I found this animated special on YouTube and decided to give it a look. After all, my father adored Pogo and thought its creator, Walt Kelly, was a genius and I wanted to see this show for myself. But before it even began, I wondered why they made the film at all in 1980? After all, Kelly died prematurely in 1973 and the strip went on only two more years...and Pogo the comic strip had seemingly come and gone. It was, by the way revived in 1989...but why make a 1980 film?
The animation is done using something that looks a lot like claymation...a stop-motion process. I think this was a HUGE mistake, as Pogo was a wonderfully drawn cartoon and the look is lost when converted to clay. That's one strike against the 1980 film and it really should have been hand-drawn. Don't believe me? Look online at some of Kelly's strips...they are works of art.
On the positive side, they were able to get the voice talents of Jonathan Winters, Vincent Price, Stan Freberg and a few other familiar actors.
The plot involves a campaign to get a candidate elected President and they want a completely unelectable sap to run against him...so they pick Pogo Possum. And, the characters of the swamp all get pulled into the hubbub.
So is it any good? Yes...but it's also fatally flawed for some of the reasons I mention above. Additionally "Pogo for President" was actually a 1964 book...and making it around 1964 would have been a LOT more timely. By 1980, its success had come and gone and audiences were not especially excited to see the character this late in time. I think this is why the film never received the widespread distribution that was originally promised. In the 60s, he was, however, one of the top comic characters...a sort of phenomenon...and it would have done great then. As such, it's more an odd curio than anything else.
