Except for robin williams of course and a few familiar faces.
I miss back when animated movies used to have relatively unknowns for voices, I prefer it this way. I found it distracting watching Cars because all I could see was Owen wilson's face, same for a shark tale, king fu panda, toy story etc. I think the only time it worked for me was Shrek because mike Myers and Eddie Murphy were perfect together.
I don't like it either. Usually those celebrity voice actors aren't as good and have pretty annoying or plain voices.
shareI don't mind celebrities being used at all, especially when they contribute something unique like Williams did, but when the cast are all celebrities it can get a bit overwhelming.
shareAnd plust for Shrek Mike Myers used a Scottish accent for the lines that he recorded his lines for the movie. I don't know would you count Gilbert Godfried as a famous face as well? It shows you who different animated movies today are, when most of them have major movie stars in voce roles, when a couple of decades ago not as famous. The most famous name in Beauty and the Beast has to be Angela Lansbury. And even when you go back to Walt Disney's day he used professional voice artists rather then any of the major celebrities of the day.
shareI don't like it. I don't mind one in a movie, but generally couldn't care less.
All this proves is the not-so-Disney co. is banking on star-power, and maybe doesn't have much faith in the actual story and presentation.
And compared to the real Disney collection, yeah, they fall short big time. Some are good, some OK, but compared to Walt, they collectively are 2nd-rate.
But here is a good question would a lot of kids know who the voices are for the film that came out whether they are major movie stars voices or unknown voices no matter if it is Robin Williams, Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers, Ray Romano etc.
shareYou're right about their being relative unknowns back then. In fact, the oldest one to use celebrities was Alice in Wonderland --- Ed Wynn, Jerry Colona.
shareI don't mind if famous celebrities are hired to do voices as long as they are the best fit for the character. You could argue they were brought in mainly to boost the ticket sales at the box office, and that may have been true for a while but Disney is so big now they don't need them. Even before that, Disney films did great standing on their own.
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