2001 - Atlantis: The Lost Empire

Before I write these I put together a loose outline of what the final product is going to be. Just a little note reminding me of what I want to put in each paragraph. The note I have for this intro is “The CGI Menace”, and that’s a pretty accurate assessment of what Disney was feeling at the time. When Dinosaur came out, the audience’s hunger for computer animation was just starting to grow, and they hadn‘t had much to choose from. By the time Atlantis came out, four more computer animated films had debuted, three of which were successful, and two of which were good. While the development on this film started long before those movies came out, Disney were smart enough to smell the change on the wind. To that end, they decided it was time for them to change with the times. And they knew what America wanted to see: A dramatic sci-fi adventure set in 1914 and inspired by Japanese animation and American independent comics. Were they correct? Was America ready for - You know what? I’ll just tell you. No, they were wrong, people didn’t want to see it, it didn’t flop yet was not a big hit, and it’s largely forgotten today by the company and the public.

However, like The Black Cauldron, Disney’s attempt here at a darker palate and more dramatic tone has led this to be a bit of a cult classic. However 2, the phrase “like The Black Cauldron” is not one that inspires confidence for a lot of reasons. However 3, the company is in a much better place artistically now than they were back then, so it might not be that bad. How ever are you feeling? I’m sure I feel the same. So eat some chuck wagon slop and let’s talk about Atlantis.

This movie had one great advantage for me going into it, and that’s the designer that came up with most of the movie’s visual aesthetic, Mike Mignola. Mignola is an independent comics artist best known as the creator, author, and primary artist of Hellboy. I have no idea how he came to work for Disney, but I’m glad he did, because the movie looks fantastic. Mignola’s got a very distinctive visual style, and lost civilizations and ancient monsters are a specialty. While it’s not a flawless transition - his fondness for bulky sleeves and his square, blocky hands make for some awkward moments of animation - it does give the movie a unique look that works wonderfully. I don’t think I’ve seen this strong and cohesive a design aesthetic since Aladdin. The biggest problem comes when the animators were clearly going away from Mignola’s designs. The character of Moliere, in particular, is pretty blatantly Disney-designed, and he never quite fits with the look of the other characters.

And those characters are EXCELLENT. A voyage to Atlantis clearly requires a submarine, and a submarine requires a crew. The writers smartly decided to take a page out of Star Trek (or, more to the point, SeaQuest DSV) and work out what jobs they needed, fill those jobs with a diverse group, develop a clear personality for each character, and give everyone a moment in the spotlight. Some of them are familiar Star Trek archetypes, like the Medical Officer or Chief Engineer, and some specific to the job, like the Geologist or Demolitions Officer. And they all feel like real, developed people. Dr. Sweet is half black, half Native American, grew up on a reservation, and served in the army. Audrey is the Hispanic 16-year-old daughter of their previous engineer who trained under her father. Vinny the explosives guy is Italian, and comes from a family of florists. None of this is plot-relevant, but it makes the characters seem far more real, and it lets the movie take a breather in between the action scenes by developing them. Also, time spent on character development is time not spent on plot, and… Well, we’ll come to that.

Look at all that production design! No, really, look at it, we can't have you paying attention to the plot.

The actors, to my everlasting relief, are FANTASTIC. This is a loooooong way from Dinosaur. Whether it’s voice actors like Cree Summer and Corey Burton, character actors like Don Novello and Jim Varney, or primarily live actors like James Garner and Michael J. Fox, everyone presents a voice that is full of personality and perfectly suited to their character. Fox in particular, as the mission’s linguist and our lead character, does a marvelous job. This was his first role after his Parkinson’s Disease forced his retirement from TV, and he throws his all into it. The animators clearly took a lot of influence from his mannerisms in the development of the character, so the fusion of actor and animation is as good as it’s ever been.

Actually, that happens a lot in this. Don Novello does his typical stream-of-conscious rambling as Vinny the demolitions guy, and the animation puts in just the right blend of stone-faced deadpan and accents of emotion. Novello actually recorded his part by reading the lines as written and then free-associating alternate takes. The filmmakers actually wound up using not a single line as scripted, landing him in the Robin Williams/James Woods camp. Phil Morris as the doctor also provided a challenge to the animators by talking as fast as he possibly could in his introductory scene. And if you’ve seen him on Seinfeld as Jackie Chiles (the only black person in New York, as far as I can tell), you know how fast that is. The actors inform the characters as well as the other way around. Man, I hated Dinosaur.

As long as I’m throwing out propers to the actors and avoiding the part I have to talk about next, some more standouts: Leonard Nimoy as the blind Atlantean king brings his legendary gravelly gravitas. Cree Summer, best known at the time as Elmyra from Tiny Toons, plays Princess Kida as stone cold badass. And particular credit to Jim Varney as the expedition’s cook. Not because of his great comic relief performance, I knew that would be good. But because he took the role knowing full well his lung cancer would kill him before the he’d have a chance to see any of it. Oh, also John Mahoney is in it. He's always good.

 

Okay, Mignola, we get it, you like old-timey photos of people standing in groups.

Okay, I’ve avoided the subject for long enough. The animation was great. The characters were great. The actors were fantastic. So what was the problem? Well, the plot that all those great aspects were plopped into is TERRIBLE. Well, not the plot really. The plot is fine. When an old explorer discovers a possible map to Atlantis, his insanely wealthy friend agrees to finance an expedition. The explorer dies before they’re ready to leave, so they hire his beloved grandson Milo, a translator of dead languages, to help them decipher the map. When they reach Atlantis, they discover a living, but stagnant situation. When it turns out the captain was planning all along on exploiting Atlantis for his material gain and doesn’t care that he’s going to have to kill the Atlanteans to do it, the more moral members of his crew rebel. Led now by Milo, who has fallen in love with the Atlantean culture, they save the civilization. Writing it down like that, it’s not a bad plot at all. But it is put together so ineptly. And both of the major conflicts are founded on  gaping plot holes.

First and foremost is the fact that the distrust the King has for the explorers, which is bound up in their cultural stagnation. This is represented by the fact Atlanteans don’t know how to read their own language or operate their machinery, which causes Milo to be an invaluable resource who helps them rediscover their cultural identity. The writers were inspired by the Egyptians encountered by Napoleonic forces in the 1800s. They were surrounded by remnants of a great civilization, but didn’t know what they were or what they meant. Problem is, in Atlantis, thanks to a magic McGuffin, these people have been around for 2,000 YEARS. They are the same civilization that sank in the first place. Did they just forget how to read? I hate the movie thing where a white guy shows the minorities that he’s better at their culture than they are (Avatar, Dances With Wolves, The Last Samurai, etc) but their attempt to avoid this trope just reinforced it and made the natives look like damn idiots.

The second conflict, after Milo teaches everyone how to ride a fishbike, is the revelation that Captain Roark was planning on pinching the legendary Atlantean power source, selling it to the highest bidder, and splitting the profits among his team. When he finds out that the Atlanteans are alive, which he had NO WAY OF KNOWING, he takes it anyway, condemning them to die in the process. Oh, and by the way, these movies are getting recent enough where I’m starting to feel a little bad about spoilers, but when the guy turns up with an army of sinister gas mask stormtroopers, I feel his turn to badness is being telegraphed maybe just a little. So forgive me for giving stuff away, but trust me, plot is not among the reasons to see this movie.

