Going Francisco

Going Francisco is a 2001 American computer-animated science-fiction comedy film produced by Gingo Movies and Imagine Entertainment and distributed by Universal Pictures. The feature-length directorial debut of Arlo-Avocha Vernon, the film's screenplay was written by Tim Hill, J. David Stem, David N. Weiss, and Karey Kirkpatrick from a story by Vernon. It stars the voices of Spencer Klein, Ashley Peldon, Missi Pyle, George Clooney, Willem Dafoe, Jodi Benson, Stephen Root, and William Shatner. This was also the first fully animated film to be produced by Imagine Entertainment. Going Francisco follows the Crosby family, who live next door to a neighbor named "The Champ" who then teleports them into a computerized caricature of San Francisco, where they meet a mysterious, clear-white, bald man, whom they later realize is actually a character controlled by their neighbor in a video game; the family must escape him and rush through the virtual city to find their way back to the real world in time for their special occasions.

The initial idea was conceived in 1997 by Arlo-Avocha Vernon following work on his animated series Funky Fu! Pop Star Fighter when Michael Wildshill and Brian Grazer approached him to make a new animated film for Universal Feature Animation in co-production with Imagine Entertainment. The animation of the film uses hand-drawn 2D traditional animation with computer-generated imagery (CGI), with Universal Feature Animation, Gingo Animation, and Universal Digital Images handling animation services.

Going Francisco premiered at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, California on June 21, 2001, and was released in the United States on June 29, 2001. It grossed $218.9 million against a $54 million budget and received mixed reviews from critics, with particular criticism directed at the film's sitcom-like production values and story. However, with its home media release, the film has since attained a cult following, particularly among those who grew up with the film. After the film's release, much of the CGI animation team regrouped to work on Universal's fully CGI animated feature Computeropolis, directed by Going Francisco ' s story artist Audel LaRoque. This resulted in a sequel entitled Going Chicago, set to be written by Irene Mecchi, being cancelled.

Plot
The Crosby family — husband Anson, wife Rhea, and siblings Dan and Sara — live in Jefferson, Missouri, next door to a video gamer labeled by his bumper sticker as "The Champ", who has garnered suspicion among his neighbors for projecting bright blue glows from his window in the middle of the night. One night, the Crosby family prepares for a road trip to an extended family reunion in San Francisco, California. Dan and Sara are less than enthused, as they previously intended to partake in special activities with their friends; Dan wanted to help his group compete against a rivaling basketball team at his school gym, and Sara wanted to escape her after-school evenings with her brother by attending a slumber party. The light from the house next-door glows progressively brighter, and just as the family begins taking off for the reunion, an electrical surge emerges from the house through the neighborhood's power lines and zaps the Crosbies, taking their van with it.

They are now teleported to a strange flat and pixelated version of San Francisco, where they are met by Mr. Suit, a clear-white, bald man who offers to help the family get to Lombard Street, expecting to meet the extended family there. While the Crosbies follow Mr. Suit, Dan and Sara suddenly become separated from the group and visit a bar where they are surrounded and attacked by a motorcycle gang led by Roger, but are rescued by a young female racer named Carly McWheels. The three are then chased by Roger and his gang, but manage to escape from them successfully. She tells the siblings that she can take them to the Crosby family reunion where Dan and Sara's parents are going, and Carly accompanies them so they can reunite their parents.

As Rhea and Anson search for their missing children, Mr. Suit begins to repeatedly offer a new domestic life with Rhea and the kids, much to their irritation. During a chase through Chinatown, Mr. Suit saves Dan and Sara, which delights the siblings, but worries the parents about Suit "spoiling" their children. Suit begins to appease the kids' demands, while the parents take note of Suit's familiar speech topics and eventually discover that he is, in fact, an avatar controlled by The Champ, and that they have been sucked into the popular action-adventure video game Road Rage: California played by him.

Suit's actions lead to him being caught by the police, but manages to pursue them by exiting the game while leaving Dan and Sara in the car to get arrested which sends them to the "beginning" of the game with their memories reverted. They are picked up by Carly, who is revealed to be the player's companion. They set off for the Golden Gate Bridge, hoping they could find their family there. Spending the night, Sara finds Dan falling in love with Carly and talking about her beginning to reciprocate his feelings. Despite that, Sara, Dan and Carly continue their mission to reach the Golden Gate Bridge. However, the video game begins to glitch out as Anson and Rhea hack the coding, attempting to rewrite the NPCs so they would bring the children forth and take down Champ's avatar once and for all. Reconciling with the kids proves difficult due to their amnesia as they believe Dan and Sara to still be overindulged by Suit, until Anson reveals to have backed up their memories from the game's history.

