A Penguin's Memories is an animated film from 1987. It is an English dub and re-edit of the 1985 Japanese anime film called Penguin Memory. It is directed by Shunji Kimura and Garrett Fredrickson and is produced by Akira Sugatani and Fredrickson. It stars Gregory Snegoff as Mike, a penguin who served in the Delta War, who returns home after the war but has received post-traumatic stress disorder a few minutes before the war was over. It is produced by CM Land and Hakuhodo and is distributed by TriStar Pictures. Suntory Beer also produced the film, as it's where the film inspiration came from, but they were uncredited in the US release due to the product not getting a US release.
A Penguin's Memories was released on June 12, 1987 to a mixed response, but it has seen a better light in modern times, and only grossed $14.6 million against it's budget of $9.9 million. It is the first film to be directed by Garrett Fredrickson
Plot
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Cast
- Gregory Snegoff as Mike
- Debbie Reynolds as Jill
- Frank Welker as Tom, Car Driver
- Chuck McCann as Al
- Lou Diamond Phillips as Jack
- June Foray as Madam O'Hara & Mike's Mom
- Dom Deluise as Paul
- Lea Thompson as Susan & Peggy
- Marshall Efron as Bob Adams
- Hank Azaria as Dr. Moe
- Burl Ives as The Librarian
- Clancy Brown as Jimmy and Court Judge
- Tom Bosley as The Piano Player
- Tim Curry as The Police Officer
Production
After the release of the film in Japan, then new film producer Garrett Fredrickson saw the movie and decided to make an English language version, after getting the license to make one from CBS/Sony Records (in exchange for handling the soundtrack under Columbia Records in America), the dub went into production. It was originally slated for a January 1987 release but was pushed to June of that year because it took Fredrickson several months to find a distributor. Cindy and Donald Hewitt were hired to translate the film into English as well as rewrite some of the lines to make it more accustomed for American release. The two would later write Disney's English dubs of various Studio Ghibli films.
When the film's title came to view by Fredrickson, he thought that the film's original title, which literally translates to Penguin's Memory: A Tale of Happiness, sounded rather clunky, and changed the movie's name to A Penguin's Memories.
While the dub is fairly faithful to the original movie, a few differences were inserted as well, these include:
- The film's opening music is shortened to just 21 seconds and the last few seconds of the music even play over the first few seconds of the movie.
- Al's line "If we could give him a cold beer, he'd get better in no time." was changed to "You better give him some medicine, Mike, or he'll die."
- When Al is describing his girlfriend, he instead describes her as "the most beautiful penguin you'll ever see"
- Mike saying Jill's name after Jill reveals that she loves him is cut out as Fredrickson found the line unnecessary
- Some of the soundtrack, with the exception of many sound effects and various music pieces, were replaced by music composed by Jerry Goldsmith, as well as added into certain scenes that lack music, such as the scene when the police come to Mike's home after his brawl with Bob Adams.
- The film's ending song is changed to an instrumental of the same song. This was due to the song being hard to translate into English and they couldn't find a fitting credits song.
- Mike's line to Bob Adams and the 2 other penguins "How about you people give up?" is changed to "You can just find somebody else!".
- Before Bob Adams begins eavesdropping on Jill talking to Madam O'Hara, he is heard singing a small tune to himself, in the original, he was heard singing "Tonight i'll have all the wine I can drink".
Casting
Fredrickson's intention for the voice cast was to not only bring in some well known voice actors, but also some actors that worked well with their parts, some of the movie's more well known voice actors included Debbie Reynolds, June Foray, Dom Deluise, Lou Diamond Philips, Clancy Brown, and Tim Curry. Even with that, Fredrickson wanted to find actors that perfectly matched Mike and Bob Adams, he stated later on "With characters like them, you want to find actors that perfectly embody their parts, and so I care about that", after a well publicized search, he cast actor and dialogue director Gregory Snegoff as Mike, and Pacifica radio actor Marshall Efron as Bob Adams. Fredrickson first met Snegoff when he came in to be the dialogue director for the movie, and after hearing his voice, he felt he would be perfect as him. Kelsey Grammer had also auditioned for the part. As for Efron, he first heard his voice in animation when he watched Twice Upon a Time, and he decided to call him to be the voice of Bob Adams, in which Efron agreed to do so. Initially the filmmakers considered getting either William Windom, Ed Asner, or Michael Keaton to be Bob Adams' voice.
