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STUART LITTLE
Small wonder
Rob Minkoff, co-director of The Lion
King, comes up with a comic adventure Stuart Little, based on a classic
by the popular American author E.B. White. And believe it or not, the
hero of the story is a mouse with an attitude...
He’s an endearing little mouse, white in colour with whiskers, a
little pink nose and a wardrobe which can be the envy of any human. His
name is Stuart, who’s
on
a lookout for a home and people he can call his own in a super-sized world
of humans.
Luckily for him, he’s adopted by the Littles, a human family, comprising
Geena Davis, Hugh 
Laurie
and Jonathan Lipnicki, and there is also a cat Snowbell, who Stuart shares
a love-hate relationship with. Through his adventures with the Little
family, Stuart discovers what family, loyalty and friendship are all about.
The humans, in turn, learn from the mouse the lesson of being true to
oneself and following one’s dreams despite the odds.
Stuart Little is produced by Douglas Wick’s Red Wagon productions,
and combines live-action with ground-breaking visual effects by artists
and innovators at Sony Pictures Imageworks, who by creating Stuart, have
taken digital character-creation to a new high. Stuart, Snowbell and the
other animal characters in the film represent the cutting-edge in production
of photo-real, performance-based digital character creation.
Coming to the story, one wonders why Mr. and Mrs. Little go for adopting
a mouse instead of someone of their own species. According to producer
Douglas Wicks, the Littles don’t see him as a mouse, but as another
living creature who is smamrt, kind and very alone, and perfectly fit
for their family. Adds director Rob Minkoff, “Stuart is a guy who
doesn’t look at the world from a mouse’s perrspective.
Producer Wick opines that every child feels like a different species than
his parents. “As a child, you are always looking at the world at
knee-level, and it seems scary and overwhelming. Watching the heroics
of someone three inches tall, like Stuart, can be very inspiring,”
he feels.
Though Stuart Little will largely appeal to children, it does strike a
balance between children’s fantasy and an adult sensibility, since
the original E.B. White classic on which the film is based has the multi-generational
appeal. White got the inspiration for the classic, with a mouse as the
central character, while he was on a train to Manhattan. He happened to
fall asleep, and when he woke up, he found a mouse hovering over his head,
which he used in the story.
While Stuart was computer-generated, Boone Narr’s Animals For Hollywood
trained 23 cats of various breeds to portray the eight cats in the film.
Casting the human characters, i.e. the Little family, was a challenge
according to the producer since they were to be projected as an eccentric
family, but the kind of eccentric who were lovable. Geena Davis and Hugh
Laurie looked attractive eccentrics according to filmmakers and were signed
on. For the character of George, the Little’s son, Jonathan Lipnicki
(Jerry Maguire) was chosen by Minkoff, even though he was younger than
the actual character. Says the director, “He has to evoke audience
sympathy even though he dismisses Stuart throught most of the film, and
Stuart has to win over George. Jonathan was perfect for the role.
Based on a screenplay by M. Night Shyamalan (writer and director of The
Sixth Sense), Stuart Little was made with the aim of creating a sweet,
funny, engaging story. More than the special effects, the filmmakers were
keen to see that a good story was effectively told, with characters one
cares about. Director Minkoff says that the opportunity to see Stuart
come to life is what would attract him him to this film. It’s going
to be the same with the audiences here.
Salma Khatib
|
Stuart Little is a revolution in the field
of digital character creation. The filmmakers jokingly say that
what drove them to create this character digitally was the non-availability
of a trained mouse, that could wear clothes, walk on two feet
and deliver dialogue. So they decoided to use technology to tell
the story. But it was no easy task even for these
experts. Says Chen, “Stuart needed to be totally believable,
in terms of both, look and performance. We had to use techniques
to bring his photo-realism to a level where the audience completely
accepted him, and wasn’t distracted by the notion that he
was created through visual effects. Stuart talks with both humans
and animals, and he has an effect on his world througgh his interactions.” |