1941 - Dumbo

So after Pinocchio and Fantasia underperformed at the box office, Disney was looking to recoup his losses. What he needed was - not a hit, exactly, but something that could be considered a success if it made the same amount of money as the last two. So they bought the 8-page story attached to an unproduced prototype toy and made a movie in a few months on a fraction of their previous budgets. Nervous? So am I. So pick up a cellophane pack of orange marshmallow peanuts, and let’s talk about Dumbo.

Even the poster looks half baked. Like those unlicensed pictures painted on the windows of preschools.

Okay, yikes. Before I go on, let me say some good things about this movie. The backgrounds look quite nice. The only three movies in the Disney canon with watercolor backgrounds are this, Snow White, and Lilo and Stitch. It looks great, and I don’t know why they don’t do it more often. This is also the first one with a straight-up celebrity voice in it. While Jiminy Cricket’s voice, Cliff Edwards, had a few novelty hits as “Ukulele Ike”, he wasn’t likely to be recognized. The first time someone that the audience would certainly know and recognize an actor’s voice is Sterling Holloway, a western-movie sidekick and comedic egghead who here plays Mr. Stork. Holloway would go on to a long and respectable Disney career, using his unique voice for everything from innocent simpletons to threatening lunatics. He never disappoints, and I’m glad to get him so early. Also, this ties with Alice in Wonderland as the first Disney movie released on home video, for some reason. So there’s that.

Okay, so the bad stuff. First some background. Pinocchio and Fantasia hadn’t recouped their budgets. This was not because of audience disinterest, at least not with Pinocchio, but because Word War II had cut off the European market, which had contributed to Snow White’s success. (Fun fact: Snow White was Hitler’s favorite movie.) So they wanted to make something cheaply that would turn a profit even at those disappointing numbers. Dumbo had less than half the budget of anything before, and it shows. Animation is shamelessly recycled, padding is frequent, and off model moments and animation errors are all over the place. In response to the demands placed on them, the animators unionized, which caused Disney to parody them in the script by having the clowns jockeying for an undeserved raise. I don’t know if it occurred to Walt that this would make him the fat, buffoonish ringmaster.

Oh, all right, that is pretty adorable.

So yeah, lots of petty backstage garbage. But how’s the movie? Well… It’s okay. Dumbo’s mouse friend Timothy is a blatant copy of Jiminy Cricket (except I like him better), the Ringmaster is an utterly forgettable villain, the songs are forgettable, the dialogue is… You know, I think that’s the issue here. This movie is just boring. It’s meandering and unfocused, and while the individual scenes are mostly acceptable, there’s only two that leave any impression. One of them is when Dumbo and Timothy get drunk (seriously) and hallucinate terrifying multicolored elephant men. Yes, this scared me as a child. It scared all of us, it’s still scary, and let’s speak no more of it. (It also taught us the word “pachyderm”.) The second memorable scene is far more interesting to me.

NO NO NO NO NO. STOP IT.

After Dumbo and Timothy pass out drunk, they wake up in a tree surrounded by crows. And the crows… well, they’re blackbirds. Black birds. As in they are deliberately modeled after cartoonish representations of then-contemporary African-American culture. This has caused some understandable controversy, because unlike the centaur from the last movie, these guys are plot-essential and remain in. But honestly, this isn’t so bad to me. Admittedly, I’m speaking from a white guy perspective, but when I look at the crows, I don’t see the ugly and insulting stereotype of Fantasia. Sure, they’re stereotypes, but they’re confident, outspoken, and take the dominant role in every scene they’re in. They’re also the only people in the movie who seem to like and support Dumbo, even if they are kind of jerks about it. So yeah, they’re not the most progressive of portrayals, but Disney’s left in worse things. (*coughpeterpancough*)  And their song, “When I See an Elephant Fly,” is the only one I really liked.

All colorful clothes and crazy hats, like some 1940s Junkyard Gang.

And yeah, that’s really all I’ve got to say. It was dull, but not terrible. Not very good, though. The animation is really terrible. Errors abound, the number of elephants from shot to shot keeps changing, voices come out of the wrong characters, All kinds of problems. And the thing is, it worked. It successfully made its money back, and freed them up to spend more money and tell a more ambitious story with their next movie… which flopped again. But we’ll get to that.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS -

*The lead crow is the only one voiced by a white actor - Cliff Edwards, in fact - but I don’t have a problem with that, since he’s a supporting cartoon bird, and the voice doesn’t stand out poorly. Oh, and um… his name is “Jim Crow”. Yeah, there’s no getting around that one.

