Fine ass... Eddie Murphy provides the voice of the Donkey in the Shrek films
The makers of Shrek The Third, released next summer, are proudly trumpeting their latest unseen A-lister: Justin Timberlake will stop pretending to be Prince just long enough to play Artie, rebellious teenage cousin to Princess Fiona (who is in turn played by Timberlake's squeeze, Cameron Diaz).
These days no animated feature is complete without the vocal contribution of someone from the upper branches of the celebrity tree. It's a trade-off. The film-makers get the prestige of a celebrity, while the performer benefits from the ego factor - no, of course I don't mind playing second fiddle to the animation by not showing my face; on the other hand, this is proof that I'm famous enough for the audience to know I'm there even when they can't see me.
This wasn't always so. If it had been, then Pinto Colvig (Sleepy and Grumpy in Disney's 1939 Snow White and the Seven Dwarves) would be a household name, and a signed picture of Adriana Caselotti (Snow White to you) would have eBayers in a frenzy. Back then, if a well-known voice was hired, it tended to be a specialist talent, like the jazz musician Louis Prima in The Jungle Book or the singer Pearl Bailey in The Fox and the Hound.
John Hurt may appear to be an exception - between 1978 and 1985, he could be heard in Watership Down, the original animated Lord of the Rings, The Plague Dogs and The Black Cauldron. In fact, he proves the rule. In the flesh, he could slip effortlessly from playing Timothy Evans to Quentin Crisp to John Merrick, and it was exactly this flexibility that made him a perfect fit back in the days when voice actors were required to be heard and not seen. If you noticed them, they weren't doing their job properly.
It seems impossible, now that films can be sold on the strength of their celebrity vocal cords, that all this potential once went untapped. Part of the change has come from the new-found crossover appeal of animation. Until the rise of series such as The Simpsons and South Park, there was nothing hip about the idea of using celebrity voices. Now there are few things more credible than moonlighting at the mic.
This season alone you can hear Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman and Elijah Wood in Happy Feet, and Kate Winslet, Ian McKellen and Jackman again in Flushed Away. Next year brings Arthur And The Invisibles, featuring the (non-singing) triple-whammy of Madonna, David Bowie and Snoop Dogg.
The best actors approach voice work as seriously as they would any acting job. I maintain that Tom Hanks' Oscars should have been awarded for his affectionate, moving voice-work in the Toy Story films, rather than for Forrest Gump and Philadelphia. And while Robin Williams is never on screen as the Genie in Aladdin, it remains his most exuberant performance. "What Robin Williams contributed to Aladdin," noted Robert Altman, "could not have been the work of either a director, a writer or an animator. The creativity contained in his work was his alone."
As the Genie, we saw Williams afresh, just as we had found in Kathleen Turner's Jessica Rabbit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? a way to enjoy again the eroticism of an actress who had been unable to sustain her own allure. Some performers are at their most liberated when they're unseen - you haven't sampled Nathan Lane's warmly poisonous wit until you've heard him as a jealous cat in the Stuart Little movies. However, many voice-tracks now feel overloaded with stars. In a film like Shark Tale (Will Smith, Robert De Niro, Angelina Jolie, Jack Black et al), the voices distract from the film rather than enhancing it. The habit of using British TV entertainers in the UK prints of movies is also becoming a major irritation. Cock an ear to Jonathan Ross in Shrek 2 or Jeremy Clarkson in Cars and you'll hear the sound of smug celebrities having their egos massaged.
It's good to remember, though, that some of the battiest off-screen turns can be heard far beyond the confines of the U and PG certificates. Think of Brad Dourif as the demented Chucky doll in the Child's Play chillers, Sissy Spacek as the brain-in-a-jar Anne Uumellmahaye in The Man With Two Brains, or John Turturro as the serial killer's calmly taunting dog in Summer Of Sam. There are gems out there if you know where to look, or rather listen.
