The Daydreamer

Following Willy McBean is another film involving different stories we explore with a male lead, this time it’s tied to an author’s story than different timeline. With that said, let’s read into The Daydreamer.

  

A young Hans Christian Anderson (or Chris to the film) lives with his shoemaking father in Odense, New Yor...I mean Denmark. His father tells the legend of the Garden of Paradise. Inspired by him and the Sandman (voiced by Cyril Ritchard), he ran away to seek the Garden. On the way, he meets characters he would loosely write.

He got drowned at the North Sea as the Little Mermaid (voiced by Haley Mill) saved him. She risked her life to revive his with a potion from a sea witch, in exchange that if he doesn’t love back, she’ll never return back to the sea.

After ditching the mermaid, he came across to the crooked tailors (skinny one voiced by Victor Borge, and the fat one voiced by Terry - Thomas), as they meet the emperor of the Emperor’s New Clothing (voiced by Ed Wynn), who hated these clothing from his tailors, yet love Beer Run or Tea Run every time they have a clean cup. The crooked tailors convince the emperor with they’re the best not with hypnotism (no, none of that!), but with a violin to move his mood about the invisible cloth.   

He got caught by the game warren for “kidnapping” an ugly duckling, as he chained in the middle of the woods. He stumbles upon Thumbelina (voiced by Patty Duke) as he shrank to her size from a tulip seed to be free (something that anyone can have access yet won’t). They travel until it became winter as a rat (voiced by Boris Karloff) cares them in his hole in the ground. The rat had an idea, an awful idea. The rat has an wonderful awful idea to arrange Thumbelina to marry the mole (*shutter* that Barry Manilow terrible music. Anyway, the mole is voiced by Sessue Hayakawa). 

Will Chris reach to the Garden of Paradise to get smarter?

I really love the opening with the cast of characters with their drawing of the actors’ presents to show and music to look forward to be something unique in each of them. Why repeat the credits after you just did the credits is just padding when they could of show the second half of the opening, but would cut Robert Goulet’s music.

This film is loaded is big name stars with some big simple scenery. Most of them are perfect in their respective role. I do love Patty Duke as Thumbelina as so far is the better version while the rest range from forgettable (Tale of Hans Christian Anderson, and Tom Thumb & Thumbelina) to annoying (1993 anime version and Don Bluth’s version). Though there are some who’s not great enough, nor terrible in performance or design to name a few.

The Sandman might be a bit lazy as he’s just a paper ghost on par with that spirit from Red Sonya, yet it’s so mysterious and his haunting voice.

Ray Bolger as a Pie Man is pointless, unless he was essential to Demark, as Margret Hamilton is essential to be Miss Gulch in this film. 

Burl Ives as King Neptune is mostly “there” as he tells the mermaid about death, despite they never question where all the seafood goes when they eat them. Funny he went from Sam the Snowman to Neptune the Oceanman.

The biggest problem is Chris himself. He does looks like teenage Stewie Griffin, but that’s just a microscopic problem of the major part of the cover than some details and pages we turn to. He’s not good in live action and animated. Usually in most live action transferred to animation, the live performance are less active while their animated counterpart have so much expressions since the animators are usually the better actors than the actor. While this is the only live action film Rankin Bass that’s tied to the story, as they’re one of many people that can work better with animation than live action. He has about two expressions (smile and stoic for live action, as shocked and smile in animated) and monotone voice & singing voice in both versions.

On top of that, he’s a dull jerk. He abandon the little mermaid and Thumbelina to be stranded just to get to the Garden of Paradise after they saved his life. Granted, Thumbelina has the bird to fly to, unless he breaks his wing after flying and then leaving her stranded. Next time a Little Mermaid sees Hans Christian Anderson, she’ll let him drown in his submarine. Then again, he did write that she have to give up her tongue for legs. He doesn’t deserve the Garden of Paradise. Any other Hans Christian Anderson would have done better to get there. Unless he’s played by Danny Kaye that he found the Garden of Paradise and will convert into the Garden of Surprise.

Speaking of which, there are better films starring Hans Christian Anderson. One with Danny Kaye that’s so good, that the Muppet Show used one of his music, Inch Worm. In fact, he’s good enough to star in one of the stories in the film with the Sandman voicing the emperor, but that’s another to tell. The other is an animated film of The World of Hans Christian Anderson where this Hans is focused as a young likable story teller and actually daydreams. This film he spend half the time asleep, which is more Dreamer than Daydreamer.

If you’re interested to see this film, there are some decent scenes in it. Yet to negative scenes is the Daydreamer himself. We can’t have a Day dreamer-less version, otherwise we can simply split this film into three shorts and change Chris’ hair color. I would choose this film over Screen Gem’s edited version of Little Matchstick and Golden Film’s Little Mermaid any day. It’s a give or take with this film.