"Oh, good, my shipment of expendable faceless henchmen arrived in time for the plot contrivance."

And they’re not the only things he turned up with for insane reasons. For his mission to an underwater cave, he for some reason brought fighter planes and a hot air balloon. Is there any reason for those other than to give his mooks something to fly around and blow up on in the final battle? And not only that, but his plan makes no sense. Why did he think that leading the expedition to discover the lost continent of Atlantis WOULDN’T make him rich already? And when he finds out they’re still alive, why does he still take the power source, even though it turns out to be an actual living person? And if he DIDN’T know they were alive, WHY DID HE BRING AN ARMY?

And why did his team only have a change of heart when it was too late to do anything about it? Not when he announced his genocidal intentions, not when he beat up and murdered an old man, but when he was sitting in a truck, ready to leave? If this was his plan all along, did Milo’s grandfather know about it? He was an original member of the team, and they were all in on it. Where the hell does Atlantis get sunlight from? Why do Roark’s minions never remove their gas masks? Well, I know that one, it’s to dehumanize them, because a LOT of them die. But still.

And the movie’s a mess on top of it. The scenes don’t hang together at all, and the dialogue tends to be horrible. The best actors in the world can’t save a script this bad. It was clearly a case where their ideas outstripped their ability to pull them off. Yet despite all that, I am giving it a recommendation. It’s not the best, it’s very far from the best, but there are enough moments when the quality concept shines through that you can still enjoy yourself watching it, and most of the plot problems are the sort that don’t start bothering you until after it’s over. So give it a look. You probably won’t be sorry.

My biggest complaint is the unconscionable lack of Aquaman. Why, it's OUTRAGEOUS.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

* David Ogden Stiers has a brief role early on. He may be edging out Jim Cummings in number of appearances.

* At one point, Milo exclaims that Roark might sell the power source to the Kaiser. This is the only time that the film’s 1914 setting becomes relevant.

* At the very beginning, Milo reveals that one of the runes in a Viking description of Atlantis’ location was mistranslated, and after changing one of the letters, COAST OF IRELAND becomes COAST OF ICELAND. This is stupid for so many reasons.

* Kida is the only Disney Princess to officially become a Disney Queen. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t get any merchandise.

"One side, Milo! I'll make short work of that robot lobster!"

* An early scene is set at the mansion of eccentric retired explorer Preston Whitmore. He has a fish tank full of coelacanths, which were thought to be millions of years extinct at the time, which indicates that he was a damn good explorer, and ties in thematically nicely. I do think, however, that it seems like a lot of effort to go to for something that will only be noticed by nerds like me that watch movies and go “Ooh! Coelacanths!”

Look, I don't care, I'm just going to keep posting Aquaman pictures.

* The film was a modest hit, but came out the same year as Shrek and Monsters Inc., avatars of The CGI Menace, and they wiped the floor with it. Disney did have one far more profitable 2D animated movie that year, namely “Recess: School’s Out”, which I really like. It was made by Disney’s B-list studio, Movietoons. The upshot is that Atlantis cost 100 million, looked great, and made 150 million. Recess cost 10 million, looked lousy, and made 44 million. So, you know, percentages.

"What manner of devilry is this?! We're not a bunch of tattooed illiterates! DAMN YOU, DISNEY!"

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2000 - Dinosaur

As I mentioned in the review of The Emperor’s New Groove, this movie actually came out earlier that same year, an unusual movie for Disney. What I didn’t go into detail about was the difference in how the two were sold. (Note to people who are reading these in film order: Sorry about that) The Emperor’s New Groove was released in December, prime real estate, but with relatively little publicity for a Disney movie. Dinosaur was released in May, also a great time, but with a HUGE marketing push. This movie was everywhere. It was heralded as an amazing, world-changing movie, technically groundbreaking, emotionally epic, a film that would live through the ages! And it worked! This movie made hundreds of millions and was the number 5 movie of the entire year, while Groove had the worst box office for a Disney film since The Black Cauldron. But when I discuss my blog with people, Groove is remembered with near-univeral fondness, and Dinosaur is… Well, it’s not remembered. This film has made almost no cultural impact, contrary to the expectations of it, and it’s excellent box office showing. So why hasn’t this lasted in the memory the way its contemporaries have? Was it as good as Disney thought, or was it all hype? Why do we describe someone as having a meteoric rise when meteors are known for falling? Feeling the burden of undue anticipation? So am I. So steal some eggs from an unprotected nest, and let’s talk about Dinosaur.

The first thing I’d like to address is the animation, a major selling point of the movie. At the time this came out, computer animation was still very much the new hotness. Moreover, the Disney animators made a commitment to realism in the portrayals of the various dinosaurs. Sure, they let themselves cheat a little, and sure, some of the dinosaurs have been rendered inaccurate by new research, e.g. the Velociraptors didn’t have feathers, but it still works. The other big selling point was the backgrounds, which rather than being posed on a computer, were filmed on location. This works really well - for about seven minutes.

That wasn’t an arbitrary number. The first seven minutes or so of this movie are fantastic. It consists of a montage of an egg being carried all over the place by other dinosaurs, pterosaurs, rivers, etc. And it’s beautiful. The sight of the Pteranodon flying through a gorge, or a mass of herbivores grazing (even though at the time the film was made, grass as we know it wasn’t thought to have evolved until after dinosaurs, but whatever), or a pair of Oviraptors running through a forest, it looks wonderful. It really feels like you’re looking into a prehistoric world, and the live backgrounds look great with the animated characters. Then the egg is found… by lemurs.

"Are you aware of the title of this film?"

Yes, the Disney folks thought we needed mammals to relate to, because after all, it’s not like dinosaurs were ever popular with kids before, right? So yeah, lemurs. Modern ones, too, but I’ll overlook that, because at least they aren’t chimps or something. Anyway, the egg hatches, and the result is an Iguanadon, which the lemurs decide to raise. Somehow, the 16-inch arboreal primates successfully raise a 20-foot-long ground-dwelling reptile, and live in peace with him on their little island, until a meteor storm forces them to flee. The meteor storm brings two more problems. One, the animation doesn’t work in it. The CGI and live elements start clashing like crazy. More importantly, after the meteorites have pounded the earth, the lush, beautiful backgrounds go away, and are replaced with boring brown rocks all over the place. And in order to escape from the desolation, they wind up joining a herd of various dinosaurs being lead by a jerkhole of an Iguanodon who says he can lead them all to the Great Valley. I mean the Nesting Grounds. Sorry. Don’t know where that came from.

Of course, I only know what it’s called because they all talk. I can’t tell you how fast this movie lost its goodwill when the talking started. That great opening sequence was also speechless. The dinosaurs communicated in hoots and clicks and roars and I was fine with it. I understood it. And I remember when I was a kid, there was no indication that they talked in the trailers or anything. If I hadn’t seen a cast list when I was doing my preliminary research, I would have been really taken aback. And oh, what a cast list.

