Old School Lane

In this episode of Casual Chats, Patricia looks back on one of the animated movies she grew up with: the 1989 animated film Happily Ever After. Taken place after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Snow White and the Prince travel to the forest to invite the dwarves to the wedding. However, The Wicked Queen's brother Lord Maliss wishes to take revenge on Snow White and the Prince after learning of her death. So, he turns into a dragon and tries to attack them, but Snow White got away and captures the Prince. Snow White meets up with the dwarves' cousins The Dwarvelles who has elemental powers from Mother Nature. Together, they travel to The Realm of Doom to rescue the Prince.When the film premiered in theaters, it was a box office bomb making $3.3 million dollars out of a $6.8 million dollar budget. In addition, due to the numerous lawsuits from The Walt Disney Company claiming that Filmation's previous film Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night and Happily Ever After were trying to call themselves "official sequels" to their films, it ended up bankrupting them and shutting down. When it was released in theaters in America in 1993, the film bombed in the box office, especially when Disney re-released Snow White and the Seven Dwarves around the same weekend to counteract Filmation. Nowadays, the film is forgotten by the general public and has become reviewing material for online critics calling it a bad Disney ripoff. What did they think of the film?

In this episode of Casual Chats, Arun looks back at one of the movies from his childhood he grew up watching which is the 1985 animated film Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer based on the 1984 Hallmark cards and animated series. Rainbow Brite is trying to bring spring all over the world, but her rainbow powers aren't working. It turns out that an evil princess is attempting to steal a planet sized diamond called Spectra to keep it for herself. Together with a boy named Krys and his robotic horse On-X, Rainbow Brite travels to the princess' palace to prevent her from stealing Spectra.When the film premiered in theaters, it made $4.9 million dollars in the box office with mixed to negative reviews from critics. Today, Rainbow Brite is seen as a forgotten part of 1980s pop culture that has been overshadowed by its contemporaries. How well does the film hold up 40 years later?

In this special themed month of looking back on nostalgic animated films that aren't as good as Arun and Patricia remember. Patricia starts up with a movie she grew up with which is the 1993 animated film Once Upon a Forest based on the Welsh story "A Furling's Story" by Rae Lambert. Three furlings named Russell, Abigail, and Edgar are tasked of rescuing their friend Michelle after she inhales deadly gas caused by a truck that crashed outside their home, a forest called Dapperwood. They only have two days to journey to another meadow to find the plants to cure Michelle or else she would succumb to the gas. When the film premiered in theaters, it was a box office bomb making $6 million dollars out of a $13 million dollar budget receiving mixed to negative reviews. It was the last animated theatrical film that was produced by the animation studio Hanna-Barbera. Since then, it has garnered a small fanbase from the people who grew up with it in the 90s. How well does it hold up over 30 years later?

The Roald Dahl Retrospective is back after an almost two year hiatus. In this episode, Arun, Patricia, and special guest Eli a.k.a. The Hero of Tomorrow discuss about the 2025 Netflix animated film The Twits based on the 1980 film of the same name starring Margo Martindale, Johnny Vegas, Emilia Clarke, Natalie Portman, and Alan Tudyk,. Mr. and Mrs. Twit are an evil, gross couple who play pranks on one another. They open a theme park called Twitlandia to attract people into giving them money only for it to shut down immediately. They also drive a truck filled with hot dog filling and shove it into the town's silo to make a huge mess everywhere. A young orphan girl named Beesha and her best friend Bubsy learn about Twitlandia and want to go there, but then learned it's ran by the same people who covered the town with hot dog filling. They get them arrested and find out they have been locking up and abusing a family of monkeys called Mugglewumps into using their tears to run Twitlandia. They set them free, but then things turn for the worse when Mr. and Mrs. Twit are out of jail and are running for mayor when they promise to make the town great again by reopening Twitlandia to generate money and convince the townspeople that Beesha is bad for stealing the Mugglewumps, the only source of power to make Twitlandia run successfully.When the film premiered on Netflix, it received mixed to negative reviews from critics and fans criticizing its gross humor, its strange art style, its forgettable musical numbers, its social and political commentary, and not fitting into the spirit of the book. What did Arun, Patricia, and Eli think of this film?

In the final episode of Old Spook Lane Creepy Chats of 2025 covering spooky stop motion animated films, Arun and Patricia discuss about the 2022 Netflix animated film Wendell & Wild directed by Henry Selleck and co-written by Selleck and Jordan Peele. A teenage juvenile delinquent named Kat Elliot returns to her hometown Rust Bank to a private Catholic school. Her parents had died in a car accident 5 years prior and she still carries the guilt that she was responsible for it. Meanwhile, two demon brothers named Wendell and Wild wish to start their own theme park after being punished to care for their father's hair. When they learn that the hair cream can raise people from the dead, they see a vision of Kat and believe they can convince her to make their dream a reality. Kat wishes to use them to get her parents resurrected using the same hair cream.When the film premiered on Netflix, it was given decent reviews by critics for its animation, characters, and atmosphere, but was criticized for the story being too overstuffed and convoluted. It was also overshadowed by other stop motion animated films that were released that year such as The House, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, and Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio. What did Arun and Patricia think of this film?