FRANK AND OLLIE celebrates Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, two of the unsung stars of the original Disney troupe. Filmmaker Theodore Thomas was more than privy to their efforts; he is Frank Thomas's son, and made this as a personal seven-year project (it premiered on the Disney Channel in
1995 before its brief regional theatrical run).
The opening follows the two nice old gentlemen, best friends and neighbors since the 1930s, through their amusingly mirrored morning routine. When the pair finally sit down and talk about their careers, one realizes how key they have been to entertainment's finest moments. Thomas and Johnston are
"character animators," masters of an arcane discipline that breathed individual life and personality into Mickey Mouse, the Seven Dwarfs, and Captain Hook through minutely subtle details in facial expressions and gestures. Thomas and Johnston display their old sketches and play-act segments from
BAMBI, LADY AND THE TRAMP and THE JUNGLE BOOK. Then the director runs the finished scenes from those productions, and the newly-informed viewer observes familiar cartoon classics with a fresh eye for every nuance. So wonderfully lifelike are the Thomas and Johnston creations that one could easily
forget how each line and curve, tic and wink, was painstakingly planned and painted in.
Part home movie, part behind-the-scenes documentary, FRANK AND OLLIE at first glance seems to go over very familiar territory. Hasn't the work of the Disney animation studios been explored enough? Not really. Certainly there were in-house promotional pieces made, and Walt Disney himself joined
humorist Robert Benchley for a whimsical 1941 on-screen tour of his company that played at theaters as a supplement to THE RELUCTANT DRAGON. But Disney's looming public image long overshadowed a talented animation team that included Ward Kimball, Grim Natwick, Wolfgang "Woolie" Reitherman, and
Norman Ferguson--names well-known to only animation buffs.
Thomas and Johnston sardonically recall Disney as a driven man whose sheer nervous energy suggested a neurological disorder, like "one of those British kings they never talk about." As a studio history, however, FRANK AND OLLIE is decidedly patchy, and only hints at what life was like for young
Theodore growing up in an environment in which a boy could assume that everyone's dad drew Pluto for a living. At the end of the film, the viewer is left with newfound appreciation for Thomas and Johnston, and a certainty that more tales from within the fortifications of the Magic Kingdom deserve
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