I go on about the voices a lot as I review these, and that’s because voice acting is an art separate from live acting. And this movie demonstrates that very well, featuring flat, lifeless performances from actors who I know are at least decent, like Joan Plowright, Hayden Pannetiere, and Juliana Margulies, or even very good, like Alfre Woodard and Ossie Davis. Our lead, Aladar, is played by D.B. Sweeney, who I swear is the result of some sort of scientific experiment to create the blandest, most forgettable actor in history. At the time he recoded this, given the production time, I guess he’d just done Fire in the Sky? Or Spawn? Maybe they thought he’d be a star by now. Because I can’t imagine anyone listened to his voice and went “Yeah, that’s acceptable”. The only actors who really bring something are Della Reese as an aging Styracosaurus and Samuel E. Wright as Kron, the brutish lead Iguanadon. Wright is actually fantastic, and since the only thing I know him for is playing Sebastian in The Little Mermaid, I’d never have recognized him.

"Wait! Take me with you! I don't want to be in this!" 

In addition to being the best actor, he’s also the only interesting character. The plot is dull and derivative, owing more than a tiny bit to The Land Before Time. Kron is a welcome source of legitimate conflict. He’s motivated entirely be the survival of his adopted herd, and he’s willing to embrace the notion that their survival might mean some of the old or slow ones die. At one point, the herd is being tracked by a pair of Carnotaurs and Aladar tries to convince them to help the slower ones survive, and without preamble or warning, Kron throws him to the ground and says “If you interfere again, I will kill you.” There’s no veiled threat, no metaphor. It’s a directness you don’t expect to see in a Disney film.

Sadly, the rest of the film doesn’t live up to that one moment of brutal honesty. For the most part, it’s an endless sea of clichéd moments and hacky lines. Including my new least favorite cliché, the Arbitrarily Silent Animal, which I first really noticed in Tarzan. Again, the carnivores are completely speechless, only growling and roaring despite clearly being as intelligent as the herbivores. And it’s really too bad. They are carnivores after all, they need meat to survive. It would be interesting to see their morality in this context as thinking, speaking characters. But alas. There’s also an Ankylosaurus that acts like a dog, which is more than a little weird. Is he just mentally challenged or something?

"Where's my feathers, Disney!"

So we’ve established why no one remembers this - because it’s completely unmemorable. It received middling reviews as well, so why was it such a big hit? Well computer animation it was still a novelty at the time. There had only been computer animated movies at this point in time; two were about toys and two were about ants. A large-scale movie, with a big ensemble cast of living (well, formerly living) animals was something new, and the hype was considerable. It put butts in seats, but it didn’t put the movie in their brains. The Emperor’s New Groove might not have busted any blocks at the theaters, but it’s the one people remember and the one they want to see again. Next, Disney will try to make a dramatic sci-fi epic based on the work of an independent comic artist, a fake exo-linguist, and Napoleonic-era French interpretations of Egypt. Who wants to take bets on how that goes?

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

* For evidence that D.B. Sweeney is the most generic white guy ever, here’s a depressing story: Apparently, Terry in the comic book Spawn looks a lot like Eriq LaSalle. But some studio executives decided the movie had too many black people in it and told the director to make Terry white. So with a casting goal of “white guy to balance the cast out”, they landed on D.B. Sweeney.

* He also hasn’t gotten any better as a voice actor. I mean, how the hell did they land on him for the adult version of Aang in Avatar? Hella disappointing. I know they have Phil LaMarr’s number, they could have got him. I would say Daniel Dae Kim, but he was already on that season.

* No, the entire additional thoughts section isn‘t going to be about how much I hate D.B. Sweeney.

"I'm making this same dumb face in so many pictures! I look like a bunch of other actors glued together!"

* One nice thing I can say is that Iguanodon was a good choice for the lead, paleontologically speaking. Medium sized, capable of bipedal or quadrupedal motion, prehensile digits, easy face to anthropomorphise, and extremely common and widespread.

* When Iguanodons were first discovered, their thumb spikes were mistaken for horns and placed on the nose. Oddly enough, the two villainous Iguanodons in the film have nose horns. It’s not terribly accurate, but it helps differentiate all the beige lumpy guys, so I’ll just count it as a history reference and accept it.

* The competition probably also had something to do with the box office. Dinosaur was up against Road Trip and a Woody Allen movie that I know I've seen, but somehow don't remember Hugh Grant being in. Groove was up against What Women Want and Dude, Where's My Car. Which might not sound like a big deal, but that's back when kids wanted to see movies starring Mel Gibson and Ashton Kutcher.

* Okay, I'm just kidding, it's actual competition was partly from Disney itself. 102 Dalmatians came out the week before, and hogged a big chunk of the family film market, and two weeks after the terrible Jim Carrey/Ron Howard version of The Grinch, which rather depressingly was the number one movie of the year.

* I bet the D.B. stands for Dumb Boring.

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2000 - The Emperor's New Groove

2000 - Kingdom in the Sun

Well, with a few different and experimental works under their belt, the studio decided to get back to animated epic fairy tales with this one, Kingdom in the Sun. Using a story inspired by The Prince and the Pauper, this was the simple and classic story of a spoiled prince who meets a peasant who looks just like him and switches places with him. And then an evil witch turns him into a llama so he can’t reclaim his throne, and plots to kill the peasant so she can take over the kingdom and use its magic to block out the sun which she blames for her aging. And the llama escapes and joins forces with a beautiful peasant woman who falls in love with him as she helps him get back into the castle. And Sting was doing the songs. Feeling complex? So am I. So get yourself some guinea pig and quinoa and let’s talk about Kingdom in the Sun.

They canceled it. Yeah, after a big chunk of it was already finished, they realized it was a convoluted and bloated mess, so they yanked it, massively retooled it, and turned it into a wacky slapstick comedy. Did it work? Were they able to pull gold from this mess, or did they just get a smaller, cheaper mess? Needing a change? So am I. So rework that guinea pig into some sort of party dip, and let’s talk about The Emperor’s New Groove.

All right, let’s get to the big question first: Yes, it’s good. It’s actually excellent. One might be worried that this would turn into a too-many-cooks situation, that it would bear the telltale marks of executive meddling, that it would feel like a quickie rushed out so all the development money wasn’t wasted. No in all cases. It does, however, have a very different feel than any other Disney movie to date. The jokes come fast and furious, and anachronisms abound. But rather than being a random distraction, or the province of one magic character, they’re part of the structure of the entire world, so they don’t bother me at all. It’s a lot like Hercules in that regard, in that they’ve created a world that works for a blatantly humorous story, so the characters can work in the way a wacky comedy requires without seeming inconsistent.

What’s really impressive, though, is that the movie still trusts itself with serious moments. Unlike Hunchback, which was constantly undercutting its own drama with those damn gargoyles, or Hercules, which placed such a divide between the comedy and drama that it could come off as bipolar, this movie lets drama happen. There’s several quiet moments between our main peasant character and his wife, or moments where the friendship between the prince - well, now an emperor - and him is allowed to grow naturally. And, yes, the peasant is now married.

