The Fearless Four (film)

The film starts by introducing each of the four main characters. Buster, a bloodhound, doesn't want to hunt; he wants to sing. This gets him in trouble with his master, and he ends up running away. Next we meet Fred, a donkey whose master has chosen to replace him with a robot. Fred runs away from home as well.

The third character we meet is Gwendolyn, a graceful Siamese cat. (Oddly for a Siamese, she does not have blue eyes.) Her beloved owner, Aunt Wanda, has died. Aunt Wanda left behind two valuable jewels, but her heirs can't find them. They decide that the cat is hiding them, and try to kill her. She escapes, taking with her a lute which she has learned to play.

Buster and Fred each like to sing, and they decide to travel to a big city in order to see if they can become famous singers. They plan to go to Paris, but because a road sign is pointing the wrong way, they end up heading toward Bremen instead. Along the way they meet Gwendolyn, who is playing her lute and singing about how lonely she is. They invite her to join them on their journey, and she accepts. Lastly, the group meets Tortellini, a rooster who has just been thrown out of his home. He too is a singer, so he joins the others.

The four animals find Bremen to be a sad place; a large corporation called Mix Max, headed by the subtly-named Dr. Greed, essentially rules the city. There are NO SINGING signs posted all about, but the animals ignore them and begin singing for passersby on a street corner. A Mix Max official named Platini rides by; he overhears the singing animals and stops, intending to punish them, but when he hears how talented they are, he decides instead to put them to work for the company. He offers them a contract to sing a radio jingle for Mix Max. Tortellini announces that he is the group's leader (to the annoyance of the others), and he insists upon signing the contract immediately, without reading it. The singing animals are now known as The Fearless Four.

For a short time after this, things go well. They are shown singing the jingle in a recording studio and quickly becoming famous. Mix Max's main products are sausages, and sales skyrocket. But soon the animals grow tired of singing it over and over. They approach Platini, asking to perform their own songs, but he orders them to stick to their contract. When Gwendolyn asks how long it will be before the contract expires, Platini reveals that it is perpetual.

Angered by this, the next time they sing the Mix Max song, they use their own lyrics, mocking the company. For this they are all thrown into a dungeon. Fred is taken to a separate room where he is Tickle Tortured before being thrown in with the others. A friendly mouse called Mozart helps them escape. Once free, they discover that Mix Max is bringing in all sorts of animals in order to make more sausages, including cats and dogs. Horrified, the four animals decide they must find a way to stop this. They return to the Mix Max headquarters, apologize for escaping and ask Platini if they can have their jobs back. He agrees because sausage sales have dropped while they were away. Also, Dr. Greed is now running for President, and he feels that the singing animals might help his campaign. It is arranged for The Fearless Four to perform songs favoring his campaign at a live concert. In order to prevent the animals from using that opportunity to sabotage him, Dr. Greed has his pet snake watching over them. But Mozart saves the day again, showing up with a snake-charming flute. He puts the snake to sleep, so when the concert starts, The Fearless Four are free to say whatever they like. They reveal to the audience that the Mix Max corporation has been lying about its activities, and a riot ensues. The Mix Max officials retreat to their factory, but the four animals follow them, attack them and defeat them. Lastly, they free the animals which had been destined to become sausages.

The film ends with the four animals returning to the countryside. Gwendolyn purchases her old home and turns it into a refuge for the animals freed from the sausage factory after Tortellini pressed the remote's buttons causing the factory blow up; she also finds Aunt Wanda's jewels, hidden in the woman's portrait. The animals then have a party to celebrate their freedom.

In North America, the English version was released on Warner Home Video on May 7, 1998, however, the VHS went quickly out of print and remains extremely hard to find. Germany received a DVD release twice; A regular release, and one from Warner Kids (a label for Warner Bros. films that were family-friendly) using the original name, "Die Bremer Stadtmuzikanten";[5] neither DVD has any English audio option. A much easier to find PAL VHS was released in the United Kingdom on July 19, 1999. Despite the film being pretty much unknown in the United States and in most of the world, the English dub is currently available on sources such as Vudu,[6]iTunes,[7]Amazon Prime Video[8] and the Microsoft Store.[9] In 2018, South Korea released the film on DVD with an English dub in it. it is unknown if Warner Archive will bring out a Region 1 DVD or Blu-ray release in the United States.

Various scenes were deleted from the original version, or shortened, when the film was distributed outside Germany, as follows:[10]

- In the original version there are scenes in which Dr. Greed attempts to hire an assassin to kill the owner of a rival company. Those scenes were removed.

- The scene in which Fred is tortured by the "tickle torture" machine was greatly shortened in some versions outside Germany, and completely removed in others.

- There is a very awkward scene in the original in which Gwendolyn openly seduces Platini while singing a song. The scene was cut from international versions of the film, most likely due to the subject of a cat seducing a human suggesting bestiality.

- A brief shot in which a bee lands on a magazine photo of a woman's breast was eliminated.

- At the end of the film in the original version, the animals are shown drinking wine to celebrate their victory over Dr. Greed and his henchmen. The images of the animals drinking wine were removed from some international versions.

These changes reduced the run time of the film to about 81 minutes.

Stuffed animals,[11] a soundtrack,[12]Bullyland figures,[13]books and other items were produced for the film's release in Germany.

The film went on television in North America on Encore (Encore Wam).[14] It went on to television in France on channels such as AB3,[15] in the United Kingdom on Cartoon Network, YTV in Canada back in 2010, and Treehouse TV in 2013. This film aired on KidScene: HDNet Movies in March 2018, along with Cats Don't Dance and Inside Out.

Production on the film started in March 1995 (also was when Munich Animation was founded), and ended production in December 1996. 150 people from around the world worked on the film, which included animators from the computer animation field working on the backgrounds, The robot centaur (Powertool), and the vehicles. The animation for the hand drawn characters and objects were all colored digitally. The film was produced and recorded for an English audience, and was later dubbed into German for its original release.[16]

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• The Fearless Four on IMDb
• The Fearless Four at The Big Cartoon DataBase
• The Fearless Four at the TCM Movie Database