Animalympics

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Animalympics is a 1980 animated film produced by Lisberger Studios, that spoofs the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, featuring the voice of Billy Crystal, Gilda Radner and Harry Shearer. Although it was made to coincide with the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, the massive US-led boycott of the 1980 Games adversely affected the movie's popularity.

Animalympics was originally conceived as two short cartoons, separated by season, before being released as a feature-length movie.

Considering the animation to have been produced in 1979, it stands out through the use of several music-video-like sequences to its soundtrack by 10cc's Graham Gouldman, uncommon at the time.

Animalympics is shown most often on the Disney Channel, albeit with several edits, both to make the movie more family friendly and to edit jokes that are no longer topical.

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The movie is a series of vignettes presented as the broadcast of the first animal Olympic Games through the fictional ZOO television network. Because of the combination of the two short cartoons, the Games combine both summer and winter Olympic events. Many of the characters presented, both ZOO crewmembers and Olympic participants, are celebrity caricatures.

Although many of the segments could easily stand alone, there are a number of recurring events and important characters. The largest such story is the coverage of the marathon, where competitors René Fromage (a French goat) and Kit Mambo (an African lioness) are the favorites to win. Both determined to win — Fromage having devoted his entire life to the marathon, Mambo determined to make a name for herself — they find themselves surprised when their minds wander to thoughts of mutual admiration and then to love. Another important story is that of Kurt Wuffner, German dachshund and skiier, and his disappearance to Dogra-la (see Shangri-la) during a mountain climbing expedition shortly after the slalom event.

A fan of the movie has started the Animalympics Album Project (see link below), an attempt to remaster and re-release the movie's soundtrack (composed by Graham Gouldman, bassist of 10cc) on compact disc. Fans of the original films have also re-edited the combined film into a close approximation of the original winter/summer games as separate films, and have been showing them at science fiction conventions since the 1980's.