To a LLAMA.

In the reworked story, there is no prince-and-pauper switch and no beautiful peasant love interest. The former witch, Yzma, now a mad scientist, turns emperor Kuzco into a llama by accident. She intended to kill him, but her idiot manservant Kronk accidentally slipped essence of llama into his drink rather than the poison. The poison for Kuzco. The poison intended specially to kill Kuzco. Kuzco’s poison. That poison. (Trust me, that was very funny if you’ve seen the movie.) After Kronk takes the llama out of the city, he winds up on the farm of Pacha, a peasant whose home he is planning on destroying to build a summer palace. Pacha agrees to guide the llama-emperor through the jungle to his palace in hopes that the spoiled jerk will have a change of heart. So it’s a buddy comedy now, and a very well-made one at that. Kuzco’s change of heart, though inevitable, is hard-won and seems genuine.

It’s a real sign of the strength of the reworked script that the characters are so well realized. There’s no inconsistency in anyone, and there’s real growth and development throughout. Kronk is particularly good, as a henchman who’s not particularly evil, just reeeeeeally dumb. It’s blatantly stated that he was hired for his looks, and that Yzma gets a new muscle boy every few years. He’s considerate and caring, and speaks fluent squirrel, albeit with a heavy human accent. Yzma is good, too, though she tries to usurp the emperor’s throne, it’s hardly her main motivation.

WHY HAVE I NOT BEEN USING GIFS THIS ENTIRE TIME.

The voices are of the usual high quality we’ve come to expect. David Spade plays Kuzco, and it turns out the magic formula for making me like David Spade is to stop me from looking at him. The whiny man-child character that’s been growing more and more impractical and irritating as the actor ages really does fit him like a glove. John Goodman plays Pacha with all the warmth, passion, and bullheadedness he’s known for. Eartha Kitt is Yzma, and with her rasping voice and excellent comedic timing she totally earns my forgiveness for foisting “Santa Baby” on the world. As for Kronk, he’s a tall, handsome, well-built moron. How could he be anyone other than Patrick Warburton? Wendie Malick, John Fiedler, and Tom Jones turn in good supporting performances. And that’s pretty much it. The movie goes almost entirely on the four main characters.

This is going to be a short review because what works, which is almost everything, works in a very simple manner, and what doesn’t isn’t even worth mentioning. There’s a couple of bits that go on a hair too long, and the lower budget resulted in the occasional wonky background, but those things are basically irrelevant. The movie works because of its gags, and they are legion, they are hilarious, and they are delivered by very talented actors. This movie is fantastic, it’s hilarious, and if you haven’t seen it, you should. I don’t know what Kingdom in the Sun (or Kingdom of the Sun, as many sources put it) would have been like. Honestly, probably pretty lousy. There’s a lot of junk around the corner, and without this inspired fit of lunacy, that crap might have come sooner. Stay tuned for Dinosaur! Yeah! Remember that movie?

Yeah, next few weeks are going to be fun.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

* Speaking of Dinosaur, that technically came out a few months before this, and was way more expensive AND way more successful. But I haven’t watched it yet. And I like this movie. So I’m doing 2000 out of order.

* There's a documentary called The Sweatbox about the making of this movie. Sting's wife, a documentarian, was granted permission to do a making-of feature on Kingdom in the/of the Sun, but instead of the fun "Here's  how a cartoon gets made" movie the Disney suits expected, the production process dictated its transformation into a "Here's how the executives overproduce and ruin movies" movie. Apparently it's very good, but Disney owns it, and for obvious reasons, aren't letting anyone see it.

* I do find myself wondering if my opinion would change if I were to see The Sweatbox. Probably not, because this movie is still funny. I had to delete most of the original Additional Thoughts section because I realized it was basically just a list of gags I liked. And half of those were just Kronk quotes.

* If you regret the loss of the Prince and the Pauper subplot, Disney did make one of those, a short released with The Rescuers Down Under. I haven’t seen it, but it’s got Mickey in it, so it’s probably lousy. Instead, try the movie Dave, or Garfield 2 if you’re a masochist.

* The German title of this seems to be “The Emperor is a Llama.” I love that.

* Yes, Incans actually ate guinea pigs. Deal with it.

And they drank foamy pink stuff.

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1999 - Fantasia 2000

It’s common knowledge that Fantasia was meant to be, as this film states, “a perpetual work in progress”, with new stuff being rotated in and out every couple of years. But after its disappointing initial run, that idea got pushed off to the side and forgotten about until the 1970s, when Walt’s nephew Roy Jr. decided the concept was due for a revival. After 20 years or so, I guess Michael Eisner got tired of dodging Roy’s calls and hiding under his desk and gave the project the go-ahead. With no Deems Taylor and Leopold Stokowski to anchor the project, a rotating crew of celebrities would serve as host, and Metropolitan Opera director James Levine would run the music. The material would be all new save for one old classic. The film would be given a lavish budget and a run in the fancy-pants IMAX theaters, marketed as the event Walt imagined. Would this live up to Walt and Roy’s dreams? Or was 2000 even less ready for it than 1940 was? Missing Deems? So is AMERICA. So make something you’ve been planning to get around to using one 60-year-old ingredient, and let’s talk about Fantasia 2000.

SYMPHONY NO. 5 IN C MINOR - I. ALLEGRO CON BRIO

Better known as “Beethoven’s Fifth”. Even better known as BUM BUM BUM BUMMMM. Via a little snippet of good ol’ Deems Taylor’s voice in the opening montage of clips from Fantasia, it seems we’re meant to take this as something like the Toccata from the first film, meaningless abstract images. Unfortunately, there’s a clear meaning. There’s some colorful triangles and some black triangles, and they have a fight, and light and color triumphs over darkness. And good thing, too, else it’d be a real short movie. It was all right. I showed it to a first grade class and they got a kick out of it, so it did its job.

"Ahhh! Whoa! What’s happening? Who am I? Why am I here? What’s my purpose in life? What do I mean by ‘who am I’? Okay, okay, calm down, calm down, get a grip now..."

PINES OF ROME

After some not-horrible introductory patter from Steve Martin and a segment intro from Itzhak Perlman, we go into our next segment, which is done mostly in CGI, and features whales swimming about in a frolicsome manner until a star explodes, giving them the ability to fly about in a frolicsome manner. It’s quite lovely, though the cursory attempt at a plot - a young whale gets separated from his parents - gets in the way of the real attraction, which is that whales look awesome, and flying whales even more so.

RHAPSODY IN BLUE

After an introduction by Quincy Jones, who looks more and more like Billy Dee Williams as the years progress, we visit New York City in the film’s longest segment. To the tune of George Gershwin’s jazz-influenced classic, various New Yorkers of all races and classes go about their daily business, in a variety of quite funny vignettes. The character designs are based on the art of Al Hirschfield, who had previously influenced the design of Aladdin. The segment was directed by Eric Goldberg, who had started it as a personal project, but when a segment for this film was needed, Disney offered to produce it in order to give the Emperor’s New Groove animators something to do while that movie underwent an extensive retool. The result is a very fresh and funny segment that doesn’t quiiiite fit the rest of the film. One thing that’s particularly striking is the heavy use of piano, which saw a bit of use in the last segment and none at all in the entire first Fantasia.

