It took Felix the Cat 72 years to star in his only feature film. His creator (and, at times, sole animator), Otto Mesmer, did not live to see this event, nor did anyone else who brought various incarnations of Felix to animated life over the decades. However, the last person to usher Felix to reasonable success in 1958, Joe Oriolo, passed the reins on to his son Don, who paid tribute to Dad with Felix the Cat: The Movie.
If there was ever a labor of love, this 1989 animated film is it. Don Oriolo wrote the script, did some voice work, served as one of the producers, and, if the end credits are correct, even performed some of the music. Wow. The direction was by Tibor Hernadi (“Animation director” on The Time Masters). No less than six nations (primarily Hungary) contributed to the production.
Yet, the film had but one US theatrical showing (as the opening selection of the third Los Angeles Animation Celebration), and plans for a wider release ended when the movie’s distributor, New World Pictures, went belly-up. The picture went unseen until it appeared on DVD on August 29, 2002.
Felix is, alas, not a very good film, and most critics have been considerably harsher than that. The story, involving Felix’s adventures in an alternate dimension where he battles on the side of a beautiful princess against her evil uncle, the Duke of Zill, is disjointed and plagued by unnecessary scenes that push the plot aside. In one of them, we watch foxes (who get their own song!) prepare to urinate on Felix’s bag. They disappear after that. An interlude with tap-dancing mice goes on far too long. And how about the one-time appearance of a dragon that silently impersonates (I think) Marlon Brando?
The animation reflects the $9M budget and is almost universally floppy and choppy: mouth movements rarely match the dialogue, and facial expressions often do not correspond to what the characters are experiencing. The editing is atrocious. There are some very primitive CGI sequences of Felix’s head bookending the film. Most of Felix’s lines are like “Dad jokes” that would embarrass Dad. Some of the characters (particularly Madame Pearl and Pim) look like they came from different films.
The picture strongly reminded me of the 1986 film Cat City (another very bad Hungarian film) in its flawed design and execution, and I would not be surprised if Felix employed many of the same animators. However, Felix is the better film, and this leads us to why this movie is merely a semi-total disaster. Some redemptive comments are due here:
To begin with, the film harkens back to the 1958 TV version of the fabulous feline, and this is rather welcome. Felix has a magical bag of tricks that comes in quite handy. Series stalwarts The Professor and his brilliant nephew Poindexter are along for the ride (Rock Bottom must still be serving time). The Master Cylinder gets a cameo (on paper). The picture even ends with Felix signing off with “Right-e-o!” The closing theme (by Winston Sharples) is the same one featuring Ann Bennett’s singing. David Kolin, replacing the immortal Jack Mercer, does a credible job voicing Felix.
The main villain, the Duke of Zill, is perhaps the best-designed character the crew came up with, and he gets a fitting backstory. The Duke resembles a tricked-up version of Spider-Man villain Mysterio, and Peter Newman lends the bad guy a great voice.
But what are the real reasons to buy/rent/stream this Felix movie besides Boomer nostalgia? One, it’s a surreal, loopy ride featuring acid-trip design, hallucinatory color, and bonkers secondary character designs (especially in the land of Zill) that must have existed in the animators’ nightmares. This messed-up menagerie is even weirder than the nutty backgrounds and layouts in this picture.
Secondly, if seeing this movie piques anyone’s curiosity about Felix the Cat, it is worth sitting through. Whether they explore the 1958 series, the three 1936 shorts from Van Bueren Studios, or take a deep dive into the iconic black-and-white Felix cartoons from his heyday during the 1920s, rediscovering this animated idol is a worthy cause. Felix the Cat: The Movie may not have been the cat’s crowning glory, but at least it kept a legend alive.