*This was the first Disney movie set in contemporary America and the first to feature legitimate crowd scenes. Sure it was in a circus, and those are very traditionalist in appearance, and sure, the animation wasn’t even close to handling the challenge of crowd scenes. But it’s nice that even when they’re not trying, they’re trying.

*No, I will not talk about the dang Pink Elephants! The scared me then, they scare me now, and I hate them I hate them I hate them.

What this movie needs is more Deems Taylor.

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1940 - Fantasia

In my last post, I gave you the basic idea of Fantasia, so no need to rehash that here. Seven classical pieces and one comedy bit, linked with introductions from music historian, minor radio celebrity, and pin-up model Deems Taylor. Actually, Taylor presented a bit of a sticky situation for me. The original cut of Fantasia was a 124 minute roadshow, which was edited down to 115 minutes by chopping up Taylor’s intros. For the recent DVD release, they restored the full film, but with no original sound prints, had to dub Taylor’s voice for the whole movie with that of Disney mainstay Corey Burton. Now, I hate editing of old movies. I think 3D conversion should be punished by horsewhipping, aspect ratio alteration by behanding, and colorization by execution. There is one exception, but I’ll get to that later. So do I watch the original voice with deleted lines, or the dubbed voice with original lines? I went with the latter, for the more accurate experience. Not that it was the complete original version. As I implied up there, there is still one part that’s been cut out, but we'll get to that. Feeling classy? I know I am. So grab a foie gras and caviar smoothie and let’s talk about Fantasia.

TOCCATA AND FUGUE IN D MINOR - This done as a series of abstract images that suit the music. A good choice, and smart to pick a song everyone knows. If you think you don’t know it, I want you to imagine Dracula music. Yup, that’s it.

THE NUTCRACKER SUITE - Before this segment begins, our man Deems gives us a little background on the original Nutcracker Ballet, which he says “Wasn’t very popular and is rarely performed today.” At first, I thought this was just Deems being a master of deadpan, or Corey Burton not picking up on some sarcasm, but it turns out he’s right. The Nutcracker bombed in Russia, and didn’t even have a full performance in the US until years after Fantasia’s release. The segment is quite good, with fairies bringing a garden to life and cycling through the seasons, but I still can’t help but wonder what it was like for the 1940 audience. Without the vast cultural proliferation of the music from The Nutcracker, they’d see this in a completely different way from me. Also, the mushrooms would seem less racist.

(Oh, I’m sorry. I mean “Mushlooms”)

THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE - What’s the point? You all know this one. Hat, brooms, starring Mickey Mouse, who’s kind of blandly charming but hasn’t been actually funny since like 1930. It’s fine, the music is solid. It’s certainly the best short cartoon to ever be expanded to a mostly not terrible Nicolas Cage movie.

THE RITE OF SPRING - The origins of life on earth, as  understood by the scientists of 1940. Actually, the early cellular development stuff is quite solid. The dinosaur biology is horrible. Tyrannosaurs with their tails dragging, sauropods with their necks raised, and dinosaurs from a span of 200 million years all hanging out with each other. But it still looks great, and the music is suitably epic. I wonder if creationists complained. They tended to be a lot quieter in those days, but Deems sure did seem to be hedging his bets in the intro, though definitely on the pro-science side. I do find the way he keeps saying “Science tells us this”, or “Science says that” to be hilarious. Like there’s just this guy called Science telling us everything. I bet he’s got a lab coat.

INTERMISSION - 15 minutes of the title card, capped with 2 minutes the musicians improvising, which is charming and funny and gives some personality to the army of nearly identical tuxedoed white men that have been playing for us. Then Deems spends 3 minutes interviewing “The Soundtrack”, a white line that changes shape depending on what instrument is played. This is awesome. And all that also includes about 4 hours of watching the orchestra file in and out of their seats. THRILLING.

You'd think I'd make fun of all the rainbows and multicolored pegasi,  but then I'd have to make fun of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and I WILL NOT DO THAT AND YOU CAN'T MAKE ME, THAT SHOW IS AWESOME.

