(I told you it’d be up very soon!)

It was the late 80’s, Disney were just about to unexpectedly create a Renaissance with four successful feature films (and one other film that is never remembered by anyone and is a sequel to The Rescuers), but before the world could truly consider the studio being back on form, they needed to get themselves out of the Dark Ages, and the failure of The Black Cauldron. And they managed to do that partly thanks to two guys: John Musker and Ron Clements. This duo went to CalArts, they were hired by Disney, they had done some animating on a few films, and in 1986 they made their directorial debut with The Great Mouse Detective, which is probably the real film that started the Disney Renaissance; it got them out of their rough spot, and it certainly gave them the confidence they needed in their animation department. So after this, Ron and John were thinking of story ideas for the next potential Disney film, and the story they really wanted to put to film was a re-imagining of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, but set in space (which I have already reviewed). But Eisner, Katzenberg and co. didn’t think it would be very profitable, so they offered the duo The Little Mermaid, and that was extremely successful. So into the 1990’s, Ron and John still had this idea of Treasure Island in space, but it was rejected again and they were offered Aladdin, and that was extremely successful too. Feeling pretty confident with themselves, Ron and John told the executives that now was the time to do this Treasure Island in space…but no, it just wasn’t thought to be a big seller. So the studio offered them a Greek myth idea, and so they reluctantly accepted – but only if their next project could be Treasure Island in space, assuming that the Greek myth idea was commercially successful.

And so it was, kind of. It did alright at the box office, and it did alright with the critics, but it was still treated the way Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame were before: they just weren’t the films of the early Disney Renaissance. And…I think it’s still liked today? Apparently some people hate it, and some people love it? I don’t know, I can’t really do my research on that. All I know is that I used to love the film as a kid; I remember getting up really early for the premiere on Disney Channel to record it off the TV, and I remember it all pretty well. So I came to it as an adult and…well, I think it’s changed, like a few other Disney films I’ve already reviewed.

Very very loosely based on Greek myth Hercules, the story is set in Ancient Greece, where Hercules is the son of Gods Zeus and Hera. Out of nowhere, Hades, Lord of the Underworld, wants to kill Hercules after hearing a prophecy that Hercules will one day defeat him. Only in order to kill him, he must turn the God mortal, which does happen, but his god-like strength remains inside of him. Learning of his past when he’s older, Hercules must go out on a journey, train himself up and become a ‘true hero’, but not until he defeats the many obstacles in his way.

Well, you can certainly tell that the directors of Aladdin directed this film – and in a way, this film is very similar to Aladdin…you could almost say that it is trying to be Aladdin. A few choice similarities the two films share are that they have a pretty modern feel to them, they have pop culture and movie references, you have a comedian voicing a main character, it’s more comedy than drama, the animation is very fast-paced and fluid. I focus mainly on the ‘modern comedy’ aspects because it’s what sticks out to me with these two films. With Aladdin, the modern references only come out of the Genie, who is a fantastical character who could be from any time period. In Aladdin, the modern-ness works. In Hercules, it really doesn’t. It’s really jarring to see all these modern jokes and references, particularly in the ‘Zero to Hero’ scene; did they really need to put the Hercules merchandising in, like the shoes and the drink and the mosaic billboard and the fan-girls? None of the modern-ness fits in this world because it’s Greek mythology, and there’s no place or reason for it. With the humour in general (as this film is more of a comedy), it’s kind of half-and-half: Pain and Panic are never funny, Phil isn’t really that funny, but Hades is really funny, and Meg has some good snarky lines too, even if they do seem a little modern.

Hades is starting to become a sort of classic Disney villain: a lot of people love this villain because he’s so funny and yeah, he is. Some fall flat, but it’s only some, and even though he might be the most modern character in the film, it…kind of works with the character: he’s a bargaining guy, a schemer, but has some anger management issues – and what would you expect when you’ve been exiled from all the other Gods? The animation on him is great too, I love it whenever he flips out and explodes and just goes straight back to his normal blue colour. Maybe my only problem with him is that sometimes he is too modern, and his comedy sometimes overshadows his villainy. Another character I love is Meg I’ve loved her since I was a kid, and I think I relate to her more as a teenager, and it’s because she’s pretty cynical when it comes to love. I won’t lie, I’m a cynical, jealous girl who hates every couple in the world because I’ll never know what it’s like for someone  to love me, and so I’ve got to like Meg quite a bit, with her ‘sometimes it’s better to be alone, so no one can hurt you’ look on love, though it is still quite a modern look. But I love her design, I love her voice actress and she’s a fresh Disney heroine – well, I guess she’s a little similar to Esmeralda.

As well as Meg, I like Hercules, but only as a teenager. I like my nice Disney heroes, and Hercules is your typical underdog, and a very clumsy one at that. But I was feeling sorry for him at first, and I love his ‘I Want’ song ‘Go the Distance’ – yeah, not many people like it, but I do! But then as soon as he becomes ‘adult’, and has done all his training, he just…changes, and I don’t like him as much – and it’s not because of his appearance. He jus t gets arrogant and big-headed, and he’s meant to be naïve but he just comes off as stupid. And I know that he’s meant to become arrogant because of all the fame he’s getting, but the whole time, I was thinking: ‘the teenage Hercules would never act like this!’ And sure, he does learn something by the end about becoming a true hero, and he’s revealed to be a total hopeless romantic, which is kind of cute (and Meg and Herc’s romance is okay), but it doesn’t seem like he’s learning anything at first. Once Zeus basically says: ‘You need to become a true hero and stop being an ass’, Hercules does have a bit of a moment where he wants to reject the fame – but when and after he’s with Meg, he gets all stupid and arrogant again! I would have much preferred it if the teenage Hercules led the rest of this story, and not this bland hero he becomes.

I think one of the things that possibly splits people’s opinions on this film is the music: some people absolutely love it, others outright hate it. I…am on the fence. I like most of the songs: as I said, I love ‘Go the Distance’, but I also love ‘I Won’t Say I’m in Love’, they’re probably my two favourites, but I would be lying if I thought that those songs fit in seamlessly with the gospel-inspired songs sung by the Muses that appear throughout the film. Like a lot of people, I wonder why the Disney studio chose to use gospel music and these Muses for the majority of the songs, and to me, the songs do add to the film’s modern feel.

Overall: There are things I like, such as certain characters and certain songs, but there are things I don’t like, such as certain characters, some of the humour and the all-round modern feel and references. I will give it points for trying something different, particularly in the overall design of the film, but when your film is more focused on comedy than drama and heart of the story, and the comedy isn’t that funny, I can’t love this film too much, like I did as a kid.

Next time, I’ll be reviewing…1940’s Pinocchio.

Quick recap on the package films again: package films were a collection of short subjects strung together to make one feature-length film made during and after WWII, when animated films with a feature-length story were becoming too expensive to make, and the studio were not financially stable after making ambitious films like Pinocchio, Fantasia and Bambi. With this package film, Disney and a team of artists and musicians were taken to South America, where they were intended to make an animated movie to be shown in the US, Central, and South America as part of the Good Neighbor Policy. And if you want to learn more about that, then I’m afraid you have to go somewhere else because I know nothing about it. I’m not knowledgeable in any historical events, so sorry for skimping on details; I’m here to give my opinion on Disney films, not explain the entire backstory of its production.

This film consists of four main segments, and each of them lasts about ten minutes, making this the shortest film in the Disney Animated Classics Collection. I had not seen this film before, all I knew was that it was about the culture in South America, and Goofy was in it (and it was only 42 minutes). And let’s get this out the way now: it’s a package film. There’s nothing particularly special about the package films. So don’t expect any overwhelming feelings about this one.

Lake Titicaca

The films starts with live-action footage of the Disney team getting on a plane and going to South America, and then seeing some of the culture of the people located in Peru. So I was thinking: ‘What? This is an animated film, right?’ But the animation does show up eventually, and the animated segment stars Donald Duck, in his first feature-length film, as a tourist trying to adjust to the South American culture. It’s a cute, funny scene; apparently Donald’s not as funny in this segment as he is in other separate shorts but, to be fair, I haven’t seen many Donald Duck shorts so I can’t judge. But I thought Donald was pretty funny here; I really liked Donald’s original voice in this segment, even though I’m used to the new voice; I still have no idea what he’s saying most of the time though.

Pedro

We then go back to live-action and move to Chile, where we don’t really get anything about their culture (maybe because the Disney team weren’t allowed cameras there?) but instead get an animated short about Pedro, a little plane who embarks on his first flight picking up air mail from Mendoza. This short feels the most like the package film shorts I’ve seen in Melody Time and Make Mine Music, only without the music; it reminds me the most of the ‘Little Toot’ short from Melody Time. I was not really fond of that short, and this one’s no different. It’s cute, but it’s nothing special.

El Gaucho Goofy

Cut back to live-action, and the Disney team are now in Argentina, where they are looking at the native Gauchos, who are sort of like Mexican cowboys. To educate the audience about the ways of the Gaucho, we are given a Goofy How-To short! …Well, it’s not really a How-To, but it’s pretty close: it’s got the narration, it’s got Goofy performing for the audience, Goofy barely talks, and it’s really funny. I think Goofy’s funny in anything, so maybe I’m a bit biased, but I chuckled all the way through this segment. Probably my favourite part is when Goofy is playing the guitar and singing: I was like: ‘Oh my God, Goofy has a great singing voice!’ But then it’s revealed that he’s just miming to a record player.

