Celebrity Voices in Animated Films

Though Aladdin really started it with Robin Williams as the Genie

"Robin Williams was so funny as the voice of the groove!"

One other Disney production had a notable celebrity as voice actor: Hercules has James Woods as Hades. The DVD commentary notes that everyone else who read the Hades part made him a deadpan and sombre fellow, the ultimate mortician. Which would beg the question: why would this ghoulish character be unhappy as Ruler of the Dead? Whereas Woods' fast-talking, razzmatazz huckster reading appealed to the director, since this character would be bored with the underworld, and have oodles of reasons to engineer a coup d'etat against his brother Zeus. Leave it to a professional thespian to realize that the Hades character would need a huge motivation to attempt an overthrow of a Physical God.

True, but Dreamworks really took it to new heights and were serial offenders.

Are you suggesting that voice actors aren't actual thespians? If you can't act, you won't get anywhere. Maybe it just wasn't the best lot of auditions.

edited 3rd Jun '14 10:22:03 PM by azul120

Disney always had so called "celebrity voices" in their movies...some of the most revered voice actors were known to be more than just the voice of a singing dog (Peg) or a courageous Mouse (Bianca) - or a villainous one (Rattigan). Or more generally speaking, who cares if the Joker used to be Luke Skywalker? The important question is if the voice fits. I usually try not to know who speaks which role beforehand. This makes it way easier to judge the dubbing on the quality of the voices alone.

Hey,hey. That still counts though.

How about when a celebrity finds that they like voice acting so much they practically do it full time, as was the case with Dom De Luise? And arguably Mark Hamill too.

Bump

Idrc if they use celebrity voices. They've been doing this since like the 40s in Disney films. What I don't like is when a movie's trailers constantly say "INSERT RANDOM STAR HERE" as some obnoxious character I couldn't give a crap about and showing them in cringe-worthy scenes that are supposedly comedy gold. I.e The MAJORITY of animared movies made in the past 2-3 decades. Since you know, the general public can't watch a cartoon kid flick without someone who's know best for stupid comedies, or tired dramas. So yeah, I don't like many celebrity voices :|

Now I'm off the soapbox.

edited 9th Aug '14 7:52:50 AM by Teddy

In my opinion, the best use of celebrity voices was in The Jungle Book. Phil Harris and Louis Prima, both famous celebrities, were used to great effect. Their scat duet is the stuff of legends.

Though Cliff Edwards in Pinocchio was about as good.

of course. The celebrity voices in Jungle Book and Pinocchio were very good. Especially in the Jungle Book. I Wanna Be Like You is seriously one of the best Disney songs ever imo.

Peggy Lee in Lady in the Tramp was good too. And for a modern example, I liked Idina Menzel as Elsa in Frozen.

Other than that, I can't think of any celebrity voice that isn't overblown, underwhelming, or boring.

edited 9th Aug '14 12:49:32 PM by Teddy

Oh yeah... I forgot about Peggy Lee.

And Ed Wynn and Jerry Colonna in Alice In Wonderland. Another great example.

Ditto. Disney definitely had some good celebrity voices. I have a feeling it was probably because most of them worked on radio or sang 8D

If you want to add animated shorts, there's Looney Tunes' "The Mouse That Jack Built," a parody of The Jack Benny Program that got most of the show's cast involved. (Including Mel Blanc.)

As I said earlier, Disney's 40s package films had tons of celebrities of the time in them. My personal favorite, of course, is their take on The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow, with Bing Crosby singing about the Headless Horseman.

I wonder if people back then were criticizing the celebrity voice casts of these movies like they do for today's...

edited 9th Aug '14 1:04:18 PM by Aldo930

Great song in an good adaption. I haven't seen The Mouse That Jack Built in years though. I don't watch that many Mc Kimson cartoons. I do remember the voice acting being superb.

I wouldn't be surprise if they did lol. But the celebrity voice actors had grear experience on radio and other types of mediums, so I'm sure the public wasnt as upset or annoyed as we are now.

