Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure

Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure is an 1977 animated film by Richard Williams (with a few live-action segments) based on the doll characters created by Johnny Gruelle. The film is mostly famous for being an example of Deranged Animation.

The plot is based on the book Raggedy Ann and Andy and the Camel with the Wrinkled Knees, by Johnny and Marcella Gruelle. Raggedy Ann and her brother, Andy, are dolls who live together in little Marcella's room with other friendly toys. The day of her birthday, Marcella gets a Jumeau doll, Babette, who is quite vain. A pirate captain in a snowglobe is immediately stunned by her and decides to elope with her to make her his bride. Ann and Andy decide to go rescue her, and on their journey, they meet a depressed blue camel doll (The Camel With The Wrinkled Knees), a lake of sentient taffy that keeps eating itself (The Greedy), an insane knight who plays practical jokes (Loony Knight), and a diminutive king who inflates when he laughs (King Koo Koo) until a final confrontation on the pirate's ship.

Raggedy Ann is voiced by Didi Conn, who would later star as Frenchie in the Grease musicals. Joe Raposo (Sesame Street) wrote the songs.

The film has similarities with the Toy Story movies, which came out about twenty years later (toys coming to life when humans not looking; new toy coming in and having to be recovered; toy that is sad about being left away from its owner). More than that, the film is known for being really freakin' weird at times. Reviewed here.

A book about the making of the film, "The Animated Raggedy Ann & Andy" by John Canemaker, could be read here as well.