Aquarela do Brazil

The final segment takes place in Brazil, and it’s easily the best part of this film. It shows some live-action footage of a samba carnival in Rio, and then it goes into a segment almost like something from Make Mine Music, where visuals are put to the song ‘Aquarela do Brazil’ or simply ‘Brazil’: it’s a fun and energetic scene involving a paintbrush creatively painting out vibrant backgrounds, plants and animals. Donald Duck makes another appearance, and is introduced to José Carioca, who we would see more of in The Three Caballeros: I think I like José a lot more in this film than in The Three Caballeros, he just seems a lot more exciting in this first appearance. He then leads Donald into another song, ‘Tico-Tico no Fubá’, introducing him to the samba – and the song is so good; I couldn’t help but dance to it in my chair. I guess if The Three Caballeros is meant to be a spiritual sequel to Saludos Amigos, then this segment would be the overlapping of the two films.

Overall: I think it does get better by the end, but it’s still just a package film that isn’t really spectacular. It shouldn’t really be put with the other Disney Animated Classics, as it’s barely feature-length, but because it’s the first package film, you can’t really miss it out. This is probably only an animated Disney film to see just so you can say you’ve seen them all, like I’m doing.

Next time, I’ll be reviewing…1997’s Hercules.

It seems ironic that I would be reviewing Sleeping Beauty right after I reviewed The Black Cauldron, as I mentioned in that review that I felt The Black Cauldron reminded me quite a bit of Sleeping Beauty, and there are plenty of similarities: they’re both fantasy stories, both spent a long time in production, both very pretty unique styles in the art direction, both very ambitious, both presented in Technirama, both financial failures. Only one film is much more superior than the other.

Sleeping Beauty was probably the animated film that Disney took the longest to make until The Black Cauldron, with story work dating back to 1951, finally completed for an early 1959 release – and with an ambitious film like this, it was going to take a lot of time to get it done. Because Disney had already made two Princess films, in Snow White and Cinderella, Walt Disney wanted his third Princess film to have a different look and so, for the first time, he hired one main person to supervise the entire look of the film: Eyvind Earle, who was put in charge of the colours and backgrounds of the film. Disney just let Earle have full control over the style, which didn’t please the animators who were used to contributing their own little style to the settings and characters – but at this point, Walt was past caring. In this 50’s – 60’s period, this was the film Disney was probably least involved in, though he would still come in and give the final say on ideas and decisions made. Again, he was off sorting out his theme parks and live-action films; in fact, the live-action The Shaggy Dog, released the same year as Sleeping Beauty, made much more money. Poor Sleeping Beauty barely made its money back, and got mixed reviews too, with criticisms of its slow pace and lack of character development. However, the film is still very popular now, with some hailing it as one of the best animated films ever made: Princess Aurora is still popular Maleficent is still popular, even the main castles in Disneyland California and Disneyland Paris are Sleeping Beauty’s castle, and not Cinderella’s. The film is also currently my 4-year-old cousin’s favourite Disney movie.

Based on Charles Perrault’s fairy tale, the story is of three fairies: Flora, Fauna and Merryweather, three Good fairies who are invited to the celebration of the newborn Princess Aurora. Each fairy grants Aurora a gift, but before Merryweather can give her gift, the evil fairy Maleficent puts a curse on the newborn baby that on her sixteenth birthday, when she pricks her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel, she will die. Merryweather changes the curse so that instead of dying, the princess will stay in a deep sleep. But while Maleficent is still around, the fairies must protect the princess from her, and so they decide to hide her away in the forest until the sixteenth birthday, when the princess is returned to the King and Queen.

Um, this wasn’t one I watched a lot as a kid: I certainly remember watching it (we recorded it off the TV, so I remember where the ad breaks were when watching this time), but not a lot. But I had actually seen this since my childhood: when I was about 16, I discovered a lot of classic Disney films on YouTube, put up in parts and I watched Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Pinocchio – however, the films weren’t really fresh in my head, so it still felt like I hadn’t seen the film since I was a kid. This was one of the films I was looking forward to quite a bit in the Disneython, and I was not let down; it’s a great Disney classic.

As I said, some people consider this as one of the best animated films ever made, or the best Disney film of the Silver Age, and if it was solely based on the visuals, then this film would definitely live up to those titles. Oh my God, this movie looks gorgeous. Its unique and very stylised visuals are probably the best part of this film: with the film being presented in Technirama, it gave the artists more space on the screen to create and put more detail into the backgrounds. Walt Disney wanted the film to look like a living painting, inspired by medieval tapestries and paintings, and it really makes the visuals stand out from all the other Disney films. While I compared The Black Cauldron to this film, there are actually some parts in Sleeping Beauty where I compare it to Fantasia, the most ambitious film from Disney’s Golden Age; there’s a particular part at the beginning where the fairies are granting their wishes, and there’s sort of daydream-like visuals on the screen that resemble the swirling universe in the ‘Rite of Spring’ segment. Some people criticised that the backgrounds in the film were so lavish and detailed that the characters were swallowed up in them being too distracting, but I didn’t really see that when I watched it. I could watch the characters and still be awe-struck at the backgrounds at the same time.

Along with the beautiful visuals, this film showcases possibly the most beautiful-looking Prince and Princess in Disney history. Now, I’m sorry if I’m coming across as shallow/weird for finding animated characters attractive (you should be used to it), but I just have to address it: Princess Aurora is so undeniably beautiful; I know most of the Disney princesses are pretty, but God, they don’t have nothing on Aurora! I personally think that Aurora looks a little bit like Winona Ryder, but I think I’m the only person on the planet who thinks this. I’ve said that my favourite Disney princesses are Ariel and Rapunzel, but I’d say Aurora’s probably next on my list, in terms of appearances…because she doesn’t really have a personality in this film. True, she’s in the film for less than twenty minutes, but she’s sort of your standard princess, more like Snow White than Cinderella…which is sort of taking a step back in terms of Disney princesses. However, the Disney Prince moved forward in this film – yes, the Prince actually has a name in this one! He’s also given a bit more personality – not much, but a bit more. And he’s probably the prettiest Disney Prince, but that just comes with the Prince package. But let’s be fair, all Disney Princes and Princesses are pretty gorgeous, so I can’t actually choose a best-looking couple. Okay, I’ll stop now.

So this movie may not have the best Prince and Princess, but it arguably has the best Disney villain: Maleficent. Everyone loves this villainess, and it’s hard not to. She’s a classy villain but she can lose her temper at times, she’s elegant but she can be reckless, she’s so confident that she is evil, she even calls herself ‘The Mistress of All Evil’ (she’s actually pretty hot too). However she doesn’t necessarily have the best motivation: you got snubbed at a birthday party, so you put a curse on the newborn baby? Though, you could probably argue that Maleficent didn’t cause havoc because she wasn’t invited but because she’s just evil and likes to cause havoc; she didn’t seem too bothered by her not being invited, it was almost like a sarcastic ‘I feel quite distressed that I wasn’t invited’. And you’ve got to love a sarcastic villain. But there is one thing that puts her above all the other Disney villains: she creates possibly the best climax scene in a Disney film. About half-way through the film, I started asking myself: ‘When’s the climax in Maleficent’s castle coming up, and is it going to be the best part of the film?’ Not that I wasn’t enjoying the film, there just wasn’t much happening. The climax is very good: from the moment the fairies arrive at the castle to the fight between Prince Philip and Maleficent as a dragon is great; that fight was animated by good old action-man, Wolfgang Reitherman. The only problem I really have in the climax is when Flora tells Prince Philip: ‘The road to true love may be buried by still many more dangers, which you alone will have to face’ …But we’re just gonna help you with our magic, anyway. But if you can get past that, then it’s a very good climax.

So speaking of the fairies, they are actually the main characters in this film, if you think about it. They do all the work, they make all the decisions, they are the real protagonists of this story; so I guess this is the first time Disney has had the supporting comic relief characters be the stars of the film, and it actually works. All three fairies are extremely likeable, they all have distinct personalities and they all have their funny moments. Probably my favourite is Fauna, the fairy in green, because she’s the most like me.

While I do like the whole film, I have to nitpick that in the first half of the film nothing really happens: the fairies try to make a dress and a cake, and Aurora has one scene in the woods where she meets Prince Philip. I guess that it’s to show what life has been like for the past sixteen years, and it’s build-up to when the fairies have to take Aurora back to her parents, but still, it takes up about twenty minutes; I was surprised to realise that Aurora doesn’t prick her finger until fifty minutes into the film! So those twenty minutes in the cottage and the woods feel a bit slow, particularly Aurora singing and walking round the woods with her animal friends. And then, just before Aurora is taken back to her parents, there’s a four-minute scene between the two Kings that really isn’t needed plot-wise, but I guess it does show that Aurora’s father, King Stefan, is actually a pretty good guy: he cares about his daughter, and doesn’t want her to get married so quickly, while King Hubert has sorted everything out for Aurora and Philip already; she is only sixteen, after all (but even then, she does still get married by the end of the film). But that scene could have been taken out, and the film could have gone straight to the fairies taking Aurora back…however, now I think about it, at the end of the two Kings’ scene, there’s a bit where Prince Philip comes and tells his father he’s going to marry a peasant – I don’t know, is that needed? Could that have been taken out too? I guess so, because when the fairies put the whole kingdom to sleep (in a really nice sequence), Flora finds out from King Hubert that Philip has fallen in love with Aurora… Okay, so maybe the scene is needed, I take back what I said.

