“With you I can run forever… with you I can run forever!”

Justin’s rating: This wins all the medals, even the chocolate ones

Justin’s review: Seriously, why am I reviewing this? I don’t even watch the Olympics, nevermind some hinky animated flick from back when I was four years old. Running and sledding animals doesn’t sound like captivating TV to me, but the effusive praise for Animalympics made me stow my reservations and give it a shot anyway.

Made for the Olympic season in 1980 (but not shown in full until later, due to the Moscow boycott), Animalympics is a television cartoon movie starring animals from different regions around the world competing to see whose… continent is best? Sadly, Antarctica isn’t represented even though the penguins would totally take gold for bobsledding.

There aren’t any main characters or running plot; this is a series of short skits all themed around Olympic sports (summer and winter), flitting back and forth between competitions and backstories of the competitors. It’s a combination of bad puns, creative animation, light social commentary, and some good-if-goofy music. Sometimes the film breaks into a music video montage with a delightfully old school tune.

You know what it kind of reminded me? Those memorably weird old Sesame Street cartoon sequences that were a little too high on the ’70s and early ’80s.

My fears that this would be too childish or boring vanished pretty quickly. The animation here is top-notch and — as I said — very imaginative. It’s kind of reminiscent of some of the better Loony Toons where a silly world is fleshed out far beyond what you’d assume. I didn’t laugh, per se, but amusement certainly warmed my belly. There are even a few under-the-radar risqué jokes.

There’s some serious talent behind this flick, too. It’s directed by Steven Lisberger (Tron), and has animators who went on to create The Lion King, The Iron Giant, and The Incredibles. It only has a cast of four people pulling off all the voices: Billy Crystal (When Harry Met Sally), Gilda Radner (Haunted Honeymoon), Harry Shearer (The Simpsons), and Michael Fremer.

It’s truly strange to my ear to hear a familiar Simpsons voice pop up in various animals’ mouths — or Miracle Max, for that matter. And I got a kick out of the fake commercials for animal products that appeared here and there.

If a heavy dose of ’80s Olympic spirit, animal animation, and people trying to imagine how successful (or not) animals would be at various sports sounds like a good time, I promise you that you won’t be let down by Animalympics. Just don’t place undue expectations on the humor.

Intermission!

• That’s the most boss studio logo OF ALL TIME
• Dragons light the Olympic torch
• “The agony of de feet” is quite literal
• The paw print is the logo rather than the rings
• Seems a little weird that four-legged marathoners would run on two legs
• Octopi make for interesting bobsledders
• The mayor of Olympic Island is a walrus Nixon
• Her coach was about to hang himself if she lost? That’s dark!
• The armadillo satellite… what?
• “Playbird”
• Alligators can jump higher than frogs — 180 feet up, in fact
• Animals can turn into drag racing cars somehow
• Disco NOOOOO
• The hot dog bed
• The game plan includes “six spectators injured”
• Water polo involves riding on sea horses, that’s funny
• That is the trippiest computer screen
• I got SO SICK of seeing the same repeated animation frames of these two marathon runners