THE PASTORAL SYMPHONY - This mostly boring symphony contains mostly boring visuals based on classical mythology. It’s also racist and sexist. The bulk of it involves girl centaurs getting tarted up for boy centaurs and putting on a sexy show for them, whereupon the boy centaurs claim their women and go have a picnic or something. The sexism is bland yet annoying ‘40s sexism, but I’m sure you’re more interested in the racism. See, there’s green and blue and orange centaurs, etcetera, and they all pair up with another centaur of the same color. And if that doesn’t sound too racist to you, there’s also Sunflower. Go ahead, click on that link. Yeah, she dances around and shines the white centaur’s hooves. Yyyyeah. Sunflower has been aggressively deleted from every print of Fantasia since 1969, and this is what I alluded to when I said there’s one form of altering an old movie I’m okay with. As Roger Ebert observed, "While the original film should, of course, be preserved for historical purposes, there is no need for the general release version to perpetrate racist stereotypes in a film designed primarily for children." And he’s right. But the segment is still boring.

DANCE OF THE HOURS - A comedic ballet involving ostriches, hippos, elephants, and alligators for its four segments, which are the same musical themes reorchestrated to imply morning, afternoon, evening, and night. It’s okay, I guess. But frankly, there’s going to be one segment I always forget when I’m trying to remember what’s in this movie. And the music is irritatingly repetitive.  (You may recognize it as the tune of Allan Sherman’s “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh”. And if you don’t, do your sanity a favor and don’t look that up.)

Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man with huge freaking wings.

NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN/AVE MARIA - Deems Taylor calls this a juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane. I call it a juxtaposition between the awesome and the lame. First off, the devil comes to life on the top of a mountain and makes a load of ghosts and demons dance for his amusement to the tune of the most awesome music ever with some really neat experimental animation. Then the church bells ring and all the cool stuff goes away and some lame pilgrims walk by singing Ave Maria. When I was a kid, I never got what the devil was doing wrong. The town was abandoned, so it’s not like they were tormenting mortals. They just wanted to climb a mountain and have a sweet party. At the time, I was technically still a Catholic. Perhaps this sympathy for the devil was the start of my slide into apostasy. Or perhaps I could just tell the difference between awesome (Mussorgsky) and lame (Schubert).

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

* This was also on the AFI list, but it deserved to be.

* Next time I do an actual review instead of a list. These get too long.

* I should probably mention that in the Pastoral, Bacchus had two sexy black centaur attendants, so… there’s that. They had zebra bodies, but if that’s racist, then so is My Little Pony, and I’ll not hear such insults.

* Years after the fact, the Disney company started claiming that the guy on the mountain wasn’t Satan, but the Slavic deity Chernobog. But Deems called him the devil, and Walt called him “Satan himself”, and Mussorgsky was all over the place on that one, so I’m sticking with the obvious interpretation.

Taylor OUT.

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A MINOR SETBACK AND FANTASIA… 3?

Well, I knew going into this that staying on schedule would by tricky at best, and in a way, having a setback this early is good, right? Riiiiiight? Because you know how when you get a new computer, sometimes it’ll restart itself randomly to do little updates or whatever? And you know how word processor programs are supposed to recover your work after an unexpected shutdown but sometimes they don't? And you know how when I get on a roll I forget to save my work? Well, you do now, and that’s what happened to my Fantasia review. So I’ll be redoing that this week, and posting it around the same time as my Dumbo review. This may lead to the Dumbo review being short and not very good, but so what? So is the movie.

But I don’t want to leave you a contentless week, so first, let me tell you the basic idea behind Fantasia. See, Walt wanted to make a high-quality short starring Mickey Mouse based on the classic story “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, set to the music of Paul Dukas. Working with legendary conductor and teen heartthrob Leopold Stokowski, Disney extended it to seven shorts and made it his third theatrical feature. His idea was that every year or two they would cycle a few new numbers in, toss a few old ones out, and keep the movie fresh and ever growing. Sadly, the film didn’t do so hot and this plan was scrapped until nearly 60 years later, when his nephew produced Fantasia 2000. But we’ll have time for that later. (Like eight months from now, so don’t get too excited.) Like Walt, Roy Jr. wanted to release another one, and the studio had produced four of the new segments when the project was scrapped. They all saw release in some form, as theatrical shorts, or DVD special features, so I have seen them. And to whet your appetite for Fantasia, here’s four things that nearly made it into the canon.