Overall: The story is fairly simple (with it being a fairy tale), so there are some comedy parts to pad out the 75 minutes, but the characters shine through, as they should in a Disney film, there’s a great climax and ending, and again, there’s no denying that it looks so downright beautiful. One of the most visually gorgeous Disney films, Sleeping Beauty could be classed as an ‘artsy’ film, much like Fantasia, and there’s nothing wrong with that, I don’t think.

Next time, I’ll be reviewing…1942’s Saludos Amigos.

In the 1980’s, things at Disney’s animated studios were not going too well: it was a battle between the old staff, who had worked with Walt Disney himself and knew what he would have wanted, and the new staff, who wanted to get away from the ‘traditional’ type of Disney films that had been released in the 60’s and 70’s. This new team wanted to make darker, more adult animated films, and they did so with The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron. The latter had actually been in production for over a decade, since Disney got the rights to Lloyd Alexander’s book series in 1971, but didn’t get released until the summer of 1985. It was meant to be the Snow White of a new generation, being incredibly ambitious with a big budget; it was the most expensive animated movie ever made at that point. But the studio also wanted to make a Disney film geared towards teenage boys, and older audiences in general, as the new team felt that teenagers wouldn’t be seen dead going to see a Disney movie. When the film was finally set to be released in the fall of 1984, Ron Miller, Walt Disney’s nephew and chairman of the studio, was ousted and Michael Eisner and Frank Wells were introduced into the studio, bringing Jeffrey Katzenberg along with them as chairman of the animation studio…which didn’t help matters, as none of them were particularly interested/had no experience in animation. When Katzenberg saw the finished product that was The Black Cauldron, he demanded to edit it, cutting out ten minutes of the darker, more intense scenes; even with the cuts, he still felt like The Black Cauldron was not a very marketable film for Disney. Editing a fully-completed animated film had never been heard of at this time, and Katzenberg’s editing put him on the bad side of the Disney animators, but the film was finally released in 1985 with disastrous results.

The Black Cauldron? How about the black sheep of the Disney Animated Classics Collection. This was the first Disney film to have no musical numbers in it. This was the first Disney film to get a PG rating. This was the Disney film that is considered to be one of Disney’s biggest failures, if not the biggest failure. With its big budget, The Black Cauldron failed to make its budget back, making just over $21 million; it did so poorly, that The Care Bears Movie actually made more money than it, released just a few months before. Disney were (and are still) ashamed of The Black Cauldron’s failure, and so they tried to forget all about it, not issuing a VHS release for it until 1998 (only out of requests from fans of the film); Disney still don’t give it much attention today: you never see the film anywhere in its theme parks, you never see any toys or merchandise from it, it’s got one Special Edition DVD release in 2010, it probably won’t get a Blu-Ray release. I think this film is only remembered because of its infamous reputation as being known as the ‘worst Disney film’. Apparently it has a cult following, and more and more people are finding it, but mostly people aren’t really fond of it.

Based on two books of the Chronicles of Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander, the story is about Taran, a young pigkeeper who has a pig who can see into the future. The pig’s obviously very special, and it turns out that the Horned King is after the pig to see if it can reveal the whereabouts of the black cauldron, which the Horned King plans to use to summon up an undead army to help him rule the world. So Taran, with the help of Princess Eilonwy and a musician named Fflewddur Fflam, must rescue the pig and destroy the cauldron before the Horned King can get to it.

Is The Black Cauldron Disney’s worst film? For me, it’s not. I have seen Chicken Little. But it is by no means a good movie; it’s alright, at best. And yet there’s something I like about this movie, and I don’t know what it is. As a young kid, I didn’t watch it much, but it wasn’t until I kept seeing the advert for it on my Disney videos that I rented it out and watched it when I was about 10, 11 years old, and I think I liked it; I particularly liked Eilonwy, and I loved Gurgi. But I hadn’t seen it since until now, and I realised that when I was watching it, I could remember every scene…and while I wasn’t enjoying it (I don’t think), I still wanted to keep watching. I don’t know, there’s just something about the film that keeps me watching; maybe it’s some form of nostalgia or something.

The one thing I am sure of with my opinions of this film is that it doesn’t feel like a classic Disney film to me…and yet this is one that should feel like a classic Disney film: it’s a fantasy, it has knights and sorcery, it has talking animals (well, one), it has fairies, it was witches; it reminds me a lot of Sleeping Beauty, Disney’s other ambitious project that didn’t fare too well. But I can recognise where it doesn’t feel like a Disney film: firstly, no songs (and I don’t really think the movie could be improved if it did have songs), and secondly, the point that pretty much everyone agrees on, it’s too dark. Now, Disney can be dark, they have had dark aspects to their films, but I don’t think they’ve ever been as dark as this. I shall just say this: the titular black cauldron is used for evil to summon up an undead army, and the only way for it to be destroyed is if a living being takes their life and throws themself into the cauldron. Yeah, you weren’t finding any of that in earlier Disney films; probably the closest it’s gone to being that dark is the ‘Night on Bald Mountain’ sequence in Fantasia, which I love…however, you could argue that Pinocchio is full of dark stuff, but I put that type of darkness in a separate category to the dark aspects in The Black Cauldron, for some reason.

The darkest thing, apart from the matter of the black cauldron itself, is the villain in the Horned King. Well, he certainly looks terrifying, and I’m pretty sure he scared many unsuspecting children watching this film. When I saw it as a kid, I wasn’t scared of him, I always thought he was really cool, and the undead army was really cool; then again, I wasn’t affected by many dark things in Disney as a kid. As an adult, the Horned King still looks creepy, and his voice is great, but he’s hardly the best Disney villain. He just doesn’t do anything throughout the film; he can’t even get his undead army off the draw-bridge before he’s thwarted by our hero. His death is pretty creepy, but it’s over too quickly: speaking of the editing earlier on, Katzenberg edited the most out of the climax, where the ‘Cauldron-born’ are unleashed and the Horned King is defeated, and I think it would have been better if the climax was longer – at least get the undead army out and causing harm! Oh, and I just have to mention that the Horned King loses his scary appearance in the climax: he gets little black pupils in his red eyes, and I think it makes him look really goofy. Throughout the film, his eyes are just black, or they’re glowing red softly, but once he gets angry, he gets these pupils and it makes him look unthreatening. Go and find his death scene and see what I mean.

With the rest of the characters, well, they’re one of the biggest faults of the movie. There are no characters here that are memorable, or well-developed, or even likeable; I just don’t care for any of these characters. With our main character, Taran: I like how he looks, and I like his name, and there are some points in his animation that are pretty good. And that’s it. He’s useless in this story, he shouldn’t be our hero – and when he’d daydreaming about being a knight and enamoured by everyone, I kept thinking: ‘Why do you think you’re gonna get to that place when you don’t do anything!’ And then by the end of the movie, he’s just like: ‘Oh, okay, let’s go back home and continue being a pig-keeper’. What?? Eilonwy has a nice design and voice, but there’s nothing interesting about her; she doesn’t need to be a princess, as Doug Walker mentioned in his Disneycember review, so I don’t think of her as a princess – oh, and I don’t like her facial animation, it’s not very good at all. I don’t care for Fflewddur, I don’t care for the fairies, I don’t care for the witches. They actually drop some characters throughout the film without any explanation: once the fairies give Hen-Wen, the pig, back to Taran, they’re gone for the rest of the film, except for one. But the one fairy, Doli, just bails out on the gang before the climax: he literally just goes: ‘Well, you’re all useless, and I give up!’ and then just disappears. He then doesn’t appear until the end of the film with Hen-Wen showing Dallben, Taran’s guardian, the future; Dallben says: ‘You did well, my boy’, and then Doli just says ‘Yep’. What??

…I’m undecided on Gurgi. While he certainly doesn’t annoy me as much as he does everyone else, I don’t…love him, but I don’t like him – I don’t know, he’s not annoying, but he’s not endearing. One thing I would have added to the ending is to keep Gurgi dead (sorry, if you haven’t seen the movie and/or want to), but I knew that if they did, there wouldn’t be a happy ending, and I wouldn’t know how the movie could have ended with a ‘bittersweet’ tone. When the witches give Gurgi back to Taran and Eilonwy and Fflewddur in exchange for the useless cauldron, they should have just given them the corpse; seeing as they’ve been given something that’s of no use to them, they should have given them something back that’s of no use. I’m not familiar with the original book series, so I don’t know what properly happens at the end of the story, but apparently this movie pretty much botched up the whole plot from the original books anyway so it doesn’t matter.

Overall: The Black Cauldron is not Disney’s worst film, but merely a mediocre one, without any memorable stand-out moments or characters, which are essential to classic Disney films. And yet, I still find something about it that can’t make me hate it; I don’t want to be too hard on it. Maybe it’s because it had a lot of effort put into it, despite all the trouble and difficulty in its production. It’s just an unintentional mess. If it’s not remembered for its characters and (lack of) charm, it will always be remembered as Disney’s black sheep.

