Animated film: Happy Family
Posted by Fred Patten on Fri 8 Sep 2017 - 00:53 — Edited by dronon as of 00:54
Happy Family (IMDB page) is a 2017 animated movie from Germany, about a family that gets turned into monsters by a witch. It looks like a mashup of The Addams Family, The Munsters, and Hotel Transylvania.
Warner Bros. funded the production, and are distributing it in Europe and Latin America, presumably to be followed by direct-to-DVD sales in the U.S. in 2018. It's based on a book by David Safier.
Is it furry? Well, the family includes a kid who's a wolf-boy, there are talking bats, and VAMPIRES! (Boo.)
About the author
Fred Patten — read stories — contact (login required)a retired former librarian from North Hollywood, California, interested in general anthropomorphics
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The URL weblink to the animation studio, Rothkirch Cartoon-Film in Berlin, was left out.
http://www.cartoon-film.de/e_profil.php?bg=bg23.jpg
David Safier seems to specialize in fantasy novels about talking animals. Too bad they’re published mostly in Chinese, French, German, Spanish, Catalan, Greek, Portuguese, Turkish – but only one in English.
https://www.amazon.com/Una-fam%C3%ADlia-feli%C3%A7-David-Safier/dp/8499307582/re...
https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Karma-David-Safier/dp/1906780366/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&i...
https://www.amazon.com/Muh-David-Safier/dp/3499256266/ref=sr_1_15?s=books&ie=UTF...
https://www.amazon.com/Mieses-Karma-German-David-Safier-ebook/dp/B072K71MF6/ref=...
Fred Patten
There is also a mostly different trailer in Spanish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVbmohc1_2k
Fred Patten
Can't wait to see.
Lots of the other “monster” scenes from “Happy Family”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NmFRaw1rfY
Honestly, how many people can tell the difference between the Computer Graphic Imagery animation from a “major” studio like Disney and Pixar, and a “minor” studio like Rothkirch Cartoon-Film in Berlin, ToonBox in Toronto, Prana in Mumbai, Animal Logic in Sydney, Triggerfish in Cape Town – even Simpals in Chisinau?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDHwf7n5nMU
Fred Patten
Note that "Happy Family" is in German, and it is also released in Spanish as "La Familia Monster". (Here is the whole Spanish movie.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXDqgk-b3Iw
But all of the signage is in English. They have U.S. passports. Could this have been made with Warner Bros. funding for the U.S. home-DVD market? Look for an American direct-to-DVD release soon.
Fred Patten
In case I haven't made it clear, the entire "Happy Family" is on YouTube in the Spanish dub, which is pretty obviously a bootleg version filmed in a theater off the screen -- you can see people's shadows walking in front of it. I expect it to be taken down from YouTube soon. But while it's up, I have seen it (and I can understand Spanish, while I can't understand German), and I did enjoy it.
I'm also pretty impressed by it as a work of CGI animation. I never heard of Rothkirch Cartoon-Film in Berlin before, but it does good work.
It used to be, in about the 1940s through the 1980s or 1990s, that only the Walt Disney studio could make an animated cartoon feature. Every attempt by someone else to make an animated feature looked pathetic in comparison ("Fritz the Cat", the Rankin-Bass features that were done in Japan, Korty's "Twice Upon a Time" -- okay, that at least imaginatively disguised its lack of a real animation studio). Don Bluth was at best an imitation Disney.
Today there are high-quality CGI animation studios all around the planet. Studios of other types of animation, like Aardman Animations' stop-motion in Bristol and Laika's stop-motion in Portland, and independent work like Wes Anderson's, are getting funded. It's a great time to be an animation fan.
Fred Patten
Oops! It's gone now. Too bad if you missed it.
Fred Patten
Is it me, or he licks the inside of his nose?
He's probably trying to touch his nose with his tongue, which dogs can do with their longer tongues -- or should be able to do, except that a real dog doesn't know that you want it to lick its nose.
Fred Patten
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