DESTINO - This was a collaboration between Disney and Salvador Dali that they began in 1946 for a future Fantasia, but never completed. The animators, with the aid of Gala Dali’s diary, where she spoke rather more understandably about her husband’s ideas, did all they could to decipher the storyboards, and the final product is… Well, I think it’s beautiful, and it’s certainly a departure from the usual style… Look at it this way, if you read “a collaboration between Disney and Salvador Dali” and got excited, check it out. It’s just what it sounds like.

Smiling? In a Hans Christian Andersen story? We'll soon fix that.

THE LITTLE MATCHGIRL - Based on the story by Hans Christian Andersen, who desperately needed a hug. Remarkable that Disney changed some of the sad parts and made it even SADDER. Gone is the abusive father, but now the matchgirl is a homeless orphan. Gone is Denmark, now they’re in Russia. It’s absolutely gorgeous and ever so depressing. I highly suggest it.

ONE BY ONE - On the flip side of that, here’s a story about children in a South African town building kites out of neighborhood materials. The colors and animation are top-notch, and the music is infectious. The song is an original composition by Lebo M., the guy responsible for all the music in The Lion King that actually sounded African. This one’s fun and happy and lovely. Watch it. You’ll need it after that last one.

This was probably also to apologize for one scene in Fantasia. Oh, you'll hear about it.

LORENZO - This is about a cat with a sentient tail, which he tries to remove, and which tries to kill him in retaliation. That’s all I know, since the only time this has ever been made available was as a short before the theatrical run of Raising Helen, and I didn’t see that. Nobody did. Anyway, here’s the trailer. Looks really good.

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The New Headline Image

If you wanted to see it bigger, here you go. Just give a click. Open it in a new tab for the largest size available.

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1940 - Pinocchio

One of the things I’ve always heard people say about Pinocchio is how much it scared them, or how disturbing and traumatizing it is for kids. Now I get that, I really do. In a couple weeks I’m going to have to watch those damn pink elephants on parade, and that still gives me the jibblies. But in this case, I never really felt it. I saw this a few times when I was younger, but it never made much of an impression on me. I think that was because I had read the book first. It’s hard to be troubled by this movie when you’ve read a book where instead of adorable, catchphrase-spouting Jiminy Cricket, you get The Talking Cricket, who badgers Pinocchio for one scene and then Pinocchio kills him with a hammer and then his feet burn off.

Disturbed? So am I. So whip up a big ol’ bowl of spaghetti and let’s talk about Pinocchio.

So yeah, the book The Adventures of Pinocchio, by Carlo Collodi, is far and away more messed up than the movie. It was intended to teach moral lessons to Italian children by horrifically abusing a puppet. Every chapter basically goes, “Someone tells Pinocchio not to do something. He disobeys, and is maimed. He is sorry.” But I want to be fair. Let’s go point by point and see who wins. The Talking Cricket’s got one for Collodi already, let’s see if Disney can pull ahead.

THE BLUE FAIRY VS THE FAIRY WITH TURQUOISE HAIR

The Blue Fairy is a sweet and innocent woman who brings Pinocchio to life, levels Jiminy Cricket up, and turns Pinocchio into a real boy at the end. In the book, she’s not needed for the first, since Pinocchio comes to life on his own. Instead, she meets him in her cabin in the woods, and takes care of him for a while. At one point, she has a bunch of forest animals come by to build him a coffin. You know, like your mom used to. When he leaves to go look for Gepetto, she takes her revenge on him by leaving a tombstone in her house saying that she died of a broken heart when he left. Then she shows up periodically to badger him along with the ghost of the Talking Cricket. She does turn him into a real boy, but still, this is a big win for Collodi.

FOULFELLOW AND GIDEON VS THE FOX AND THE CAT

The movie’s fox and cat are a pair of charming raconteurs who sell Pinocchio to a puppet show. And one of them is voiced by Mel Blanc, which is cool. I do find it odd that everyone thinks a little wooden boy is so remarkable, but no one reacts to a pair of anthropomorphic animals strolling around talking and selling puppets into slavery. Still, they are beaten by the book’s pair, who, though not anthropomorphic as such, still manage to rob Pinocchio blind and get him executed.

("I'ma like-a four different-a ethnic-a stereotypes!")

