High cockalorum!
The Water Babies is a 1978 live action-animated feature film, very loosely based on the classic children's novel The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby by Charles Kingsley.
When Tom, a 12-year-old Victorian chimney sweep, is framed for stealing, he makes a run for it and ends up jumping into a violent river. There he encounters a civilization of anthropomorphic underwater creatures. Before he can return to the surface and clear his name, however, he must help rescue his new friends, the Water Babies, from an evil shark who bears a striking resemblence to his cruel master, Mr. Grimes.
The Water Babies provides examples of the following tropes:
- The Alcoholic: Both Mr. Grimes and Masterman are drunk throughout most of the film.
- Adaptational Alternate Ending: In the original book, Tom and Elly end up resurrected in the then-present day, Tom becoming a successful 'man of science' who has no time for relationships, especially with Elly, However, in the film, Tom returns straight back to practically the same time as he left, with Lord Hanover taking Tom in to live with Elly as a reward for revealing the duplicity of Mr. Grimes, with no reference made to what happened to either of them next.
- Ambiguously Gay: Terence the seahorse, oh so much.
- And You Were There: The cartoon sea creatures are voiced by people Tom had met before in the real world.
- Animated Adaptation: Extremely loosely of The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby by Charles Kingsley, omitting over two-thirds of the book.
- Animated Credits Opening: The opening credits are done alongside a simple sequence depicting a young chimney sweep climbing through a maze of chimneys named 'A Story of a Little Chimney Sweep in the Year 1850'.
- Animated Musical
- Arc Words: The term "high cockalorum" is said by a number of the main characters, with each having their own interpretation of what it means.
- Artistic License – Physics: The heroes bombard the shark's underwater fortress by cutting chunks off an ice shelf that's floating overhead, and by dropping giant balls of ice. Apparently, ice only floats when it's really big in this movie.
- Big Bad: The killer shark in the animated segment and Mr. Grimes in the live action parts. They're kind of the same person.
- The novelization* outright makes them the same character. Grimes and Masterman flee from Harthover when they realize they have fallen under suspicion for the robbery. They try to escape by sea, fall out of their boat and are somehow transformed into a shark and an eel, later conveniently finding their way back to shore and regaining their human form in time for the final confrontation. No explanation is given for this (unlike with Tom, who is pretty clearly implied in both versions to be a lost Water Baby) and they're completely baffled by it. It also creates an Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole, since the Killer Shark's existence is already well-known to the inhabitants of the sea, which couldn't be the case if he had literally just appeared on the scene.
- Book Ends: The live action sequences open and close the film.
- Brave Scot: The appropriately named Jock the lobster.
- Canon Foreigner: A few characters were added: Jock, a Scottish lobster, Terence, an effeminate starstruck Seahorse, and Claude, a foppish French swordfish.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Lady Harriet, who has to be told exactly what her husband's job is despite being married to him for who knows how long.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Elly is golden haired and very kind to Tom right from the start. She helps clear his name when her uncle wants to hang him for the theft he was framed for.
- Hand Wave: The author in the original book handwaves the fact Tom and Elly never become a couple by saying that no-one below the rank of prince or princess ever marries in a fairy tale.note
- Karmic Death: Mr. Grimes tries to get Tom hanged for a theft he committed. Guess what's heavily implied to happen to him in the end.
- Limited Animation: Several sequences are obviously repeated.
- Magical Barefooter: The Water Babies are all barefoot and even Tom temporarily loses his footwear when he's transformed into a Water Baby.
- Meaningful Name: Mr. Grimes is filthy on the skin and in the heart.
- Medium Blending: The film opens and ends with live action Book Ends but the bulk is animated.
- Mysterious Past: The film briefly touches on Tom being a lost water baby, but never explains how he got lost and ended up on land.
- Never Say "Die": In both the movie and the original book, with one of the most notable versions showing a heartbroken Elly, due to Tom becoming a Water Baby, abruptly being 'given wings', all but implying that she was turned into an angel, so she could be reborn in the 20th century.
- Only One Name: Tom has no last name, since he has no parents.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Elly's Uncle John believes her when she tells him Tom was framed and immediately switches to trying to help Tom rather than arrest him.
- Undying Loyalty: Toby would follow Tom anywhere.
- Uptown Girl: Elly and Tom couldn't be more different from each other, socially-speaking —
- Tom's a street urchin with virtually no money to his name.
- Elly was clearly born into a very wealthy family—in fact, her family appears to be of nobility, as Elly's Uncle Johnnote is stated to be a Lord.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: What happened to the salmon after the otters started chasing them?
