The Magic Roundabout (film)

''The Magic Roundabout'' (also known as ''Sprung! The Magic Roundabout''; ) is a 2005 animated adventure fantasy comedy film based on the television series of the same name. Unlike the show, which was presented with stop-motion animation, the film utilizes computer-generated animation. The story sees a group of unlikely heroes who go on a quest to stop a reawakened villain, who intends on freezing the world, from retrieving a set of powerful diamonds.

It was released in France with an original French dub on 2 February 2005, and an English-language version was released two weeks later in the United Kingdom on 11 February. In the United States, the film was released as ''Doogal'' on 24 February 2006 with a new English cast, dub, and script. Only Ian McKellen's performance was retained, while Kylie Minogue redubbed her role from the UK release. Whilst the UK and French dub received mixed reviews, the US dub received overwhelmingly negative reviews.

Plot

Dougal the well-meaning, but greedy dog places a nail in the road to pop a sweet cart's tyre, planning to nibble on the sweets himself. After the driver goes for help, Dougal accidentally crashes the cart into the roof of the Magic Roundabout at the village. The cart explodes where the damage causes the Roundabout to spin out of control as an ice wizard flies out and freezes the roundabout over, trapping repairman Mr Rusty, Dougal's young owner Florence, and two other children named Coral and Basil within an icy cell. Horrified, Dougal and his friends, Brian the cynical snail, Ermintrude the opera-singing cow and Dylan the hippie rabbit, summon the jack-in-the-box-like wizard Zebedee for help.

Zebedee explains that the roundabout acted as a barrier to keep his evil counterpart Zeebad imprisoned to prevent him from freezing the world that he once did before. Because Zeebad is released, he can work his icy magic again. However, by retrieving three enchanted diamonds and slotting them on the roundabout, Zeebad will be re-imprisoned, and his magic will be reversed. But if Zeebad claims them first, he will use them to freeze the sun. Zebedee mentions that one of the diamonds is supposedly hidden on the roundabout while the other two are hidden at separate locations far beyond the village, and sends Dougal and his friends travel onboard Train, a magical locomotive, to retrieve them. Meanwhile after escaping, Zeebad discovers a Foot guard animatronic, Soldier Sam, that was catapulted from the roundabout when it froze over and animates him to help him find the diamonds. After the gang camp in the mountains that night, Dougal, while left outside, strays far and is abducted by Zeebad. A moose leads the gang to Zeebad's lair where Ermintrude rescues Dougal from his prison. Zeebad pursues them, but Zebedee is summoned to duel Zeebad. However, Zeebad defeats him by freezing him on the cliff and collapses it, causing him to fall into the abyss.

While saddened, Dougal and his friends continue their journey to retrieve the diamonds respectively from a lava-bordered volcano and an ancient temple filled with evil skeleton guards. But Zeebad takes them, leaving the only hope to stop Zeebad is by returning to the roundabout before Zeebad does. The gang onboard Train are pursued by Zeebad in a drill-like locomotive and he overhears that they are returning to the roundabout. They crash into a buffer stop, sending them flying before crash-landing into the snow. The impact injures Train, forcing the gang to leave Train behind and return to the village through the snowy barren wasteland the world is now freezing into. Zeebad, after abandoning an injured Sam in the snow, beats the gang to the now-frozen village, but cannot find the third diamond. Sam, having realised his true duty is to guard the roundabout, arrives on the moose to battle Zeebad, but is overpowered and fatally wounded. Learning that Sam was part of the roundabout, Zeebad discovers that the diamond is hidden inside Sam, and removes it from him, ending Sam's life.

When Zeebad begins to freeze the sun with the three diamonds, the gang returns to the village and intervene by reclaiming the diamonds and slot them on the roundabout until the third diamond remains. Although Zeebad steals it back and reclaims his victory, the timely arrival of a healed Train knocks the diamond free from Zeebad, giving Dougal the chance to simultaneously redeem himself by slotting it on the roundabout. This activates the power in the diamonds to re-imprison Zeebad, thaw out the world, along with the sun, and restore the Magic Roundabout. Zebedee is revealed to have survived and re-joins his friends.