STROMBOLI VS MANGIAFUOCO

Both the movie and book give us enormous, black-bearded puppeteers who abuse Pinocchio. In the movie, Stromboli is, on the surface, a comical goof, but backstage rants and raves and keeps Pinocchio in a tiny cage. In the book, he rages on and off stage. When Pinocchio distracts his puppets (who are also alive, I guess), Mangiafuoco kidnaps him to use as firewood. Pinocchio pleads for his life, so the guy decides to burn one of the other puppets. Pinocchio begs for that puppet’s life, and the guy has a sneezing fit, decides to eat raw meat, and gives Pinocchio some money. I’m giving this point to Collodi, but it’s less for being scary and more for being just damn weird. Also, I find Stromboli to be really poorly animated. Research indicates that the filmmakers agree with me, so I feel okay about that.

THE COACHMAN VS THE LITTLE MAN

This one's a lot closer, and I almost gave a point to Disney for it. The Coachman is really creepy and cruel, with an imposing physicality and an army of inexplicable hairy gorilla-blob things as henchmen. (Seriously, what were those things?) But the Little Man of the book is even creepier. While the Coachman is gruff, the Little Man is soft spoken and kindly, until one of his donkeys starts trying to speak, and then he goes and BITES ITS EAR OFF. Collodi describes him as "a horrid little being whose face shone with kindness", and makes it clear that he has been doing this for long enough to be a millionaire. Smooth and kindly evil beats rampaging and thuggish evil every time.

(Would you buy a used donkey from this man?)

PLEASURE ISLAND VS THE LAND OF TOYS

Win. For. Disney. In both versions, this is a place with no adult supervision, where kids act like figurative jackasses and then turn into literal jackasses, whereupon the people who run the place sell them to farmers. In the book, the transformation is, like so many other things, treated in a bizarrely matter-of-fact way. Yup, you’re a donkey now. That'll happen. In the movie, they play up the trauma of the weeping donkey-children, and the horror of one's body changing. The scene where Pinocchio’s friend Lampwick (Candlewick in the book) changes is seriously damned traumatizing. It’s like some 1940s kid’s version of a Cronenberg movie. So horrific is it that Disney’s getting this point, even though in the book, the Pinocchio-donkey GETS SKINNED.

MONSTRO THE WHALE VS THE TERRIBLE DOGFISH

Come on. Whale vs. Shark? No contest. Point Collodi. And I’m not sure the Disney animators have ever seen a whale. I question the marine biology credentials of this children’s puppet cartoon.

(I Have a Mouth and I Must Bray)

So yeah, final tally is 6 to 1, and there’s a lot more from the book I didn’t cover. But while I can’t get behind the idea that it’s that scary, I can say it’s very good. Sure, the script is still a little all over the place, and the ‘gag’ mentality hasn’t fully meshed with the feature-length mentality, but a lot of that can be related to the book, which even Collodi admitted was a mess. Building a coherent narrative from the mad ramblings of a misanthropic Italian who was just throwing chapter after chapter out to please his editor couldn't have been easy, but they mostly did it. A later adaptation would merge the puppeteer, the coachman, and the sea monster into one character in a pretty clever way, and maybe that's the right path to take. With so much story to get through, all the villains get away scot free, and the story is unsatisfying. 

But the movie still works. The animation is practically a full generation ahead of Snow White, with amazing pans, background work, and crowd scenes. Pinocchio's loose-jointed style of movement is hilarious, and while the human characters are off at times, there are a LOT of them, which shows great ambition. Remember, the Queen was the only hand-animated human in the last one, and she wore big flowing robes that concealed much of her body movements. The songs are wonderful, too. Eeryone knows the classics like "I Got No Strings" and of course, "When You Wish Upon a Star", but my favorite has to be "Little Wooden-Head", sung by Gepetto when Pinocchio is still just a puppet. It's catchy, clever, and sets up his character wonderfully. And that's what's going to keep Disney going. This is another one that's on that AFI list, and while I can't say I'd rank it as one of the top 10 of all time, I can easily see myself putting it in my top 10 Disney films. Maybe. We'll see in a year.

(Also: Really stylish pants.)

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

*This film has a weird approach to accents. In Snow White, everyone was American, but here, Pinocchio's American, Stromboli is Italian, the Coachman is British, and Gepetto is — German? I actually think he was trying to be Italian, but... yeah.

*I liked him at first, but after a while, I started to really wish someone would throw a hammer at Jiminy Cricket.

*Speaking of the Cricket, there's a weird running gag where he gets all into pretty girls, but they're all human, or human-based objects, like Gepetto's carvings or Stromboli's puppets. So yeah, that's weird.

*Disney's love affair with cutesy animal sidekicks really starts here. Gepetto gets two. His cat was awesome. Though that does cause some Pluto/Goofy style confusion with Gideon.