 * Action Girl: Well, more of a Faux Action Girl in Raggedy Ann's case, as she usually relies on the men around her to protect her - but Ann is the one who insists on embarking on the quest to rescue Babette, and she can take care of herself if she absolutely has to.
 * An even more surprising example is Babette, who is very much a Damsel in Distress in the earlier parts of the story but by the climax
 * Affably Evil: The Greedy. He literally wants to eat Ann's heart, but he is polite to the heroes and bears them no ill will - at least at first.
 * Amazing Technicolor Population: For starters, Looney Land has a purple knight and a salmon-pink king.
 * Animation Bump: The entire Greedy sequence (sans the ending part, which was done by a different animator), which was done entirely by Golden Age veteran Emery Hawkins, is very fluidly animated and loaded with so much detail that you jaw will drop just from taking it all in. Keep in mind, stuff like this was an extreme rarity for animation back then!
 * The animation of the Camel by Art Babbitt, another animation great, is noticeably more solid and restrained than the rest of the movie.
 * Anthropomorphic Food: The Greedy
 * Anti-Villain: The pirate captain just wants a female companion for himself.
 * Balloon Belly: Random parts of King Koo Koo's body inflate when he laughs; when he inflicts the Tickle Torture on the good guys, the "last laugh" this gets from him causes him to expand to monstrous proportions.
 * Wacky Wayside Tribe: There is also a convincing argument to be made that the entire middle third of the movie (starting with the Greedy and ending when they finally get back to the business with the pirates) feels like an enormous side-quest, even though King Koo Koo shows up again for the climax.
 * It feels like They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot.
 * Blob Monster: The Greedy
 * Big Eater: The Greedy: "I never get enough..."
 * Big Red Button: On the speedboat stolen by the twin dolls is a big lever with a hand at the end and the sign "Don't pull me". They do pull it, and it causes the speedboat to.
 * Brother-Sister Incest: Raggedy Ann and Andy have a love song.
 * It was likely intended to be a song about sibling love. It just doesn't sound like one.
 * The song is actually a subtle reference to the dolls' origins: Raggedy Ann and Andy's hearts were made from the same piece of candy, making them not only twins but practically symbiotic. They literally cannot live for long if they are separated.
 * Captain Obvious: "You just kicked a knight!"
 * Comically Missing the Point: The Greedy needs a "sweetheart" to be happy. He thinks it is something to eat. It thus gets worse when he learns that Raggedy Ann literally has a candy heart.
 * Cloudcuckoolander: Everyone in Looney Land essentially.
 * Comedic Sociopathy: King Koo Koo almost literally feeds on this.
 * Creepy Twins: The twin dolls, brr...
 * The Day the Music Lied: The introductory fanfare in King Koo Koo's throne room.
 * Deranged Animation
 * Disney Acid Sequence: When Raggedy Ann and Andy go to King Koo Koo's kingdom. The Greedy sequence. The Camel's hallucinations could apply.
 * Eldritch Abomination: Some have called the Greedy a perfect example of what one would be like.
 * Some might say the Greedy is really just a kid-friendly interpretation of Yog-Sothoth
 * Nah, he's more like Abhoth from "The Seven Geases"--a pool of sludge that constantly devours itself. Except Abhoth is made of primordial ooze and devours its own floundering malformed offspring, and the Greedy is made of taffy and devours the candy inexplicably bubbling out of itself.
 * Eldritch Location: Parts of Looney Land are pretty eldritchy even by the movies own surreal standards.
 * The Eeyore: The Camel With Wrinkled Knees.
 * French Bitch: Babette.
 * Genre Savvy: When they happen upon a freakish-looking boat moored on a lagoon just off the coast of Looney Land, the protagonists seem to instinctively recognize the kingdom's inside-out logic and reason immediately - and correctly - that pushing a big red button marked "STOP" will cause the boat to "go."
 * Have I Mentioned I Am Manly Today?: Andy is adamant that, in spite of being about as butch and durable as his sister, he's a super-macho, rough-and-tumble action-hero toy who will brook no dress-ups or tea parties, and also will fight you.
 * And, since this is a musical, expresses these sentiments with flamboyant song-and-dance numbers.
 * Hey, It's That Voice!:
 * Once again, that is Didi Conn as Raggedy Ann.
 * Subverted in the case of Sir Looney, who sounds like he is being voiced by Camp Gay icon Paul Lynde but is actually portrayed by Alan Sues of Laugh In fame, and in the case of King Koo Koo, whose voice sounds like that of Paul Frees (who is famous for voicing Professor Ludwig von Drake in the Classic Disney Shorts), but actually belongs to little-known actor Marty Brill.
 * "I Am" Song: Raggedy Ann sings "Rag Dolly".
 * "I Want" Song: Several.
 * I Taste Delicious: The Greedy keeps eating himself. Well, he is made of taffy and miscellaneous candies.
 * Jabba Table Manners: The Greedy.
 * Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Andy is rude, sarcastic, and confrontational, even toward women. He is also very brave and will never let any harm come to his sister.
 * The Lost Woods: The Deep, Deep Woods.
 * Metaphorgotten: "Fire one!...Fire two!...Fire three!...Fire four!...Fire five!...Fire six!...Fire seven!...Fire eight!...And fire him!"
 * My God, What Have I Done?:
 * Raggedy Ann, after realizing that her decision to free the pirates has led to Babette's kidnapping.
 * Babette, after it becomes clear to her that her obsession with going to Paris has gotten everyone into terrible trouble.
 * The Napoleon: King Koo Koo.
 * One-Scene Wonder: The Greedy, again. Most people who saw the movie remember the Greedy most strongly, who is the prime reason this film is classified as Deranged Animation.
 * Padding: The Greedy sequence. One of Williams's colleagues even admitted that this part of the movie goes on too long, but Williams was adamant about leaving all of it in because his team had worked so hard on the animation.
 * Pie in the Face: A common gag in King Koo Koo's court.
 * Pirate Girl
 * Pirate Parrot: The Captain has one, and it proves important to fight King Koo Koo at the end.
 * The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Well, except for kidnapping young women.
 * Redheaded Hero: Raggedy Ann and Andy.
 * Retro Universe: With the exception of some contemporary clothes worn by Marcella in the film's opening sequence (and she quickly changes into a more "girly" outfit for her birthday party), the film does not appear to be taking place in 1977. In fact, judging by the characers' sensibilities and the music and so on, this would most likely be taking place in the mid-1950s at the latest (and, in fact, these characters were created in 1914). Not only that, but Babette and King Koo Koo and several other characters look as if they were literally Born in the Wrong Century.
 * Schmuck Bait: The "WELCOME" sign on the entrance to Sir Leonard Looney's funhouse.
 * Shout-Out:
 * Andy gets stuck under a box with just his feet sticking out, like the Wicked Witch of the East in The Wizard of Oz. And he runs up a wall like Cosmo in Singin in The Rain during his "Make 'Em Laugh" song.
 * Inverted: This troper sees some connection between Satoshi Kon's more deranged moments and this movie's overall style.
 * The funhouse into which Sir Looney lures the heroes, with its exclusively black-and-white palette, rinky-tinky ragtime music, zany architecture, and ability to render anyone who enters it The Speechless, obviously amounts to a tribute to the silent-film comedies of the 1920s.
 * Something Else Also Rises: The Captain's beard goes erect when he sees Babette.
 * Spiritual Successor: To Homer's The Odyssey, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz...really, to a great many famous stories, especially those written around the archetype of The Quest.
 * Standard Snippet: "Entry of the Gladiators" is briefly heard when our heroes get sucked into the funhouse.
 * Stockholm Syndrome: Played with. By the time our heroes catch up with the runaway pirate ship, Babette doesn't want to leave. But it's not because she's fallen for the captain, but because.
 * Sugar Bowl: The Greedy himself is this, except it's nightmarish and disturbing rather than bright and cheery.
 * Tickle Torture: The climax is based around this.
 * That Reminds Me of a Song: Anything and everything will set off a musical number.
 * Throw It In: Didi Conn had laryngitis when she voiced Ann.
 * Unwanted Rescue: By the time the heroes have reached the pirate ship, Babette
 * Villainous Glutton: Who do you think?
 * Villain Song: Quite a few, including "The Pirate Song," "I Never Get Enough," "Because I Love You" and "It's Not Easy Being King When You're Short." Of course, EVERYONE gets a song in this movie.
 * Visual Pun: The Camel With the Wrinkled Knees is literally "blue" because he's often sad.
 * What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: If hallucinogens had existed in the 1920s and someone like Max Fleischer had taken them, the result might well have been a lot like this film.
 * Hallucinogens did exist, since some of them can be found in nature. Peyote, anyone?