With Dan and Sara's memories being back thanks to the backup, the children finally reunite with their parents and the Crosby family attempts to head back to reality. Suddenly, The Champ then opens a new multiplayer server to have an army of other players attack the family for revenge. However, the Crosbies, along with Carly, rely on one of the army members, Dan's school bully Ronnie, to forward a message to those they were supposed to meet with — Dan and Sara's friends, and the extended family — inviting them to the server to revolt against Champ. They defeat the army using a bug caused by the parents' recoding, in which if a decapitated head of the Abraham Lincoln statue looks straight at players' screen from up close, the game will crash.

With Champ reported and signed up for rehabilitation, the Crosbies are returned to reality by an officer who inspects the experiment Champ used to teleport the family with. They reconsider the decision to go on their respective trips after the abundant time they've already spent with their family and friends. However, now exhausted from the artificial elements of the game world, they decide instead to take a simple drive across the country, together as a loving family.

Cast

 * Spencer Klein as Dan Crosby, Sara's younger brother; a 12-year old basketball geek.
 * Ashley Peldon as Sara Crosby, Dan's older sister; a 15-year old high school sophomore and a typical neat-freak teenage girl.
 * Missi Pyle as Rhea Crosby, the mother of the siblings.
 * George Clooney as Anson Crosby, the father of the siblings.
 * Willem Dafoe as The Champ, the Crosbys' next-door neighbor and an aspiring top-ranking player of Road Rage: California.
 * Dafoe also voices Mr. Suit, a mysterious character whom the Champ is controlling.
 * Jodi Benson as Carly McWheels, a talented NPC racer in Road Rage: California whom Dan and Crosby go to for help on their adventure.
 * Stephen Root as Rob Belvin, a police officer in Road Rage: California.
 * William Shatner as Roger, the leader of a biker gang in Road Rage: California.
 * Clint Howard as Thomas, Betty's husband.
 * Amy McNeill as Betty, Thomas's wife.
 * McNeill also voices Liko.
 * Justin Shenkarow as Jerry, Dan's best friend.
 * George Wu as Lin, a Chinatown resident.
 * Cynthia Marion‎‎ as Judy
 * Lauren Tom as Nina
 * T. J. Thyne as Nick
 * Arlo-Avocha Vernon as Police Officer #1
 * Gary Hall as Police Officer #2
 * Paul Eiding as Police Officer #3 and Biker #1
 * Jeff Bennett as Biker #2 and Pawn Shop Owner
 * Corey Burton as Biker #3
 * Jess Harnell as Joe
 * Laraine Newman as Newscaster
 * Harland Williams as Foreman
 * Kath Soucie as Driver
 * Tom Kenny as Ronnie

Additional voices

 * Carlos Alazraqui
 * Jack Angel
 * Bob Bergen
 * Rodger Bumpass
 * Jennifer Darling
 * Debi Derryberry
 * Bill Farmer
 * Lynn Hobson
 * Roger L. Jackson
 * Danny Mann
 * Jason Marsden
 * Mickie McGowan
 * Pat Pinney
 * Phil Proctor
 * Arlo-Avocha Vernon
 * Michael Wildshill

Development
Following the success of his Gingo animated series Funky Fu! Pop Star Fighter ahead of its premiere in February 1997, Arlo-Avocha Vernon was approached by Brian Grazer of Imagine Entertainment and Michael Wildshill (who was working on Ama and the Mysterious Crystal at the time) to develop a new film at Universal Pictures' Feature Animation division. Vernon then pitched several ideas for the studio, in which among them (the one that was ultimately green-lit) was a concept of "a family road trip inside a virtual world" he originally had as a proposed TV series for a few years prior to Funky Fu!. Vernon wrote a treatment and pitched it to Wildshill, who was "definitely blown away" of the concept.

On March 13, 1999, it was announced that Vernon was directing the film, now entitled Going Francisco, with a set release date of 2001, with Tim Hill, J. David Stem, David N. Weiss and Karey Kirkpatrick hired to write the script while Wildshill, Grazer, Brandon Minez and Joe Medjuck would produce it. The film was initially set to be produced under the Universal Feature Animation label, but later decided that it would be instead released under the Gingo Movies brand following the modest success of Hatty in the Big City: The Movie, a feature film based on the Gingo series Hatty. However, Universal Animation was still involved in the project, but only working for the story development and animation services this time.

Animation
While the work was a Universal animated production, it was considered far less essential than the studio's mainstream works at the time such as Mistress Masham's Repose, and was given a far smaller budget compared to these films. Thus, Going Francisco was jointly produced by Universal Feature Animation and Gingo Animation with Universal Digital Images handling the CGI animated sequences. Pre-production was done at the main Feature Animation studio in Universal City, California, starting as early as mid-1999. The animation work was done at Bardel Entertainment in Vancouver under the direction of Barry Ward and Delna Bhesania, and clean-up work done at the main Universal City studio. Additional clean-up/animation was done by Yowza! Animation in Canada.