Next time, I’ll be reviewing…1959’s Sleeping Beauty.

…Um, well, there’s not much to say about Brother Bear’s background. It was first developed in 1994, and was intended to be very similar to The Lion King, in that it had a very dramatic storyline with elements of the Shakespeare play King Lear. …And the working title was ‘Bears’. Wow, Disney, you couldn’t think of anything better? It was the third and final film made solely at Disney’s Feature Animation Studio in Disney-MGM Studios in Florida, it was released in the early 2000’s, when Disney’s animated films weren’t making that much money, and people were growing out of traditionally-animated films and flocking to CGI films like Shrek and Ice Age, the latter having quite a few similarities to Brother Bear (even though the Disney film went into production before the Blue Sky film): both involve Paleolithic-era Inuit people (even though Brother Bear takes place after the ice age), and both plots focus on a road-trip/journey of some type. Brother Bear made a bit more money than its predecessor, Treasure Planet, and it was considered to be fairly successful; however, if you think about it now, its total box office number is the budget of one of Disney’s most recent features, Tangled. It didn’t help that critics were still giving mixed reviews, and it seemed that at this point, the Disney animation studio could not do anything about their string of unpopular animated features; Brother Bear was meant to be the very last traditionally-animated film from Disney, however it was pushed forward because of problems in the Home on the Range production. Would it have been better if Brother Bear ended Disney’s catalogue of traditionally-animated films? Well, I haven’t reviewed Home on the Range yet, but even if Brother Bear is (most likely) better, it’s not really the highest note to go out on.

The story is of Kenai, a young man who gets given a totem representing what he must achieve to become a man…and he needs to achieve love, and his totem is of a bear. To make things worse, a bear comes out of nowhere and steals the tribe’s food, leading Kenai to go after it and kill it – but he’s not going without his brothers, Sitka and Denahi. When Sitka gives his life for his brothers while the bear survives, Kenai goes out again to kill it, this time to avenge his brother’s death. But when he is successful, the spirit of Sitka comes down and transforms Kenai into a bear as punishment. So with the help of another bear called Koda, Kenai must make a journey back to the mountain where he was transformed and learn the lesson of love that was bestowed upon him.

Before I go on, this is going to be another pretty short review because I didn’t particularly care for this film. I loved it as a kid, I remember watching the DVD so much (I didn’t see it in the cinemas so saw it for the first time on DVD)…but now, it’s just alright. I didn’t particularly care for any of the characters, the humour is hit-and-miss and I don’t think Kenai did learn the lesson of love by the end of the movie. Maybe because I had watched it so much as a kid, I wasn’t wowed by it – but then again, I watched The Little Mermaid and Aladdin way more times, and those films still entertain me. Maybe I was just tired while watching it: I watched this when I got home from my first day back at college, and so all I wanted to do was just get into bed and sleep (just so you know now, I’ll put a separate blog post up later, but now I’ve started college again and I’ll need time to work, some of the Disneython reviews will be a bit short or lacklustre…like this one is).

I’m bringing Doug Walker up again, because he said in his Disneycember review that he absolutely loved the first twenty minutes of Brother Bear; I don’t absolutely love it, but I do like it. It does show the film’s roots as being more dramatic like The Lion King: heck, a (very likeable) character that we’ve gotten to know dies in the first thirteen minutes! The brothers have a good chemistry and the setting and lifestyle of these people is established very well too – and of course, the movie looks incredible. I didn’t realise that the movie actually changes aspect ratio after Kenai’s transformation, but the art style definitely changes too, in terms of characters at least. I have to mention the transformation scene because for me, it was the big stand-out part and probably my favourite part of the film. The song used is fantastic, there’s some great effects and it’s almost breath-taking when you watch it. If you haven’t seen this film and don’t particularly plan to, just take a look at the Transformation scene here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iSKQr6rnbs

But once Kenai turns into a bear, they really shove in the comic relief and the wacky characters that aren’t needed. Rutt and Tuke, the two moose, are the ‘main’ comic relief side characters and I didn’t care for them; it was kind of nice to see them have a dramatic moment and that their brotherly relationship tied in with Kenai and Koda’s brotherly relationship, but other than that, they’re a bit annoying. Speaking of the main brotherly relationship…I don’t know how to feel about it. Yeah, I guess it does work…it seems like they act like brothers, but there’s something that I can’t really put my finger on that doesn’t feel genuine about it to me, just like I think Kenai never really learnt the lesson of love by the climax of the film. Their love-hate relationship seems to be more hate than love to me, and it’s sometimes jarring to see them getting along (only a little) one moment, and then having an argument the next. I think it felt more like a friendship than a close brotherly relationship.

Another thing I’ll say is that I like the songs. Like with Tarzan, apparently people don’t like Phil Collins’ songs that much, but even though they’re not as good as the songs in Tarzan, these Brother Bear songs are the ones I grew up with that I know so well. My favourite is the Transformation Song that I mentioned earlier.

Overall: What I said above: it’s just alright. There were some parts that I liked, particularly the first twenty minutes, and there’s some good emotion and intensity in scenes, but there’s nothing else about it that’s really memorable.

Next time, I’ll be reviewing…1985’s The Black Cauldron.

Winnie the Pooh is Disney’s most recent animated film (at the time of this post), and it’s a rare thing indeed. It’s a traditionally animated film that has no real big names voicing the characters, it’s just over an hour long and it’s a sequel to one of Disney’s package films from the 1970’s. This is the second film from Disney’s ‘new-and-improved’ animation studio, that is to say new-and-improved since John Lasseter became chief creative officer and brought traditional animation back to the studio, however, according to Wikipedia, it will be the last Disney animated film to use traditional animation. If this is so, I am going to sit in a corner and cry for several hours, and then move on with my life. So, as I said when I reviewed the first Winnie the Pooh movie in the Disney Classics Collection, Winnie the Pooh was created by English author A.A Milne, Walt Disney licensed the rights to the characters and stories, Disney made three short Winnie the Pooh featurettes and created a package film of the three shorts in 1977, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Thirty-five years have passed, and Winnie the Pooh is probably Disney’s most popular franchise, so popular that the studio decided to make a sequel…and it was a modest financial success, however it wasn’t the best idea to release your film the same weekend as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. And to be fair, not every kid wanted to see Winnie the Pooh: they were more interested in films like Cars 2, and Kung Fu Panda 2 and…The Smurfs. But the families who didn’t/haven’t seen this film are really missing out because I thought this film was fantastic – yeah, I’m an adult, obviously the first time watching this film, I freaking loved it.

With nothing really connecting to the original Winnie the Pooh shorts, there are two stories here that our beloved characters take part in: one is a story in which Eeyore loses his tail, and so his friends try their best to find a replacement, and the other is a story in which the gang believe that Christopher Robin has been abducted by a terrifying monster called the ‘Backson’. But these stories aren’t told separately, like in The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh; they put them together into one timeline, although it does begin with one story, forgets about it to go onto the second story, and then comes back to the first story at the end.

Again, all the characters are so strong and they carry this film on their shoulders; it helps to have a Disney veteran who was actually an animator on one of the original Winnie the Pooh featurettes work on the film as the storyboard artist, so there was no worry that the characters would not act the way they should. I think every person working on this film was passionate about keeping the original charm of the earlier featurettes, and they didn’t fail at that at all. I was very happy with how they used the characters in this film because 1. There’s more Eeyore and 2. There’s more Piglet. Eeyore has more depressing things to say, and I was just laughing at all of them (I feel so bad for saying that); he has a bit of a subplot with Tigger, which is kind of cute but I felt a bit sorry for what Tigger puts him through in the song number between them. Piglet gets put through a lot of pain too in one scene, which I didn’t like; how dare you show poor Piglet in pain! I also got my cute Piglet moment in the film, when he runs off and gets a flower and thinks it’s pretty.

But the film doesn’t forget to focus on Pooh, who is still the main character, and he still just wants his honey: that’s all he wants out of his life. He actually has that generic character formula to him: he wants something, he tries to get it, he is constantly thwarted, he succeeds in the end. He also has kind of has this in Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, but I was feeling sorry for Pooh, and rooting for him more in this film to get his honey because you can see that his lack of honey is affecting him negatively: from the beginning of the film, he doesn’t get to have any honey, and throughout the film, he gets hungrier and hungrier, his stomach-rumbling is getting worse, and he is so starving with hunger that he actually starts to hallucinate – only it’s not as scary as ‘Heffalumps and Woozles’, it’s a nice hallucination. And all the while I was just shouting: ‘Give Pooh his honey!!’ I know he’s a stuffed animal, but he’s gonna die if he doesn’t eat something soon! But thankfully, he does get to eat by the end of the film, I don’t think I’m giving much of a spoiler there.

