In a magical world, a wizard known as The Grin (Ian McShane) comes to the kingdom of Groovingham along with his fiancé, Mary (Amy Thompson). The Grin tries to spread happiness throughout the kingdom, but an overzealous blacksmith causes a fire while under the influence of his spell leading to a fire in the kingdom that The Grin is blamed for. Mary helps The Grin escape, but is soon captured by Groovingham's soldiers and is exiled to another world as punishment. Several years later, Mary tells her grandson, Terry Dexter (Toby Kebbell) stories of The Grin and has published them as an author and used them as a basis for an amusement park. When Mary passes on, Terry inherits stewardship of the Park but his reluctance to change anything from the way Mary left it has lead to drop offs in attendance and accumulation of debt. Terry while repairing Mary's balloon car discovers a crank for the car which takes him to the world of Groovingham where The Grin is now known as The Grump and intends to seek revenge of Groovingham by placing a spell of gloom on it. The care free Princess Dawn (Lily Collins) soon finds herself on the run alongside Terry with Dawn seeking to end her Kingdom's curse and Terry to find his way back home.
Here Comes the Grump also known as A Wizard's Tale is an adaptation of the 1969-70 animated series Here Comes the Grump by David H. DePatie and Friz Freleng. The series featured a simple premise of 10 minute segments with the main characters of Terry Dexter and Princess Dawn traveling around a strange world in search of the McGuffin the Crystal Key that would lift curse from Dawn's kingdom (that we were never made privy to the nature of) and eluding the evil wizard hunting them named The Grump. The show never really had much staying power in the United States where it aired to moderate success with one season, but was apparently a much larger success in Mexico hence why this film is a Mexican co-production. Here Comes the Grump didn't really have much substance as a show with the main selling point being in the bizarre novelty of different lands or creatures Terry and Dawn encounter along with slapstick that came about from the Yosemite Sam inspired Grump falling victim to backfiring plans or bad luck. Having seen a few of the episodes of the TV show it was just okay, it didn't really do anything particularly special and I think Jay Ward did much of the same things it tries to do with Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends with better writing and a lower budget, but as far as cartoons from that era go it's harmless. Unfortunately A Wizard's Tale is nowhere near as okay as its inspiration and doesn't even pass the standards for mediocre animated films.
The movie comes to us from Ánima Estudios the same company behind Top Cat: The Movie and Top Cat begins, and while I don't think A Wizard's Tale is as bad as those two, it certainly rings of something from the same creative team. The movie's initial set-up was very middle of the road with the film trying to create a "sympathetic" Grump, and already out of the gate that's a sign we won't get a faithful adaptation because the Grump in the show was a petulant jerk who reveled in how big a jerk he was. Sure we never got any real back story for our characters in the show and you have to give the audience something, but it probably shouldn't be something that undermines the core concept of the thing you're adapting. The animation is also very muddy and while it's not the worst 3D animation I've seen, everything has a plasticky look to it with blurry textures that look pretty cheap. And then there's Terry Dexter and Princess Dawn, oh boy. Both Terry and Dawn were basically blank slates in the original show as their purpose was to serve as straightmen to the oddness of the lands they visited or to The Grump's attempts to capture or hinder them. Here however they're not great in the additions made. Terry's now a very whiny and obsessive prat whose desire to save his grandma's theme park might have held weight if it wasn't taken to Grey Gardens levels of disturbing. And then we have Princess Dawn who's design with oversized eyes is really off putting and is so airheaded she doesn't want any responsibility and just wants a "Prince Charming" to rescue her. It's pretty hard to put any stock into Dawn rescuing her Kingdom when she really doesn't seem to care.
And then there's the movie's humor. On occasion the film does have some inspired moment such as mood changing darts in a chase sequence where Terry and Dawn first meet, but most of the time the film consists of poorly timed slapstick that pales in comparison to what was on the original show or just bizarre jokes that make you scratch your head at best or rub your temples in frustration at worst. A baffling setpiece takes place at the Bloonywoonie Kingdom (which appeared in the actual show) and is a particularly cringe worthy sequence as the Bloonywoonies are strange hipster caricatures who have a hooka-den/coffee shop analogue that's clearly an analogue for drug use (as Princess Dawn indulges some and exhibits certain "behaviors") which would be bad enough in and of itself, but they take it a step further by having them fend off against the Grump using Twitter......I'm not joking, the Bloonywoonies have a major sequence in this film where they fend off the grump by using their smartphones and tablets to say mean things in social media posts that somehow turn into physical manifestations of hashtages, poop emojis, and etc. And it's such a lazy pandering sequence.
A Wizard's Tale (Here Comes the Grump) takes a cartoon that didn't have that much substance to begin with and somehow does less with it than the original show did. The characters are awful, the animation is mediocre at best, and the humor is either ill timed slapstick or painfully stupid. There's no reason to watch this, I probably shouldn't have even watched it. But I did, and I have to live with that now.
