Friday 28 September 2012

Ted and creative re-imaginings of Disney classics


Directed by Seth MacFarlane
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Giovanni Ribisi, Seth MacFarlane, and Captain Jean-Luc fucking Picard

Being a kid and being drunk is basically the same thing. Your motor skills are rudimentary, attention span short, impulse control severely limited, situational awareness essentially nil, and, if you’re a particularly shitty kid/drunk, you piss yourself.

In a sheer genius move, Seth MacFarlane has done some of the best genre-melding in recent memory. With Ted, he has crafted a kid’s movie for drunken grown-ups. It evokes all the magic, excitement, and wonder of a kid’s movie about a stuffed toy coming to life, but at the same time mainly contains scenes of the titular teddy bear getting faced, bending chicks over vegetable crates, and telling everyone who isn’t Marky Mark to get fucked. And in the same way that you wanted to be friends with the Genie from Aladdin when you were young, you’ll also probably find yourself yearning to sit down on the couch next to Ted and Marky Mark, fire up a fatty, drink brewskies, and have arguments about trailer trash nomenclature.

 As children, we all loved animated movies, and over $420 mil at the box office for an R-rated comedy is evidence their power has not waned. As a matter of fact, Ted has out-grossed Ice Age, The Adventures of Tintin, Monsters vs. Aliens, and the original Toy Story. It would be unsurprising if this kick-starts a whole movement of adult-themed animated films geared towards wayward twentytoforty-somethings who drink copiously and are chronic underachievers. It would also be pleasant because then I wouldn’t feel so alone.

In fact, it’s already given this writer a lead-in to some creative re-imaginings of the animated pictures of his youth.

Classic Animated Films as R-Rated Adult Comedies (Because I Like To Dream)

Beauty and the Beast

When Belle happens upon Beast’s castle she finds him there hanging out among a herd of bison, for which he now acts as the alpha-bison.

This will be funny because instead of being a miserable, morose bastard, the Beast has accepted his fate as a creature, made the best of it, and has a more liberal attitude towards poontang. Belle, since she is a female Disney character and is therefore defined by the man she’s with, tries to coax him out of being herdmaster:

--
BELLE: But don’t you ever dream of being more? Of going back to the glorious life of lights and magic and dancing that you once had?

BEAST: Yeah, well, it’s balls that I’ve had to re-think my entire wardrobe but taking care of the herd has its perks, hon. You know I can go down to the town veterinarian, tell them one of the calves is sickly and they give me Ketamine. Honest to Christ. They just GIVE me fuckin Ketamine.

BELLE: What’s Ketamine?

BEAST: Oh, nothing. It’s totally not an anaesthetic I just diluted in your fruit juice.

BELLE: What?

BEAST: What?
--

And they could work in humourous side-plots where Belle laments to the bisons (because, duh, of course they would talk) about how woefully unloved she is and how she’s completely stumped about how she might bring Beast out of his cocoon.

--
BELLE: That last rose petal is about to fall off and it’s like he doesn’t even care. It’s like he wants to live as a beast forever.

BISON #1: Well of course he does. Dude, that guy owns the living shit out of everything in these woods now.

BISON #2: For real, this wolf pack used to hunt our calves and elderly but once Beast took over that all stopped dead in its tracks.

BISON #1: Yeah, that guy would just go out super early in the morning and take a huge shit in front of their wolf-cave. Then, whenever one of the pack would come out to examine it he’d throw Furbies in its direction. The wolf would get all worked up because Furbies are colourful and wolves aren’t that smart, but just when the wolf was expecting maybe a fifth of sixth Furby to land, Beast would fling a giant fucking boulder at it and give it permanent brain damage.

BISON #2: Seriously, this guy lives to fuck with predators. He’s like the Chris Hansen of the animal kingdom.

BISON #1: Yeah, and you think he’d give up being the alpha for your narrow ass?

BELLE: Well Gaston, the alpha of our village, is very congratulatory towards me.

BISON #2: Gay.

BISON #1: Total fag.

BISON #2: With that Steven Seagal ponytail? Hooker, please. Who’s he trying to fool?
--

RIGHT??!


Pocahontas

This should just be an animated version of Guess Who. They can even bring back Ashton Kutcher, mainly because I have trouble thinking of someone I like to see persecuted more.

Instead of dinner John Smith has to stay parked in the village for a few weeks while all the Mattaponi Natives hazed him. Like, they’d make him hunt water buffalo and boars with some kid’s slingshot or smoke the peace pipe after they put some industrial-strength PCP in it and then made him chase his tail until he sobered up and realised he didn’t have a tail. As comic interludes they could intersperse scenes of Kutch and the Mattaponi youth getting the munchies and talking shit over some beef jerky.

Plus, like, her pop, Chief Powhatan would totally be played by Graham Greene and nickname Kutch Wobi Madaondo, which he would go along with gleefully (as Kutch does) until he found out two-thirds of the way through that it meant “white devil” and then Graham Greene would laugh at him (as Graham does) and say “You got Punk’d, fool!”

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

Gang bang.

I mean... was there ever a doubt in your mind?


Aladdin

Before he has a chance to link up with the carpet and that blue dude, Aladdin gets picked up by Islamic fundamentalists who are impressed with his ability to move stealthily and evade the authorities. Promising to get him off the streets and provide him with more comfortable surroundings, he is inducted into Taliban boot camp where he learns a variety of infiltration manoeuvres while simultaneously developing an indoctrinated hatred of the West.


Prince Ababwa: not so easy to fuck with anymore
 
Meanwhile in Agrabah, the Sultan is still searching for an acceptable suitor for his daughter, Jasmine. Determined to gentrify his territory and expand the reach/influence of his empire, he arranges her marriage to a British business magnate.

Of course this infuriates the Islamic fundamentalist contingent, as it will dilute and impurify the royal line. They send their new recruit Aladdin on a stealth mission to sneak into the palace and murder the magnate in his sleep.

Aladdin slips past palace security, reaches the royal chambers, and as his dagger is midair and he’s about to go all “Allah hu akbar!!” on this poor fuckin dude the Princess Jasmine rolls over in her sleep and he’s like “Dag… this girl is pretty. Imma just have to take this British guy’s place.”

So instead of stabbing him Aladdin administers a lethal dose of Propofol, skins the guy, and then gets into bed wearing this dude’s skin. Jasmine wakes up a bit confused because, you know, there’s blood all over the sheets and stuff but she’s like “Father told me this might happen when I become a real woman” and thinks no more of it.

Aladdin mimics a British accent and goes on business-as-usual, nurtures a reluctant friendship with Jafar and that bird who clearly needs to take a huge dump all the time, and steers clear of any conversation that might expose him as an imposter. However, by around day 4 his skin-suit seriously starts to smell fuckin rank because he’s basically walking around encased in a decaying body (Aladdin has great core strength in this version) and everyone’s asking questions.

By that point Aladdin has been getting the royal treatment for a while and has come around to Western indulgences such as bowling and Tosh.0. He understands that man has evolved by being adaptable so he settles into this new life, marries the Princess, and has beers with the pet tiger in the afternoons. It’s about GROWTH.

THE END