One of the film's goals was to blend different mediums of animation into one film to have such a seamless finish to the point you could not tell the difference between what was two-dimensional hand drawing or computer-generated 3D animations and environments. For the animation of Going Francisco, there are three main elements that were essential to the production of this film. The traditional 2D character animation, three-dimensional character animation, and the computer-generated or CG character animation and environments. According to Vernon, he wanted to utilize computer animation for the San Francisco scenes in the film as he described them as a "3D video game world". After several failed attempts to recruit computer animation companies for the CGI animation, Universal took on the animation themselves through the Digital Images division, which produced the 2000 CGI-animated short Aero.

To ensure CG animation, 3D workbooks were created using Softimage 3D software. 54 animators worked on the film, using 300 computer processors to animate the CGI scenes. To make the 2D characters turn into CGI, Vernon and fellow character designer Shannon Tindle had an orthographic view of the characters, and Vernon's character designs were drawn on paper and scanned into the PowerAnimator software for the modelers to rig in the computers. The programs were "Fuzzy Tool," which was used for the characters' hair and clothing and to create fur and grass; "Body Builder," which was used to create skin and muscles for the characters; and "Mug Shot," a shape blender that works within Alias Maya for facial animation and lip-synching.

During post-production, the film was sent to Skywalker Sound, where the sound effects were mixed with the music score.

Soundtrack
The soundtrack was released on June 26, 2001 by Epic Records.

Track listing

 * 1) "Invincible" - Michael Jackson
 * 2) "Getaway" - Earth, Wind &amp; Fire
 * 3) "It's Gonna Be Me" - NSYNC
 * 4) "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) " - Scott McKenzie
 * 5) "Maximum Consumption" - The Kinks
 * 6) "In the Hood" - Kool &amp; the Gang
 * 7) "Don't Mess with the Radio" - Nivea
 * 8) "You Rock My World" - Michael Jackson
 * 9) "Hyperreal Orbit" - The Shamen
 * 10) "Michael" - Roy Davis Jr.
 * 11) "Clock Is Mine" - Lyre Le Temps
 * 12) "San Francisco (You've Got Me)" - Village People

Score
The original music for the film was composed by John Debney and Heitor Pereira, both of whom had previously worked on the score of Spy Kids. It marks the first Universal animated film to be scored by two composers. The score was released on July 10, 2001 by Varèse Sarabande.

Track listing

 * 1) Main Title / Road Rage Theme
 * 2) Evening Plans
 * 3) They Call Him the Champ
 * 4) Electrical Convenience
 * 5) Urban Lunatics
 * 6) The Kidnapping
 * 7) Chinatown
 * 8) Mr. Suit Ruins It
 * 9) The Secret of the Suit
 * 10) Can You Police Help Us?
 * 11) Lots of Cars Comin'
 * 12) Knocked Out
 * 13) Reprogramming
 * 14) You Can't Escape!
 * 15) Calling Back to Reality
 * 16) Friends and Family Revolt
 * 17) What Do You Think?

Release
Going Francisco was released in theaters on June 29, 2001, by Universal Pictures. The film was accompanied by the short animated film Construction Royale featuring Woody Woodpecker in his first theatrical short in nearly 30 years.

Marketing
The first trailer was released theatrically in late 2000 with Mistress Masham's Repose. A second trailer consisting of new animation debuted in March 2001.

A video game based on the film was developed by Argonaut Games and published by Konami alongside Universal Interactive Studios for the PlayStation console which was released on June 18, 2001. Konami released another video game for the Game Boy Advance and Game Boy Color.

Home media
Going Francisco was released on VHS and DVD on December 18, 2001, by Universal Studios Home Video. It was re-released on DVD on May 24, 2011, and re-released again on DVD on July 17, 2018. The film has yet to be released on Blu-ray.

Box office
The film earned $82.8 million in North American theaters and another $136.1 million from other countries. The worldwide gross was $218.9 million against a budget of $54 million.

Critical reception
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Going Francisco has an approval rating of 57% collected from 78 reviews, with an average rating of 5.4/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Going Francisco may deserve points for its visuals and talented cast, but the script plays it too much like a Saturday morning cartoon -- and not often a funny one to begin with." Metacritic gives the film a score of 51 out of 100 from 41 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Accolades
Coming soon!

Legacy
On October 25, 2001, Variety reported that Paint World writer Irene Mecchi had signed a writing deal with Universal Pictures and Gingo Movies to write a direct-to-video sequel to Going Francisco titled Going Chicago, which was to have The Champ coming back for revenge on the Crosbies where he teleports them to a twisted, virtualized version of Chicago and along the way, the family meets new friends and foes and must find a way to escape from the Champ's new trap. Like the first film, it was planned to be produced by Imagine Entertainment with 2D and CGI animation provided again by Universal Feature Animation and Universal Digital Images, and was also considered for theatrical release. However, by 2003, the sequel was cancelled when Universal merged the Digital Images division with the main Feature Animation studio following the box office failure of the 2D hand-drawn animated feature Magina.

More coming soon!

Main
To see the main transcript of the film, click here.

Trailers
To see the transcript for the trailers of the film, click here.