March Birthday

And now, for the toons celebrating their birthday in March…

Premiering March 26th, 1997, and the only fully animated feature produced by Turner Feature Animation (this studio was merged during the post-production into Warner Brothers Animation), it was also the directorial debut of former Disney animator Mark Dindal, who was also one of the film's writers. The film is also notable for the musical numbers being choreographed by Gene Kelly, who, sadly, passed away in 1996, way before the theatrical debut, and in fact, the post-credits dedicate the movie to his memory.

Despite the movie's title, the full story is focused precisely intro proving it wrong, and show that cats, and other animals, can't just dance, but do it wonderfully, and also sing, act, and do excellent performances in general. The movie's set in 1939, with an idealistic dancing cat from Kokomo, Indiana, moving to Hollywood in hopes of starting a career there; while he finds multiple obstacles, specially from humans who don't think an animal can perform like people, he also finds other animals with similar dreams, all of them inspired by the cat's optimism to give these dreams another try. Their initial attempts get ruined by a bratty child star (and her hulkish butler) who, ironically, is among the first ones to recognize the animals' true talent, and wants to avoid some serious, unwanted competition; in the end, however, the kid's true nature is revealed to the world, along with the animals' abilities, ruining her career and kick-starting the animals'. The epilogue images even show the fauna performers becoming the stars of several famous movies on later decades.

Despite having a good critical reception, and being the first non-Disney animated film to have won the Best Animated Feature award, the movie didn't do well in the box office, apparently because of lack of advertising and the failed marketing campaign; it didn't help that, during production, management at Turner Feature Animation changed repeatedly and each head that came in attempted to take drastic revisions, even trying to change the movie's time period and introduce new characters that didn't fit with the original script. Luckily, on later years, it became a cult classic, with a small yet loyal fan base thanks to the Home Video releases.

So, Happy Birthday, guys, and we all know you can dance; and do it as greatly as usual.