As those who were trapped on the roundabout are freed, a comatose Florence is revived by Dougal. As everyone goes for a ride on the roundabout, they discover that it is still non-functional because Sam is lifeless. Zebedee restores Sam back to his inanimate form and returns him on the roundabout which functions once again. Dougal now realises the true value of his friends and the good qualities of selflessness, courage, and humility.

Voice cast

Production

Development

In 2000, Andy Leighton started working as a managing director at bolexbrothers. There he learned that the studio's financial income was drying up, and decided to start building a feature film slate. Associate producer Bruce Higham had a link with Kodak and was friends with Nick Collinson, who worked for Canal+. Collinson told Higham that Pathé were one of the big successful French companies in terms of film distribution and financing, so Higham, in turn, mentioned this to bolexbrothers. Director Pascal Rodon of Action Synthese in Marseille and producer Laurent Rodon of Les Films Action in Paris had acquired the rights through Serge Danot's wife Martine to produce a film adaptation of ''The Magic Roundabout''. The Rodon brothers had not done any films before and needed someone to do the storyboards and script, so they turned to director and editor Dave Borthwick, actor and writer Paul Bassett Davies and Leighton. The show was a huge hit in France and the United Kingdom, so they were looking for a UK partner, which led to Leighton having meetings with Pathé UK. Leighton got in touch with Trevor Horn's wife Jill Sinclair and told her that bolexbrothers was making the film, at which she joined in as an executive producer. With more than 140 people contributing, the development started in May 2000 and lasted until December 2001. Around the same time, Action Synthese decided to wait until they had developed all the characters along with the animation tests before they managed to get Pathé to finance the film production. Pascal Rodon described Pathé's financing of the production as, "A perfect fit. They are the biggest cinema owner in Europe with about 60 percent of French cinemas, and have interests in the UK."

During 2002, the film was in pre-production until the actual production commenced and lasted for 33 months. According to Leighton, the film had a slightly darker tone than the show; bolexbrothers wanted to take the action away from the Magic Garden, with their story starting there, but then having the characters go on a globe-trotting adventure around the world. Raoff and Stephane Sanoussi made an attempt to write a story for the film. Because they did not have any experience of writing extended narratives, their first script was strongly reminiscent of the show's usual 3-5-minute episode format. Davies was hired and brought in to help develop the narrative. When he first went over to Paris for a week, he and the Sanoussi brothers got along well. At one point, they were asked to create a backstory for the film. Davies began to contribute his ideas, and because of the Sanoussis' inability to do extended narratives, someone suggested that they create an origin story for Zebedee. So Davies and the Sanoussis created two characters for the film, Zeebad and Soldier Sam. Nobody asked the writers if they were going to make the film for children or acknowledge that it would appeal to adults like the show. This was because a lot of animated films in the 2000s, such as DreamWorks Pictures' ''Shrek'' and Disney and Pixar's ''Monsters, Inc.'', attempted to hit two demographics to include elements that would appeal to both adults and children. However, the producers at Pathé UK, including Tad Safran, asked Davies to write a draft of the script. Davies wrote three drafts, removing the narrative structure of the original script before other people were brought in to polish it off. The Sanoussi brothers disliked this because it was not their vision. The film adaption was done by French producer Jean-Pierre Carasso. Davies stated, "Essentially, Pathé UK and all the other producers had to do a certain amount of mollifying to various parties, by giving the people a credit. And gradually, over the course of a year, they became disillusioned, they became hostile towards me. Probably with reason, because... as a kind of representative of everything that was coming in and taking their project away from them. And that's the result when suddenly the budget goes into the millions and millions."

