I played an extra in a stage production of The Water Babies when I was little, so it’s not as if I never knew the story. So how in the world did this monstrosity of a film version get made and how did it become a symbol of wretchedness to me.

Try to remember the worst piece of animation that you’ve seen that made it to the silver screen. Chances are that it won’t even come close to this, whose animation makes standard television fare look like a lush Disney feature by comparison; hell at times this makes filmmation’s stuff seem decent. With repeated animation abused for all it’s worth, animation mistakes that wouldn’t look out of place on My Little Pony; and some generic to ugly character design.

All this could be excused somewhat if the plot managed to compensate for the terrible mechanics, but the story is a all out mess plagued by some of the most awful, repetitive, songs even penned. It all starts in the realm of mediocrity to begin with, the Victorian world look fairly well realised if a little lacking in real grit, is this suppose to be London’s speedy underbelly? seems a bit too civilized. Then it plunges downhill as soon as Tom plunges into the animated world.

Monkeyfunk is quite right that it has simply borrowed the plot of the wizard of Oz, and replaced the three friends with underwater ones. Two of these characters don’t have any real problems, the overtly camp seahorse has a problem being lonely, though you can’t help but wonder why he is intent on scaring people away from the ship graveyard he lives in. The plot is simplistic and formulaic, the solution too easy to obtain, to me this is what makes a kids film a real Kids film.

It is in the live-action section because although it is bookend by live-action, it also tends to jolt back to the live-action sequences and tries to integrate the two together throughout. One way or the other, the one thing this film truly is, is abysmal.

Ooh boy, this is a stinker. Terribly written and boasting some of the worst animation ever seen in a theatrical release - that's Water Babies.

The film is ostensibly based on Charles Kingsley's novel of the same name, but actually just takes the basic setting and attaches it to a storyline that seems to have been cribbed from The Wizard of Oz. Let's see - kid has troubles in normal world; kid goes to fantasy world with characters connected to his aquintinces back home (in particular, his uncaring masters become the Killer Shark and his eel sidekick), he meets three friends (a stereotypically Scottish crab, a stereotypically French swordfish and, er, a stereotypically gay seahorse), each time singing a variation of a song (bits of which sound suspiciously similar to the Walrus and Carpenter's song from Disney's Alice in Wonderland).

Eventually he meets a big scary dude - here Neptune who (SLIGHT SPOILERS, not that it's really possible to spoil a movie this bad) who promises to set the captured water babies free if Tom proves his worth by defeating the Killer Shark. This echoes the Wizard of Oz promising to send Dorothy home if she proves herself by defeating the Witch of the West, but here it doesn't make any sense - since the Shark is the one holding the babies captive, defeating him would have allowed Tom to free the babies without Neptune's help. But once you've got that far into the movie, it'll become obvious that the script was written on the bus to the studio and any plot holes pale into insignificance in the totaly terribleness of the movie as a whole.

So anyway. While the live action sequences that bookend it are irredeemably tedious, the animated portion is so dripping with "so bad it's good" value that I gave the movie an extra half star. Yep - The Water Babies is right up there with Titanic: The Animated Movie.