Movie Thoughts: White Fang (1991)

• Released: 1991
• Directed by: N/A
• Running time: 50 min
• Rating 1.5/5

Synopsis

A wolf-dog hybrid is raised by various owners and learns what it means to be loved by a master.

My Thoughts

The nth Jack London adaptation I'm tackling on this blog. This time it's Burbank's White Fang, a 1991 film released to cash in on the success of Disney's live action feature of the same year. There's also a bit of mystery surrounding it, because I for the life of me couldn't find who directed this or what the exact release date is. 

Anyways, how is the film? Well, as is to be expected with these cheap cash-in movies, bad. I will give it some credit, especially when compared to the Goodtimes animated adaptation, however. First of all: the animals don't talk. Second: the character designs are slightly better. Still not good, mind you, but better. However, that's where my praise for this movie ends.

It's honestly a pretty straightforward adaptation of Jack London's book, but just with elements cut out and the dark parts watered down to cater to the kids. Rather than Beauty Smith actually beating White Fang, he instead annoys him day and night to the point of White Fang losing his mind and turning aggressive that way. Like the Goodtimes version, it's also rather short (about 40-50 minutes) so a lot of events are glossed over or happen way faster than in the book.

White Fang in this is honestly pretty boring a character. He also gets close to Weedon Scott way too easily. After having been abused for years you'd expect him to be really distrustful of humans. And he is, but he lets his guard down pretty much instantly after being fed by them a few times.  

The animation and this movie is honestly a bit weird. The visuals in general are. While the character designs themselves are slightly better than those in the Goodtimes version, they do still have the same problem of them lacking structure. Proportions and sizes change regularly as well. The animation in and of itself is just very standard for a cheap cash-in movie like this, however the movements often felt...odd. Like they were slowed down or something. Like, even actions that should be happening quickly (such as a running dog or a puppy going over a waterfall) feel very slow and delayed. Smooth animation is not always better. Finally, for the backgrounds, they feel incredibly cheap and you can even see assets (e.g. certain trees) be recycled in them a couple of times. 

While this is ultimately a bad movie and a bad adaptation of the book, I do think that it is ever so slightly better than Goodtimes' 1997 White Fang movie. Both are cheaply-produced cashin-movies, but thank god the animals in this don't talk or sing.