Cinema’s Best Friends
Ariel had Flounder. Aladdin had Abu. Turner had Hooch. Now Jason Segel has Ted, in this week’s FTRC Film Club champion of the same name.
Animal sidekicks are a staple of cinema, with a whole Noah’s Ark of critters jostling for space on our list of all time faves. Here are our picks:
DONKEY (SHREK) – Irritating, shrill and probably a bit stinky (he does hang out with an ogre) there’s something about Shrek’s BFF Donkey that’s just so damn adorable. Maybe it’s his dogged determination to have Shrek for his bud, his witty one-liners or the face that seems to be just made from teeth. Whatever it is, there’s a special place in our hearts for this particular animated ass.
Just in case you need more proof of how good this character is, there’s the small matter of Eddie Murphy’s BAFTA nomination for his voiceover work. It was the first of it’s kind!
HEDWIG (HARRY POTTER 1-7) Not just a winged version of Postman Pat, Harry Potter’s owl Hedwig was actually one of his closest buds. Yeah so they fell out a lot, and she gave him a good nipping a few times, but no friends get on all the time. She loved him so much, in fact, she took an Avada Kedavra for him in the first part of franchise-finisher Deathly Hallows Part 1. Now that’s love.
And Hedders wasn’t the only awesome animal knocking about in the wizarding world – there were other owls, toads, cats and rats that turned into men. Jeepers.
BABE (BABE) Is a talking pig. Is there any other criteria necessary? A courageous critter who shows us all that we can follow our hearts and live our dreams, even if we are a pig in a dog’s world, Babe is the porker to save any human’s bacon (ho ho ho). Oh, and he’s also cute and ginger and tiny. That’ll do, Pig. That’ll do.
Fact: Babe was actually played by 48 separate pigs and an animatronic double. There were more than 1000 animals on the set.
WILLY (FREE WILLY FRANCHISE) After being captured and subsequently released back into the wild in a high flying feat of high-jumping, it’s just carelessness that sees the infamously obedient orca captured for a second, third and unofficially, fourth time. In fact there are now so many Free Willy films we’ve simply stopped caring, but the first flick is definitely a kiddie classic. Come on, how many animal sidekicks can trump a five tonne killer whale who can catch flying coke cans?
Ted is out now. Here’s the (NSFW) trailer:
But just what is this Film Club malarkey all about? It’s simples, really. Each week we send a pair of cinema tix (ODEON or Cineworld, whichever is best) to 10 of our most active Facebook/Twitter followers. We put the film we’re going to see to the vote, and the winning film is the one we all go to see. Then we all sit around on Facebook on the Sunday night (6.30) and chat about it. Magic. Sound like something you want to get involved with? Drop us a line at twitter.com/f_t_r_c or on Facebook at on.fb.me/d4dMv8
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