The rest of the characters are again all likeable – even Rabbit’s a little bit nicer in this film; I thought he was a lot funnier in this, too. And I thought this film was really funny: I was laughing so much at parts of this film. And I think the funniest part is that all the film’s conflict is caused by just how stupid all the characters are – and I mean, all of them, even Owl and Rabbit, and I thought Owl was pretty smart! There’s actually a part in ‘The Backson Song’ where Owl seems to have a bit of sense, and it made me laugh really hard, but he just ignores it and carries on being stupid with the rest of them. I went past the point of being annoyed by it and was just laughing at it; it sort of added to the charm. The fourth-wall jokes return in this, using the storybook format once again, and there’s probably even more character interaction with the book than in The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. John Cleese is the narrator in this, and he’s wonderful; they couldn’t have gotten anyone better.

If I have to nitpick, I would nitpick about the new voices for the characters. Obviously, they couldn’t get all of the original actors to voice the characters from 1977, so they used most of the voice actors from the more recent Winnie the Pooh films like Winnie the Pooh’s Most Grand Adventure, The Tigger Movie, Piglet’s Big Movie e.t.c. (I have only seen The Tigger Movie out of that set of films). I wasn’t bothered by Pooh and Piglet’s voices: Jim Cummings has been doing Pooh for a while now, so he’s got it down to an art, he’s just as good as Sterling Holloway. Piglet’s voice is sometimes similar to the original, but sometimes it’s too high-pitched; he sounds like a little girl when he’s shouting. Jim Cummings has also been doing the voice of Tigger for a while, but at some points his voice sounded a bit off…and his Tigger is the voice I’m most familiar with! This voice kept reminding me of Ray, who Cummings voiced in The Princess and the Frog. Eeyore’s voice was a bit of a surprise but I got used to it, and I think Tom Kenny (Spongebob Squarepants) did a pretty good job as Rabbit, but I don’t think Owl’s voice sounds like the original, however I’m not even that familiar with the original. He’s voiced by Craig Ferguson, who is apparently a famous comedian and TV host (who has done a few voices for animation recently). And I don’t really care about Kanga and Roo’s voices, I’m fine with them; the voice of Kanga is actually one of the songwriters in this film.

Which brings me to the songs, and they are all really, really good. They were written by Robert Lopez and his wife, Kristen, and Robert Lopez is the Tony-Award-winning Broadway musical writer responsible for the songs in Avenue Q and The Book of Mormon…and considering the type of humour in those musicals, you’d be horrified to find out that one of the songwriters wrote the songs for a movie starring Winnie the Pooh. But Lopez’ music at least does have that light-hearted, catchy sound that fits into the Hundred Acre Wood universe perfectly. …I think my favourite is the ‘Everything is Honey’ song, which is the song Pooh sings in his hallucination scene. Zooey Deschanel also has a few songs in this film as well and, while I find Zooey Deschanel and her voice annoying, she’s tolerable singing the ‘Winnie the Pooh’ title song and an original song during the end credits.

My biggest problem is of course that the film is just way too short: why were there only two stories, there should have been more! This film is just over 60 minutes, they could have used fifteen or twenty more minutes to add another little story in there, and of course, I want to see more of these characters! Give me more of these characters, movie! And give me more traditional animation! If it’s not obvious by now, I prefer hand-drawn animation (and stop-motion) far more than CGI animation (with some exceptions *cough* Pixar), and it’s really nice to see such fantastic animation on these classic characters. Renaissance-era animators Andreas Deja, Mark Henn and Eric Goldberg returned to animate Tigger, Pooh and Christopher Robin and Rabbit, and it’s fantastic, like I said. I particularly liked Eric Goldberg’s animation on Rabbit, and I noticed something in that at some points, where Rabbit is just downright hysterical, there are blue circles round his pupils and they’re only there for a frame or two, but I thought it was a really cool touch. See, even the paragraph stating my problems ends with something else I love about the film.

Overall: If you’re a fan of the original Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, or any of the earlier Winnie the Pooh films, then you will love this, as it captures the charm of the original characters with no real modern touches to it what-so-ever, except the cleaner animation. And even if you’re not a big fan, like I am, you can still love it: I loved this film, and I just wish there could be more kids’ films like this nowadays. And if this is the last traditionally-animated film ever to be made by Disney, then this is a pretty good way to go out.

Next time, I’ll be reviewing…2003’s Brother Bear.

It was the start of the 60’s, and the start of a new sort of style for Disney – the three films released in the 60’s are still part of the Silver Age, but there was a new look and process to the animated Disney films. 101 Dalmatians introduced the Xerox process, replicating the animators’ sketches directly onto cells, making it cheaper and wasting less time inking; the ‘sketchy’ look would be used for the next six films the studio released over two decades. Walt Disney never particularly liked this look, but he was past caring at this point. He was losing interest in his animation part of his ever-growing company: there was even talks of closing the animation studio down, but Disney couldn’t bring himself to do that; he still had a soft spot for animation. So he kept the animation studio going, but the next feature film had to be much cheaper, after the financial failure of Sleeping Beauty. And the film made back its money, and was probably Disney’s most popular animated film in this ‘sketchy’ style behind The Jungle Book, getting numerous re-releases.

Based on the novel by Dodie Smith, it is the story of two Dalmatians, Pongo and Perdita, who belong to Roger and Anita, living in 1960’s London. Perdita has a litter of fifteen puppies, who Cruella DeVil, Anita’s old schoolmate, wants to capture and make into a Dalmatian fur coat, as she ‘lives’ for fur. So once her henchmen kidnap the puppies, and the humans have done all they can to search for them, it’s up for the dogs to make the journey and save the puppies.

I’m afraid I don’t have much to say about this one, because I don’t really care for it. I did watch it as a kid, but it wasn’t my favourites. It’s just one of those nice, harmless Disney films that came out during the 60’s and 70’s with no real ambition; it’s just a pleasant little film that doesn’t stand out to me. It seems like a lot of people still really like this film, but I guess I just think it’s okay.

I think I liked the first twenty minutes the most; when I was watching the opening credits and remembering the music, I was liking it. I love the beginning with Pongo’s voice-over and trying to get Roger and him a girlfriend each, and that’s very cute, and then the two couples meet, and that’s very cute. And it’s all happy and pleasant until Cruella DeVil makes a visit, causing Roger to create a song about her right on the spot – I wish I could think up a song as good as that off the top of my head. I did find Roger to be pretty funny in that scene with his song intruding in on Anita and Cruella’s meeting. I didn’t realise that Cruella’s entrance was pretty funny too: when Anita asks how she’s doing, she replies with: ‘Oh, miserable, darling, as usual, perfectly wretched!’

Which brings me onto Cruella: she is by far the most interesting character in this, and is the most popular and memorable character to come out of the film. Anita calls her ‘eccentric’ at one point in the film but oh no, I don’t think that: she’s more like a total psychopath. I seriously was a little disturbed by her in this film, she just comes off as being insane: she waltzes around, putting on a show, she maniacally laughs at nothing, she talks to herself, and she’s just so determined to get these puppies for her coat…it’s just a fur coat, lady. I really want to know what happened to her in the past to make her like this. But she is what makes the film interesting, and her craziness kept me going for the rest of the film; she also makes the car chase in the climax a bit more exciting, because she just becomes so mad and psychotic. I was wondering who animated her out of the Nine Old Men, and I thought it was Milt Kahl or Frank Thomas, but I was surprised to find out that it was Marc Davis, who animated Cinderella and Flower from Bambi. However, I did also find out that he animated Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty earlier, so it makes sense.

But as I said, she was what kept me going because once the conflict actually starts when the puppies get kidnapped, I found myself losing interest with the bland characters. The puppies have no personalities and so I’m not as concerned about them, although the fact that they’re puppies makes you have at least a bit of concern about them being harmed. The only other character I really like is Sergeant Tibbs the cat – typical, in a film focused on dogs, I have to like the cat – but I only really like him because of his voice…I guess I like that he’s hard-working and never gives up on his mission to save the puppies.

…And because I don’t really have anything else to say, I’ll just say that I did love a bit in the ending where Pongo and Perdita have returned home with 99 puppies; Anita asks: ‘Where did they all come from?’ Roger looks at Pongo and exclaims happily: ‘Pongo, you old rascal!’ Hehehe, naughty Disney.

Overall: It’s just okay, it’s just a nice little film. Nothing really special (except for maybe having the most psychotic Disney villain), it’s just…a Disney film, and it’s not really captivating.

Next time, I’ll be reviewing…2011’s Winnie the Pooh.

Considered to be one of Disney’s darkest, ballsiest films, Hunchback was made around the same time Pocahontas was being made, so Disney were still wanting to make their films epic dramas, after The Lion King made a ton of money. Perhaps Victor Hugo’s novel was too much of an epic drama for a Disney adaptation, as many people questioned how and why Disney would want to use this story for their next film; it was a bit of a different direction from the studio with a string of family films combining comedy with dramatic moments. The studio knew that there was going to have to be some darkness in this film, because the novel is so dark by itself: they had to keep some key parts of the novel into the film, like the theme of religion, something Disney had always stayed away from. There are issues dealing with sin, profanity, Heaven and Hell, prejudice, lust and the use of the word ‘damnation’ (twice!). So they tried their best to also make it kid-friendly at the same time, focusing more on the theme of acceptance and being different than the theme of church corruption and architecture, making the characters nicer and kinder, and adding comic relief and musical numbers, blind-folding the MPAA into giving the film a G rating. But even then, this wasn’t exactly the best film to get family audiences into the cinemas to make lots of money, after the disappointment of Pocahontas. Critics weren’t crazy about the film, and the die-hard Victor Hugo films obviously shunned the film for changing so much of the original source material. But its popularity has been growing over the years, and I think it’s because the children who went to see it when it was first released have grown up, discovered it and understand it a lot more. As a Disney fan, as you grow older, there are some Disney films you appreciate more as an adult than as a kid. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is one of those films.

