The Point

Besides having a wonderful score written by Harry Nilson, including the song "Me and My Arrow" which was used in a car commercial, it had a great story and unique cartoons - very different for its day. I had seen it when it first came out with Dustin Hoffman as the father's voice, but the next time I saw it, Alan Thicke did the voice and I wondered if I had been mistaken. It is gratifying to know that I wasn't. I've never heard it with Ringo Starr in that part, but I think it would be interesting.

The Point, a delightful animated film, is a joy for both children and their parents. The story line is a typical fable - how little Oblio was born in the Land of Point with a perfectly round head. After beating the evil Count's son in a game of triangle toss, he and his faithful dog Arrow are banished to the Pointless Forest. Here they encounter numerous strange creatures and have many adventures, where they learn that physical or not, everybody has a point. The music was written and performed by Harry Nilsson...after his hits with "Everybody's Talkin'" and the "Theme from the Courtship of Eddie's Father", but before his monumental Nilsson Schmillson album. A song from this feature, "Me and My Arrow" became a minor hit. George Tipton does wonderful but largely unrecognized arrangements of all the songs. The original movie was featured on ABC television in 1971 with Dustin Hoffman providing the narration. Harry Nilsson himself peforms the narration on the corresponding soundtrack album, which is a delight in itself. (It has recently been re-released with additional material.) When the film was shown in Great Britain, the original narration was wiped and replaced with one by Alan Barzman. Later the film was shown on the Disney Channel, with narration by Alan Thicke. The VHS home version is narrated by Ringo Starr, a drinking buddy and close friend of Harry Nilsson. Although the VHS version is no longer in print, I have seen versions with all 4 narrators lurking about on the internet. I have not heard personally heard the Alan Thicke or Alan Barzman versions. Ringo does a nice job on his narration, which I prefer over Hoffman's. However, if you're a Dustin Hoffman fan, his version is fine as well.

I also watched this movie as a kid in the early 1970's. I think I first saw it at home (around '72 or '73) and a couple of years later saw it at school.

I imagine it was used to promote peace and harmony not only among the races, but also among conservatives/liberals, and the like. Oblio was a kid who was born (the only one) without a point on his head. He goes into exile and is determined to find "his point" with his dog Arrow. Eventually, he returns to town to see if they will accept him along with his differences and is stunned to find out he now DOES have a point on his head. The only problem is that the town now has round heads, but they take him in warmly. Excellent movie to teach about racism or how we are all different, but we must all be accepted.

I have a fragmentary recollection of seeing this film when I was a kid and liking it back in the 1970's when it played on network TV. I recently re-watched it with my nephew Max, who is in 2nd grade and will be 8 years old in two months.

Probably the most important thing to say is that the movie held Max's attention very well, his eyes were riveted to the screen, and that he liked it very much, except for some of the musical interludes, which he thought were 'wierd,' especially the song where the whale dies and decomposes. (Of course, me being a sophisticated adult, I thought that song was probably the most profound and poetic, but I can see where Max was coming from.)

Based on the fact that Max appears to be a fairly typical real kid, who plays games on the Wii, who normally watches Adventure Time, the Ninja Turtles, and Sponge Bob, I would say that it is likely that other real world kids of today are likely to enjoy this movie as well.

As an adult, I find a number of reasons to recommend this movie for grown-ups and kids to watch together:

1. It's nice to find a kid-friendly film that isn't part of a mass merchandising campaign, which is now always the case regarding Disney and Pixar and Shreck movies, not to mention crap like GI Joe, Transformers, and My Little Pony. After watching this, it's unlikely your kid is going be asking for an Oblio action figure, and if he does ask, you won't find that action figure at the Target store.

2. Animation: This film has full-animation as opposed to the cheap-looking 'limited' animation that you see in the Hanna Barberra stuff from this period. Also, the drawing and coloring appears to have been done all by hand, giving the moving images a hand-made kind of quality, which is endearing to adults, and which might serve to inspire kids to pursue their own artistic endeavors. All in all, it's a refreshing change from computer animation and the other super-perfect stuff made today.

3. The narration and dialog is often clever and amusing, even insightful at times. The voice actors are all good, in particular, Mike Lookinland, who sounded so much like a real and natural kid, I did not recognize him as being one of the sickeningly saccharine Brady Bunch kids. A lot of the reviewers her on IMDb lament that Dustin Hoffman's original narration has been lost, and I of course always regret when a piece of art is not preserved intact, but Ringo Starr, besides being an old friend to the adults, tends to be popular with kids as well (hence his former gig as the narrator for Thomas the Tank Engine).

4. I'm dubious that all of the songs will appeal to kids, but at least they didn't cause Max to walk out. As an adult, and being ambivalent about a lot of Harry Nilson's music, I can say that most of the musical numbers I quite enjoyed. At least with the musical numbers, that is a good time for the kid to go the bathroom or to put some fruit or Ritz Bitz on a little plate for him.

5. The morals of the fable, regarding the somewhat arbitrary criteria we use to determine whether an activity has a 'point,' and regarding tolerance and acceptance of the differences between persons, are good morals for kids to learn.

On the whole, I found this to be a fun, sincere, unique, surprising and heartfelt piece of video that grown-ups and kids can watch together.

I kept hearing about this movie a lot for quite some time, and when I saw the video at my local library, I decided to check it out to see if it was any good.

Little did I know what I was in for!

In other words, I loved every minute of it. I have this thing for semi-obscure non-Disney animated movies, and 'The Point' was just adorable. Never before have I seen a lead character quite as endearing as little Oblio, or a cuter dog than Arrow (I just loved his expressions). The Rock Man was just too cool... with that beatnik-like voice and wisdom.

I loved the songs, and there's a very strange one about death, which shows a whale decomposing... it's the weirdest part of the movie, and has to be seen to be believed. The sequences to a few other songs aren't much more normal, actually. But I mean all of this in the nicest way possible.

'The Point' will for sure have a place in my cartoon collection soon. Anyone who loves strange cartoons or Harry Nilsson should see it.