Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure (1977)

Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure
G
2 Slimes
Copyright 20th Century Fox 1977
By: InformationGeek

THE CHARACTERS

Raggedy Ann: A pleasant doll that enjoys being played with. She and Andy go after Babette when Ann foolishly lets out Captain Contagious from his snow globe and he kidnaps Babette.

Raggedy Andy: He doesn’t like the way he has been treated as a toy. We know this because he sings about it. He goes with his sister to find Babette.

Babette: Like another certain toy out there (Not in this movie mind you), she doesn’t believe that she is actually a doll. She is kidnapped by Captain Contagious.

Camel with the Wrinkled Knees: He is a toy that has been thrown away by his old owners. He sings like old country singer. There is something very wrong with his eyes and I think he is being called to toy camel heaven throughout the film.

Captain Contagious: Someone get this guy a tissue… scratch that, a box of tissues. He is in love with Babette, sings in an Italian accent, and has facial hair that would make Wizard Whitebeard jealous. He kidnaps Babette.

Marcella: The little girl owner of all of the toys in the movie. I think she should take better care of Ann since she was being careless with her, like when she dragged Ann up the steps.

The Greedy: Joe Silver! I will not explain who or whatever he is. You would never believe me. He just keeps eating and eating and eating. Every second I see of him, I swear I am slowly going mad.

Sir Leonard Looney: I think he is high on some type of drug or he is suffering from the worst case of psychosis I have ever seen.

King Koo Koo: He is very short and his royal subjects are all apparently Jack-In-A-Boxes. He gets a lot bigger when he laughs and he wants to be able to laugh so much until he is the biggest king around.

Gadzooks: Paul Dooley! He is a blob of something that works for King Koo Koo.

LESSONS LEARNED
+ Dolls can sing when no one is around.
+ Boy dolls don’t like being girl toys.
+ Oars are strong enough to move a pirate ship on land and up a wall.
+ Never offer to take rides from crazy eyed camels.
+ Dolls have taste buds.
+ Children’s movies can drive people insane in ways they never thought possible.
+ Knights wear trash cans and play practical jokes on people when they suffer from psychosis.

STUFF TO WATCH FOR
0 min – Doll’s probably thinking: “Ow, ow, stop dragging me up the steps.”
5 min – Oh God what’s going on?!
9 min – Looks like the box fell on the Wicked Witch of the East.
18 min – Did the voice actress for Babette just change?
29 min – What are they doing?
40 min – Seriously, what the hell is going on?!
45 min – I have gone insane, that’s the only thing logical explanation for what I am seeing.
51 min – I have gone crazy again! SAVE ME!!!
70 min – This can’t be real…
82 min – I don’t get any of this!

NOTABLE QUOTES
King Koo-Koo: Ready. Aim. Tickle!

The Greedy: Is this endless eating all there is to be? Or not to be?

The Greedy: Take that! No one can resist vanilla!

THE PLOT

Oh boy… this movie was a bit of a mind trip for me to say the least. After seeing a video online saying this movie is one of the most messed up/crazy things around, I decided to see if the person was right or wrong. So, as you can imagine, I sought out this movie and finally ended up watching it. Man, what a story I got to tell.

It opens up with this girl name Marcella coming home from school with her doll, Raggedy Ann. She drags it up to her room and drops it off. Then when she leaves the room, the doll and every other toy in the room comes to life! It’s Toy Story, but 28 years earlier! Seriously, the toys ask Ann to tell them about what happen in the outside world, which she does, but she does it in song. Well this isn’t a “Musical Adventure” for nothing. As for the song itself, it is sort of ok. The lyrics leave something to be desired, but the voice actress isn’t that bad of a singer.

We also find out that Marcella has turned 7 years old and ends up getting Babette, a snooty doll from France, as a present. She doesn’t realize that she is a doll and she also wants to go back to Paris. So this is where Toy Story stole… I mean came up with part of its story! Not all the dolls are pleased with her as you can imagine, especially Raggedy Andy, Ann’s brother, who has had it up with the girly dolls in the room and the fact that he has been treated poorly as a doll.

Anyways, a pirate captain called Captain Contagious, who has the worst case of the sniffles you ever seen and is stuck inside of a snow globe, falls in love with Babette. He tricks Raggedy Ann to let him out and he kidnaps Babette. He then takes his toy pirate ship, scales a wall, and leaps out of a second floor window with her in tow. So, Raggedy Ann and Andy take off after them into the woods behind Marcella’s house. Oh yeah, at this point, we are about 30 minutes in and we have had at least 5 musical numbers. At least it sticks to that Musical Adventure title.

During their trip through the forest, they run into the Camel with the Wrinkled Knees. He sings his problems to them while somewhere a banjo backs him up. At this point I am getting a bit confused, because the forest now doesn’t even look like a forest. They offer to be his friends and then he gives them a ride, which ends up taking them over a cliff because he has some sort of hallucination of seeing toy horse heaven or some thing like that. They land in this large pit of brown gooey taffy that is home to The Greedy, a monster made of taffy and other sweets that can’t stop eating. I got lost at this point so I’ll just skip this mind trip and move onto what happens afterwards since this scene is never mentioned again.

Next up on this insane movie, Ann, Andy, and the Camel meet Sir Leonard Looney. His name doesn’t even begin to cover how bonkers this guy is. After they watch his psychotic episode that included a terrible song, he kidnaps them and takes them to a place is far more bizarre than Wonderland. After traveling through a room painted like a chessboard, they end up in a dark room that is revealed to be the throne room of King Koo Koo, who runs this insanity driven nightmare of a land. As you can imagine, this new scene with the king is just as crazy as everything else in this movie and we get another musical number, which is good since is slows down my trip into my own madness.

The king is very upset that he can’t laugh enough to make himself grow enough so that he can become huge, so he wants Ann and her friends to make him laugh as much as possible. If they fail, he’ll turn them into laughing Jack-In-A-Boxes, like everyone else in his kingdom. This doesn’t make much sense does it? Good! You now have a good grip of what the movie is like. Anyways, Ann and everyone starts a big pie fight that they use as a distraction to get away from the crazy king.

King Koo Koo gets angry that they escape and sends Gadzooks, a gray blobish monster after Ann and everyone. While this happens, Ann and her friends catch up with Captain Contagious, who has had the tables turned on him, since now Babette has taken over the ship. Of course, she doesn’t accept their help to come home and instead has them tied up.

Then Gadzooks comes, captures everybody, and tickles them. King Koo Koo, who has also come as well, gets a lot of laughs out of this and grows to gigantic proportions. Then Captain Contagious’ parrot goes and pops the evil king. Then somehow, we end up back in Marcella’s backyard where all the toys are back and safe. The little girl comes along and takes all her toys back to her room, without questioning how they got out there. Later that night, Camel, who was missed by the girl, goes up to Marcella’s playroom and enters it. He is found by Marcella, who accepts him along with all her toys.

Wow, that was a surreal movie. The first 30 minutes and the last 5 minutes are the only normal parts of this movie, but then everything else goes to the creepy dimension of oddity. As for stuff I liked about the movie, the animation was nice, a lot of the songs were sung well, voice acting was fine, and it was actually creative. However, the sure amount of insanity that I found in this movie really brought the rating down. Either way, the movie is at least worth a watch one time. If you can get past the craziness of the movie, you might find yourself coming back. As for me, I got to go call a psychiatrist. This film messed with my sanity a bit too much for my own taste.