Ahhh.... Back to the classics. After suffering through some of Disney's lesser films, it easy to see how their classics are taken for granted. Lady and the Tramp was a welcome reminder for why I started this in the first place. It's touching, thrilling, adorable, and a whole lot of fun. For Disney's first full length original tale, Walt and Co. have done a fabulous job. This movie features some of Disney's favorite voice actors in multiple roles. The guy who played Smee in Peter Pan has about 6 roles in this movie and Lady is voiced by the same woman who voiced Kanga in Winnie the Pooh and Merriweather in Sleeping Beauty. It's also Kind of a hoot to hear the voice of Cinderella's fairy Godmother as crazy cat lady Aunt Sarah. Peggy Lee even pulls triple duty, playing both Siamese cats and the sultry dog in the pound. (Is it weird to describe a dog as 'sultry'? Maybe, but she is basically the doggy version of a lounge singer, so I'm gonna stick with it.)
As the spouse of a woman who really wants a puppy, (I wouldn't say no to one either) I was a little dismayed at the treatment of Lady by her owners once Darling became pregnant. I understand being cautious or distracted, but ignoring your dog's existence? That's just bad pet ownership. But I'll forgive it because it allows us the chance to see Lady go on her adventures. The climactic scene with the rat is really fantastic. I highly recommend revisiting this movie if you haven't scene it for a while.
8/10
*on a nerdy theatre note: You have to love any movie where the Russian dog in the pound quotes Gorky's "The Lower Depths"!
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
DMCP - Melody Time & Make Mine Music
Double feature today. Melody Time and Make Mine Music mark the last of the Disney Compilation features of the 1940's. After sitting through Three Cabelleros, Saludos Amigos, Fun and Fancy Free, and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, I'm glad to be moving on. Both Melody Time and Make Mine Music feature animated shorts set to music sung by popular artists of the day and it works to a certain degree.
Melody Time is by far the stronger film. It features shorts about Johnny Appleseed and Pecos Bill, both of which are highlights for me. The animation in Melody Time is consistently creative and stunning, spanning several artistic styles. The Flight of the Bumblebee sequence is outstanding, as is the opening winter ice skating scene. After watching this film I was very excited to see what hidden gems would be hiding in Make Mine Music. I would be disappointed. The highlight of MMM is Peter and the Wolf. Other than that, it's the opposite of Melody Time. The final sequence of MMM involves the zealous murder of a whale who can sing opera. That's the closing number. Not good, not good at all....
Oh well, with the exception of Fantasia 2000, it's all narrative features from here on out. Up Next, Lady and the Tramp!
Melody Time - 7/10
Make Mine Music - 3/10
Melody Time is by far the stronger film. It features shorts about Johnny Appleseed and Pecos Bill, both of which are highlights for me. The animation in Melody Time is consistently creative and stunning, spanning several artistic styles. The Flight of the Bumblebee sequence is outstanding, as is the opening winter ice skating scene. After watching this film I was very excited to see what hidden gems would be hiding in Make Mine Music. I would be disappointed. The highlight of MMM is Peter and the Wolf. Other than that, it's the opposite of Melody Time. The final sequence of MMM involves the zealous murder of a whale who can sing opera. That's the closing number. Not good, not good at all....
Oh well, with the exception of Fantasia 2000, it's all narrative features from here on out. Up Next, Lady and the Tramp!
Melody Time - 7/10
Make Mine Music - 3/10
Sunday, June 5, 2011
DMCP part 4 - Chicken Little, Fox and the Hound, Fun and Fancy Free
Well, we finally got back to some good stuff. Let's get to it:
Chicken Little - It's easy to see why people dislike this movie. The hip, current twist on an old fairy tale idea was well worn out by the time it came out in 2005. Turning a tale about a silly little chicken into a movie about space aliens sounds ridiculous, but watching it again, I feel like Disney was in on the joke. It's so referential it turns into a meta commentary on self-referential movies, just look at the movie within a movie at the end. Also, a lot of the jokes are quite funny. My favorite side character in the movie is easily Fish out of Water. The animators do a fantastic job with his physical comedy. At it's heart though, Chicken Little is about forgiveness. It's about a boy (or chicken) trying to undo the damage of his one big mistake and earn back his dad's trust. Chicken Little spends most of this movie trying to prove to the world that he's not just the summation of one mistake, and that he's much more than that. Gary Marshall does a nice job of playing the single father who isn't quite sure how to deal with the fallout from his son's actions. Under all the flash and silliness, there is a nice emotional core to this movie that I think people can relate to.
7/10
Fox and the Hound - I'm not quite sure what to make of this movie. The story is fairly well put together and there are some great moments to be sure, but the message of the movie is a little unclear, and the movie is a bit dated. I could never quite figure out who Copper, the hound dog, and Todd, the fox, were supposed to represent. Is this a movie about race relations? If so, it's troubling that they spend so much time dwelling on the fact that Copper and Todd should be natural enemies. Or is the movie more about overcoming society's influence on defining the roles we must take on? I think that's a little better, after all, Copper isn't Todd's enemy until he is trained to be so. By the end of the movie though, Copper is able to overcome his conditioning and he defends Todd as his friend, regardless of the consequences. I guess I was thrown off by the rather stereotypical performance of Pearl Bailey as Big Mama. It struck me as pretty racist and I don't think that was the intention but it did affect my view of the movie. The highlight of the movie for me was young Copper's attempt at howling. It's one of the more adorable things I've ever seen. The biggest problem with this movie though, is the music. Oh man, is it sappy and dated and terrible. The whole spoken word poem/song as Todd is being taken to a game preserve is unbearable. The animation is good, but it lacks a proper Disney shine. The colors are muddy and the attention to detail is just not there. Overall, I'd say I liked this movie more than I thought I would, its a bright spot in Disney's dull years, but it doesn't quite hit Disney quality.