Based on Victor Hugo’s famous novel, the titular hunchback is Quasimodo, a deformed young man who lives in the bell tower of Notre Dame, brought up by Judge Claude Frollo, who forbids him from leaving the tower…and of course, that’s all Quasimodo wants to do. When he does, he is celebrated in the Festival of Fools, but soon tortured and made the laughing stock in front of the town. Everything changes when a gypsy named Esmeralda comes to save him, and so Frollo, with a hatred for all gypsies, starts a search to capture Esmeralda and burn her to death, accusing her of witchcraft. But both Quasi and Frollo cannot bear to part with her, while Quasimodo has fallen in love with her, Frollo has an uncontrollable lust for her.

Before I get into my review, I shall just point you to Doug Walker’s Disneycember review of it: http://blip.tv/nostalgiacritic/disneycember-the-hunchback-of-notre-dame-5848566 because he basically explains my opinion; everything he mentions is how I feel about the film (except for one thing, which I’ll get to later).

I have not read Victor Hugo’s novel (and I do not plan to), but I know pretty much everything that happens in it…and I think it’s best that people do not compare the film to the book, because it just ruins your view on the film – that is, you haven’t seen the film before you read the book, which might be a small amount of people. I of course saw the Disney film first, and I loved it as a kid; obviously all the religious themes and Frollo’s lust for Esmeralda went completely over my head, but I still loved it. And now I think about it, I’m not really sure why I loved it – but I did; it was a Disney movie, go figure. It wasn’t until I was about sixteen years old, and I saw good old Doug Walker’s Top 10 Disney Villains and Villain Songs videos which feature him giving a bit of an opinion on Hunchback, and I was curious to watch it again, and I loved it even more; I understood all the themes of acceptance and prejudice and, of course, knew what ‘Hellfire’ was all about now. And then I hadn’t seen it since then until now. Now before I watched it yesterday, I included Hunchback in my all-time favourite Disney films, and I was wondering why I did. But then I saw the film again, cried about five times during it, and I was reminded how much I love this film. Yes, I have my problems with it, but I still love it so much for it to stay in my all-time favourite Disney films for a while.

Shall I start with the characters, as that’s always the part I’m most interested in with Disney films. One of the reasons the Disney team wanted to make this film is because of the characters, even though they altered them heavily and made them a lot more likeable, which I have no problem with. My favourite character in this is Quasimodo…you all know that I like my protagonists kind and good-hearted, so this was a no-brainer. Quasimodo is probably the character that made me prefer likeable protagonists because he is just so likeable: he’s so kind and so sweet, and yet he’s very anxious and self-conscious and has been tricked into thinking that Frollo has been treating him well all these years. He’s a lot like Dumbo, in that he just wants to be accepted, and I wanted to follow him all the way through, rooting for him to the very end. I also love Esmeralda, she’s a great heroine: she has the right balance of being feisty and independent, but also being gentle and amiable. Oh, and in this film, she has three guys going after her, and you can totally see why: she’s smokin’ hot. But I can’t use that as a positive because looks aren’t everything, as this film tells me.

But there is one character who wants Esmeralda for her looks (and…possibly something else), and that’s our villain, Judge Claude Frollo. He’s probably one of the best Disney villains because he’s a conflicted, complex villain: he sees everything except himself as corrupt, and tries the ‘purge the world of vice and sin’, but he has sinned, and keeps sinning himself. He does realise that he is sinning, in his lust for Esmeralda, but he believes that everything he does is never his fault, and that it’s all in God’s will. You don’t get that from any of the other Disney villains, do you? He’s not my favourite, but he is a very strong candidate for Best Disney Villain.

Two of the three guys after Esmeralda fall in love with her for her personality, the first being Quasimodo and the other being Phoebus. I never really cared for Phoebus as a kid, but I actually really liked him this time round. He’s the ‘Prince’ in this story as a supporting character, which is something Disney hasn’t really done before, and though he sometimes comes off as a little bland, I think he’s alright; he has the funniest lines in this film, no doubt. I like his relationship with Quasi, and I also like his relationship with Esmeralda, which is the one thing I disagree on with Doug’s Disneycember review. I think Phoebus and Esmeralda have good chemistry together, though I can see more why he goes for her more than why she goes for him – and even though I like them together, it’s still heartbreaking for Quasi when he realises Esmeralda never loved him; that was one of the times I cried during the film, just thought you’d like to know that.

Another character I love is Clopin, and my first problem with the film is that there is not enough of Clopin. And I’ll be honest, I don’t really see anywhere in the film there could be more of him, but I really love him. He is in the film five times, and he is great in all of them. He also has great animation: there’s one bit I particularly love in the ‘Court of Miracles’ song where his puppet comes out and shouting ‘Wait, I object!’, and he has a fight with it, I really like that bit of animation. Oh, and he’s got a killer singing voice: his ending notes in ‘The Bells of Notre Dame’ are so awesome.

I guess now I’ll get onto the problem which is the biggest problem with the film, and the problem that everyone has: the god damn gargoyles. They just don’t need to be in the film at all. And I know, Disney has to put the silly comic relief characters in for the kids, but if you knew you were going to be adapting a Victor Hugo novel, you should have known that there wasn’t going to be a lot of comedy. Of course, I don’t know if there are some small bits of dark humour in the novel, but putting silly comedy into this type of story just isn’t going to work with all the drama and conflict going on; the silly comic relief characters work in Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid because they’re fantasy films, and there’s a magical element to the universes. Doug Walker brings this up in the Disneycember review that if the gargoyles were just in Quasimodo’s mind, then they would have been more tolerable; he puts it really well in that it would have been a ‘tragic way to get your comic relief in’. But it’s not just that they really do exist and just choose to become stone when they like, it’s that they’re obnoxious and the humour is not funny. The ‘A Guy Like You’ song number really annoys me because it feels ‘modern’ to me – oh, and they’re responsible for the one movie reference during the climax. If someone could edit this movie together and cut all the unnecessary gargoyle gags, the song number and everything they do in the climax out, then it’ll be a lot better.

Also, another comedic scene that doesn’t really fit is the Festival of Fools scene with the ‘Topsy Turvy’ song number, but with this scene, it has to be in the film, it’s integral to show Quasimodo at the Festival…and so we have to show Disney’s version of the Festival of Fools, and it’s got to be bright and silly and comedic. I sort of wonder how the Festival is depicted in the novel, as I’m pretty sure it’s not as light-hearted as in the film. But the song is good and hey, more Clopin, I can’t complain too much.

I’ll end this review by talking about probably my favourite part of the film which is the music, both the songs and the score; this is by far Alan Menken’s best work in terms of music (rivalling Beauty and the Beast). The songs are fantastic too, and just because they don’t have Howard Ashman’s lyrics doesn’t mean that they can’t be on par with the songs Menken/Ashman wrote earlier. Like with Pocahontas, the lyrics are by Stephen Schwartz, and while they may not be as clever as Ashman’s, they still gel wonderfully with Menken’s music. My favourite song is ‘Out There’: I know everyone loves ‘Hellfire’, but I’ve always really, really loved this one and at the worst moments it can make me break down into tears…just like in the Disney Dreams fireworks display at Disneyland Paris. But to be fair, every song works well for me – even ‘A Guy Like You’ is still a decent song on its own, and I even like the short ‘Court of Miracles’ song (because it’s more Clopin, come on).

I realised this viewing that there are many songs in the first half, but by the end, the score sort of takes over in the climax and ending…and good Lord, is the score incredible. Throughout the film, it’s dramatic, beautiful and tragic, and the choir makes everything much more so. This, like his score for Pocahontas, is exceptional work.

Overall: No, it’s not perfect, and no, it’s not one of the first Disney classics you think of but for me, this is still one of my all-time favourites. This is ‘Disney epic drama’ done right…with some faults. But I truly don’t let those faults get to me, and I don’t care if the film isn’t like the novel. I like that it’s darker, and more mature, it’s very emotional and it’s very beautiful too, in its music, its visuals and theme of acceptance and, like Dumbo, I can relate to that so much.

Next time, I’ll be reviewing…1961’s 101 Dalmatians.

Dumbo is a very simple film. Because Pinocchio and Fantasia lost money on their release, Disney just needed to make a small low-budget film to get some money back. Unlike the first three ambitious animated films the studio made, the animators and artists had to cut down on the lavish backgrounds and detailed realistic character animation. Around the same time, the studio were also working on Bambi, which would have all the lavish backgrounds and detailed character animation. Instead of expensive gouache and oil paints, the backgrounds were watercolour. Instead of detailed character animation, the style was much more cartoony; it was almost like a full-length Silly Symphony short. Walt Disney didn’t have time or money to experiment with scene ideas, so there were barely any scenes that weren’t put into the final product and even then, the film is only 63 minutes long, keeping it short and simple. About five months before the film was released, there was an animators’ strike (that would be depicted in a scene of Dumbo), where much of the studio staff left and the atmosphere around Walt and the remaining staff was changed forever (if you want more information on that, go and look it up yourself because I don’t understand any of the financial talk, I apologise). If this movie didn’t succeed, then the studio was probably likely to shut down.