Nice chin, George.

PIANO CONCERTO NO. 2 IN F MINOR - I. ALLEGRO

Whoop. Speaking of piano. After a visibly drunk Bette Midler sundowns all over the screen by way of introduction, we proceed with our story, an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Steadfast Tin Soldier”. It’s mostly okay, but probably the weakest segment in the movie. The designs are nice, but the animation is blocky, early days CGI, and is frequently choppy and uneven. The pacing is also weird, and the change to a happy ending is mehhh.

THE CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS, FINALE

James Earl Jones delivers the introduction to this segment in the most portentous and gravitas-y way he can, which is saying something. This makes for a great joke when it turns out the segment is about a flamingo with a yo-yo annoying his flock. A very short segment at just under two minutes, this is a nice palate-cleanser. It’s funny, and the animation is unique and interesting, featuring no outlines on the birds, which allows the color to dominate. I’d say they should all be like this, which would make the movie very lively and very bright, but also about 12 minutes long. This segment was also directed by Eric Goldberg, but this time, he also did all the animation and made an onscreen appearance with James Earl Jones. Show off.

THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE

In tribute to the original notion that Fantasia would include classic works alongside new ones, and in tribute to the fact that Sorcerer Mickey is a real handy marketing tool, we’ve got a repeat. The only new material is an introduction by Penn and Teller where Penn blathers inanely about how all magic is fake. Except Mickey’s? I don’t know. Turn it down a little, buddy.

This is about the funniest thing I've ever seen.

POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE, MARCHES 1-4

After the tag at the end of the last segment with Mickey and Leopold Stokowski in silhouette, Mickey runs out in non-silhouette to tell James Levine to stall for time while he and Donald prepare the next bit. Mickey’s not funny, but Levine is charming and interesting, and a little stiff in a Deems-ish sort of way, and it makes me wonder why they didn’t just have him host the whole thing instead of a parade of fairly awkward celebrities. Ah, well.

The segment itself is the story of Noah’s Ark, with Donald as Noah’s assistant, scrambling to get everything taken care of. Along the way, Daisy thinks he was left outside and drowned, and he thinks the same of her. This is a bit weird, as they’re on the ark for months, both doing their jobs. Wouldn’t their paths cross? Wouldn’t Noah mention something to them? Sure, this isn’t the silliest thing about the story, but you have to remember, there are actual adult people in the world who think this really happened, and even they would find this contrivance to be a bit much. Anyway, the animation’s good, there’s some good gags, and the famous “graduation march” is perfect for the bookends of the animals boarding the ark and leaving it. Or should I say… Disemb-ARK-ing?

This is what the inside of Bette Midler's brain looks like.

FIREBIRD SUITE

Angela Lansbury takes us into this last bit, and if there’s one thing we know, it’s that Fantasia movies gotta end with a big-ass monster. In this one, a forest spirit flies around coaxing spring out of winter, until she finds a place her magic doesn’t work. In her curiosity, she accidentally awakens a gigantic firebird who destroys her forest. As she despairs in the ashes, a stag shows her that she can still create life and joy. The animation is really great in this one, particularly in the movement and emotions of the forest spirit and the firebird’s emergence as a wave of lava. (I’m not going to call it a pyroclastic foe. But mostly because I feel bad about the ‘disembarking’ pun.)

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

* Itzhak Perlman and James Levine are basically identical.

* Okay, none of the hosts were that great, but Bette Midler was really deranged. Her segment discussed various rejected Fantasia segments from over the years, but they didn’t seem to script any of it for her, resulting in bizarre reads of lines like “And here’s some art for a segment based on Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries… Here they are!.. And there they go,” as still images float along beside her. And the whole time, she’s holding her hands on her stomach with her elbows out in a very awkward manner, unmoving. It’s all very odd

Occult imagery! Call Don Wildmon!

* When Mickey speaks to Leopold Stokowski, Walt’s voice has been dummied out and Wayne Allwine’s put in, to be consistent with the new material that follows. Take that, beloved founder of our company!

* In my Uncle Scrooge comics, Donald has white sclera, but in animation, he has blue sclera. Not that this means much. I just wanted you to look up ‘sclera’. Now you’ve learned something!

* Both CGI pieces were completed before Toy Story, but not released until 5 years later, so they look clunky even by the standards of the day.

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1999 - Tarzan

As I’ve mentioned before, Tarzan is often considered the last film of the Disney Renaissance, and there’s a case to be made for that, I suppose. The next film, the long-desired Fantasia sequel, is definitely a much bigger style shift than this was, and the movies that follow it certainly have a distinctive tone and style to them. So I can see how at the time this was seen as part of the still nebulously-defined Renaissance. But looking at the films all together, I definitely think this is the start of the new era. There’s a lot changed in this one, and they were taking a pretty big risk making another dark and serious movie when they had enough time to prepare and could have played it safe. Would their fortunes turn around? Would the new era bring cinematic achievements or miserable failures? Why does Tarzan wear a loincloth if everyone else is naked? Going ape? So am I. So use a stick as a rudimentary tool to dig termites out of a mound, and let’s talk about Tarzan.

 Let’s get the money out of the way first. Mulan made about 300 million, which while a far cry from the glory days, was a significant bump up from Hercules. Tarzan made 450 million, approaching Beauty and the Beast levels for the first time in a while. (Side note: I’ve been meaning to mention, I’m working with worldwide box office gross to present on these, as that’s what’s easy to find. If you want more in-depth analysis, then give me some money.) A major reason for that was that it was just plain very good, but of course, the easy recognition of the Tarzan brand must have helped, too, coupled with the fact that the famed ape-man hadn‘t had a major screen presence in years.

And trust me, this is based on the Tarzan movies. The book, Tarzan of the Apes, is an odd little thing. For one thing, he’s not raised by gorillas, as many believe. Most of the gorillas are jerks. Nor was he raised by chimps as the old movies suggest. He was, in fact, raised by Mangani, a fictional ape species that walks upright and has a spoken language. (Phillip Jose Farmer noted that they seem more like a type of Australopithecus. But then, he would.) Apart from that, the broad strokes are the same -

1 - Deep in the jungle, in the land of adventure, lives Tarzan.
2 - Tarzan is handsome, Tarzan is strong.
3 - Go cheetah, get banana.
4 - And so they got funky.

He's really cute and his hair is long.

No, wait, I’m thinking of something else. The broad strokes of the Tarzan story are:

1 - Pasty white English people die in jungle
2 - Baby raised by apes, becomes awesome
2a - And wears a loincloth for some reason
3 - English explorers find white jungle dude and try to introduce him to civilized society.
4 - Dude thinks it’s cool at first but then annoying and goes back to the jungle.

