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Key Details

• Directors: Rob Minkoff, Chris Bailey and Mark Koetsier
• Animation Studios: Cinesite, Aniventure, Align, GFM and HB Wink Animation, originally by Mass Animation and Arc Productions
• Country of Origin: United States of America, Canada
• Rating: PG
• Release Date: 21 July 2022 (in Singapore theatres)
• Trailer: Click Here

Introduction

Konichiwa, fellow adventurers! Blaziker has returned for another animation adventure and today, continuing from our voyage in The Sea Beast, we now venture to the far, wild west to a town populated by cats and cat samurais. However, I heard from the grapevine that this town has a troubled history, so we need to prepare for potential danger in advance.

Directed by Rob Minkoff, the legendary director of The Lion King, and animated by various studios, including Cinesite (the animation studio behind the two Addams Family animated movies, as well as Extinct and Riverdance: The Animated Adventure) and Aniventure (who worked together with Cinesite on Riverdance as well as their upcoming solo project “Hitpig”), it starts comedy star Michael Cera as the only dog in the town full of cats, training for his dream to become a samurai under the mentorship of Samuel L. Jackson. Paws of Fury is a supposed animated remake of the comedy classic “Blazing Saddles” as seen in its original title “Blazing Samurai”.

This movie had a wild production history, stretching all the way to the days when an animation studio called Mass Animation is in charge. I will not go into the nitty-gritty since Pan-Pizza had covered its troubled production below:

So, after many delays, shady practices and a title change, will Paws of Fury be a ‘Banzai!’ of an animated movie, or will even the mind that brought us one of the most legendary animated movies ever created cannot save this animated mess?

Story and Characters

Before we get to the review, I would want to raise a disclaimer that this movie had been in development hell for the past five years, having changed hands from one studio to another. Such occurrences are common for past animated movies, such as Food Fight (2012), Norm of North (2016), Wonder Park (2019) and others, so it is important we take those issues into accounts.

With that said, the writing is lacklustre due to lack of cohesion and originality. With the writing team changing hands due to the troubled production, Paws of Fury became an unfunny and messy animated remake of “Blazing Saddles”. There are certain moments during my screening where I feel confused over a good amount of plot holes in the movie’s key moment or bored over the lack of excitement. Even when considering the lack of proper development, the writing was not good for theatrical animation standards.

Another issue I have with the movie is the comedy. Look, comedy in most mainstream animated movies is most of the time stale, with overused and overbearing jokes aplenty. Most of the jokes are (just like in the original) “in-your-face” jokes with references a la Disaster Movie (although much better than that Seltzer-Berg flick no one wanted), as well as some fourth wall, modern gags that felt out of place (plus self-aware movie jokes), probably because of the movie being in a limbo previously. While a couple of them land very hard, the issue is the lack of set-up and how bunched up the jokes are, making the experience somewhat grating. Even worse, the jokes are aplenty, but because they came at a rapid pace, it is so difficult to take a breather in between jokes because of the lack of good pacing.

As for the characters, most of the characters tend to be cliches of typical animated movie characters, with almost nothing new to show. Hank (Superbad star Michael Cera) is the only dog in a town full of cats who is not only dumb, but is also annoying at times, making his motivations less powerful that at face value. His mentor and former samurai Jimbo (the legend that is Samuel L. Jackson) is your typical down-and-out mentor with a dark past of his own. For Jackson, this was just another one of those moments, but his voice acting was passable enough personally. All the other characters are mostly characters you would expect from your run-of-the-mill, mainstream animated movie, and even Ricky Gervais’ portrayal of an evil cat lord has a funny name. His name? Ika Chu. Insert obvious reference here.

Animation

In terms of the animation, the animation studios that worked on Paws of Fury switched hands consistently. First, Mass Animation (founded by Sony Pictures Animation co-founder Yair Landu) got into trouble for their suspicious crowd-founded animation, then Arc Productions (the studio that worked on various shows, including some episodes of Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia, now acquired and re-named to Jam-Filled Animation) went under in 2018. In 2019, Montreal-based Cinesite (the long-time visual effects specialists and animation studio, who also many animated movies such as Riverdance: The Animated Adventure), who together with their partners worked on the animation to the end. Personally, I think while they do not produce the best quality animation, Cinesite’s animation is decent enough for theatrical animation standards.

From the trailer, the animation shown to me did not impress me in the slightest, looking like a direct-to-DVD or direct-to-streaming movie, but what I got from the movie is much better than I thought regarding that point.

