Give that rodent an Oscar! I mean a Grammy! I mean SHIT

The British, as you know, are insane. Only they would think that a colonial empire stretching from Hong Kong to the Falklands is worth shit. So it's no surprise that they produced this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM5PjQW16r0

That's "Tales of the Riverbank," a show that takes the general idea of "Mr. Ed" and one-ups it to outrageous new heights. If this was a game of HORSE (laffo), Mr. Ed would've just quit after the first round.

Take a look at the clips of this show. There are hamsters on airplanes, balloons, boats, not to mention performing construction, curing herpes, engaging in proxy wars against the Communists (mealworms are known Marxists, after all), having sexual scandals involving acorns, engaging in police brutality, and nibbling.

I don't know if this is a feat of imagination or of madness. Perhaps it makes no difference.

No doubt this show would have violated several animal-cruelty laws today. Maybe some of these Hammies died so that others would not be exploited in the future. Well, aside from inside Mary Kay labs. Baby steps to full civil rights, rodents. Baby steps.

Today, of course, this show would've been all CGI, or at the very least puppets. It may look slicker and it may be an achievement on a different scale, but it would never live up to the lunacy and gall that "Tales of the Riverbank" had to film rodents nibbling and dub it with cockney bastards.

There was a time when animals were considered a major draw to television and film audiences. Movies from "Milo & Otis" to "Homeward Bound" to "The Great Panda Adventure" to "Aliens" featured creatures we all loved, and they all could talk like humans, which for adults introduced all sorts of pressing questions about predatorial rights and slavery, but for kids were just peachy. Well, not so much the panda movie, that bombed.

But animals don't hold our interest anymore. Real animals, that is. I mean sure, we go apeshit over the panda cubs and the koalas being punched and Knut the now ferocious and hideous polar bear. But we no longer turn to them to entertain us, and perhaps that's a good thing after all. But it's a different proposition when you make "Finding Nemo" with real clownfish and wrasse. Haha I know there are no wrasse in Nemo but I love saying that name. Wrasse. Wrasse! Wrasse wrasse wrasse! Spotted wrasse! GIANT GROUPER.

The truth is that "Finding Nemo" would probably have sucked if you had real fish dotting back and forth, using their puffing mouths as a proxy for actual verbal communication. Certainly you couldn't really reproduce some of the more exciting scenes without the creative use of puppets and hoping to God the audience can suspend its incredulity long enough to make it past the jellyfish.

But what if someone could pull it off, anyway? You'd think the notion of keeping a hamster in a model airplane would render the job impossible. Yet these limeys did it. Maybe the real challenge to making an animal film is not in deciding which plucky protozoan should be voiced by the gay celebrity (Nathan Lane would make a perfect Myxozoan). Maybe the real challenge is figuring out what to do with the real thing, like using a petulent child actor. Sure, the actual product would suck, but would we admire the effort?

I'm not so sure. We recently had "Space Dogs," a film about puppies being launched to the moon as part of some sadistic Chinese experiment. But this time they dispensed with simply letting the dogs pant and dubbing from there and simply crudely animated mouths on their snouts. Is that any different at all? No, I'm splitting hairs. But what do we think of the director who has to sit on the set while some animal trailer gets the dogs to stop shitting in the Sea of Tranquility?

Well, actually, we don't think anything of them. Because they're directing a movie called "Space Dogs" about dogs that are literally in outer space. And they talk. Like children.

This shit really was best left behind in the past. Sorry to have wasted your time.
















































Alright I'm not sorry at all. Shut the fuck up and enjoy the hamsters.