Bad Objects is a series chronicling films with cursed productions, controversial content, disastrous releases, polarizing legacies, and sometimes all of the above.
In 1979, Disney who had been Hollwood’s premier animation studio for nearly sixty years suffered an exodus. In one night, the groundwork was set for what would be the worst decade of Disney’s history, and the beginning of the only studio that ever seemed like it could unseat them. On his 42nd birthday, Disney animator Don Bluth resigned and began Don Bluth Productions he brought with him eleven Disney animators including Gary Goldman and John Pomeory.
In 1982 Bluth Productions released their first film The Secret of Nimh, it was only a moderate commercial success but received rapturous acclaim from critics. Bluth and his team were off to a great but still weren't really in competition with Disney. In fact, Bluth Productions would run into some early financial problems that would require them to ally themselves with Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment. It wouldn't be until the mid-80s when the competition started to heat up. In 1985 Disney released the catastrophic flop The Black Cauldron on a budget of 44 million dollars it grossed just 21 million dollars. In 1986 they recovered slightly with The Great Mouse Detective, which was a small commercial success.
Meanwhile, in 1986 Bluth released his second film, An American Tail, it was just as acclaimed as The Secret of Nimh but it also made more money than any non-Disney animated film ever had. Perhaps more importantly it made more money than The Black Cauldron and The Great Mouse Detective combined while costing substantially less than either of them. With just two movies Bluth and his fellow Disney turncoats had already shown they could compete with Disney, and in 1988 they would take that competition to the next level.
On November 18th, 1988 Disney and Bluth would release their next films in direct competition with one another. Disney released Oliver and Company and Bluth released The Land Before Time, in their opening weekend battle The Land Before Time won handily, opening at #1 while Oliver and Company opened at #4. In the long run, Oliver and Company would win out in terms of box office, but not by a huge margin especially considering The Land Before Time costly roughly 20 million dollars less. While it did lose at the box office The Land Before Time did keep up the tradition of receiving quite a bit more acclaim than its Disney counterpart while also having more cultural staying power.
Even if Oliver and Company had somewhat revitalized Disney at least from a financial perspective, the decade in animation had belonged to Bluth. Going into 1989, Bluth had released the two most successful non-Disney animated films of all time, had consistently outperformed Disney with critics and audiences, and had recently gained more independence from the Hollywood system by cutting ties with Amblin and starting Sullivan Bluth Entertainment. It made perfect sense for Bluths next film to once again go up against Disney’s yearly offering.
Bluth’s next film would be All Dogs Go to Heaven a project that had been in some level of development since The Secret of Nimh. It was Bluth's biggest effort at unseating Disney yet, it had his highest budget yet, it was led by a major movie star in Burt Reynolds, and it was made with the greatest deal of independence of any of his films. Its production was mostly very smooth, everyone involved believed strongly in the project they were working on, and they had all of the momentum to beat their Disney counterpart on November 17th, 1989.
Unfortunately for Bluth Disney had finally found a way out of their decade-long slump. They returned to John Musker and Ron Clements who had directed Disney’s most critically well-regarded film of the decade thus far in The Great Mouse Detective to direct The Little Mermaid which began life as a pitch from Clements back in 1985. On their shared opening weekend, The Little Mermaid would only slightly outpace All Dogs Go to Heaven opening at #3 while All Dogs Go to Heaven opened at #5, but by the end of their respective runs The Little Mermaid would be the most successful animated movie of all time and All Dogs Go to Heaven would be Bluth’s least successful film since The Secret of Nimh.
To make matters worse The Little Mermaid was not just a major financial hit but was also showered in acclaim from critics and audiences alike, while All Dogs Go to Heaven was Bluth’s first negatively received film. The film was viewed as a bit of a disaster in comparison to The Little Mermaid and received a decent amount of backlash for its more upsetting elements that made it struggle to catch on with younger audiences.
While I personally don’t have a problem with the films darker elements it does make sense that many families did. After all this is a children’s animated film primarily about illegal gambling, mob warfare, child labor, and the looming threat of eternal damnation. The Little Mermaid is about love and growing up and fun loving Jamaican crabs, I know which one I’d want to see if I were in eight years old in 1989.
For me the real problem with All Dogs Go to Heaven is not its content, while that may have hurt it commercially I think it actually works for the film creatively. My big problem with the film is that it’s a musical where none of the songs are very good. While The Little Mermaid has some of the best songs from any animated musical ever.
But outside of the music problem, All Dogs Go to Heaven is not a bad movie. It’s very well animated, with a distinct, eye-grabbing style. It’s very dark (probably too dark for a G-rated movie) but that serves its very resonant themes. It’s not an especially remarkable film but for the most part, it’s a sweet, funny, and sometimes pretty insightful film.
Unfortunately, when you're going up against a Goliath like Disney that is not enough. All Dogs Go to Heaven lost decisively to The Little Mermaid but it wasn’t a disaster. It made a decent profit, its reviews skewed negative but there were quite a few champions for it most notably Roger Ebert, and it continues to have a cultural footprint to this day. But it still lost to its Disney counterpart and it lost badly. To rival Disney as an upstart animation studio there isn’t room for any losses, with one movie after a decade of failures, Disney had returned to being the undisputed top dog of animation.
The real failure of All Dogs Go to Heaven is what it spawned. The effort to recover from the disappointing box office led to films like Rock-a-Doodle , in which a greater emphasis was placed on broad commercial appeal, and the return was a true disaster. Bluth would not have another hit until Anastasia in 1997 which he made at Fox Animation Studios a studio he co-founded with Gary Goldman at the behest of 20th Century Fox head Bill Mechanic after the downfall of Bluth Entertainment. Fox Animation Studios would not last long being replaced in 2000 with 20th Century Animation. 20th Century Animation still exists (barely) but now it’s been consumed by the Disney machine.
All Dogs Go to Heaven is not a great film, it’s got a lot of problems but it also has a lot of good in it. It wasn't Bluth’s best work but it certainly should not have marked the beginning of the end of his effort to have a real independent Disney competitor.
Rating: 6/10