To start off with the negatives, the character designs felt generic, with most of the characters (except for Hank the dog samurai) being cats. Sure, there are variations of the cat designs, but most of them, while having the distinctive Japanese-style neko designs, kind of looked bland to me. There are also certain parts of the animation that feel artificial-looking, such as the unnatural water animation towards the third and final act of the movie (which is still an issue for many animated movies these days. I feel those animation studios need to look at The Sea Beast on how to animate water properly).

However, while the character designs lack distinctiveness and some animation moments feel uncanny, the team at Cinesite and friends made up for it with some decent use of action design and stylised animation. There are two flashbacks moments where the style switches to a more manga-style animation, having darker backgrounds with hand-drawn style animation and designs, even with a CG-heavy movie. Sure, the stylised animation is not as good as other animated movies that utilised this technique, but it is a much better attempt compared to the Around the World in 80 Days animated movie (which I mentioned in this article).

In addition, the action sequences pay homage to samurai-based cartoons, most notably Hong Kong Phooey (which I am certain Paws of Fury is not ripping off from), particularly the fight between Hank and the gigantic Sumo in the middle of the movie, where the cartoony aspects of the movie shone through. I also enjoy the epic battle scene towards the end that makes up for an otherwise cheesy second act that breaks the flow of the story.

Considering Paramount purchased the rights to Paws of Fury on a fire sale of US$10 million, and that the entire production costs around $50 million (which would put it as a low to mid-budget film), it is one of the better animated movies by Cinesite. I still think the dynamic dance sequences and varied animation in Riverdance: The Animated Adventure is their better work, but I do not mind the boring character designs and some obvious animation errors and cheap-looking animation, if that means fun, cartoony animation that is ok enough for low to mid-budget theatrical animation standards.

Special Sauce

Now, here are some special parts of Paws of Fury that make the movie stand out:

• Soundtrack: For a typical, generic, low to mid-budget animated movie, most viewers would not care much about the soundtrack, even me as an animated movie soundtrack fanatic. That said, the soundtrack slaps hard, even if most tracks were what you would expect from a typical soundtrack. Two songs stood out: “Blazing Samurai”, the intro song with inspirations from traditional Japanese music that might be one of my favourite intro songs of any movie this year, and “The Coolest Cat”, the ending song that I somehow enjoy a lot more than I should.
• Troubled production: Even before this movie’s releases, the animation community, me included, knew about the production issues surrounding Paws of Fury (or by its old name of Blazing Samurai), being first around in the early 2010s and only releasing in 2022. It was a fascinating lesson about why producing an animated movie is very hard, and my salutations to the current team for putting in the hardest effort to salvage whatever mess this movie already produced.
• The word “Blazing”: When first produced, Paws of Fury is supposed to be a tribute to the western comedy classic “Blazing Saddles” and there was one particular joke that pays homage to the Mel Brooks classic (and yes, Mel himself was part of the Paws of Fury voice cast): one of the first successful fart joke scenes in mainstream cinema. And yes, it involved beans just like in the original. Before you ask, there were fourth-wall jokes, and one of those jokes is a good reason Paramount insisted on releasing it theatrically in most countries.

With that said, it is easy to note that Paws of Fury plays out like a typical, run-of-the-mill animated movie and only a handful of elements make it stand out among other, similar animated movies. A shame that it could not pull off what makes Blazing Saddles a classic in the first place.

Conclusion

You know, I expected myself to not like this movie at all, but after my screening, I will admit that while Paws of Fury is pretty mediocre at best, there are signs of life at key moments in the film. The crew working on it had to finish the job and inherited from the existing mess that might never see the light of day. The problem is that Paws of Fury is such a mess that even Rob Minkoff and his team could not pull off a miracle despite their efforts.

While Paws of Fury had some bright spots, including the decent if otherwise error-prone animation, what let this movie down was the lacklustre or otherwise messy writing with lack of cohesion. Most of the characters felt like caricatures of typical animated movie characters and most do not add up to the movie, and the in-your-face humour and references do not work most of the time. If I were to be honest, I felt conflicted over whether or not I like the movie, but while it did not meet expectations, at least the team at Cinesite, Aniventure, Align and the other studios attempted to salvage whatever mess they acquired from such a delayed movie. Sometimes, a movie is just not ready to hit the big theatres, and this is sadly one of them.

Thank you so much for reading this review, and since there is a bit of a gap between Paws of Fury and the next two animated movies coming out next month, we will look back at more of the animated movies that came out before this blog’s existence. I will see you on the next adventure and until then, k thanks bye!

Rating

• Story and characters: 1.5/5
• Animation: 2.5/5
• Special sauce: 2/5
• Overall score: 6/15

Rating: Mediocre