While i’m no Saberspark, i feel this deserves to be spotlighted for it’s such a weird, messy and obtuse piece of animation cinema and its tale has all the juicy bits, from misguided inception, development hell rot, leeching off an already established film, Paws Of Fury: The Legend Of Hank has it all.
If nothing else because somehow a sequel/tie-in game for it was released last year and i recently found out to my complete bewilderment.
Nothing to with the Sega Genesis videogame Brutal: Paws Of Fury, they both just happened to be recycling Bubsy naming conventions for when you can’t be arsed to make jokes, just puns, and taking a martial arts-asian aesthetics, though for different reasons since The Legend Of Hank is not a ’90s film, but a product of the late 2000s-2010s, when it was still in vogue to remake foreign (often Asian) films for the “american-internation market”, in a way also a product of the same vein of racism already tapped into the 90s by most western shows and games.
For the youngins it might sound strange, but especially in the late 2000s you couldn’t blink without seeing America remake a Japanese horror film, heck, they even remade Park Chan Wook’s Old Boy, they couldn’t stand the idea of something not being western enough at the time, especially if it dared ail from a country in the Asian sphere, so to speak.
Unless Tarantino did it.
I say this because this movie was pitched in this climate, back in 2010, as Blazing Samurai, an animated remake of Mel Brook’s beloved western parody Blazing Saddles.
But things got messy as the movie changed hands like 3 times (about what you expect for a development hell march survivor), starting off as Facebook crowfunded project handled by Mass Animation, slated for a 2015 theathrical release, but then the project chew through so many producers, screenwriters, distributors, the animation studio meant to take over Mass Animation, Arc Productions (now Jam Filled Entertaiment) didn’t, nothing came out of it until Aniventure joined in 2019, then it changed directors and producers again, and now animation was gonna be handled almost entirely by Cinesite.
Then the COVID 19 pandemic happened, so most of the animation work had to be done remotely.
Also, a few months before it’s actual theatherical release in 2022, it has its title changed from Blazing Samurai into Paws Of Fury: The Legend Of Hank.
This is my digest of the mess, as it has been covered extensively by others animation critics and fans, because it became a running joke, the “Duke Nukem Forever” equivalent for the discourse in the animation community.
And let’s not forget this was definitely put in motion due to the incredible success of Dreamwork’s Kung Fu Panda, which launched in 2008, which might sound like a mean, unfair critique, but let’s not beat around the bush, this movie isn’t even trying to hide its obvious status of existing because Kung Fu Panda made money, as the opening with the fireworks is shamelessly replicated from Dreamwork’s film. No fucking shame.
One would be tempted to somewhat respect the committment to still making this thing despite the continuous issues, but let’s not give too much credit for what amounts to obligations of pushing out something to show investors, despite this project being better off cancelled instead of being dragged through the dirt and 3 different animation studios and multiple directors and writers over 12 years just because someone did conceive the admittely stupid idea of remaking Blazing Saddles as an animated children film.
It’s just a tack more dignified than Food Fight in this regard because it was actually made to be a movie, not a vehicle for advertising foodstuff mascottes.
If nothing else, this was already a very hard concept to make work… and yeah, hindsight and all of that, but i could have told you in 2010 already this was a dumb, stupid idea, for free.
Maybe if somebody involved actually had an actual vision of what to do with it instead of just thinking that the “idea” alone would suffice, it’s no wonder it bounced back and forth because nobody wanted to fund or produce it or simply didn’t know what to do with it, as probably not even its writers or directors knew.
Besides using Blazing Saddles as a crutch-excuse to rip-off Kung Fu Panda, i mean.
For once, the original film hadn’t much of a narrative, it was Mel Brooks spoofing the spaghetti western genre, to be specific, it was an ensemble of sketches, which is fine for how a parody/spoof film worked in the ’70s. Plus it wasn’t really aimed at children, at all, despite having the notable achievement of making a properly funny fart joke about beans (and yes obviously they would keep that scene, since it’s a kids film).
