot more if it was just a cartoon.
But either way, it deserves credit for being creative and... weird.
#3 Best Spongebob sponge out of water
You know what?
Yeah!
Sponge out of water is one of my favourite cartoon live action mixups!
When I first saw spongebob, patrick, squidward and the crew enter our real world, it was
epic!
The final battle between spongebob and the... theme song pirate... integrates Spongebob
so seamlessly into our world, that even my adult eyes couldn’t tell if he was really
there or not!
And every person in our world feels like they’re honestly reacting to seeing Spongebob and
his crew!
With understandable shock!
Plankton, Sandy, Krabs.. each character is given just the right amount of screen time
in our real world..
And I was just delighted watching their perfectly chosen super powered zaniness in our world.
While a good portion of the movie is set in bikini bottom, the transitions between reality
and cartoons are simply seamless.
Spongebob and the crew are made to look even more exciting in real life than in bikini
bottom..
Spongebob and the crew jumped into our world with an explosive energy that made for an
incredibly memorable final fight… with the..
Theme song..
Pirate…
Are ya ready kids?
Aye aye captain!
#2 Weirdest Monkeybone
Monkeybone is… uncanny.. and yes, that icy chill you may be feeling down your spine is
normal.. that unnerving confusing chill is the trademark
of Henry selick, the creator of nightmare before Christmas...
Monkeybone is like being in one of those stress-induced fever dreams where your subconscious thinks
it’s giving you a nightmare… but it's so confused, muddled and disoriented that
it just ends up throwing at you an incoherent, dark, nonsensical barrage of images.
In fact, we -are- watching our main character in a coma!
Stu the cartoonist, AKA Brendan Frasier, must escape his own dark dreamworld while fighting
Monkeybone.
The star he created for the most… shoddy cartoon series I’ve seen in the past…
well let’s be realistic, 5 weeks?
Again, I don’t really like the main character Stu.
A bit like Frank, he’s mostly awkward and obnoxious in a bad way.
But more importantly, the dream sequences are exactly what we’d expect from Henry
Selick.
He immerses the world of Monkeybone in a sea of the supernatural, spooky and slightly grotesque.
he imagery here is endlessly creative, yet sits within the uncanny valley.
Here, its hard to tell if we’re looking at cartoons or real life.
And the character monkeybone fits in with the insanity perfectly.
I can’t guarantee monkeybone will be an… enjoyable, pleasant experience?
But I can guarantee you…
It’ll be… an -experience!-
#2 Best Enchanted (2007)
I don’t often hear people talk about about Enchanted and I never quite got why.
A disney princess named Giselle comes from the cartoon world into our world and befriends
a buttoned-down all-business divorced dad named Robert.
But what’s nice about it is it isn’t just the traditional “just be more positive”
perspective hook or peter pan 2 philosophy.
While I don’t mind that philosophy, Enchanted is more about seeing both fantasy and reality.
Robert introduces a bit of reality into Giselle’s cartoon life, and Giselle introduces some
colour and hope back into Robert’s life.
And I like that balance.
It’s a movie that is basically the modern Disney philosophy in a nutshell.
And it manages to re-capture in both Giselle’s behaviour and the animation that traditional
disney feel so well.
I mean, the flaw to this cartoon live action mixup is that the story’s pretty predictable
and some of the characters are cliched.
We know Giselle and Robert are going to fall in love and learn from one another..
But despite that, I just find the story really beautiful.
This is actually the only movie I can think of where a cartoon character and real world
human cross dimensions and fall in love.
Not just in lust.
In -love- and I just find watching that unfold really touching.
And while I normally forget disney songs not long after they happen, I find myself remembering
a lot of the musical numbers
in Enchanted..
What’s most important to me though is that at the end of the Enchanted, I’m left with
a warm feeling in my heart.
Like, there’s this unspoken mutual acceptance and of both fantasy and reality, and to me,
that’s a beautiful thing.
#1 Weirdest Cool world
This movie it’s….
Well it’s… it’s er…
It’s a fascinatingly, enticingly, incredibly BAD mess!
But honestly, I actually enjoyed it!
Characters will just DANCE randomly for a solid 2 minutes for no real reason.. but this
is another case where I’m just so immersed in the colours and atmosphere that I don’t
even care.
It’s still fascinating!
I love the kinda bleak, twisted world.
Look at that!
Even the buildings are dark, artistic and twisted..
What’s the main plot of … cool world?
Well..
I’ll try and explain it as best I can without getting this video flagged.
Because JEEBUS knows children can’t hear about natural bodily urges and functions!!
Jack the cartoonist falls in er… monkey love with his own… scantily clad… well-endowed..
cartoon character?
He finds himself sucked into the cartoon world, and he begins exploring the dangers of er…
scoodlipooping between humans and cartoons.
Yes you heard me right..
