"The Butter Battle Book" is an American half-hour television special, well actually just a little over 20 minutes as usual, that was released back in 1989, so it has its 30th anniversary this yeah. The director is Ralph Bakshi and while he is not entirely unknown the writer is the star here as here we got one of Dr. Seuss lesser known works and he was in charge of the original material as well as the adaptation. This one was not nominated for an Emmy. The cast includes some known names too, the voice cast that is andthese are Oscar nominee Charles Durning as well as Golden Globe nominee Clive Revill with the latter being still alive today. Now I must say I can see why people did not really like this one as much as some of Seuss' other works, even if the imdb rating is decent. The characters felt pretty uninteresting to me, even if it was clearly visible who made this. The fact that nothing except their either blue or brown outfit makes a difference between them visually is typical Seuss. Same goes for the rhymes. No narration this time, but the characters are speaking. It is basically about two lands who fight and one of them eats bread with the buttered side up, the other with the butter side down. Now that is the one truly baffling thing here. Yep people did eat bread with the butter side down at some point apparently. Anyway, the result of this conflict is that they are fighting each other, not really violently to keep it kids- and family friendly, but yeah there are arguments and we also see catapults and what they shoot with these catapults were slices of bread, a large amount, with the buttered side where they think it belongs. I think this is in terms of almost every production value a bit of a poor man's version of other stuff by Dr. Seuss. His easily recognizable approach to comedy alone is not enough. The characters, the music, the animation (maybe), the exact contents - itg all feels tolerable, but not really worth seeing. It is certainly as far away from failure territory as it is from real quality. So if you totally adore Seuss' works, then go check this one out. What I found far more interesting than the story or so is thatg you can easily make a connection here between this short film and the plot and the cold war atmosphere that was still existing back in the late 80s globally, even if it was really quickly getting less, also with the Fall of the Berlin Wall around that time. But this is not supposed to become a history lesson, but a review instead. So I say as an overall suggestion that you may want to skip the watch here. Nothing worth seeing really except the buttered bread that may make you hungry. Not recommended.
Review of The Butter Battle Book