Yes, this is also a loose – but not really that loose – retelling of Blazing Saddles, but it amounts to basically removing the spicier gags and elements and in their place stuff a lot of Asian stereotypes and a cookie-cutter coming-of-age hero story about the evil cat lord Ika Chu (Ricky Gervais) wanting to impress the Shogun (Mel Brooks) and become chosen as his heir, but feeling the need to remove an empoverished village of cats, Kakamucho, by sending them Hank (Michael Cera), a dog samurai wannabe not cut for the job, but he will have to become a proper warrior to save the village, with the help of Jimbo (Samuel L. Jackson), an old grouchy, sarcastic mentor that begrudegly teaches him how to be a samurai….
Yeah, the premise is basically an ancient Japan samurai (technically Japan though i could say “Chinapan” and it would still be correct given its that generic and stereotyped “Asian” world) swap of Blazing Saddles, with the racism swapped for specism, as instead of a black sheriff being sent to work into a town of white racists so to make the townfolk leave, here the villain has the Shogun send into a village of cats an incompenent dog samurai to protect the townfolk and basically have the villagers give up trying to defend themselves… instead of Ika Chu just sending an army to straight up wipe the cat village out, because otherwise it wouldn’t even count as a loose remake of Blazing Saddles, even if it makes no sense and eventually the villain resorts to that anyway.
Again, it was fine in a movie meant to be an ensemble of sketches and all over the place, not so much when you try to do that and still push a narrative that the audience is supposed to care about, and have messages and lessons when the movie itself doesn’t seem to care much about anything else than references and, overly repeated fourth wall breaks, and since it’s approach to comedy it’s just throwing lots of jokes the ones that don’t stick don’t linger… but obviously this is true also for the occasionally proper clever and funny lines.
And in way i get why, since a lot of the jokes are bad, tired, cliched, but occasionally something sticks, there are some occasional good bits and jokes amidst a sea of bad ones that are often clustered to other lame ones, dumb as hell but honestly there’s not even painfully unfunny, they’re lame but clearly aimed at kids, as in, this is just for kids, its aimed at children, just at them, with the amount of poop and fart jokes it becomes clear this isn’t for anyone else but the youngins.
I usually think it’s not a real excuse since children deserve better, but in this case we have a film clearly made and engineered to please just a crowd of children and not their parents, or anyone else that outgrew puberty decades ago. So it’s not a “family film”, in this sense.
This reliance on the Mel Brooks film also makes discussing worldbuilding pointless, because there really isn’t any, and any implication you might get is probably accidental or pointless overthinking, like about how there are talking animal people…. but horses are just regular ol’ horses, somehow, and not talking horses neither, i guess they didn’t think of ripping off Tangled, which did came out in 2010, hence when the movie concept was first pitched and shopped around.
It’s a lazy kids film but also not that lazy, and it’s not even that offensive, odd given its source material, it’s not so bad it will make your children grow dumb for real, but it’s also a dodgy, confused movie that both does and doesn’t know what to do with itself, not helped by the constant production delays that made it extra dated on arrival in 2022, making even the less savvy viewers irked by something “suspicious” about the way it looks and sounds, even with a solid score by good ol’ Bear McCreary… not so much the holdover theme from when it was called Blazing Samurai, that is impressively middling in both lyrics and tune (even if still done by McCreary), or the frigging club music by Steve Aoki.
I still can’t believe this came out in 2022… heck, i can’t believe this came out AT ALL, to be properly honest. Or that it was co-directed by Rob Minkoff, who directed the original animated Lion King film (and the Stuart Little films too).
Yeah, i’m not joking, this project was plain absurd.
And i’m tempted to say that i’m in disbelief that Mel Brooks not only authorized the remake, but also produced it and provided the voice for the Shogun character… then again he also teamed up with italian “comedian” Ezio Greggio for something called Silence Of The Hams, so we already knew Mel was also capable of backing some real stinkers.
Though strangely i wouldn’t call this a pile of crap.
There is some effort, even by the cast of popular actors that feel like they were chosen more for name recognition and typecasted to hell, yet put a good performance, within the limits of the script, with Samuel L. Jackson’s being the best performance, as he’s clearly more used to these roles written for him, and some random casting choices like Michelle Yeoh playing a random cat lady that has like 10 lines tops, and maybe a name?
