The Magic Roundabout (2005)

***The Magic Roundabout*** (originally released in France as ***Pollux - Le manège enchanté*** and re-dubbed in the U.S. by The Weinstein Company as ***Doogal***) is a 2005 CGI animated action-adventure fantasy film based on the television series of the same name. It was produced by the French studio Action Synthese and distributed in France and the United Kingdom by Pathe. The American dub of the film, *Doogal*, was distributed in the United States by The Weinstein Company.

## Plot

Florence and her animal friends live in the Enchanted Village, which is under the care of Zebedee, a kindly wizard. However, a dark force approaches this sunny world. After being imprisoned for eons, Zeebad, Zebedee's evil double, reappears and threatens to start another ice age. The only way to stop Zeebad is for Doogal and his friends to find three magic diamonds before he does.

## Why it's Better than the final edition of *Doogal.*

1. Unlike the final U.S. edition of the film, there are no excessive amounts of pop-culture references, fart jokes, cartoon sound effects, or narration (the latter courtesy of Judi Dench).
	* Producer Harvey Weinstein and screenwriter Cory Edwards have been confirmed to be responsible for these unfunny jokes, not Butch Hartman.
2. The voice acting is more enthusiastic and perfectly blends with the characters’ lip-sync.
3. The characters are all likable and charming in their own ways. No one gets flanderized.
4. There are some good scenes that were shortened, cut, and switched around from the final edition of *Doogal*. Examples include Doogal dreaming about playing with Florence and the post-end credit sequence of Zeebad imprisoned.
5. The animation is at least decent.
6. Nice soundtrack from Mark Thomas.
7. Proper and engaging storytelling.
8. Clever and intelligent attempts at humor. For example, instead of requesting Brian to call him Neo from *The Matrix*, Dylan states, “Sorry, I don’t believe in violence... Except in self-defense.”
9. The ending is really happy and charming, as it shows everyone riding the magical carousel as soon as Zebedee, Dougal and his friends fix it.
10. The film is correctly advertised as an action-adventure movie.
11. The original French edition of this film is also great.
12. There was a part not in the British or American versions: the drawing on the wall of the cave.
13. The fight scene between Zebedee and Zeebad is nothing short of awesome.
14. None of the European film and home video posters are misleading.
15. It stays very faithful to the original 1963 *Magic Roundabout* series.
16. Similarly to *Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius*, where the titular protagonist feels sorry for wishing to live without and causing the Yolkians to take away his parents, Dougal becomes remorseful for nearly causing Florence to die after he accidentally crashes into the carousel.

## Bad Qualities

1. **Plot hole**: As revealed near the end of the movie, the ice enclosing the carousel could have been cracked through conventional means, since Ermintrude breaks the ice with her singing.
2. ***Some jokes are very inappropriate for a family-friendly movie:***
	* The movie treats Doogal’s candy addiction like a drug addiction.
	* In one scene, when Dylan mentions that he has “something stashed that might help us”, referring to Zebedee’s magic box, Brian sternly tells him not to experiment with illegal substances. This could be misinterpreted as a reference to using drugs.
	* Brian’s crush on Ermintrude is rather questionable, since Ermintrude is taller than Brian.
	* The picture is brownish.
	* During the scene where Ermintrude frees Dougal from his icy prison, Soldier Sam gets squished by her butt and the door of Dougal’s ice cage.
	* In one scene, Zeebad mentions that Dougal and the gang will eat each other for dinner, which is cannibalism.
3. The Weinstein Company re-dubbed this film in the United States with disastrous results, as mentioned above. More information regarding the final edition of U.S. dub may be found on the titular film’s page on Awful Movies Wiki here.
4. While the animation is decent, the CGI designs of each character may unsettle first time viewers.
5. Despite being faithful to the source material, some scenes have a poor grasp such as the fact that there was no major villain in the original *Magic Roundabout* TV series.
6. The story, while good, has no sense of pacing.
7. Some scenes don’t match up, like when Zebedee uses his mustache’s power to block the squad instead of escaping from his frozen trap.
8. Zebedee is underutilized in this movie, only appearing during four scenes.
9. Soldier Sam could be considered a punching bag, due to him getting injured by other characters, accidentally hitting himself with his cane, and being left behind by Zeebad in the snow.
10. Dougal becomes way too hard on himself after he accidentally destroys the carousel and nearly causes Florence to die from hypothermia.

## Trivia

* To make the American edition of this film make more sense, writer and executive producer Butch Hartman (*The Fairly OddParents*) rewrote the dialogue in the film to make it more appealing to American audiences. Most of his rewrites were eventually discarded by producer Harvey Weinstein (he later claimed that only 3% of his script was accepted in the final cut), and instead, the final version contained numerous poorly made references to popular culture and flatulence jokes, which were not in his initial script or the original version. Hartman also revealed in a 2017 interview that the U.S. edition was supposed to contain a frame story similar to that of *The Princess Bride*, but it was scrapped due to budget costs and therefore replaced by Judi Dench’s narration. He also stated that the original U.S. film poster had his name and production company Billionfold Inc. on it, but they were removed on later posters in copyright favor of both Pathé and Action Synthese’s credits.
* On November 10th, 2017, writer Butch Hartman revealed in a 2017 interview during the Weinstein scandal discussing *Doogal*’s development on his personal YouTube channel, expressing long-harbored remorse for his involvement, where he revealed that much of his script was rewritten and re-recorded by producer Harvey Weinstein and his production and distribution company The Weinstein Company with a different screenplay by *Hoodwinked!* co-director Cory Edwards; he also stated that only 3% of his original rewrites were accepted in the final edition of the film (approximately only two lines of dialogue).
* Dougal’s name was spelt as “Doogal” in the U.S. edition, presumably to prevent any mispronunciation with the voice actors.