Something that irks me about terminally online animation fans is that they always cry out for more unique animated experiences, and then don’t venture out to experience them, or, if we want to be nice, don’t know where to start. My recommendation is always to check out distributors like GKIDS, who consistently bring over cool stuff from around the world, even if it sometimes feels like they focus a bit too much on Japanese animation. A good place to begin if you want to dive into the deep end is to look at animated films from 1968–1989.
When Walt Disney passed away (with The Jungle Book being his last film he worked on), Disney went through a slump that hit an all-time low (and not their last all-time low as we have seen with their run in the 2000s and 2023’s Wish), and the release of films like Yellow Submarine, animation around the world exploded. A good example of this is the fact that without the success of Yellow Submarine, we wouldn’t have gotten the Hungarian animated films Johnny Corncob and Son of the White Mare by Marcell Jankovics. Some countries delved into smaller budget affairs that resulted in more adult animated fare like the work of Ralph Bakshi with 1972’s Fritz the Cat. The 70s had a slew of more erotic and sexually charged films like the Animerama trilogy of A Thousand and One Nights, Cleopatra, and Belladonna of Sadness. It was a treasure trove of varying animated experiences that we weren’t getting in the US. Yes, I do like a couple of the films Disney made during the 70s and 80s, but let’s not act like it was their top-tier stuff.
Sadly, this big boom in experimentation and out-of-control productions didn’t last, and as the 70s went on, quality control was all over the place. While we got some great stuff still, the 80s were when things slowed down. Good animation was coming out, but in the US, we were getting some of Disney’s weaker efforts. There was a lack of interest in animation at the time, or it just feels like there was a lack of interest. It showed that even with this movie’s meager $3 million budget, Twice Upon a Time failed to make a profit and was a victim of timing and circumstance.
On paper, you would be shocked to hear that a film that had Henry Selick, George Lucas, and David Fincher involved didn’t do well. In a modern context, that would sound absurd, but for Fincher and Selick, this was early on in their careers. The film itself was directed by John Korty and Charles Swenson, who co-wrote the script with Suella Kennedy and Bill Couturie. It revolves around two unlikely heroes. Ralph the All-Purpose Animal (voiced by Lorenzo Music), and a mime-like character named Mumford. They live in a town called Frivolli, a town in a fantastic world. The People there have happy dreams due to the powers of Greensleeves, a wizard, and his group of Figmen of Imagination that deliver them daily. However, there is also a place called Murkworks, where an evil villain named Synonamess Botch, voiced by Marshall Efron, plans on stealing Greensleeves’ powers to obtain the ability to control time by taking possession of The Cosmic Clock. This way, Botch can unleash onto the world non-stop waking nightmares. It is up to Ralph and Mumford, alongside Greensleeves’ niece Flora Fauna, voiced by Julie Payne; a highly incompetent superhero named Rod Rescuman, voiced by James Cranna; and a snarky Fairy Godmother or “F.G.M.”, voiced by Judith Kahan, to save the day.
I opened up with how much of the wild west the animation scene was in the 70s to the 80s, because this feels like one of the last bastions of that period. First off, its animation style is wholly unique. It uses a style of cutout animation called Lumage that John Korty built up around when he would do shorts for shows like Sesame Street and The Electric Company. Cutout animation didn’t only exist when Korty crafted Lumage; Europe and Russia were huge adopters of cutout animation. From what I have seen, the US simply didn’t use cutout animation (despite it being at the time much cheaper than cel animation), and Twice Upon a Time is one of the few now readily available films that use it. The animation has this vibrant stop-motion look that mixes cutout animation with live-action elements, similar to films like Yellow Submarine or the works of Terry Gilliam. If you watch this movie and think of visuals from books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar, then you will get an accurate expectation of what it looks like.
The film’s low budget meant they couldn’t pay for stage, character, or celebrity actors. Instead, the cast is full of comedians who work in or do wonderful stuff with improvised dialogue. Sure, there are some names folks may recognize like the late Lorenzo Music, who was best known for his voice work in shows like The Real Ghostbusters and voicing the iconic cat Garfield, but you would find it hard to find current audiences who would know who these folks are. Even though it has this mix of improvised dialogue, a vibrant trippy art style and distinct animation style, it’s a fairly straight-forward story of underdog heroes wanting to prove that they are good folks by saving the day and stopping the villain. The central plot sounds like a lot of fantasy stories.
What makes Twice Upon a Time stand out is the fact that it looks like an offbeat modern/fantasy children’s book, with dialogue that would sound more at home in an offbeat or early SNL season. The actors have set-ups, but then they let loose, and in the uncut version, you can even hear some of them flub as they change their words or restart sentences. The inclusion of characters like Rod Rescuman,a parody of superhero or knightly heroes, would feel more at home in something like Shrek. It’s not a deep movie. Obviously, you can look under the hood and pick apart the more thematic commentary that it may have, but the film doesn’t seem to really want to be about that. It’s a film entirely about dream logic that makes the viewers put the pieces together of how its world works. With its snappier edge of some cursing (if you watch the unedited version), it isn’t entirely made for kids. It’s a tone that can be for all, but you can’t always rely on everyone vibing on the same wavelength.
It does seem like the film’s story is about to fall apart, and while there are some incredible line readings from James Cranna, Judith Kahan, and with delightful snark from Lorenzo Music, it’s like they are grasping at straws in certain scenes to progress the story. The characters aren’t meant to be deep, and for something this experimental, that should be fine, but they are fairly one-note.
With all that said, does that even matter? Twice Upon a Time is such a vibrant and unique experience that you don’t often see in animation, or if you do, it’s pretty much gonna be stuck in distribution limbo, only popping up during festival circuits, or getting a quiet VOD release to then never be heard again. It’s an additional shame that this film, alongside The Right Stuff, killed the studio that made it, with The Ladd Company going under after both films bombed at the box office. It didn’t help that there was a disruption between the distributors and the creatives, due to the edited version being the only one available for years, with no home release. It now has a DVD from Warner Archives that comes with both the uncut and edited versions.
In the end, it sucks that this film was caught in a bad spot with its company going under and getting a limited release. While it got generally positive reviews, that didn’t save it from bombing and being a forgotten gem in a sea of quantity-over-quality animated releases of the previous decade. There is a reason why folks tend to love this one when they discover it, and it remains one of the more unique animated experiences from the 80s.