Weaver gives the movie a presence; without her it's a B picture that lacks the subplots and corny characters that can make B pictures amusing.
It's one thing to try and match a really corny carton character like Roger Rabbit, but trying to voice match an actor like James Earl Jones is really difficult, because people are so in tune with it.
"William lets loose on this project," Ms. Lion said, adding that what set him apart from other costume designers is that he keeps adding more styles -- a new finale costume for Marissa Jaret Winokur, who plays Tracy; a noisier purse for Edna, a bit more jazz for Clarke Thorell's character Corny.
I do, if only because her Heidi is less corny than the characters around her, Heidi's female friends, all of whom are played like someone's idea of "political" women — loud, self-righteous, and ultimately hypocritical.
The show itself was like a kind of glam-rock eighties "Hee Haw," with vaudevillian characters, corny jokes, skits, songs, and, because it was the eighties, rapping, by a mostly white cast — "a bunch of girls rapping in these little short costumes," Roxy Astor says.
"Skylanders" plays out like a live-action Saturday morning cartoon show, with over-the-top characters, corny but cool voice-overs and villainous sheep.
Kenny Ortega, the director and (with Peggy Holmes) the co-choreographer, doesn't act as though his material has flaws: perfunctory plot twists, corny lyrics or characters.
They can suffer from simplistic premises and too many corny jokes, but his characters are always richly, sympathetically drawn.
Is this just another example of Hollywood recycling corny old pre-war characters with little modern-day relevance?
