Korney Chukovsky's Doctor Aybolit is a beloved icon of Russian children’s lit, but his similarities to Doctor Doolittle are so striking, it caused a scandal when Lofting’s earlier work was finally translated into Russian in the 1990s. It seems pretty clear Chukovsky ripped off Doolittle, so it is only fair that Canada plundered Aybolit right back in 1971. Filmmaker Gerald Potterton literally put new words in Dr. Aybolit’s mouth by redubbed the garish-looking Soviet children’s movie Aybolit-66, much in the tradition of What’s Up Tiger Lily or Fractured Flickers. Yet, that wasn’t even the weirdest part of Gerald Potterton’s animated-hybrid freak-out Tiki Tiki, which screens in its freshly restored weirdness at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.
In a way, Tiki Tiki is like Planet of the Apes, if primates had evolved to control the film industry. J.J. is a gorilla who runs the studio founded by K.K. (do those initials mean anything to you?). The mogul signed Dennis McShane, an up-and-coming hipster screenwriter (who is sort of equal parts George Carlin, Dennis Hopper, and Kinky Friedman), to make a picture for the studio. So far, he has spent a lot of money, but has no dailies yet to show for it.
McShane also has an experimental idea that scares J.J. He wants to use humans to play apes. The crazy thing is Aybolit-66 features a lot of people playing monkeys. The level of costuming is roughly on par with Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and their respective color palettes are comparable. Reluctantly, J.J. tags along with McShane in his special flying movie-camera airship, to film the humans as they embark on improvised sea voyage to Tiki Tiki, which is supposedly in Africa, even though the name evokes Polynesian associations.
Frankly, the Aybolit-66 footage is often painful to watch, like the toughest films the ‘bots riff on in MST3K. However, the animated segments are pretty cool, despite their counter-culture perspective. You can definitely see stylistic similarities with Heavy Metal, which Potterton directed, as well as Yellow Submarine and the bizarre Raggedy Ann & Andy movie, on which he served as an animator. He also incorporates baroque interludes that might remind fans of Terry Gilliams animated sequences for Monty Python.
There are the occasional naughty bits in Tiki Tiki, but the real problem for potential young viewers is most probably cannot process irony at the levels required to appreciate Potterton’s treatment of Aybolit-66. Even though it was produced with the counter-culture in mind, Tiki Tiki is mercifully never explicitly political or ideological. The humor is very much hit-or-miss, but it is amusing to watch the primate characters kvetch, argue, bumble, and generally make trouble. Recommended as a “missing link,” so to speak, of 1970s animation, the restored [and unembargoed] Tiki Tiki screens tomorrow (7/20) during this year’s Fantasia.
