Danny, an ambitious singing and dancing cat, goes to Hollywood and overcomes several obstacles to fulfill his dream of becoming a movie star.
Director: Mark Dindal
Stars: Scott Bakula, Jasmine Guy, Natalie Cole, Kathy Najimy.
Gene Kelly ... choreography consultant (uncredited), but In Memory Of in credits. GK died Feb'96.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118829/
Watched online, ordered disc.
12 songs in the Soundtracks, 6 with Music and Lyrics by Randy Newman. Bakula (b. '54) does his own singing, and sounds good; young like the character.
Takes place in 1939, has multiple celebrity caricatures and film references from the era. At one point I saw the ape King Kong at the studio, which doesn't fit, since the film was released '33 by RKO. All references to specific films involve only those owned by Turner at the time, which would include Warner, MGM, & RKO. [When I get the disc, I want to freeze-frame in places to catch more and check the Connections page.]
At first I was enchanted by all the old H'wood references. That happened in a few places, not persistently.
Then I got really hopeful that the repression of animals in film (the cat is only allowed to say meow) would be an allegory for racial repression in films, but that didn't seem to happen.
I'm surprised GK is supposed to have consulted on the choreography, because I found it stylized and unrepresentative of human dancing, and turned me off completely. (The animals are talking and walking on 2 legs, so they dance that way too.) But maybe with a dvd and ffwd/pause/rewind control, I'll be able to reevaluate that.
I was offended by Darla Dimples being so clearly a smear of Shirley Temple. Darla was a tyrant; I never got the idea ST was.
Bought because it was GK's last H'wood contribution.
Update 11/27 (original post 11/21/18): watched again, even watched the "Songbook" separately, and the dancing does not impress me, and does not feel like GK would have been happy with this result. Oh, well.
Rated 6.9 (6,320)
distr. Warner, dir. Dindal; 6-