Borthwick was hired to oversee the storyboards and scripts, but went through a personal crisis during the pre-production and was sidelined as a result. The producers at Pathé UK lost confidence in him, so Borthwick brought in his student Frank Passingham, who took over. Les Films Action also hired Jean Duval to create and supervise their graphic charter for the development of future ''Magic Roundabout'' productions. At the end of 2003, Laurent Rodon asked Duval to participate in the final storyboard of the film. Duval went to Marseille, where he met Pascal Rodon. In 2004, the Rodon brothers offered him the position of co-director.

Animation

Unlike the show, which was presented with stop-motion animation, the film was mainly animated in computer-generated animation, which Pascal Rodon was very much into. Whereas British animators and studios such as bolexbrothers specialised in stop-motion or traditional animation, Paris was, in Leighton's words, "kind of the leaders f computer animation, since they had about three or four universities that were teaching it, being more advanced than the UK was. Based in Bristol, bolexbrothers had a good reputation for their awards that they had won at film festivals with their short films, commercials and their previous feature film, ''The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb''. According to Frédéric Bonometti, the director of animation, the animators chose to animate the characters with key-framing instead of motion capture as they did not want the animation to be too close to reality, and they use real movements as inspiration when animating the characters. They first started using 3D Studio MAX, although it was used to develop the characters, but the interface was not fast enough for the animators as they struggled to animate. Instead, they chose to switch to Softimage XSI which was much easier for the animators in working conditions and saving time in development.

When animating the hair for the characters and Dougal's fur, the animators first tried the envelope tool, then used the Hairs Dynamic in XSI. They used this technique for Dylan's tuffs of hair, but abandoned it mostly due to it causing technical problems. The animators also developed a mesh that served as a deformation cage for the characters' hair, used for Florence's hair and Coral's pigtails. Because Florence's skirt and Coral's dress were the only clothes that required animation, the animators did not use a clothing simulator, instead using a series of bones in rotation around the skirt which deformed it via envelope tool and automatically calculated when the dress collided with the legs. For special effects such as explosions, smoke and clouds, the animators used simple geometrical shapes as placeholders and reference points in space and time for the effect specialists. As the animation was being made and rendered in Softimage XSI on the hardware provided by Hewlett-Packard, Avid Technology participated with Softimage to help with the animation and rendering of Dougal's fur. Les Films Action relied on Avid during the animation and rendering process.

Casting

Casting was done by John and Ros Hubbard and Leighton. The French voices were provided by Henri Salvador, Vanessa Paradis, Michel Galabru, Eddy Mitchell, Gérard Jugnot, Dany Boon, Élie Semoun and Valérie Lemercier. The English voice cast included Robbie Williams, Kylie Minogue, Ian McKellen, Joanna Lumley, Bill Nighy, Tom Baker, Jim Broadbent, Ray Winstone, Lee Evans, Ediz Mahmut, Daniella Loftus and Jimmy Hibbert. Because they all knew of the show (except McKellen), they were extremely motivated and enthusiastic. Due to his busy schedule and travels between London and France, Duval had to delegate some of the recording sessions with the actors and was not able to work with Paradis.

Soundtrack

Trevor Horn was involved in the beginning of the film's production as a producer, but the film eventually became a vehicle for a lot of "bubblegum pop records" to which Horn owned the publishing rights. According to Leighton, "My big disappointment was they couldn't get the music together. I think because it landed again in Trevor Horn's lap but he was still producing other things."

