Lucas has produced more mainstream animated efforts (like the Steven Spielberg-supervised "Land Before Time") but his first attempt at animation is this surreal, stop-motion animated marvel that has been virtually unseen since a DVD/laserdisc release in the early ’90s. The film stars Ralph, the All-Purpose Animal, a kind of amorphous figure voiced by Lorenzo Music (the voice of Garfield the cat on the animated series) and his silent Chaplinesque mime buddy Mumford, as they attempt to save the world from a series of never-ending nightmares (literally). The animation is hard to describe, even more so because, thanks to issues with licensing (there’s a robotic gorilla character whose face is a television screen that shows clips from famous movies, including Lucas’s own "Star Wars" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark") and internal creative differences (the director and producer had competing cuts of the movie), it’s virtually impossible to find/see. The best way to describe the animation is somewhat in the style of "South Park"/Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python stuff, with occasional interactions with live action characters and general weirdness. It’s really beguiling and animation nerds often cite it as one of the more important stop motion films of all time.
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