Triumph of the CG animated animal.
If you're working at Fox, you're probably feeling pretty good this week. The naysayers were wrong about "Avatar," which has cracked a billion dollars worldwide and shows no signs of slowing down. And "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel" performed just as expected -- which would mean $256 million globally and counting. And there's much more to come on the CGI-animals-adapted-from-comics/TV shows front: "Heathcliff" (Garfield's thinner but equally snide long-lost feline relative), "Marmaduke," "Yogi Bear." All of these adaptations have a few things in common. They come from low-rent, generally shoddy material whose franchise durability is impeccable. And they all involve (ostensibly) funny talking animals (except for "Heathcliff," who didn't talk until he hit TV). The question is, when did this become standard and why? Once, your average cartoon-turned-movie stayed a cartoon. The wrangling of live-action animals wasn't an option -- the gap between actuality and cutesy anthropomorphization was too...
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