While I’ve no problem with a movie discussing this, and there’s nothing wrong with a little
titillation… this is just REALLY…
WEIRD!
A good way to describe cool world is..
Roger rabbit on drugs… starring Jessica Rabbit... with no subtlety… and brad pitt
for some reason…
There are tons of problems, obviously.
Even though the art is incredibly creative, it often feels like the cartoons are just
tacked over the top of the live action..
Rather than it feeling like they’re interacting.
Though scenes like the bedroom scene with Holli and Jack did feel really convincing.
Frankly, I actually found the main characters really charming in this one.
Detective Frank and Jack feel believable in their roles.
Despite the story, Jack doesn’t feel too perverted to me.
He feels relatable.
Like we can see the conflicting emotions and feelings in him.
He feels human, but still redeemable.
And the voice actor for Holli does a fine job getting both that sultriness but still
a hint of tooniness across.
Scenes feel intense, confusing, but that’s the thing.
The scenes make you feel something, even if it’s just confusion.
And that’s why I can’t call it a movie I dislike.
Because this movie is a conflicting barrage of emotions..
Cool World is simply... a compelling nonsensical nightmarish string of consciousness that seems
inspired by a culmination of years of cartoon history and... rule 34.
Cool World *is* a trainwreck… but geebus it’s an interesting trainwreck!
The sheer amount of imagination that went into this is frankly quite admirable!
The dark colours, the movement, the world itself.
It’s just fascinating.
If you’re over 18 and curious and don’t mind something…
REALLY bizarre, I’d recommend giving cool world a look.
Honourable Mentions
Space Jam I’d like to call this a “good” movie
but I know I can’t do that without looking like a hypocrite… more so than usual.
But even after all these years, I still like this movie!
I can’t fully justify it, I mean, I know it’s a sellout movie... but this movie was
just everything I wanted to see as a kid!
Song of the South This was a case where I can’t quite call
this an abysmal movie.
Although obviously the implied slavery is terrible, as a movie itself, it is about what
you’d expect from a 1946 disney live action movie.
It was one of the first large-scale attempts to combine animation and live action so of
course it was going to be mushy and silly-looking.
And again, I like the song zip da dee doo dah too much to discount this movie completely.
#1 Best Who framed roger rabbit (1988)
I have something shameful to admit..
When I first saw this movie when I was 7, I spent a year or so thinking that cartoons
were real!!
Like, I thought they all lived in toon town and Walt just hired them to come on set and
act gooney…
The point being that Who Framed Roger rabbit was such a seamless, engaging molding of toons
and real life, that I was completely fooled.
What is so astonishing about this movie is that even when my adult green-screen-trained
eyes see this 1988 animation interacting with our world years later, I still feel like the
characters are really there.
When our main character Eddie valiant finds Roger in his office, it really looks like
Roger’s there.
And if I didn’t have a somewhat reasonable education and an okay grasp of reality, you
could probably fool me even now!
And on paper, the movie -shouldn’t- work!
A hard-boiled murder plot combined with all this tooniness and silliness…
Somehow all of it made for a miraculous movie that melts my heart every time I see it.
The tones are this perfect balance of toony, yet still firmly grounded in reality.
Giving the right amount of screentime to both and toons.
And I love the timeless universal message about finding laughter in bleak times.
*Roger: sometimes it's the only thing we have*And all the characters are likeable.
You can understand Eddie’s sourpuss persona after his brother was murdered by a toon,
but you can also see how well-meaning Roger is.
So the two end up working together perfectly on set… despite one not actually BEING there!
It’s just..
This -shouldn’t- have worked, but it miraculously did!
And turned out to be one of the top 250 movies of ALL TIME.
Who framed Roger rabbit is a movie that hits me deeply on a child-level and an adult-level.
Letting my emotions find a balance in the middle.
Who Framed Roger rabbit was a breakthrough for cinema.
It was the perfect combination of gritty detective drama combined with the bringing to life of
so many of my childhood characters.
It's not only one of my favorite movies, it’s obviously the best cartoon live action mixup..
To me, there’s just something so unworldly, yet beautiful about seeing these animated
characters I know are fictional, suddenly appear in real life... interacting with people
like it’s the most normal thing in the world.
The young child in me just suddenly comes alive and revels in every moment..
How will us humans react to these toons?
How will they react to us?
On the occasions I get to see our world and cartoons cross the fourth wall and meet us,
even if they're bad it’s often a bizarre, but often riveting experience,
And if you think I missed a particularly weird or awesome cartoon live action crossover,
feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments!
And as always, thanks for watching!
And I’ll see you next time!
Welcome to the end of the video!
Thanks for sticking around to the end.
Originally this actually started out as a worst and best list..
But I realised all the worst were actually really creative in their animation and deserved
credit for that.
Anyway, I'll talk to you later!