On the foreclosed Meadowbrook Farm, a young piglet named Gordy (voiced by Justin Garms) embarks on a journey to find his family after his mother, father, and siblings are all sold and taken up north. On the road Gordy is taken in by traveling country singers Luke McAllister (Doug Stone), Luke's daughter Jinnie Sue (Kristy Young), and Cousin Jake (Tom Lester). After playing an engagement for the wealthy Royce family consisting of family patriarch industrialist Henry Royce (Ted Manson), Ted's daughter Jessica (Deborah Hobart), Jessica's boyfriend Gilbert Sipes (James Donadio), and Jessica's lonely son Hanky (Michael Roescher), Gordy becomes a hero after saving Hanky from accidentally drowning in a swimming pool. The McAllisters give Gordy to Hanky and soon Hanky is able to understand Gordy because he "took the time to listen". Meanwhile Henry capitalizes on Gordy's "Hero pig" image much to the ire of Jessica and Gilbert who want Jessica to be the face of the company as Gilbert tries to sabotage Gordy's image.
Gordy is 1994 family film that is notable for coming out slightly before the superficially similar (but much more successful) Babe. Gordy had actually started back in the 60s with writers Jay Sommers and Dick Chevillat of Green Acres who tailored the original script then titled "Waldo" as a vehicle for Arnold the Pig who appeared on the series. The script remained un produced for several decades until it was eventually acquired by Sybil Robson for her company Robson Entertainment in 1993 10 years after Sommers and Chevillat had passed on. A re-write was subsequently done by Leslie Stevens who was credited as co-writer alongside Sommers and Chevillat with the latter two receiving story credit. The film was eventually acquired by Miramax and theatrically released in May 1995 where it opened at number 8 at the box office behind several holdovers and the number one opening of Crimson Tide and the film only wound up earning $3.9 million against a $6-7 million budget. Robson blamed the underperformance on the lackluster distribution with Miramax which coupled with the toxic threatening attitudes of one of Miramax's executives lead to Robson getting a settlement from the company (at least according to various news sites). All these years later Gordy has largely been forgotten with the exception of the occasional riffing by online comedians or semi-memetic appeal of one of its songs, but aside from that Gordy is harmless but it's also bland and sloppily constructed.
Despite the fact the movie went theatrical, the filmmaking has a very direct-to-video or TV movie of the week type feel with the opening shots of Meadowbrook coupled with the lackluster animal voiceover techniques just leaves the film feeling very lacking. Granted it's not the worst I've seen as projects like Going Bananas or Nukie featured similar scenes done to much poorer effect, but when compared against Disney's Homeward Bound remake which many of the same approaches Gordy did but with more polish this really doesn't cut it. But aside from the technical issues, the story also feels very disjointed with a number of false starts such as the country music family feeling like an unnecessary addition before Gordy winds up with the Royce's. There's also that element of Gordy's speech being able to be understood by Hanky which is built on pretty flimsy logic even by the standards of children's filmmaking and when the film goes into Gordy managing the company with Hanky as his translator (yes, really) it feels massively misguided for the kind of film it is because kids don't generally care about business dealings and marketing so I doubt they'll be all that enthused by scenes of Gordy appearing on Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser.
Gordy feels exactly like what it is: Cheap disposable children's entertainment. The fact that this had writers of Green Acres isn't all that surprising as the whole thing does have the feel of a pre-Rural Purge TV project that would've followed the same lines of Mr. Ed or Green Acres, but when you compare it to other animal centric movies from around the same time Gordy isn't worth a viewing especially when other pig centric movies like Charlotte's Web and Babe are right there and better.
Gordy is 1994 family film that is notable for coming out slightly before the superficially similar (but much more successful) Babe. Gordy had actually started back in the 60s with writers Jay Sommers and Dick Chevillat of Green Acres who tailored the original script then titled "Waldo" as a vehicle for Arnold the Pig who appeared on the series. The script remained un produced for several decades until it was eventually acquired by Sybil Robson for her company Robson Entertainment in 1993 10 years after Sommers and Chevillat had passed on. A re-write was subsequently done by Leslie Stevens who was credited as co-writer alongside Sommers and Chevillat with the latter two receiving story credit. The film was eventually acquired by Miramax and theatrically released in May 1995 where it opened at number 8 at the box office behind several holdovers and the number one opening of Crimson Tide and the film only wound up earning $3.9 million against a $6-7 million budget. Robson blamed the underperformance on the lackluster distribution with Miramax which coupled with the toxic threatening attitudes of one of Miramax's executives lead to Robson getting a settlement from the company (at least according to various news sites). All these years later Gordy has largely been forgotten with the exception of the occasional riffing by online comedians or semi-memetic appeal of one of its songs, but aside from that Gordy is harmless but it's also bland and sloppily constructed.
Despite the fact the movie went theatrical, the filmmaking has a very direct-to-video or TV movie of the week type feel with the opening shots of Meadowbrook coupled with the lackluster animal voiceover techniques just leaves the film feeling very lacking. Granted it's not the worst I've seen as projects like Going Bananas or Nukie featured similar scenes done to much poorer effect, but when compared against Disney's Homeward Bound remake which many of the same approaches Gordy did but with more polish this really doesn't cut it. But aside from the technical issues, the story also feels very disjointed with a number of false starts such as the country music family feeling like an unnecessary addition before Gordy winds up with the Royce's. There's also that element of Gordy's speech being able to be understood by Hanky which is built on pretty flimsy logic even by the standards of children's filmmaking and when the film goes into Gordy managing the company with Hanky as his translator (yes, really) it feels massively misguided for the kind of film it is because kids don't generally care about business dealings and marketing so I doubt they'll be all that enthused by scenes of Gordy appearing on Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser.
Gordy feels exactly like what it is: Cheap disposable children's entertainment. The fact that this had writers of Green Acres isn't all that surprising as the whole thing does have the feel of a pre-Rural Purge TV project that would've followed the same lines of Mr. Ed or Green Acres, but when you compare it to other animal centric movies from around the same time Gordy isn't worth a viewing especially when other pig centric movies like Charlotte's Web and Babe are right there and better.