The Fearless Four (film)

The Fearless Four
"The Fearless Four" UK VHS cover
Die furchtlosen Vier
Directed by	Michael Coldewey[1] Eberhard Junkersdorf[1] Jürgen Richter[1] Wolfgang Urchs[1]
Produced by	Eberhard Junkersdorf
Written by	Bert Henry Dagmar Kekulé Georg Reichel Markus Urchs
Based on	Town Musicians of Bremen by Brothers Grimm
Narrated by	Klausjürgen Wussow (German) Christopher Gaze (English)
Music by	Péter Wolf
Edited by	Uli Schön
Production company	Munich Animation Stardust Pictures London Bioskop Film Warner Bros.
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Family Entertainment
Release date	October 2, 1997 (1997-10-02) (Germany)
Running time	87 minutes (German dubbed/ original release) 81 minutes (English dubbed version/International releases)
Country	Germany[1]
Language	German English

The Fearless Four (German: Die furchtlosen Vier) is a 1997 animated film about four funny animals that all have one thing in common: they want to sing, but can't for various reasons. Production began in March 1995 when the studio was founded. It combined traditional animation with computer animation. The film was produced by Munich Animation and released by Warner Bros. Family Entertainment. The film won a Bavarian Film Award for outstanding achievement in Germany.

The film was set in the near future and base lightly on the fairy tale of the Town Musicians of Bremen.

Plot

The film follows the carefree lives of the easygoing bloodhound Buster, the woeful donkey Fred, the graceful Siamese cat Gwendolyn and the self-assured rooster Tortellini.

The film first begins with Buster, who likes to sing and dance instead of doing his job to hunt foxes. His owners notice this and make a deal with one of the workers for the food factory, Mix Max, stands for Mix and Match owned to kill and stuff him, which they agree to it. Buster starts to worry, and tries to escape from being stuffed, which makes the worker chase him pull his tail. This makes Buster angry; he attacks them and then escapes.

Fred, an aged, fragile, donkey worked as a slave for his newly-replaced owner and sings about his life. His owner is angry that Fred is singing instead of working, sells him to Mix Max, and replaces him with a robot centaur named PowerTool, due to him being not helpful to work. A female bee helps Fred escape by leading other bees to swarm at a driver in a truck with Fred hostage. When Fred is freed, signs for the direction to Bremen and Paris on the road have been switched/turned around. Fred falls onto a tree, and meets a napping Buster. They have a conversation about wanting to be famous, singing animals and decide to travel to either one of the two cities and also choose where to go to become famous singers by spinning a bone, to see if it stops on Bremen or Paris. It stops on Paris (which is actually Bremen), and they start going there.

Gwendolyn, a Siamese cat, is sad after her owner, Aunt Wanda died. The people who inherited her estate only care about finding two gems and not taking care of her cat. They are upset that Aunt Wanda did not tell them where they are located in her farewell address and thinks that Gwendolyn knows where they are, and keeps them secret. They try to kill her with milk with a drop of poison, but fail with their attempt. They hire a worker for Mix Max to kill her. Also, the kid that belongs to the two inhertiers (difficult to say exactly) tries to kill her, but they all fail, and she traps them in the basement. After her escape, she meets up with Buster and Fred, who have heard her sing, and agree to let her join them on the journey.

Tortellini the rooster gets kicked out of his home after his wife gets mad at him after having an affair with a duck. He gets captured by a Mix Max worker, but is freed after a tree branch hits the cage. After meeting the three journeying animals, Fred kicks the cage to let him off, after demanding to get out. Tortellini talks to them about being a great singer, which annoys them; they leave him, but he goes with them. On their way, they meet an owl who tells them they are going the wrong direction to Paris (they are heading toward Bremen) and says it is dangerous in Bremen, but the animals continue on.

The town of Bremen is led by an evil scientist named Dr. Greed, the leader of the Mix Max factory. After trying to catch attention to the people of Bremen, Platini, and Dr. Sevenbrains, workers of Mix Max eventually notices their talent and wants them to work for the factory, to improve the factory's image and sing a famous jingle to make people buy their sausage products for profits. Though they become famous, the animals get bored singing the same jingle all the time. They try to get a change in music, but get rejected the idea. The animals start to notice that the company owns their voices, and their freedom.

