This week in the Deep Hurting Project, the 1999 animated remake of The King and I.
- Okay, maybe they changed the overture music for the first film, but did the original overture have this much emphasis on long orchestral chords.
- So, this is new: it opens on a storm on the voyage to Siam, and somehow, the boat does not match with the surroundings at all.
- So, there's this guy who's watching her boat on this Stargate-looking thing, and apparently, this is the Kralahome, the guy who did nothing in the original except walk around without a shirt and temporarily shock the Leonowenses. He's the villain now.
- Does he even need evil plans for the westerner to think the King is a barbarian? Shouldn't the culture shock and imperialist mindset take care of that? And why, if they were convinced that the King was a barbarian, do you think they'd keep a Thai person in charge and not, say, have themselves take it over totally, like they did with India?
- So, why is that dragon's fire circling and not, you know, striking the boat directly?
- So, "Whistle a Happy Tune" is used in the most bizarre way: the boat's being attacked by a black dragon whose fire circles around the boat and Anna sings the song to try and suppress her fear and this song somehow defeats it.
- You know, one of the biggest flaws with the original (besides the fact that the original play was based on a novelization of several memoirs that sometimes either played fast and loose with the truth or just took hearsay and treated it as fact; the whole Tuptim subplot was an example of this) was that the Asians all speak in this weird broken dialect, even when they're alone, and this kind of ups the ante by adding several more characters that are more stereotypical, like, for instance, Master Little, the Kralahome's sidekick, who speaks in a voice that sounds like a cross between a stereotypical Asian accent, a stereotypical Mexican accent, and a bad Patton Oswalt impression. He's blatant cringe, especially given that, beyond his accent and his job, his most defining trait is that he runs into things and his teeth fall out. This happens 3 times in the first 15 minutes. As dodgy as the portrayals of the Asians in the film are, at least Hammerstein had the good sense to not fall TOTALLY into stereotyping. At least they tried to create fully realised characters and not just offensive cutouts. If they can try that in 1950, what the fuck are they doing in 1999? That said, the Kralahome at least speaks perfect English.
- Why does Tuptim fall in love with the Crown Prince in this version?
- Why is "Getting to Know You" the equivalent of those random-ass animal fights that sometimes dominate the talkier parts of Chick Tracts? Wait, is this their attempt at turning it into the montage of the von Trapp children going to town in The Sound of Music? Did they know in advance they weren't going to get the chance to do another animated Rodgers and Hammerstein movie, so they inserted some of that in there?
- If "Whistle a Happy Tune" wasn't bizarre, "A Puzzlement" is itself a Puzzlement. It just has to be seen to be believed:
And no, the statues are never hinted at being alive before this, and they never come back to life. - How does she not know what the Crown Prince looks like?
- Wait, did Anna ever promise the King that her head would never be higher than his? Even in the original, she never promised this. In this version, it's barely even mentioned. This may be a function of a play that's over two hours being compressed to an hour and a half with added horseshit.
- Wait, the Hot Air Balloon is unnatural for the British in 1862? Maybe 80 years prior, but while the Wikipedia page is silent on the history of the balloon between 1794 and 1960 for whatever reason, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that they would have been familiar with it for decades before that.
- ... does The King's balloon have a fucking propeller? Are you that fucking unfamiliar with the history of air travel?
And the blatant anachronism aside, what purpose would a propeller serve on a hot air balloon? - Please tell me Tuptim didn't survive going down a river of lava unscathed...
- Well, dancing with a lit sparkler doesn't seem safe, especially when you're doing it to celebrate a regicide
- And of course the movie fakes us out for thinking The King is dead. Of course.
- And why are there still 15 minutes left in the movie?
Comparing the Universal Oneness of All Life to Yo Mama since 2010.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.