5.5/10
Fun and Fancy Free - This is another compilation movie from the post WWII years as the Disney studios were still getting back to their prewar output. It contains the stories of Bongo and Mickey and the Beanstalk and Jiminy Cricket is our guide into these tales. Bongo is a pretty cute story of a circus bear learning to cope with his new found freedom. His bewilderment as he learns how to live with the wild bears makes for a cute little story, and Dina Shore lends her voice as the narrator much in the same way Bing Crosby did for the Legend of Sleepy Hallow. Mickey and the Beanstalk holds a very dear place in my heart, as it was a favorite of my friends and I when we were kids. We marched around the woods singing the Giant's silly "fee fi fo fum" song while building forts in the woods. However, I quickly realized that I grew watching a truncated version of the story. The theatrical version of the tale includes a rather large amount of live action characters as well. The set up for the tale is an older gentleman and his puppets telling a little girl some stories. These puppets provide their own witty asides throughout the tale. While the jokes are cute, I have to say, the puppets are fairly unsettling when looked at today. They could be the reason some children develop a phobia of ventriloquist dummies. Apart from that; Mickey, Goofy, and Donald get to have a lot of fun playing the poor farmers who sell their cow for some magic beans. If you can get over your fear of dummies, you'll enjoy this lighthearted film. The only thing I didn't like about this movie where the slow, ballads sung in each piece. They went on too long and brought the momentum of the film to a grinding halt. cutting the songs in half would have fixed this, but I suppose attention spans were longer in the 1940s.
6.5/10
Chicken Little - It's easy to see why people dislike this movie. The hip, current twist on an old fairy tale idea was well worn out by the time it came out in 2005. Turning a tale about a silly little chicken into a movie about space aliens sounds ridiculous, but watching it again, I feel like Disney was in on the joke. It's so referential it turns into a meta commentary on self-referential movies, just look at the movie within a movie at the end. Also, a lot of the jokes are quite funny. My favorite side character in the movie is easily Fish out of Water. The animators do a fantastic job with his physical comedy. At it's heart though, Chicken Little is about forgiveness. It's about a boy (or chicken) trying to undo the damage of his one big mistake and earn back his dad's trust. Chicken Little spends most of this movie trying to prove to the world that he's not just the summation of one mistake, and that he's much more than that. Gary Marshall does a nice job of playing the single father who isn't quite sure how to deal with the fallout from his son's actions. Under all the flash and silliness, there is a nice emotional core to this movie that I think people can relate to.
7/10
Fox and the Hound - I'm not quite sure what to make of this movie. The story is fairly well put together and there are some great moments to be sure, but the message of the movie is a little unclear, and the movie is a bit dated. I could never quite figure out who Copper, the hound dog, and Todd, the fox, were supposed to represent. Is this a movie about race relations? If so, it's troubling that they spend so much time dwelling on the fact that Copper and Todd should be natural enemies. Or is the movie more about overcoming society's influence on defining the roles we must take on? I think that's a little better, after all, Copper isn't Todd's enemy until he is trained to be so. By the end of the movie though, Copper is able to overcome his conditioning and he defends Todd as his friend, regardless of the consequences. I guess I was thrown off by the rather stereotypical performance of Pearl Bailey as Big Mama. It struck me as pretty racist and I don't think that was the intention but it did affect my view of the movie. The highlight of the movie for me was young Copper's attempt at howling. It's one of the more adorable things I've ever seen. The biggest problem with this movie though, is the music. Oh man, is it sappy and dated and terrible. The whole spoken word poem/song as Todd is being taken to a game preserve is unbearable. The animation is good, but it lacks a proper Disney shine. The colors are muddy and the attention to detail is just not there. Overall, I'd say I liked this movie more than I thought I would, its a bright spot in Disney's dull years, but it doesn't quite hit Disney quality.
5.5/10
Fun and Fancy Free - This is another compilation movie from the post WWII years as the Disney studios were still getting back to their prewar output. It contains the stories of Bongo and Mickey and the Beanstalk and Jiminy Cricket is our guide into these tales. Bongo is a pretty cute story of a circus bear learning to cope with his new found freedom. His bewilderment as he learns how to live with the wild bears makes for a cute little story, and Dina Shore lends her voice as the narrator much in the same way Bing Crosby did for the Legend of Sleepy Hallow. Mickey and the Beanstalk holds a very dear place in my heart, as it was a favorite of my friends and I when we were kids. We marched around the woods singing the Giant's silly "fee fi fo fum" song while building forts in the woods. However, I quickly realized that I grew watching a truncated version of the story. The theatrical version of the tale includes a rather large amount of live action characters as well. The set up for the tale is an older gentleman and his puppets telling a little girl some stories. These puppets provide their own witty asides throughout the tale. While the jokes are cute, I have to say, the puppets are fairly unsettling when looked at today. They could be the reason some children develop a phobia of ventriloquist dummies. Apart from that; Mickey, Goofy, and Donald get to have a lot of fun playing the poor farmers who sell their cow for some magic beans. If you can get over your fear of dummies, you'll enjoy this lighthearted film. The only thing I didn't like about this movie where the slow, ballads sung in each piece. They went on too long and brought the momentum of the film to a grinding halt. cutting the songs in half would have fixed this, but I suppose attention spans were longer in the 1940s.
6.5/10
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