So while all those notes are in the book, the Disney film owes the most to the wildly successful MGM films starring Johnny Weismuller. It was these that really cemented the idea of Tarzan in the mind of the American audiences. The “me Tarzan, you Jane” (which never actually happened), the faithful elephant sidekick, and just the general feel of the thing was pure classic Hollywood. Plus, of course, the famous Tarzan Yell, a trademark of MGM, licensed by Disney for the film.

Not that there’s anything wrong with it being more of an adaptation of the pop-culture idea of Tarzan than the book. After all, pretty much every Christian-themed movie owes more to Milton and Dante than to the Bible. And if it wasn’t for the movies taking over the idea of Superman in the public mind, the dude wouldn’t even fly. So this isn’t one of those Jungle Book cases where they’re ignoring the source, they’re just treating it pragmatically. And as with the Jungle Book, their instincts pay off big time.

It was at that moment that Inspector Javert knew Tarzan's parents were secretly prisoner 24601.

This is a very good movie. VERY good. Frankly, right from the start, I was taken aback at the quality. The introductory scene is a montage of Tarzan’s parents shipwrecking and building a home for themselves with their infant son at the same time the gorillas Kala and Kerchak are welcoming their child into the world. We gain instant emotional attachment to the two families and the animators and the music do a wonderful job of making us feel the love on both sides - until tragedy strikes in opposite directions as the leopard Sabor kills the gorilla baby, then the human parents shortly after. Kala hears the crying human child, and decides to adopt it, naming it Tarzan.

That’s all in the first five minutes or so, and that’s remarkably economic storytelling. The music helps immeasurably. The biggest risk Disney took here was dropping the songs, making this the first non-musical we’ve seen in nearly ten films. But in a way, they didn’t, since there are still songs, sung from the POV of the characters, pertaining to the situations. Only they’re all sung over the background by Phil Collins, who also wrote them. This works better than it has any right to. The frequent presence of Collins on the soundtrack gives the film a fine through-line, and his distinctive voice fits into the feel of the film quite well. My one complaint is that a few of the songs are a bit samey, and as I hum one, it can easily turn to another without warning. But on another level, that helps the flow of the movie, so it’s all good.

It certainly helps that he’s writing about such clear, well-realized characters. What impresses me the most is that each could have been a simple stereotype and the movie still could have been good, but they went beyond. Kerchak could have been just the angry father figure, but his resentment of Tarzan both for replacing his son and for proving such a talented and capable gorilla gives real depth to that. Likewise Kala goes further than a mere protective mothering type, and Turk, Tarzan’s best friend, moves further beyond the “I’m jealous of your new friends” personality type than I expected. As for the humans, artsy science-girl Jane has a wonderful passion for discovery and a polish of Victorian politeness that makes the scene where she first meets Tarzan, a gorgeous pile of muscles with no personal boundaries, absolutely hilarious. Clayton, the hunter who accompanies her expedition, is Gaston writ large in his heart, but his efforts to conceal that fact from the scientists he’s manipulating make him fascinating. And just when you start getting fooled yourself, he snaps and shows his true nature. The only characters that don’t surpass their stereotypes are Jane’s absentminded professor of a father and Tarzan’s neurotic elephant friend Tantor.

Angela Lansbury's performance was particularly subdued.

The voices are similarly excellent. Subtlety is again the name of the game here. Jane is voiced by Minnie Driver and Tarzan by Tony Goldwyn (the bad guy from Ghost), both of whom deliver just the right amount of emotion and intensity. Tarzan’s gorilla parents are Lance Henriksen and Glenn Close, who similarly keep things on a very even level without succumbing to Boring Voice Actor Syndrome. The most remarkable of the underplayed voiced was BRIAN BLESSED, who played Clayton. This guy has made his entire career out of shouting, to the point that I instinctively write his name LIKE THIS, and yet he plays this as the smoothest sweet-talker possible and does fantastic. I’m sad Disney never brought him back to play someone a little crazier or to be in a musical, but I’m glad he did get to cut loose once in the movie, because he also provides the Tarzan Yell, which Goldwyn wasn’t up to. Oh, BRIAN BLESSED, you are a treasure. Tarzan’s friends are Rosie O’Donnell and Wayne Knight, who go a little more cartoony, but both are very talented and underappreciated actors, and they work with it.

The animation is also phenomenal. The characters are still animated through CAPS, but a new process has put them in fully 3D CGI environments rather than painted backgrounds. They must have been working on this for a long time, because after a small moment of getting used to it, the effect looks great. There’s a lot of sunlight through leaves in this one, an effect Disney has done well, and Tarzan’s vine swinging is done with those crazy tracking shots The Rescuers Down Under was so fond of, only they‘re far more capable of pulling them off now. The character animation is clear and strong and skews to the realistic while still carrying a lot of personality. One particularly good bit of design are Tarzan’s muscles, which accurately reflect a life spent walking like a gorilla.

I remembered this movie wrong. I remembered it from way back in 1999 as having good action but being rather dry and slow. And I suppose it is, to a 15-year-old. I have no idea how I’d interpret it if I were younger. But I’m 29 now, and the appreciation I feel for this movie is much stronger. It’s extremely mature, more so even than Hunchback, whose maturity was found largely in the darkness of its subject matter. The maturity of Tarzan is in the complex characters, their interactions, and the emotions that the story brings forth from them. The death of Kerchak is one of the most moving I’ve ever seen in one of these films, and the death of Clayton, which comes complete with the silhouette of his hanged body, is one of the most brutal and most satisfying. Also, this is probably the only Disney movie where you’ll hear a character refer to another’s ‘emotional constipation’.

Upon seeing this, several children in the theater were cured of their ACTUAL constipation.

So yeah, this one is very, VERY highly recommended. Probably not for a younger kid, but definitely for an adult. I still think kids would get a lot out of it - The vine swinging and fight scenes are very well done, and there’s a lot of accessible comedy - but this is one for the more developed mind. Or possibly a very astute gorilla.


ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

* Kerchak’s death mirrors that of The Beast from Beauty and the Beast exactly, from the positioning of the characters to the dialogue “You came back,” “I came home.” So yeah, imagine the emotional impact of that moment, only instead of romantic love, it’s familial love, and instead of turning into a handsome man, the big guy dies.

* In the book, the Tarzan Yell was described only as “The call of the bull ape” or something like that, so the MGM folks had a lot of leeway when making up the sound of it. For good bonus fun, check out the non-MGM 1930s Tarzan films from various studios, who attempted to make their own trademark-able cries. In the Buster Crabbe version, he just yells out “white guy” in the ape language.

* Since the spoken language of the Mangani is lost and Tarzan now communicates in gorilla grunts, one does wonder how he was able to identify himself as “Tarzan”.

* The reason Tarzan wears a loincloth in the book is because he wants to have fur like the other animals and that’s the only thing he can figure out how to keep on. I knew all along. In the movie, that’s never mentioned, though since Kala finds Tarzan in a diaper, it’s possible she just thought it was something important to his kind of animal and kept it going.

I am impressed with its ability to stay on, I must say.

* It is a bit weird at the end, though, when Tarzan leaves the boat with pants on and is wearing his loincloth again by the time he reaches the jungle. Maybe he was just using it as underwear.

