Animal Crackers

Animal Crackers

Imagine, if you will, a classically trained Shakespearean actor say Sir Ian McKellen singing and dancing in a musical number with showgirls, wearing “Buns of Steel” underpants and plotting with a motorcycle riding crook played by the not even slightly classically trained Gilbert Gottfried. No? Directors Tony Bancroft, Jaime Maestro and Scott Christian Sava have done it for you in “Animal Crackers,” their colorful and charming take on the story of a magical circus (loosely based on Sava’s graphic novel).

McKellen voices preening, pompadoured Horatio P. Huntington, ringmaster of the Huntington Brothers circus, who has dreams of fame and fortune; his kind hearted brother Buffalo Bob (James Arnold Taylor) runs things backstage and cares only about entertaining the audience.

They both fall for beautiful aerialist Talia (Tara Strong), but when she agrees to marry Bob, Horatio leaves the circus in a jealous rage. A magical gift box from Talia’s aunt (Harvey Fierstein) helps make the circus a hit; among its human performers are Chesterfield the clown (Danny DeVito) and Bullet Man (Sylvester Stallone), who gets shot out of a cannon at each performance (and has therefore broken all 206 bones in his body). But it’s really all about the animals.

The biggest fans are Bob’s nephew Owen (John Krasinski) and Zoe (Emily Blunt), daughter of dog biscuit magnate Brock Bigham (Wallace Shawn). They first meet as children in the circus audience and fall in love; as adults, they’re still together but miserable Owen works for Zoe’s father as a dog biscuit taste-tester. When the circus burns down one night, Owen is given a box that contains magical animal crackers: Eat one, turn into that animal; your human form appears as a cookie, to be eaten when you want to change back. (Be careful about the broken cookies.)

Joyfully, Zoe leaves her father’s business to pursue the circus. Owen remains behind, collaborating with a socially awkward yet brilliant scientist named Binkley (Raven-Symoné) on dog biscuits that taste like people food. But the acrobats and clowns are boring audiences; they want need to see what the circus is known for: its animals. Cue Queen: “Don’t Stop Me.”

It’s all pretty fast-moving, populated with colorful characters of both human and animal varieties alike, and punctuated by lively musical numbers. We don’t spend any time wondering why one brother has a British accent while the other does not or how “nephew” Owen seems to have no parents or where exactly this magic comes from as Chesterfield not-explains it, “Gypsy curse, stale flour, radioactive sugar mites who knows? Who cares? It’s magic!” But there are details that reward our attention: Owen’s blue hair comes out through his eyebrow hair when he transforms into animals with fur or scales.

By the time you realize that a subplot sort of drags, with Owen constantly having his dog-biscuit experiments sabotaged by rival Brock (Patrick Warburton in the most thankless role of a film filled with them), you’re back in the middle of Horatio’s plot or watching Owen transform into a bear or a horse or a fish or a lion. McKellen gets a great villain “I want” song called “It Should Have Been Mine.” And he and Gottfried have fun arguing over which of them is the henchman. Stallone is funny in a Groot-like role where all he can say is his own nom-de-circus, Bullet-Man until he says something else.

The character design is average at best but the action sequences themselves especially during big climactic confrontation near the end and montages of animal transformations during circus acts are lively and staged with a strong sense of space. No matter how many shapes Owen takes, Krasinski’s everyman always keeps it warm hearted and engaging; he may be surrounded by the fantastic and silly but his humanity, even in animal form, is what brings the movie to life.

Watch Animal Crackers For Free On Gomovies.