The film's soundtrack was composed by Mark Thomas. James L. Venable and John M. Davis composed additional scores for the American version. The songs in the film include:
* "The Magic Roundabout" by Andrea Remanda and Goldust Productions, performed by Kylie Minogue, Andrea Remanda and Scaramanga X, with additional vocals by Steve Anderson
* "Magic by Pilot*
* "You Really Got Me" by the Kinks, performed by Bill Nighy and Catherine Bott**
* "Lean Mean Fighting Machine" by Andrea Remanda and Goldust Productions, performed by Andrea Remanda, Scaramanga X and R. Driscoll
* "Spinning" by Andrea Remanda and Goldust Productions, performed by Andrea Remanda and Scaramanga X
* "Simply Wonderful" by Andrea Remanda and Goldust Productions, performed by Andrea Remanda and Scaramanga X
* " Mr. Blue Sky" by the Electric Light Orchestra, with additional vocals by Catherine Bott
* "Toreador Song" by Georges Bizet, performed by Catherine Bott, Arthur Dick and Mark Thomas**
* "The What-a-Snails Waltz" by Mark Thomas
* "Believe Yourself" by Andrea Remanda and Goldust Productions, performed by Andrea Remanda and Scaramanga X
* "Bust This Joint" by Andrea Remanda and Goldust Productions, performed by Andrea Remanda, Scaramanga X and R. Driscoll
* "Also Sprach Zarathustra*
* " I Love To Boogie" by T. Rex*
* "Sugar, Sugar" by The Archies*
* "In the Hall of the Mountain King" by Edvard Grieg*

(*) Denotes licensed songs.
(**) Denotes arrangement of song.

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes, the UK version of the film received an aggregate score of 50% based on six reviews, with an average score of 5.1/10. Joe Utichi of ''FilmFocus'' wrote: "For all its undeniable promise, this take on ''The Magic Roundabout'' is just plain disastrous in its execution." Stella Papamichael of ''BBC Online'' stated that "the story isn't inherently funny, relevant, or convincing. Essentially it's too 'dumbed down', tragically bypassing the cheeky 60s subtext of the original TV show and sapping its nostalgia value". '' Time Out'' wrote: "The story’s clearly aimed at the ''Teletubbies'' fraternity who would never question a scenario as ridiculous as this ... granted, the level of computer animation isn’t exactly state-of-the-art, but it’s certainly florid enough to captivate undemanding five-year-olds ... Robbie Williams and Bill Nighy’s stoned rabbit help transform what should have been an unendurable fiasco into an, albeit forgettable, treat for toddlers. And toddlers only. William Thomas of ''Empire'' wrote: "this version is far slicker and attempts a bit of Hollywood-style action-adventure grandstanding, but it works both as a trip down memory lane and as an entertaining movie for (very) young children". ''Total Film'' included it on the list of the 50 Worst Kids Movies Ever Made, calling it a "CGI flick that pretty much destroyed a generation's childhood memories".

''Doogal'' (United States)

As reported by William H. Macy, Harvey Weinstein saw ''The Magic Roundabout'' and decided to produce an American localized version. On 24 February 2006, the film was released in the United States as ''Doogal'' and was distributed by the Weinstein Company. The majority of the British cast's voice work was dubbed by American celebrities such as Chevy Chase (Train), Jimmy Fallon (Dylan), Whoopi Goldberg (Ermintrude), Bill Hader (Soldier Sam), Macy (Brian), and Jon Stewart (Zeebad). Child actor Daniel Tay (''American Splendor'') plays the titular character in the United States dub. The U.S. screenplay adaptation was handled by Butch Hartman; the original script was heavily revised via the addition of numerous references to popular culture. Hartman would later reveal in 2017 during the Weinstein scandal that most of his input was rewritten and rerecorded by Harvey Weinstein, and said of his writing of the final film that he "had maybe 3% to do with".

Only two original voices remained, those of Kylie Minogue and Ian McKellen. Minogue, however, re-voiced her own lines with an American accent. The United States version also features Kevin Smith as the voice of Moose, who was originally a non-speaking character, and adds narration by Judi Dench.

Reception

The US version of the movie was widely panned by film critics and audiences. On Rotten Tomatoes, it received an aggregate score of 9% based on 47 reviews. The consensus reads: "Overloaded with pop culture references, but lacking in compelling characters and plot, ''Doogal'' is too simple-minded even for the kiddies". Metacritic gave the film an average score of 23 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". It received an F rating from ''Entertainment Weekly'', writing that "very young children should be angry... where is it written that 4-year-olds don't deserve a good story, decent characters, and a modicum of coherence?". It was placed number five on Ebert & Roeper's Worst of 2006. ''Screen Rant'' ranked it number 1 on its list of the twelve Worst animated movies ever made.