The animation is decent, nothing stunning but even if it feels obviously dated for a 2022 release, and looks about something that would have came out in 2013, Cinesite did a decent, respectable job, i can’t really complain much, given this year i’ve seen in theathers the disaster that Mamoru Hosoda’s Scarlet was even in “mere” technical terms, hence i’m not inclined to call the animation in this film THAT bad or say that it aged like milk, it’s competent if unremarkable work.
Paws Of Fury: The Legend Of Hank it’s just a middling animated film aimed at children… when the jokes weren’t referencing stuff not even you grandparents might remember, shops that even by 2022 didn’t exist anymore, or just lazily using references, often about things that don’t exist or are relevant anymore, or have the VAs references their famous roles because it’s that kind of lazy writing (and bad kid films tropes) the script leans into heavily and constantly.
When it isn’t oddly a loyal recreation of Blazing Saddles (even tonally so), to the point the crediting of Mel Brooks as writer makes sense, since the script still lifts/uses a lot of lines from Blazing Saddles directly, keeps the fairly constant fourth wall breaking even if here comes off as cheap and lazy, especially due to having more of a narrative bolted on, as these problems highlight the fool’s errand of remaking Blazing Saddles as an animated kids film to also bank on the Kung Fu Panda craze, only for productions issues to cast the project into development hell for a decade and dating the film even more that the script does.
You know, maybe it IS a bit offensive as it uses Blazing Saddles, a beloved and respected comedy film such as the ones from the golden era of Mel Brooks parodies, as a framework for such a generic ass lazy story with the visuals of a Kung Fu Panda wannabe of yore, boring ass cardboard characters and overall a middling quality animated film that really should have been release directly to video instead of theathers, and at one point that was the idea.
If this was released directly to Netflix it would have been more tolerable, i assume less fuss would have been made about it, even though the issues of his “inspirations”, its generally lazy writing and it being a loose animated retelling of Blazing Saddles would still matter, because why would anyone even conceive this?
Maybe it would have worked better if there was any proper vision to it, because even stupider ideas like pitting the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles against Batman and his villains have made for a good fun film in the hands of people that knew what to do with the idea, instead here they simply gathered any important actor, director, producer and cinema celebrity they could and crossed their fingers, hoping it would all come together in the end by itself, even when the “idea” was just an attempt at banking on western remakes of asian films and leeching off Kung Fu Panda’s success.
It’s also one of those cases where the production history behind the film is far more interesting than the movie in itself, which it is kind of a miracle even came out, and remains an incredibly mediocre oddity, a fine mess that indeed does answer “yes” to the boast of how “you couldn’t make Blazing Saddles today”. Instead of asking “why” you would do a thing like that to begin with.
Besides frustrating Samuel L. Jackson into not swearing because it’s a kids film, obviously.
Especially since it felt extra random even in the decade of western remakes of asian films it was conceived, the early 2010s, kinda ambitious in a way, i suppose, and i will give them some credit for trying to stick with the idea, even if it was kinda random and feels borne out of the marketing department more than any creative vision, just bandwagoning into trends and stereotypes (some already dated even at the time) for its own sake,
At the end of the day Paws Of Fury: The Legend Of Hank is a mere curiosity that i don’t recommend to anyone aside animation film students and historians, but even to them i would say just go (re)watch Blazing Saddles, instead.
Even with some its dated qualities it’s a beloved film for a reason and a reminder of why Mel Brooks was once the king of parody before the genre die, resurrected itself for the worse in mid-2000s, died again, and now is apparently trying to make a comeback. When it should just stay dead, at least the kind of parody film that is trying to be a thing again, i’m not saying exactly its name in fear of a Voldemort-esque retribution.
Also, this isn’t even as bad as most of you might have hoped, so it’s not even good for a trashing, as it honestly in itself it’s very generic and blends perfectly within the sea of middling at best animated kids films put out in theathers, or the even worse one released direct to video to leech off Kung Fu Panda flavour. Maybe the lower end of “mid”, but still, it’s no Little Panda Fighter.
See you later for the review of the videogame tie-in, because fuck me.
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