It wasn't overdone with respect to "star power". I didn't mind that Angela Landsbury was the teapot in Beauty and the Beast, for instance. Or even Robin Williams in Aladdin.

It's just those cases where a star adds nothing to the role that a non-celebrity voice actor couldn't.

edited 9th Aug '14 4:40:27 PM by azul120

You know, there's an example of a Celebrity Voice Actor in Gumby: The Movie. Melisa Kary was Tara's Non-Singing Voice when sang "Take Me Away" near the end. A celebrity she is, an actress she's not.

I dislike it when you can tell a character (or a number of characters) in an animated film have obviously been written to fit whatever celebrity they've got to fill the role. Well, perhaps not so much that as when you can tell a character is primarily in the film to give some currently popular celebrity a place in it.

It's a terrible thing, to be sure; I'm kind of with Billy West on the whole thing - all it does is crowd legitimate voice actors out of animated films.

Then again, not every film can use celebrity voice actors to the effect of, say, The Last Unicorn.

When the actor in question is an actual, skilled actor, and can do effective voice acting, I think it's fine. And, to be fair, in some cases a bit of stunt-casting can pay off. Billy Joel, for instance, isn't an actor (and he'd be the first to tell you that), but he actually did an excellent job playing Dodger in Oliver and Company.

Well, those cases are kind of the exception that proves the rule, especially recently, when it seems that executives think celebrities are needed to sell an animated film, no matter what.

Recall how Janet Waldo's performance in the Jetsons movie was thrown out after she'd done all her lines in favor of replacing her with Tiffany. Remember how Craig Mc Cracken fought tooth and nail to ensure that the Powerpuff Girls would have their original voice actors in their movie and not get replaced by celebrities like the execs wanted.

You see all this, and then you look at Disney's latest films, which are rather refreshing in that they use celebrity voice acting - and yet they don't call attention to it.

It doesn't bother me if the actor fits the character, it isn't done excessively, and it isn't done as an audience grab. Robin Williams was perfect as the genie in Aladdin. Many of the voice actor choices in Madagascar, however, are an obvious audience grab.

Even live-action films using popular celebrities as an audience grab bugs me: the most obvious example being The Giver casting Taylor Swift to play Rosemary, a minor character, and playing Rosemary up as a major character to capitalize on Taylor Swift's popularity.

All in all, it depends on how it's done.

Funny story... Robin Williams took on the role of the Genie on the proviso that Disney not play up the fact in their advertising for the film.

And Disney proceeded to do just that.

That's why he didn't return for Return of Jafar.

edited 2nd Jul '16 7:24:13 PM by Aldo930

Not only that, but they didn't put his name in ANY of the supplementary material. If you read the book they published about the making of Aladdin shortly after it was released, he's only referred to as "the Genie."

Disney and Williams patched things up eventually; he did come back for King of Thieves.

They do the celebrity bit with high-profile anime dubs, too. I remember Disney cast James Van Der Beek as Pazu in Castle in the Sky when he was pretty popular, but release of the film was delayed several years. By the time it came out, he was definitely on the wane (but in his favor, he wasn't a tenth as screechy as the original Japanese voice actor).

Going back to bad casting, let's take Rosie O'Donnell in Tarzan.

edited 2nd Jul '16 10:21:04 PM by Robbery

Don Rickles was perfect for the role of Mr. Potato Head. He dislikes the role, however, because he feels it damaged his career as an adult comedian as mentioned in The Unofficial Guide to Disney World.

As for examples of bad casting, Eddie Murphy as the donkey in Shrek was just plain grating, although that may have been the point. Still, the "deliberately annoying character" archetype could have been played out better with a different actor.

The lead in the dub of Only Yesterday that came out recently was played by... You know, whoever it was from the new Star Wars film.

Though you could argue it's been going on for a while. The English dub of Toei's Alakazam The Great made much of Frankie Avalon being in the film.