But it was a miracle that Dumbo was a financial success, and it got positive reviews. But who would have thought that the little simple film would go on to be one of the most popular films associated with the Disney studio. All over the world, people of every age still adore this movie – and they have good reason to. Four of the five Disney films of the Golden Age may be more ambitious and visually stunning, but Dumbo fully deserves to be right up there with them, in terms of being considered the most emotional and charming film of this collection.

I think everyone knows this story, it’s pretty simple: Dumbo is a little elephant with big ears, and he’s teased and ostracised by the other elephants and circus animals. His protective yet ill-tempered mother eventually gets herself in trouble when she retaliates against a human audience member, and she is separated from her baby. So Dumbo is all alone, being the laughing stock of the circus, but with the help of a little mouse named Timothy, he must prove himself to the world and discover his secret talent.

I was thinking before I watched this film that I didn’t watch Dumbo much when I was a kid; I remember watching it, but I don’t remember watching it much (either way I was excited at watching it again). But as soon as the opening credits started, and the score played, it just turned a light on in my brain and I remembered the rest of the score; I found myself humming along to it. I guess I did watch it quite a lot because as the film continued, I knew every single shot that was coming next; I remember every single scene in this from when I was a kid. I was so happy with this that I was just sat there with a big smile on my face for the first fifteen minutes; this is nostalgia at its best. Did I like it as a kid? I loved it as a kid. Do I like it now? I love it now.

Let’s get this out the way: Dumbo himself is one of the most adorable characters ever created in fiction. You seriously cannot help ‘Awwww’-ing along with the other elephants when you first see him, and if you don’t find his actions just a little bit endearing, you have no soul. There is no doubt that all the credit goes to Bill Tytla for this. Bill Tytla was one of the Disney animators of the Golden Age that taught the Nine Old Men, and he was one of the highest-paid animators at the studio because he was so damn good. Before Dumbo he had animated Grumpy from Snow White, Stromboli from Pinocchio and Chernabog from Fantasia (and as I said in that review, I adore the animation of Chernabog). But in fear of being typecast to animate these big, antagonistic characters (well, excluding Grumpy), Tytla wanted to animate Dumbo, the tiny little elephant overflowing with innocence. And what a job he did: his work in this film is considered to be some of the best in animation history. It is amazing how Dumbo can express all the characteristics of a child just through his face and his movements with no dialogue what-so-ever. It’s just pure acting through drawings, and because of this, we are totally with Dumbo throughout the whole film. I guess another reason we’re with Dumbo is because everyone has been in his situation: everyone has (or at least felt like they’ve) been bullied or ostracised, and felt like an outsider. I still feel like an outsider, and probably always will, so of course I was going to feel something for Dumbo. There is actually a scene I really like where Timothy (I’ll get to him later) is washing Dumbo with a toothbrush, and he’s trying to tell him how great he was in the circus show, and that he was amazing, but Dumbo just keeps crying; he can’t accept that he was amazing, because he’s just so down on himself. That is me all over; I feel like that all the time, so I could really relate, much more than when I did as a kid (for the record, I didn’t feel ostracised as a kid, I was perfectly happy being the freak I was).

Though I was very familiar with the scenes, one thing I wasn’t expecting was how early on in the film Dumbo’s mother gets taken away from him. There’s a really lovely scene where it’s just Dumbo and his mother playing around, and it’s so sweet – and then about two minutes later, Dumbo’s mother flips out and the circus hands have to tie her down and put shackles on her feet, and they’ve taken Dumbo away. But I guess it’s effective having her out of the picture early, because then there’s time for Dumbo to miss her, and time for Timothy to befriend him…before the scene where Dumbo gets to see her again. Yes, it’s the ‘Baby Mine’ scene. Dear God, I was not expecting to cry so much. I do not normally cry at films: I will scream and melodramatically flail my arms, but I don’t have actual tears coming from my eyes, unless it’s a really, really special moment in a film (and if I’m feeling extremely down). I cried like a baby during this scene: as soon as his mother’s trunk reaches down to him, and Dumbo puts his head on her trunk, the look on his face just sets me off. And the song starts, and oh my goodness, it’s heartbreaking. Oh God, I’m actually crying just remembering it in my head.

Even though I think I emotionally died from that scene, there’s not actually that many other really emotional scenes. As I said, the style of the film is very cartoony, and because it’s a circus setting, there’s big, lively scenes with loud music and comedic characters, and it’s alright; it doesn’t really get annoying, it’s entertaining, but I like the comedic animals more than the human clowns. The animals at the beginning of the film are cute, and they did cheer me up in the ‘Baby Mine’ scene; of course, it cuts to several of the other mother animals sleeping with their babies and they made me laugh; I had tears streaming down my face, but they made me laugh.

And then right after that scene, the clowns are celebrating how well the show went and go off to ‘hit the big boss for a raise’, knocking a bottle of champagne into a bucket of water. …And Dumbo and Timothy get a bit drunk. And then five minutes of complete pointlessness happens. Even though they didn’t have the budget of the past three films, Disney still wanted to push the envelope of what could be done with animation even further in this film, so he had to put in just one scene to show that. It’s the ‘Pink Elephants’ scene. As a kid, I think I didn’t like it: I would watch it, I wasn’t scared of it, but I just didn’t like it. I hadn’t seen this in its entirety since I was a kid, and…yeah, the whole time I was asking: Why is this in the movie? And more importantly, why was it put straight after the scene where I’ve been bawling my eyes out? I had to watch the ‘Pink Elephants’ scene wiping my eyes – but that was pretty hard to do, because I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. The scene actually is really impressive: Disney did push the envelope with how surreal, crazy yet fun the visuals are, and how the images can transform into anything. It’s very creative, and very entertaining, even though it has no place in the film. Seriously, what was in that champagne.

What I also really love is the music (yeah, I’m gonna talk about the music again, and I will definitely be talking about the music in my next review). I remember it all from my childhood, so maybe that’s why I find the songs so catchy. The songs are all really great, but my favourite song is ‘When I See an Elephant Fly’; I’m in full sing-along mode whenever I hear it. And they are of course sung by the supposedly racist crows. …Yeah, this movie’s been called racist because of these crows. With racism in Disney films…I don’t really notice it, but maybe that’s because I’m a stupid white girl who isn’t knowledgeable about black people or black history. With the crows, I am taking Eric Goldberg’s word for it: on the making-of featurette, Goldberg states that the way the crows talk and act in the film is accurate to how a jazz band like Louis Armstrong’s would talk on a record. And there’s no doubt that they’re important to the plot: they’re the ones that give Dumbo that confidence to love himself and find that special talent he has, and they’re sympathetic with him. And I think they’re cool, as I said, I love their song, and the dance number that comes with it. Interesting fact: Ward Kimball, who animated the crows fantastically, was the only one of Disney’s Nine Old Men to work on Dumbo, while the others worked on Bambi, because Kimball’s strength was animating comic cartoony characters, and he didn’t really like realism in animation, so he was put on Dumbo instead of Bambi, which required heavily realistic characters.

One thing that makes Dumbo stand out from the other animated Disney films is its short running time; it’s not the shortest film in the collection, but it barely makes a feature-length film at 63 minutes, and I reckon that’s because of the low budget they had. If I hadn’t said it before, I’ll say it now: I’ve noticed that the climaxes to some Disney films are extremely short, and that the resolution and ending is normally very rushed. Do you want to know how long it takes for the conflict to wrap up? Two minutes and ten seconds. That’s a record. But I’m not complaining at all because the moment when you see Dumbo falling without his feather and then using his ears to zoom up past the clowns just gives you the biggest feeling of relief and joy; it’s so satisfying to see little Dumbo succeed. Though the ending is extremely short, it’s just over a minute long, it tells you everything you need to know: Dumbo becomes world-famous, Timothy…becomes his manager, but most importantly he is reunited with his mother, and that was all I really wanted for him, so it worked for me.

Overall: I put this film on the same level of Bambi: I find them to be very similar, and I have a lot of love for both of them. While I love Bambi for the pure artistry and animation, I love Dumbo for its simplicity and emotional attachment. Yes, it’s very short and fast-paced, and it does get cartoony and wacky, but the overwhelming sympathy, sadness and joy I got out of it makes it an undeniable favourite.

Next time, I’ll be reviewing…1996’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

P.S. I just wanted to put this story I found on Wikipedia here, because I thought it was really sweet: In 1967, Bill Tytla was invited to a screening of Dumbo at the Montreal Expo’s World Exhibition of Animation Cinema as part of an Hommage Aux Pionniers, but he was worried that no one would remember him. But when the film ended, they announced the presence of “The Great Animator”, and the audience erupted in “a huge outpouring of love”. I just think that’s a really sweet story, and it’s a shame that it wasn’t too long after that night that he died.