*Accidentally Funny 1940s Lyrics Alert : "Hi-diddle-de-day, an actor's life is gay!"

* I meantioned the ambition in hand animating the humans this time, but there is some rotoscoping with the Blue Fairy. Thing is, it works. Whereas Snow White and the Prince didn't seem to fit in with their surroundings, the fairy... Well, she also doesn't, but it makes her seem strange and otherworldly, which is good.

*Gepetto's bed looks super comfy.

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1937 - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Well, here it is. The big one. The first one. The first feature length cel animated movie in the history of ever. And I’m glad to be starting with this one for two reasons. First, I’ve never seen it in its entirety, and given its importance to the history of animation, that’s a bit shocking to me, and it’s already something I’ve been meaning to do for quite some time. Second, four years ago, I developed an intense and resentful personal grudge against this movie, and I want to know if I’m justified.

Intrigued? So am I. So grab yourself an apple, and let’s talk about Snow White.

Okay, I’m sure you’re wondering about the grudge, so let’s go there first. I was always a huge fan of the AFI top 100 movies lists. Starting with the 100th anniversary of the motion picture, they would do a big fancy four hour TV show every year listing the American Film Institute’s choices for top 100 movies, stars, romances, thrillers, etc, with bits from A-list stars talking about them. I would watch it with my brother and my dad, and we’d critique the choices, talk about what should have made the list, what could have been higher or lower. It was genuinely a highlight of my year. And when they announced they were going to do 10 top 10 lists of a variety of genres, and one of them was going to be animation, I was incredibly excited.

And what was on that list? Seven Disney movies, two Pixar movies, and ONE from another studio. And it was freaking Shrek. Not The Iron Giant, not The Land Before Time, not The Secret of NIMH, not South Park, not Chicken Run, not… Okay, that’s a rant for another day. But what really bothered me was that of the seven Disney movies, four of them were from the first five the studio released! And number one? The BEST animated movie of all time? Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Really, AFI?!, I ranted, Not only do you refuse to acknowledge the broad range of animation films, you confuse age for quality. I’d never seen it, but I knew! The first of something is never the best. The Model T is not the greatest car ever. The Edison cylinder is not the finest media storage device. And Snow White can’t be the greatest animated movie of all time. Still, I always felt slightly unjustified in that. Well, now I’ve finally seen it, so… How did it measure up?

Well, frankly, it’s a lot better than I thought it would be. For one thing, the quality of animation is mostly stellar. They do a lot more complicated things than I would have presumed them capable of. Disney obviously knew what was riding on this, and the animators really brought their A-game on the Queen, the Dwarfs, and the animals. Snow White and the Prince are rather unfortunately rotoscoped, which makes them not quite fit in with everything around them, but from the perspective of a 1937 movie watcher, I can tell it still looked amazing. Even from that perspective, though, I can’t get past Snow’s voice. It’s shrill and nasal and horrible. And the Prince sounds like Dudley Do-Right. But again, the Queen and the Dwarfs, voiced by future stars in the fledgling field of voice acting (most notably Pinto Colvig as Grumpy, who sounds like a cross between an old prospector and a pirate,), are excellent. No, the flaws of the movie aren’t in the drawing or the acting. It’s the writing.

(AND MY PICKAXE.)

Cohesive screenplays were not really a thing in 1937, and Disney was very much a maker of shorts. In that frame of mind, it’s understandable that he was paying his writers 5 dollars per ‘gag’. That’s 75 dollars in 2010, and if my boss was paying me 75 bucks per idea, I’d be throwing a everything at the wall to see what sticks, too. But while this can and does at times work, what it mostly results in is some bits that drag on for way too long and abrupt changes in tone. It does effectively stretch out a very thin story to feature length, but it’s still a thin story. Snow and the Prince have no character at all, and most of the Dwarfs have nothing but their names. The Queen and Grumpy are really the only two with any personality, motivation, or growth in the movie. The songs are suitable, but pretty unremarkable. Good for humming and whistling (while you work, even), but really repetitive and simple for the most part.

(Someone got paid 75 bucks for this, and they forgot a dwarf.)

So to my satisfaction, it was actually a very good movie. The criticisms I had above really don’t do much to the film’s detriment. It’s an enjoyable experience, and I’d certainly let my kids watch it. Is it the greatest animated film of all time? Not even close. Does it at least rate the top ten? Nope. Maybe top 20. Toward the bottom, as a sort of honorable mention.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS:

* One of the animators was named “Perce Pearce”. AWESOME.

