The Adventures of Noddy (film)

The Adventures of Noddy is a 2003 British American fantasy traditionally animated film based on the Noddy books by Enid Blyton, It is directed by TJ Fredrickson and Vicky Jenson and produced by Fredrickson, Terry Ward, and Frank Marshall. The film composites it's own story, but it uses certain elements from the original Noddy books. It is produced by Intermedia, The Kennedy/Marshall Company and animated by Film Roman and distributed by Universal Pictures in the US and Entertainment Film Distributors in the UK.

The Adventures of Noddy had it's worldwide premiere in East Dulwich, London and was later released to theaters in the UK on March 6th 2003 and was later released to theaters in America on May 9th 2003. The film received mixed to positive reviews from British and American critics drawing praise for it's animation and voice acting but getting criticism for it's story and not having the exact charm as the books. It was also a box office bomb grossing only $10.4 million against it's large $25 million budget.

Plot
COMING SOON

Cast (very incomplete)

 * Daryl Sabara as Noddy

Production
During the late 80s and early 90s, talks for a film adaptation of Noddy were coming around, but these attempts never got further than discussions.

In 1995, TJ Fredrickson announced a desire to see a movie based on the character, and later gained film rights to the character. He presented the project to film producer Frank Marshall, who was unfamiliar with the books and quickly read some of them. Marshall was rather satisfied with the books saying "The books are just really fun and endearing, which is what brought me onto the project". Initially Fredrickson's own Fredrickson Pictures was going to help produce the movie, but after the company was folded into New Line Cinema, he decided to find a different source of funding for the movie.

One of the hardest goals for the movie was to make the film still child appropriate yet having stuff that would to appeal to adults too, but nothing too intense. Fredrickson later found the balance for this after watching a few other British TV shows, including Noddy's Toyland Adventures. In an interview he stated "It was just a little difficult at first, but once I saw enough cartoons to find that balance, it clicked too well".

In 1997, Terry Ward signed onto the project after hearing about the film idea. His reasons for joining were "1. I got to work with Fredrickson, and 2. The stories about this fun little character are some of the greatest I've seen so far". In November 1999, it was announced that Entertainment Film Distributors would release the movie in the UK and that Intermedia would help with co-funding and that Frank Marshall signed on to the film. Universal Pictures officially came on board in January 2000, beating out some deals held by Walt Disney Pictures and Warner Bros. Universal managed to win the rights to the movie because of their deal to release the movie in 2,013 theaters and the funding amount they would put in. Universal secured American theatrical distribution for the movie as well as in France, Germany, Italy, and in The Netherlands, while they would still hold television distribution worldwide.

In 2002 it was announced the film's script had been completed and the film entered production in July 2002, the film was completed in February 2003.

Animation
The Adventures of Noddy was animated by Film Roman, which Fredrickson considered asking to do the animation after watching episodes of The Simpsons. Fredrickson wanted the company to keep the film's art style true to the original books by having the character designs resemble Robert Tyndall and Harmsen van der Beek's illustrations, which caused the movie's animation to take a little bit longer to make as Film Roman tried a lot of times to make sure the character designs the same as the books.

The film also used the same animation technique Disney used in 2001's Atlantis: The Lost Empire as the animators thought the animation of that movie was too good to not be used for another movie.

Casting
Many interviews stated that voice casting for the titular character was very hard. Many auditions for the main character were held, with many voice actors auditioning for the character, being both British and American. Near the end, the team were rather keen on picking Liam Aiken for the main character, until actor Daryl Sabara made his own audition, in which they thought his voice just matched the character very well. Fredrickson also considered getting Sabara to voice the character after seeing him in Spy Kids.

Music
The Adventures of Noddy 's score was done by both Randy Newman and Julian Nott, The score was recorded at Abbey Road Studios and orchestrated at the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Marketing
Universal had spent about $7.4 million in marketing, with ventures from McDonalds, Nestle, Coca-Cola, and Chrysler Jeep. The film's tagline was "It might just be a land of toys, but it's his world". A direct reference to this tagline was featured in a featurette for DreamWorks' Over The Hedge where the tagline for the movie was "It may be your backyard, but it's their world"

McDonalds released 10 toys modeled after characters from the movie to help tie-in with the movie's American release, while Nestle had special themed packaging for their products, such as Butterfinger and Nesquick.

A video game for the movie called Noddy: The Video Game was developed by Universal Interactive Studios, THQ, and Heavy Iron Studios, it was released for the PS2, Nintendo GameCube, PC, and Gameboy.

Trailers
COMING SOON

Home Media
The Adventures of Noddy was released on DVD & VHS in the UK by Entertainment in Video on July 8, 2003 and in the US on November 18, 2003 by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.

Critical Response
On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a score of 57% based on 119 reviews with an average rating of 5.9 out of 10, the site's critical conesensus reads "While The Adventures of Noddy 's impressive animation will please some audiences and keep children entertained, it's story doesn't exactly keep originality and it doesn't hold as much charm as the books". On Metacritic, however, the movie has a score of 61 out of 100, indicating favorable reviews. Audiences polled on Cinemascore gave the film an average grading of "B" on an A+ to F scale.

Roger Ebert gave the film a rating of 3 out of 4 stars stating "One thing about the film that makes it stand out from many other book to movie adaptations is that it tries extremely hard to stay in line with the style of it's source material, which is fine, but it doesn't always make the movie much much better though, had the story been better the film would've done a lot better".

Despite the movie's polarized reception, it has seen success in DVD & VHS and on broadcasts on Encore Family and HDMovies.Net, it has also been very popular amongst Noddy Fans

Box Office
The film underperformed in the box office getting $10.4 million against it's $25 million dollar budget. It has since been presumed that the film didn't do very well because of it being released the same date as Daddy Day Care, the film opened at #4 at the box office behind the aforementioned film along with Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.

Accolades
At the 76th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for "Best Animated Feature" but lost to Finding Nemo. It did win the "Best Actor" award for Daryl Sabara. It was also nominated for Favorite Movie at the 2004 Kids' Choice Awards.