After an attempt to fight back, the animals end up getting thrown in a prison except Fred, who gets tickled in a machine until he passes out and gets tired. After he gets thrown in, a mouse called Mozart tries to help them escape but can't, due to being too small. They eventually escape by Tortellini pulling Buster's tail while he sings to try to get help which makes him angry, and leads to him breaking the bars. While escaping the factory, the animals see Mix Max's scheme of caging animals to make there way to be slaughtered to make their sausages and try to promise to save them from being slaughtered. Eventually, During an election, the four animals protest with a song for the usage of lots of animals for the company's sausages. They catch the attention with the people at the election, and cause a riot with tomatoes. After Dr. Greed, Platini, Dr. Sevenbrains, and a manager for the factory (Mix Max) fescape, the animals trick and scare them by looking like a 8-eyed monster the owl mentioned earlier, and trapping them under a movable tiled floor after a battle between the animals and Dr. Greed and his henchmen (Platini, Dr. Sevenbrains, the manager for Mix Max) at their headquarters to get the remote that can free the animals out their cages. After they free the animals, Tortellini accidentally destroys the Mix Max factory after messing with the remote. The animals celebrate after the destruction of the factory and the four live together in a house with the animals after finding the gems Aunt Wanda's relatives were looking for. Buster and Gwendolyn admit their feelings for each other and sing together with Tortellini and Fred accompanied them. The Owl from earlier appears from the top of the screen and looks the audience before closing the sheets and sleeps as the movie ends.

The story was very loosely inspired by the folk tale of the Town Musicians of Bremen.

Cast

Release

In North America, the English version was released on Warner Home Video on May 7, 1998. The DVD was released on September 28, 2003. The most recent release was a re-release of the same DVD, but bundled with Rover Dangerfield, which was released on July 4, 2007. Germany received a DVD release twice; A regular release, and one from Warner Kids (a label for Warner Bros. films that were family-friendly) using the original name, "Die Bremer Stadtmuzikanten". A Region 2 VHS was released in the United Kingdom on July 19, 1999. Greece, Russia, and Italy (as La Banda Del Rock - I Musicanti De Bremen) had a VHS release around or after 1998. France had a VHS release on September 15, 1999 (as Les musiciens de Bréme). Brazil got the film on February 20, 1998 and had a VHS release. It was called Os Quatros Aventureiros there in the country. The film premiered in the Netherlands in 2002 as De Bremer Stadsmuzikanten on VHS. Other countries like Spain (called Los Musicos de Bremen) also had a VHS release. The film is very rare in North America, really now only available from sources like Vudu, YouTube, and the Xbox video and music app. The film in the English version was available on Netflix in the fall of 2016.

In all releases of the movie outside of Germany, scenes were cut from the original version. Scene Include; The animals are celebrating and drinking wine after the Mix Max factory is destroyed, a song (which would be too sexual, as well as being disturbing for kids, involving Gwendolyn seducing Platini, which could be considered Beastality), extended footage of the tickle torture machine, and Fred being sent to it, a sexual innuendo joke (where a bee lands on a woman's breast on a magazine in one scene) and most of Dr. Greed's footage being cut to a few appearances and being at the finale. This reduces the film's run time to about 81 minutes in the other release not in Germany. Stuffed animals, a soundtrack, Bullyland figures, books and other items were produced for the movie's release.

The film went on television in North America on Encore (Encore Wam) years ago. It went on television in France on channels like AB3 and in the United Kingdom on Cartoon Network, and in Canada on YTV in 2010 and Treehouse TV in 2013 and has also appeared on other channels internationally.

Production

The film was a 1997 holiday season release with Anastasia, Flubber, Alien: Resurrection, Home Alone 3, Titanic, MouseHunt, Mr. Magoo and the re-release of The Little Mermaid. The movie was started in March of 1995, and ended in December of 1996. 150 people from around the world worked on the movie, as well as animators in the computer animation department that worked on the backgrounds, the robot centaur in the movie, Powertool, as well as vehicles. The colorization, as well as the animation camera was created digitally. The film costed 15 million in USD.

References

External links

• The Fearless Four on IMDb
• The Fearless Four at The Big Cartoon DataBase
• The Fearless Four at the TCM Movie Database