THE SNOB: ANIMALYMPICS

So here’s the problem with watching the Olympics: they’re too goddamn long. By the time you get to the gold medal high-dive competition, you’ve already spent 3 days watching people no one’s ever heard of and will never hear of again, you’ve forgotten which events you’ve seen already and which are still going, and just what the hell is the difference between a 4.0 and a 5.0 anyway? They look exactly the goddamn same!

Sorry.

Anyway, there is a solution. A stoner’s solution: distill the whole Olympic games into a 78-minute children’s cartoon with anthropomorphic animals, lots of bright colors, and some extended musical sequences. It’ll look something like this:

Oh, and since it’s the 80s (almost) and we’re doing shit with bright colors, let’s have Stephen Lisberger direct it. You know, Stephen Lisberger. The Tron guy. Here’s Lisberger Studio’s badass logo sequence he made for Animalympics. See if you can find anything that reminds you of Tron, maybe just a little.

Although this marks the beginning of 80s-style technoey psychedelia, it’s only 1980, so the 70s are still around. As evidenced by when Kurt Wuffner finds himself in “Dogra-La,” a mountain paradise filled with attractive dog-women and gigantic, suspicious-looking mushrooms. You know how kids love mushrooms.

Now I want to be clear about this – this is NOT a movie about the Animalypics. This movie is the Animalympics.

As in, Animalympics doesn’t have a plot. Or even characters, really. There are only Animalympic events and Animalympians, shown exactly as it would be shown to a television audience (of animals, presumably). It comes complete with commercials, anchors doing running commentary, post-competition interviews with athletes, and instant replays.

Let me emphasize that. This is a cartoon. With instant replays. So right after you watch the “Eurasian” mink, Tatyana Tushenko do her medal-winning floor exercise, you get a few seconds of the same footage AGAIN in slow motion, with running commentary.

For a movie about animals from other countries, Animalympics isn’t as racially awkward as you might expect. When it does come up, it’s the “multicultural” kind of racial weirdness where everyone gets along and the stereotypes are mostly positive. Case in point is the gymnast Bruce Quackimoto, my favorite anthropomorphic duck. He’s a highly-disciplined karate master who doesnt speak English. Turns out he’s also a fantastic disco dancer.

You will now have “Go for It” stuck in your head the rest of the day. You’re welcome.