Roger Moore of ''Orlando Sentinel'' described it as "easily the worst kid's movie since '' Spy Kids 3-D'', a confusing blur of a magical quest based on an ancient British stop-motion animation TV show." Christy Lemire of ''Associated Press'' called it "the laziest, most disheartening animated children's film ever made." Randy Miller of DVD Talk says that: "''Doogal'' is, after all, one of the worst excuses for a children's film during this or any year ... Filled to the brim with pop culture references and other such gags that'll be even less funny a few years from now, it's like ''Shrek'' without the occasional bit of charm and surprise".

Michael Phillips of the ''Chicago Tribune'' described the film as "Eighty-five minutes you'll never get back." and also put it on his Worst of 2006 list. Frank Scheck of ''The Hollywood Reporter'' wrote, "The key frame animation, based on three-dimensional models, is rudimentary, with none of the characters proving visually arresting." Ned Martel of ''The New York Times'' wrote, "In ''Doogal'' setting the world right again involves a badly paced quest for three diamonds, assorted jokes that don't land, and a daringly incoherent climactic confrontation."

Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.

Accolades

Home media

''The Magic Roundabout'' was released on DVD and VHS in the UK on 18 July 2005 by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment (under Pathé). The DVD release included the option to play along with the film via a "Magical Mysteries Quiz Game" in which, at certain intervals, the viewer would answer questions relating to what they have seen; Tom Baker would provide narration during the game. Two questions had to be answered correctly at a time before the film could continue, with an aim to see how many questions the viewer can get right first time. The game could be played under two difficulties; "Starter" to get the viewer started, and "Smarter" which was slightly more difficult. The film was later re-released on a 2-disc Special Edition DVD with extra bonus material that includes an inside look at the history of the original 1964 series, two making-of featurettes, classic episodes of the original series in both English and French, design gallery, cast and crew biographies, theatrical trailer and a couple TV spots.

In 2006, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released a 3-movie DVD pack that contains ''The Magic Roundabout'', ''Chicken Run'' and ''Robots''.

The American version of the film, ''Doogal'', was released on a double-sided DVD on 16 May 2006 by The Weinstein Company containing both the fullscreen and widescreen versions on each side.

In Canada, the country's distributor, Alliance Atlantis, released both the American version of the film nationally along with the original version dubbed in its European French language to DVD at the same time in Quebec (despite the country using a completely different French accent there). Alliance Atlantis' version of the US DVD has the same artwork that was used in the DVD release of the original English version of the film.

In 2008, ''The Magic Roundabout'' was released on Blu-ray exclusively in France featuring both the French and original English versions. Despite being sourced from a 2K English master, selecting the French audio track (or using the angle option) would show the credits in French sourced in its original DVD release, hence the low quality during it.

A couple years later, the Blu-ray was re-released as part of Fox Pathé Europa's "Sélection Blu-VIP" service where it contains a DVD copy of the film (in a plastic sleeve) as well as a booklet containing a catalog of Blu-ray releases from 20th Century Fox, Pathé, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and EuropaCorp along with a code on the back of it which can be used on the now-defunct 'Le Club BLU-VIP' website to earn points for merchandise for films released at the time (à la Disney Movie Rewards).

Cancelled sequel

Before the film was released, a sequel to ''The Magic Roundabout'' was announced to be in development, with the voice cast expected to reprise their roles.'Magic Roundabout' sequel planned – Digital Spy
/ref> However, Action Synthese closed their doors in 2013, effectively ending any chances of a sequel being made.

Notes

References

External links

* (''The Magic Roundabout'')
* (''Doogal'')

The Magic Roundabout on Pathé International
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