ANI-MOVIES, *Animalympics

In what could be the first American animated compilation movie, Animalympics was originally supposed to be a pair of TV specials done for the 1980 Summer and Winter Olympics. The winter one aired and received a few awards, but because Jimmy Carter boycotted the summer games after an incident with Russia, the second special never aired. It was aired during the next Olympic games on cable TV but this time as a single film, which is strange because they had summer and winter sports in the same place at the same time. Directed by Steven Lisberger who would go on to create Disney’s Tron franchise, this was animated by his own production company. The film works well enough as a collected edition, although the entire film is collage of sketches done that you would normally catch in one of those old Tex Avery cartoons where the entire thing is like a newsreel, even though stretching that out to 78 minutes might be pushing a little. The film had a gaggle of actors with Gilda Radner doing most of the female characters, future Mr. Burns voice Harry Shearer, Billy Crystal doing his best Howard Cosell impression, and audiophile Michael Fremer doing at least half the cast. Much of animation is reminiscent of Looney Tunes and some of the Goofy cartoons that spoofed sports documentaries. A good portion of the film is padded out with musical numbers, some of which are dream sequences or trippy scenes to get high with.

The entire plot is really a telecast of the first ever Animalympics from Animalympics Island which was originally the lost city of Atlantis. There are no humans in this reality, just anthropomorphic animals that managed to live together in peace before Zootopia even got out of the stable. The network covering this is ZOO with several different reporters and news anchors. Some of the athletes have a whole story behind them like a dog skier getting lost in a Shangri-La type land in the mountains, plus a daring bird countess who wins a fencing match. The one segment that gets the most attention is a marathon that goes on for several days between a French goat and an African lioness who run together over the finish line after falling in love with each other. There are jabs at pop culture of the time like disco which aged badly when the movie finally released, plus some of the characters were analogs of celebrities like John Travolta or Muhammad Ali that were dated.

The film was a launching pad for future animators including Brad Bird of The Iron Giant, Roger Allers of The Lion King, plus Bill Kroyer who joined Disney to do the CGI effects for Tron. Most of the humor is lost on younger viewers even in the 80s since it was mostly written during the late 70s. The soundtrack is slightly memorable, but the entire film is random vignettes tied together like an episode of Wild World Of Sports, so the attention span on any real plot is as sporadic as a roller coaster off the rails. Animalympics is more of a great study case for young enterprising animators than an entertaining theatrical production, although it did awaken the furry fetish for a whole generation.