Closed Mondays

Let's be blunt. The 1960s and 70s were terrible times for good animation. The excellent artwork of Looney Tunes and MGM were history and Disney was a sleeping giant which wouldn't really come back to life until "The Little Mermaid". In the meantime, third-rate animation studios like Hanna-Barbera churned out crap---cartoons with very low cel-counts (making the characters move like robots) and terrible stories (think "Speed Buggy", "The Harlem Globetrotters" and "Scrappy Do"). As a child and teen during this period, I pretty much watched the old classics in reruns and lost interest in the newer stuff. Thank goodness for the resurgence of animation!! Fortunatley, despite the nadir of the 60s-70s, occasionally a really great cartoon was produced against the odds. In other words, if bad and cheap animation paid, how could you expect anyone to bother with the good? Well, in the case of "Closed Mondays", you do get an exceptional short--even back in 1974.

"Closed Mondays" is an early animation of the Will Vinton Studios--the same folks who wore out their welcome in the 1980s with those annoying dancing raisins. It wasn't that the raisins were badly made--they were GREAT claymation characters. But, they were shown to death--with tons of commercials and even a kids cartoon series!! Talk about overkill....though I can't blame Vinton and the rest, as it did pay handsomely. But, they were capable of far more interesting stuff back in the 70s--such as "Mountain Music" and this short. These were terrifically animated using lumps of various colored clay--and very active imaginations.

The short begins with a wonderfully awful old guy wandering about an art museum. He seems to hate everything--which made me laugh. Even when the artwork comes to life, he seems unimpressed. And, in the end, it all makes a bit more sense. As I said, the quality of the work was very nice, the story was lovely AND it made me happy. Apparently the Academy also was impressed and they awarded the film the Oscar for Best Animated Short in 1975. See this one.

This claymation short film starts with an old man, jolly off wine, coming into an empty art gallery and being quick to dismiss much of what he sees as rubbish. However as he walks around, the static images and works do more than remain this way and instead start to speak to him in different ways.

There is a point in this short film about the power of art to be alive and speak to the viewer and I mostly liked the idea behind this short where the various words come alive to the way that they are either silly, moving or everything in between. The idea is good and at points so is the short film – particularly in the sudden poignancy of the conclusion, however for me I found myself more appreciating the film and the idea than I did really enjoying it. The reason for this is two-fold. Firstly the animation. I appreciate it is now over 40 years old, but it is rather ugly in the delivery – in some cases it works (for example the transforming robot) but in others I found it as a barrier to watch – I know this is superficial and unfair to the content, but for me it was as such. The second thing that gave me pause was that some of the examples of the art coming alive didn't work – and again I use the transforming robot as an example, it seemed too silly and out of nowhere. Had all the examples had something to bring to the table it would have been better but again this robot example stuck with me as being out of place considering the good ending it was building to.

This won the Oscar for the year and in a way I do not begrudge it because I like the idea and aspects of the delivery, but I would be lying to say I did not struggle with some of the animation and the content at the same time. I appreciated it as a whole, but I did not necessarily enjoy it as such.

It's the one-woman show of "Celia Crazelsnuk" that our visitor has come to view. It's supposed to be closed on Mondays, but armed with his bottle and a very limited knowledge of art - in he goes! There are paintings and there are sculptures - and when they start to come alive it gives him (and us) an opportunity to see some vibrant and quite emotional animations. These work well offering quite a wide variety of subject matter and even a very talkative robot, but it's the stop-motion of the man himself that's most impressive. The facial expressions and muscle definition is worthy or Ray Harryhausen himself. I loved the ending, too!

The 1974 winner of Best Animated Short depicts a man looking at artwork that appears to come to life. I especially liked the malfunctioning computer. One might interpret Will Vinton's "Closed Mondays" as a look at the relationship between humanity and the art that we produce. There's even the question of how to define art. I wouldn't call this my favorite Will Vinton cartoon, but I enjoyed it. Personally I don't think that enough people get to see the nominated animated shorts. They tend to be far more interesting than the features voiced by the celebrities of the moment.

Anyway, this one is worth seeing. It's too bad that Phil Knight took over Will Vinton's studio and fired Vinton from it.

It's been 25 years since Closed Mondays was released, and at least 20 since I've seen it... so my fond memories of this short are a testament to it's lasting impact. I too lament it's unavailability on video. I just saw the Wallace and Gromit series, and would love to see Closed Mondays again to remember all the little details.