What was the controversy with Doogal?

R

Ranken

New member
I've heard random things:

Changing the voice actors to Americans.
Too many pop culture references.
The fact the program was no longer British.

Anything else?
 
Controversy? Doesn't that imply someone had a conversation concerning it? Because as far as I know, nobody ever knew or cared about Doogal and didn't see it and didn't want to and as such there's nothing really to talk about. The only time I ever bring it up is usually in the same sentence as other such forgotten oddities as Badder Santa and Norbit.
 
Doogal was the American title of the British film The Magic Roundabout, based on the classic children's television series of the same name broadcast on British TV in the '70s.

Ironically, the original series was a French import that was redubbed beyond recognition. The dubbing team had no idea what the original plots were, so they basically made them up in the dubbing booth. Like a slower-paced Samurai Pizza Cats, this resulted in a surreal, dream-like experience replete with witticisms and cultural references.

The controversy is that the American importer of The Magic Roundabout movie attempted much the same thing in order to appeal to an American audience...and failed dismally.
 
I don't know about contraversy, but it was certaintly one of the worst animated films I've seen...even worse than middle-of-the-road fare like Open Season and Over the Hedge. Just...dull and uninspired, with poor writing.
 
All I knew about this movie/series/whatever was that that thing is UGLY. Maybe that had something to do with it? Probably not. My tastes tend toward cats.
 
The whole fact that the redub cast were quick to slander it says alot. I think the original movie could be forgiven and forgotten as nostalgia fluff. The America version just speaks of everything wrong with the trend of CGI cartoon movies.
 
The way I heard it, Eric Thompson (the English scriptwriter) had high standards for kids' TV which the French series didn't match, so he decided he could do better himself. Sort of like a bizarro 4kids.
 
Doogal was one of the more notable recent CGI flops. Mostly because it was "re-interpreted" by that master witticist, Butch Hartman. If you think I've been hard on him, movie critics were worse. And they're so good at disembowelling lousy writers, they get paid for it.

And speaking of paying, if you want to see what moviegoers thought of Doogal, go to Yahoo Movies, type in the title in the User Reviews search box, and read the commentaries there. That should give you a good sampling of what went wrong with that movie, from a source perhaps more credible than movie critics (who, as I mentioned, are paid to see lousy movies. Moviegoers, on the other hand, lose money on the deal.)
 
The problem with Doogal was that it was based on an import franchise which next to no one in the US has even heard of. Unless you're a Brit or are old enough to remember the late Nickelodeon show Pinwheel, chances are that you've never even heard of Spung the Magic Roundabout.

Those who were familiar with it wouldn't like the film any more since they replaced all of the British voices of the characters with American actors. I mean, the voice of Whoopi Goldberg coming out of Ermintrude's mouth? Really. Also, the title was purposely misspelled; it's actually Dougal. I guess the producers thought us Yanks would see that name and think it was "Doug-al".
 
Well, at least the proper version got an American DVD release, and perhaps the revamp's dismal failure may deter any similar attempt in the future. Even if American audiences were unfamiliar with the franchise, I'm sure the untampered film would have done at least slightly better in theatres than that Doogal bastardization.
 
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