Animation Re-work
Similar to a few films like Godzilla: King of the Monsters, certain scenes in A Penguin's Memories were re-filmed or changed out entirely. Many of the differences between the animation in the original and new dub is additional in-between work for some of the character animation, extending some pieces of animation to better sync with the lines, and also refielding certain scenes to correct some problems from the original animation, such as to remove certain fog effects and correct lighting problems, while some of the new scenes involved inserting new scenes to better transition each scene and to replace certain moments in the film. The additional animation work was done by Hyperion Pictures, with some of the animators later working on a few other Hyperion projects like Rover Dangerfield.
Release
A Penguin's Tale had its premiere at the Annecy International Film Festival in May of 1987, and was released in American theaters on June 12th, 1987.
Distribution
Fredrickson had struggled to find a distributor for the film, as many film studios such as Warner Bros and Columbia were quite concerned about the film's subject matter being too dark for an animated film, making the film harder to market, although a deal was offered by De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, Fredrickson didn't find it that good of a deal
HBO had acquired television broadcasting to the movie alongside with Showtime, because of this, and for the fact that the film had no distributor at the time, Columbia began considering to look back at the film, but instead release it through their Tri-Star label, and they later called Fredrickson again to tell him to visit Tri-Star Pictures (then spelled with a hyphen). After his visit, TriStar acquired the film's distribution rights for $1.5 million in stock, shortly before it's premiere at Annecy, however, because of this, Tri-Star was unable to do proper marketing for the film save for various TV spots before it's release and also reprinting a trailer that was created when production on the dub was underway. It was one of two animated films TriStar released in the 80s, alongside the Carolco Pictures movie Pound Puppies and the Legend of Big Paw.
During this time, the movie was also mentioned on an episode of Night Flight, where Gregory Snegoff was interviewed but credited as Greg Snow.
Rating
A Penguin's Tale received a PG-13 rating for both war and standard violence and strong language, as well as mildly frightening scenes. Fredrickson had expected this rating.
Despite Fredrickson expecting the film to get a PG-13 rating, a few other people were confused why the film would need a PG-13 rating, Roger Ebert noted this in his review of the movie saying "Why A Penguin's Memories is rated PG-13 rating is something of a mystery, compared to films like Gremlins or Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, this film has PG written all over it.", Gene Siskel also agreed in the At The Movies review, saying "The only truly violent scenes in A Penguin's Memories are just the war scene and the fight scenes, that's it. It doesn't have anything ridiculously violent like Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, it's more on the lines of something like Patton or Back to the Future." A few other people assumed it was given that rating due to it being an animated film with penguins included, despite carrying it heavy themes.
Box Office
Because of the limited marketing on the film, and because of competition with the 20th Century Fox film Predator, the film only made $14.6 million at the box office against it's $9.9 million budget
Critical Reception
A Penguin's Tale initially received mixed reviews from critics, with some praising the story and voice acting, while others criticized the tone, and described the animation as "clunky". In a more positive review from Roger Ebert, he stated "While I do admit the animation needs more work to make it feel more complete, the film's concept was handled well in execution and the voice acting was spectacular".
However, in recent years, the movie has obtained a cult following, and reception has become more positive over the years. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a score of 80% based on 34 reviews with an average score of 7.3 out of 10, the site's critical consensus reads "Featuring animation that might be a bit clunky, but carrying plenty of heart. A Penguin's Memories is an anime film that definitely deserves a watch". The film in 2018 also started to become a bit notorious for the fact the character designs from Club Penguin strongly resemble the character designs from this movie, sparking a few internet memes, mostly in the famous "Delta War" scene. Fredrickson was aware of the similarities Club Penguin had with the film, but he himself felt they were more coincidental than anything else, due to the differences between them.
The film has also been broadcast on HBO and Showtime from October 1988 to 1996, which partly boosted it's cult status, on Adult Swim in 2005 and again in 2009, both airings with TV-14-V ratings, and on Sony Movie Channel in 2014 and again in 2017. The film has also been shown on Retroplex a few times.
Home Media
- 1987 Key Video VHS/Laserdisc (Distributed by CBS/Fox Video)
- 1994 Columbia/Tristar Home Video VHS
- 2002 Columbia/Tristar Home Entertainment DVD
- 2017 Mill Creek Blu-ray/DVD
Gallery