* As a child, and even a little bit now, I experienced some gender confusion over Tarzan’s friend Turk. She’s definitely female, but if you miss the early dialogue that mentions this, it’s not very clear. Her design isn’t notably feminine, but then again, she’s a gorilla. She’s got a tough, adventurous personality more associated with a male character, but I’ve never gone in for gender roles. Her voice is by Rosie O’Donnell, who - easy jokes aside - is a very good actor and does a lower than normal voice for the character. Also, her name is ‘Turk”. Oh, but it’s short for “Turkala”. So yeah, I can see where people might get confused. Including the producers of the Broadway show, who cast Chester Gregory in the role.

* That said, I don’t think Turk’s jealousy of Jane is romantic in nature, though it’s not difficult to read that into it if you want. But Rosie O’Donnell has confirmed that they originally wrote the character as male, and didn’t change the script at all when she was cast, as she pointed out there’s no reason the ‘best friend’ role can’t be a girl, which is why I think it’s unfair to read a romantic attachment into it, because it seems to have been totally unintended. But hey, death of the author and all that jazz.

* Sabor has no lines in the movie, like the gators in The Rescuers, the goanna in Rescuers Down Under, the cat in The Great Mouse Detective, etc. It annoys me when some animals in a talking animal movie are arbitrarily mute. I guess Tarzan never had the chance to learn to speak leopard?

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1998 - Mulan

Even before this one begins, I feel an odd sense of change in it. When this film was in its very early production, Pocahontas came out. While it was too late to change Hunchback, and Hercules was different enough to not need it, it was a much more cautious Disney that created Mulan. They hadn’t stopped trying, but the air of confidence is definitely gone from this movie. The budget is, as far as I can tell, comparable to the last ones, but the whole endeavor feels smaller somehow - except when it feels bigger. It’s hard to explain. Really, it’s rather appropriate that a movie with duality and deception as a major theme should so often feel like it’s moving on two separate levels.

The male rabbit is swifter of foot.
The female’s eyes are smaller.
But when two rabbits run side by side
How can you tell the female from the male?

I don’t know, either. So get yourself some chow mein or lo mein, because I always forget which is the one I like, and let’s talk about Mulan.

As with the last few films, we’re in a weird place right off the bat with the source material. Originally conceived as a short called China Doll, which definitely would have been racist based off the title alone, the filmmakers eventually reached the decision to do an adaptation of an old Chinese poem “The Ballad of Hua Mu Lan”. I had assumed this poem was an epic along the lines of the Bhagavad Gita or the Illiad, but it turns out it’s really short. The entire poem is basically “This girl’s dad was called to war, but he was all old and stuff. So she pretended to be a boy, and went to war, and did really good, and then went home. And no one figured out she was a girl until she got back.” Remarkably, they’re not even able to hit all of those plot points. But we’ll get there.

Tarzan is often considered the final film of the Disney Renaissance, but as I was coming up with my eras of Disney, I listed Tarzan as the start of the new era. It wasn’t a musical, didn’t follow the same structure as the ones that came before it -  and I see watching this that it was the right call. This really is the last gasp of the formula that had served them so well. Stuff that had been taken for granted - comic sidekicks, musical numbers, a certain flow of plot - all make appearances here that seem more obligatory than natural. Take the music for instance.

Though I do appreciate an entire musical number about how horny everyone is.

For the past several films, it’s been Broadway superstar Alan Menken, except for the one that was Elton John, and they worked with powerhouse lyricists like Stephen Schwartz, Howard Ashman, and Tim Rice. This movie, the music is by… Matthew Wilder? Who? Well, probably someone that comes a hell of a lot cheaper than Alan Menken. I know these aren’t names, but come on. Menken’s got eight Oscars, seven Golden Globes, and eleven Grammys. Wilder had one top five hit a decade before this came out, and one Grammy nomination as a producer.

As for the songs themselves… Well, at least it might count as a return to the good old days of Disney, because like so many of their classic films, there’s one really good song, one okay one, and a lot of unmemorable crap. In both of the good songs, the main advantage was the very clever lyrics by David Zippel of Hercules, the only non-star lyricist of the past several films. Between that, this, and his co-writing with Alan Menken of “The Star-Spangled Man” for Captain America, I’m starting to really like this guy. But the end credits song, “Be True to Your Heart,” more than makes up for it by being the 90s-est end credits song ever. It’s performed by 98 Degrees for cripes sake. And - Stevie Wonder? Oh, Stevie, you should know better. But you never do.

The casting is mostly good. Mulan was meant to be played by Lea Salonga, who you’ll recall did the singing for Jasmine in Aladdin. But in early reads, her speaking voice was determined to be a little princess-y, and she was replaced with TV and action movie star Ming-Na. Now, if you’ve ever seen Ming-Na in a movie, you know she’s not exactly burning with charisma. Oh, sure, she plays off Jean-Claude van Damme well enough, and she’s easy on the eyes, but there’s not any Oscars in her future to say the least. She does well enough, but there’s a few moments when she gets - What’s the audio equivalent of “deer in the headlights”? Her best moments are all when she’s posing as her male counterpart, Fa Ping, where she has some good comedic timing, and her slightly off delivery is nicely covered by the fact that the character is lying. Salonga still does the singing, and yeah, her voice is really different.

Guys. You don't have to cast a martial artist. You just draw this stuff.

Apart from that, the casting works well. The trend continues of good character actors playing to their strengths. Pat Morita as a wise old leader, Gedde Watanabe as a smarmy dweeb, James Hong as a pompous bureaucrat, etc. One playing wildly against type is Harvey Fierstein as a tough-guy, womanizing, battle-scarred brawler, which suits his voice perfectly, but he‘d never get away with in live-action. George Takei plays an angry and authoritative person, but I’m not sure if this is playing against type, because this is a good ten years before he became America’s Sweetheart and a professional Internet Funnyman. The heroic lead and love interest is played by B.D. Wong, who does quite well, with singing supplied by Donny Osmond, who sounds impressively like Wong. Miguel Ferrer can play a smart yet brutish villain in his sleep, but that’s because he’s SO FREAKING GOOD at it, so I was glad to hear him in this as the hulking genius Shan Yu. And then there’s Eddie Murphy…

Eddie Murphy plays Mushu the dragon, our main comedy relief. He is a disgraced family guardian summoned by the spirits of Mulan’s ancestors to awaken one of the better guardians and bring Mulan home. Working in his own interest, he decides to instead go off on his own and help Mulan become a war hero, so that she will honor the family, and him by extension. For most of the film, he’s the only supernatural element. He’s not quite as distracting as the gargoyles of Hunchback, as he does have a direct relevance to the plot. And Chinese culture has a much stronger sense of dragons and ancestors than European culture for whatever the gargoyles were. Genius loci, I guess. Still, I can’t help but feel that the movie would have been better without him in it. Like I felt with Cinderella, I’d rather see Mulan make it on her own without magical help. But Mushu does stick around, and doesn’t interfere too much, so I don’t have much of a problem with him. Except for the fifty or so times he’s clearly visible to the world at large but no one seems to see him. I guess their eyes don’t work off camera?

Not this disguise, though. This is flawless.