The Jungle Book is known as Walt Disney’s last film – or at least the last Disney film that Walt himself worked on – and he didn’t even get to see the final product, which is a shame because he really did put a lot of himself into the production. As I’ve said before, during the 1950’s and 60’s, Disney was losing interest in his animated films and was more concerned with the Disneyland theme park, TV shows and live-action films, and so was barely ever present during productions of films like Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians and The Sword in the Stone. After The Sword in the Stone didn’t do very well critically or financially, Disney made sure that he was more involved with the studio’s next planned film, an adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book; I like to think it was because he really wanted to make this film, and got invested in the jungle setting and characters. But the production was not without its problems. Story writer Bill Peet wanted to make the story darker, like in the original book, but Walt wanted to keep things light-hearted because this was a family film. This led to Peet leaving production and the Disney studio altogether, although the personalities he had created with the characters – and the inclusion of two new characters – remained intact. Walt had to change the songwriter for the film, because he felt Terry Gilkyson’s songs were too dark, and so he got the more familiar Sherman brothers to write the songs, although one Gilkyson song is kept in the film. And of course, there was the tragedy of Walt’s passing in December of 1966, ten months before the film was set to be released. But I’m sure he would have been elated to have known that the film was a critical and financial success, was re-released three times and it is still a beloved Disney classic today.

Loosely based on Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, Mowgli is a human boy found in the jungle as a baby and brought up by a pack of wolves (who are out of the picture pretty quickly). But when news goes round that the tiger Shere Khan is back in the jungle (with a deep hatred for humans), Bagheera, the panther who found Mowgli, must force him to leave his jungle home and go back to the ‘man-village’. However, Mowgli is perfectly happy in the jungle, and so decides to stay, meeting a colourful cast of characters on the way.

So I think the general consensus of this film is that everyone likes it pretty well, and it’s one of the more kid-friendly Disney films. Well, I can tell you, I think this was the one Disney film that I did not like as a kid. I never watched this film because I was scared of one part: Baloo’s roars. I am scared of stupid things. But I was so scared of it, I didn’t watch it for most of my childhood, until I was eleven years old, and I wanted to watch it again because I was trying to watch every Disney film ever made, and I liked it then. Though I didn’t watch the film too much, I know most of the songs really well: they were all on the Disney Sing-Along Songs videos that I watched religiously as a kid; I also had a Disney’s Greatest Hits album that had ‘The Bare Necessities’ and ‘I Wanna Be Like You’ on it, with all the instrumental parts kept in, so I know those songs by heart. I reckon this viewing for the Disneython is probably the third time I’ve seen The Jungle Book, and I wasn’t sure whether I was going to like it: as proven, most of the Disney films that I have a strong childhood attachment to are the ones I still love (and am probably a bit more biased to).

So I started watching and right from the opening credits, I was really interested. The opening credits are shown over the backgrounds of the jungle and George Bruns’ score, and I really love it: I love the backgrounds throughout this film and if ever the sketchy animation was a bit hard to look at, I could just look at the backgrounds surrounding them. Now some people aren’t too keen on the ‘sketchy’ animation in the Disney films of the 60’s and 70’s, but I don’t really mind it; it’s still Disney characters being brought to life by some great animators, and there’s actually some really astounding character animation in this. Eric Goldberg, one of the animators of the Disney Renaissance, has said that The Jungle Book has some of the ‘best character animation a studio has ever done’, and other fellow animators Andreas Deja and Glen Keane were inspired by this film to go into the business. As well as the animation, I just love the designs of the animals, especially the elephants. The Disney animators’ goal with their animal characters was to always transfer human expressions on the animals’ faces, while their bodies would move realistically, using footage of the real-life counterparts for reference, and it really does shine here.

I am sort of half-and-half with the music in this film: some of the songs I like, some of them I don’t. My two absolute favourites are yours, ‘The Bare Necessities’ and ‘I Wanna Be Like You’, but I can’t actually choose one that I like more than the other. Both are so lively and catchy and there’s great instrumental parts and great vocals and the scenes they appear in are the real stand-outs of this film. However, the other songs I can take or leave; I know them really well, but if I didn’t, they wouldn’t be very memorable. Even though I liked the score in the opening credits, there wasn’t actually much else of the score that I noticed, maybe because half the scenes in this film are played in silence, with no background score, and it made me feel like those scenes went on for too long. The only other bit of score I remember now is in the scene before Mowgli gets caught by Kaa the python, because it’s really similar to the music in the opening credits.

I shall get this out the way now: yes, there is re-used animation in this film; it’s Wolfgang Reitherman, it’s one of his ‘trademarks’. But there is also re-used score in this too. I guess George Bruns just got lazy because he decided to use a piece of music from his score from Sleeping Beauty and some of Paul J. Smith’s organ music from Snow White in two scenes of The Jungle Book. Now I have yet to review Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, but I probably won’t be able to tell where the music they used in The Jungle Book is in those films because I can barely remember the music. But those are the only lazy parts of this film and they were barely noticeable to me; the only other lazy part of this film is Baloo the bear (that’s me trying to make a joke. Ha).

Baloo is probably my favourite character in The Jungle Book, but that’s hard to say when you’ve got such a cast of characters. There are a lot of characters I love in this: Baloo, Bagheera, Kaa, King Louie, Colonel Hathi, that cute little baby elephant, the tall dark-haired vulture…and of course, Shere Khan. I think that Shere Khan might be my favourite animal villain, because he is just so aware of his dangerousness: he is so sure that he is the biggest, baddest guy in the jungle, and he just doesn’t have a worry that he may be defeated. Oh, and his voice just makes him. George Sanders has such a fantastically classy British voice that it’s just perfect for Shere Khan’s nonchalant personality; there’s a great part in the scene between him and Kaa, where Kaa tries to hypnotise him, but he just slaps Kaa on the head and is all like: ‘Oh, sorry, I can’t be bothered with all that’, and it made me laugh so much. Classy tiger. Speaking of Kaa, he’s really cool too, and of course, it’s Sterling Holloway voicing him, so of course I’m gonna like him; I was actually surprised that I wasn’t distracted by his voice, because he’s basically using his Winnie-the-Pooh voice, but not once did I think: ‘Oh, that’s Winnie the Pooh inside a snake’s body’ – that’s got to be some real talent as a voice actor, right?

Anyway, I need to talk about Baloo, because I just said he’s my favourite character, and the reason he is my favourite character is because I sort of want to be him. No, I don’t want to be a bear, no I don’t particularly want to live in the jungle (seems as I have a fear of pretty much every animal, especially wild ones), I just want his lifestyle. Baloo is just a laid-back, chilled-out, worry-free guy who just takes life as it comes and is completely happy with his position in life; he was singing ‘Hakuna Matata’ before Timon and Pumbaa were. Obviously, it’s impossible for anyone in this world to have Baloo’s lifestyle because life is hard, and there are always problems that get in the way, and you don’t actually have the time to chill out and not worry. But wouldn’t it be great if you could live like Baloo? Just chilling out every day, doing whatever the hell you want, singing and dancing round everywhere. Disney sets high expectations. Anyway, I don’t just love Baloo for that, I love that he makes me smile every time he’s on-screen. I wasn’t really sure when he was going to first come on-screen, but as soon as he did, I just had this huge smile on my face. He really makes the film come to life from his appearance. I will admit, the beginning of this film is a bit weak: the whole bit with Bagheera finding Mowgli and giving him to the wolves is forgettable and very narrative voice-over-heavy; they didn’t need to put voice-over in at all, the fantastic animation on Bagheera’s face says it all. You get a bit of Kaa, and that’s okay, and you’re introduced to Colonel Hathi and the elephants, and that scene goes on for too long. Then you get a nice scene between Bagheera and Mowgli where they have an argument and Bagheera leaves him alone…and then Baloo literally just walks on-screen singing to himself, and the movie gets better from there.

Throughout the first half of the film, Baloo’s a funny character, and he’s really entertaining; he reminded me of the Genie from Aladdin, which I reviewed not too long ago. But then about half-way through the film, after the big scene with King Louie and the monkeys, there’s this dialogue scene between Baloo and Bagheera, and I was totally not expecting it. It’s a pretty dramatic scene, where you see another side of Baloo: you see the concern for Mowgli, and you see him stop being cool for just a minute to realise the real problem that’s happening. And you see that Baloo is just a child himself, when Bagheera is trying to explain the problem to him, but it’s kind of funny how he explains it too; I found it even funnier when Baloo tried to explain it to Mowgli a few minutes later. But the point is I wasn’t expecting these five or ten minutes of drama, to show another side of Baloo and to let the film slow down a little, and I really really liked it. It reminded me of the ‘Ave Maria’ sequence in Fantasia, and how Charlie Chaplin had said: ‘Never be afraid to give your film a slow, quiet moment’, and Walt Disney said that he wished he had done that with Snow White (don’t know what he thought the dwarves mourning over Snow White scene was, but oh well); knowing that, these few minutes in The Jungle Book bring Walt’s contribution to light, and that’s a really nice sign.

Overall: This movie is soooooooooo much fun, and it wasn’t hard for me to be entertained. You don’t need a very strong plot to be entertained in a film, but it is very hard to pull it off – this film manages to, thanks to its fantastic characters. The Jungle Book gets its comedy and drama balanced well, which is the sign that Walt Disney had played a large part in this. This is a wonderful way to end the marvellous career of a pioneer and innovator of not only animation but film in the 20^th Century.

Next time, I’ll be reviewing…1941’s Dumbo.