Voice Actors in Animation: Why I like professionals and not celebrities.

Maurice LaMarche in full flow at a Kids Next Door recording session

So a while back I read a blog post by a certain Nico Colaleo over on his rather decent I Love Cartoons! Do You? blog. The topic was cartoon characters and how once upon a time, they were the stars of their own cartoons rather than the voices behind them. It’s a good read although he focuses more on the visual (title cards, promo posters, etc.) than the actual concept in question. Yes, today I’m going to talk about celebrity voice actors.

In the past, professional voice actors did pretty much any animation work, heck, Mel Blanc did pretty much every voice to come out of Warner Bros. for at least 30 years, even after he died! The reason professionals were used, and still are to this day for television, is that they knew what they were doing, had a real knack for the job and yes, could do more than one voice (usually).

That’s pretty much the way television has stayed with many professional voice actors, including Maurice LaMarche as shown above (and on Mr. Warburton’s never-fails-to-make-me-smile blog), who I swear, if it wasn’t for himself and Tress MacNeille, we would have seen about two cartoons for the whole of the 1980s. But I’m not going to talk about TV today, I’m looking at the bigger picture, literally, movies.

Disney has had a pretty good grip on the theatrical film market since around abouts the beginning. OK, so Don Bluth gave them a scare a few years back but that’s irrelevant. What is relevant is that they enjoyed tremendous success for the longest time. Pretty much all of the films put out used professional voice actors, and many of them did a lot of work for Disney, almost exclusively so.

I guess what brought me around to the topic was when I watched The Little Mermaid a couple of weeks ago. Yeah it was kind funny to see the rather simple, idealistic plot that even kids wouldn’t bother with now and some rudimentary computer CGI thrown in for good measure (so good in fact that a reviewer on Amazon thought it was added in later as part of the restoration).

Watching it a second time, I was struck that a) all the credits were at the start (seriously Hollywood, let’s bring this back, you could even run them before everyone has got their popcorn) and b) the voice characterisation credits were listed as one block, no top billing or anything. And all the actors were unkown to me (at least until I hit up Wikipedia later on).

I liked that; knowing that the actors whose performance I was about to listen to seemed to be just regular people (regular except that their names were on the screen and mine wasn’t, yet). What’s unsurprising is that they do a great job. Of course, they wouldn’t be employed otherwise.

Compare that to today, where big Hollywood names are trotted out to the public to flog the latest animation feature they’ve done. Nico uses the posters to good effect here, noting that for Shrek, the names of the actors are bigger than the images of the characters themselves. Other films throw as many actors as they can in there, hell, even Delgo had celebrity actors and that was the biggest flop of last year, although it still remains a favourite of the otherwise perfect Mr. Elliot Cowan.

What’s the point? Sure celebrity actors can bring a bit of glamour to your film, but they won’t help if the film itself sucks. Having seen Monster Vs. Aliens there recently, I was honestly disappointed. It was not a great film; technically, it was brilliant but script wise it was very weak. The celebrities roped into this one didn’t help matters. Nothing against them, but they’re absence would not have made a difference.

It’s not all doom and gloom however. One could argue that Pixar is on the greener side of the grass. Well, sorta, they still use regular actors, just less well known ones that are more suited for their roles. For this, they should at least earn a wee bit of respect. The same goes for Michael Bay, Tom Kenny manages to get on the payroll for Transformers. He didn’t harm the movie’s chances.

Personally, if you’re movie is good enough, people will go see it. If I want to see Eddie Murphy in a movie, I’ll go watch Beverly Hills Cop or something like that. While he is certainly capable of voicing a donkey, so am I, and you won’t see my funny face either. Mainstream actors are known for their looks, not their voices. I think Elvis would come close to breaking that rule, but he hasn’t made any films for a while.

I’ve neglected to mention the relative costs savings that professional VAs bring because I feel that’s a bit of an afront to them. I see no reason why they can’t make a blockbuster like Shrek and get paid millions for it, even if their name isn’t splattered all over the poster.

However, as I write this, we’re just over a week away from the premiere of the series Sit Down, Shut Up. A show which casts actors rather than voice actors. Hopefully this is a once off. TV is the last bastion of professional voice actors.

With animated features consistently increasing in popularity, it’s unlikely we’ll see a change in policy, which is a bit of a shame, but then I remember that I like film I like and don’t like films I don’t like, regardless of who’s in them.

So, for your gratuitous enjoyment (and maybe also as a reward for reading all the way to the end), here are some of my favourite voice actors (in no particular order whatsoever).

• Mel Blanc
• Billy West
• Dan Castellaneta
• Harry Shearer
• John DiMaggio
• Hank Azaria
• Phil LaMarr
• Grey DeLisle
• Candi Milo
• Janice Kawaye
• Scott McNeill
• Tara Strong
• Patrick Warburton
• Seth McFarlane
• Rachel McFarlane (accomplished in her own right you know)
• and that’s all I can think of now because it’s late and I have to work tomorrow, yes, it’s Friday but falling asleep at the desk isn’t an option. We’re still pushing for a couch in the corner in order to create a loophole though.