But it does speak to an interesting dilemma this movie has. It’s at its best when it’s being realistic. The small moments, the interactions between Mulan and her parents or her fellow soldiers, work really well. The best scene in the movie is when Mulan is bathing and her three friends decide to come in for a swim. Everyone’s naked and goofing around, and Mulan’s trying to work out a way to leave without being seen, and when Mushu aids her escape, it’s not with magic, or a funny costume, or a celebrity impression, but by swimming up and biting one of the guys on the butt. It all just feels more real

There are big moments that bring it, too, particularly Mulan’s squad meeting the Hun army. The animation is spectacular in this sequence, from the enemy horde riding over the mountaintop to Mulan’s insane rescue of Shang - riding a horse through an avalanche that she caused and trusting her idiot friends to pull off a one-in-a-million arrow shot to catch her as she goes over the mountain - is pulled off wonderfully. The animation in general in the movie is… Well, the characters are more simplified, and the backgrounds tend to be the same, but I’m not sure if that’s from a cut budget or a style choice. The influence of Chinese art in this one is pretty limited, apart from one fantasy sequence designed after calligraphy and some neat swirly explosions.

No jokes. It's just awesome.

I’ve had little but good things to say about the movie, and I stand by that, but the whole thing is kind of sloppy. The good elements don’t have much that connects them, the big finale is kind of a mess, the characters and dialogue are pretty bland. I recommend this one, but without a good deal of enthusiasm. You won’t be sorry you watched it, but there’s probably better things you could be spending your time on.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON GENDER

Oh, man, I had all these thoughts on the portrayal of gender roles in this movie and I couldn’t find a space for them in the main body because I wound up kind of glossing over the plot. So here’s the short version:

Mulan is a girl. I had forgotten just how girly she was in the years since I’d first watched it. If this story was about a tomboy who hated the idea of an arranged marriage to begin with and always wanted to fight, it wouldn’t have the power it does. Mulan goes to see the matchmaker at the beginning because it is expected of her, and when she fails, she feels bad about it because it was her only means of honoring her family. While on her journey, she walks past men playing games, being soldiers, farming, making art, and just generally going through a world that makes it clear that her only value is what a man chooses to give her. When Mulan enters the army, she’s the only woman we see for the entire rest of the film apart from a few extras. When the war is over, she returns to her parents, bringing the emperor‘s crest and Shan Yu‘s sword to honor her father. She’s found value in the world, despite having previously been abandoned by her comrades on a snowy mountaintop when her deception was discovered. (A change from the original song, where she was not found out until she retired.) So why is it important that she remains ‘girly’?

While the script, as I mentioned, is pretty blah, it does do a good job of highlighting the ways masculinity is prized and femininity denigrated in our culture. When Yao is standing on the rock during the bathing scene, he tries to goad the others into knocking him down by saying “There’s nothing you girls can do about it.” The commanding officer calls them girls and says he’ll “make men of them”. If Mulan had been portrayed as a tomboy who dreamed of being in the army, the movie would be enforcing that view. But instead, she finds it hard to fit in to the men’s world, and her femininity  eventually winds up being her greatest resource. She goes through the training and becomes the equal of the men, but not by rejecting her womanhood. That’s exactly the right message to send, because it would have been so easy to accidentally play this as “Boy things good, girl things bad.”

Also, while many of these films have had a man gazing at a woman in slack-jawed, smitten, lustfulness, this is I think the first time we’ve seen a woman do the same. When Shang takes off his shirt to begin their training, Mulan’s face bears the distinct mark of “DAAAAYUM THAT‘S A NICE CHUNK OF CAPTAIN.”

This, on the other hand... Well, they can't all be Donny Osmond.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON OTHER STUFF

* Hee hee. “Fa Ping”.

* Less impressive sing-casting is Mulan’s grandmother. Speaking, she’s played by voice acting legend June Foray, who I think was 158 years old at the time. She mostly uses her typical sassy old lady voice, but starts to modulate into a softer voice, like she uses for Granny in Looney Tunes, when her part in a song comes up. Then, inexplicably, she sings in the voice of Marni Nixon, who had a hell of a career in the 1950s dubbing over tone-deaf film stars like Audrey Hepburn and Natalie Wood in movie musicals. The slight problem with this is that Foray sounds like a crotchety old lady, and Nixon sounds like… Well, like someone who dubs for movie musicals in the 1950s, with a voice as clear as a bell. At first, I thought they were building up to a joke, but the punch line never came.

* Nixon also dubbed Marilyn Monroe, Deborah Kerr, Margaret O’Brien, and Rita Moreno. The notion of hiring actors who can sing seemed to escape them.

Hey, what's that stuff coming out of her wound? Wounds don't leak, Pocahontas made that clear.

* At one point, Shan Yu finds a doll on the ground, gives it a once over and hands it to his henchmen, saying “What do you see?” In most movies, this would be an excuse for the henchmen to say “Duh, I dunno, boss,” and he would point out his clever discoveries and rub their faces in it a little. But instead, each in turn takes the doll, identifies what it’s made of, where it’s from, and who had it before, and uses that to deduce the army‘s current location. It was a great moment. Just because these guys are ‘barbarian’ invaders dressed in ripped up furs and with creepy eyes, doesn’t mean they’re stupid, and the fact that they were all smart made it more plausible that a small cohort could infiltrate the capitol and take the palace hostage.

* Of course, two of them were going shirtless on a snowy mountain. So maybe they’re not that bright.

* This movie was reasonably well-received in China, in a kind of “Oh, that’s cute, you guys think you can portray our culture” kind of way. I imagine when Kung-Fu Panda came out, they fairly exploded with surprise. But while it may not reach that rather surprising level of accuracy, the Chinese culture is handled far better than the Powhatans were. Of course, Mulan would have been immediately executed for trying to hug the emperor, but it was a nice moment. She’s just lucky this took place in the days before foot binding.

* Disney was really anxious for this to do well in China, because it's a huge market for Western films, but they only let 10 per YEAR in, and Disney was on the outs with their government for doing a biopic of the Dalai Lama.

* Jackie Chan played Shang in all three Chinese dubs. So please watch this video. You're welcome.

* This movie has one of the worst animated/background interactions since the days of the ATP process, when a statue is seen painted on the background and later being held by a character, and they don’t even look kind of the same.

The Great Stone Dragon as painted by the background artist.

And as done by the animators. Do you guys even talk to each other?

* When watching Hercules, my sister noted that all Disney horses have basically the same personality. And she's right. No change here.

* In another "the sidekicks have sidekicks" moment, there's a cricket named, apparently, "Cricky" who was initially a good luck charm for Grandmother Fa, but winds up working as Mushu's secretary. It's actually pretty hilarious.

* Best joke in the movie is the obstructive suck-up Chi Fu's picture of himself with the emperor, which I shall let speak for itself:

* I was a bit unfair to Wilder when dismissing his producing Grammy nom, because it was for Tragic Kingdom, which was a pretty excellent album as far as 1998 Brian was concerned. 2013 Brian hasn't given it much thought lately, but nostalgia makes him inclined to agree.

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