* It’s so nice that the Queen just keeps a heart-holding box around the place.

* On two occasions, the dwarfs yell “Jiminy Crickets!” Three years later, Disney would make sure no one could do that with any sincerity ever again.

* The bit where the Queen disguises herself is all kinds of awesome. I wish I had a keg of screams and could mix my cocktails with lightning.

* I didn’t talk about the Huntsman, did I? Guess the Horn of Urgency’s on the fritz again.

(INTO ACTION! Huuuuuuuuuuunt.)

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My (Somewhat More Than A) Year With Walt Disney Animation Studios

Hi! I’m Brian. 

This holiday season, as my work schedule overwhelmed me and I fell far behind on my other writings, a thought stuck me. There are 52 weeks in a year. There will be, at the end of this year, 52 films in the Disney Animated Canon. And what I really need is something that occupies even more of my time, AND has a strict deadline, which I am terrible at keeping. GOOD LIFE CHOICES HERE, FOLKS.

So, yes, I will be watching one Disney movie a week and reviewing it on this blog. Let me clarify which ones I am doing. I will be sticking to the aforementioned Disney Animated Canon, or the movies made by Walt Disney Animation Studios (Formerly Walt Disney Feature Animation, formerly Walt Disney Productions, Ltd, formerly Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio) and released to theaters. This will NOT include straight-to-video or theatrically-released films by DisneyToon Studios, which means all but four of the sequels are right out. (Sigh of relief). This also doesn’t include movies financed or produced by Disney but released under another label, like The Nightmare Before Christmas or A Christmas Carol; movies that are live action with animated bits, like Mary Poppins or Who Framed Roger Rabbit; or live action Disney films like Swiss Family Robinson or The Princess Diaries. Anything by Pixar is, of course, also out.

Here are the movies I’ll be reviewing, arranged roughly into thematic “ages”. I’ll be updating this with links as I go along. Check back on Saturday afternoon for the first official entry.

THE GOLDEN AGE

(Early experimentation, development of the Disney style, and some growing pains)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

Pinocchio (1940)

Fantasia (1940)

Dumbo (1941)

Bambi (1942)

THE ANTHOLOGY AGE

(A lot of compilation movies of EXTREMELY mixed quality)

Saludos Amigos (1943)

The Three Caballeros (1945)

Make Mine Music (1946)

Fun and Fancy Free (1947)

Melody Time (1948)

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)

THE RESTORATION

(Return to old values, new innovation in animation, firm establishment of the brand)

Cinderella (1950)

Alice in Wonderland (1951)

Peter Pan (1953)

Lady and the Tramp (1955)

Sleeping Beauty (1959)

One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)

THE MOURNING PERIOD

(The illness and death of Walt Disney, big financial trouble, and some really weird choices)

The Sword in the Stone (1963)

The Jungle Book (1967)

The Aristocats (1970)

Robin Hood (1973)

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977)

THE DARK AGE

(New kinds of storytelling, abandonment of musicals, an overall darker tone)

The Rescuers (1977)

The Fox and the Hound (1981)

The Black Cauldron (1985)

The Great Mouse Detective (1986)

Oliver and Company (1988)

THE RENAISSANCE

(Return to musicals, fairy tales, and other Restoration tropes, with a fresh emphasis on story)

The Little Mermaid (1989)

The Rescuers Down Under (1990)

Beauty and the Beast (1991)

Aladdin (1992)

The Lion King (1994)

Pocahontas (1995)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)

Hercules (1997)

Mulan (1998)

THE LATE RENAISSANCE

(As the Renaissance to the Restoration, so this to the Dark Age. More variation in story, no musicals [as such], innovation in writing and art)

Tarzan (1999)

Fantasia 2000 (1999)

Dinosaur (2000)

The Emperor's New Groove (2000)

Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)

Lilo & Stitch (2002)

Treasure Planet (2002)

THE DORK AGE

(Two lousy 2D movies, misplacement of blame, three lousy CGI movies)

Brother Bear (2003)

Home On The Range (2004; Last 2D film until 2009)

Chicken Little (2005)

Meet The Robinsons (2007)

Bolt (2008)

THE MODERN AGE

(The Pixar guys are in charge now, so… Good movies.)

The Princess and the Frog (2009)

Tangled (2010)

Winnie the Pooh (2011)

Wreck it Ralph (2012)

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