Reviews by JxSxPx

After playing around with a few films that echoed classic children’s literature, Disney throws all of its muscle behind an actual animated adaptation of a beloved piece of children’s literature. The results are not quite as enjoyable as the original stories which knew what fun parts to steal and mix in, but it’s not all the bad. I suppose the only thing that really came to mind while watching Treasure Planet was that it was just good enough, and never really objectionable.

The character designs, various alien species, new worlds, and space-age upgrades to typical pirate lore are all well done. As the film begins, something new and imaginative is introduced – a space port built like a crescent moon, a peg-leg pirate becomes a cyborg, a feline captain and her sentient rock first mate, these are just a few of the wondrous new sights to find. Would Treasure Planet work better as a silent film, I wonder? Looking at it is one thing, having to listen to it is another.

Most of the voice cast does well with the roles they are given, except for our lead, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, an actor I normally enjoy. I don’t think it’s entirely his fault, as his character is stuck on petulant brat for 75% of the film’s running time, only becoming tolerable during the loud, explosion-filled grand finale. This problem of characterization plagues the film. There’s only one instance of it being done well, and several more of it being half-done then abandoned.

Emma Thompson’s Captain Amelia emerges as a daring, tough, strong character, before she’s sidelined during the third act, and forced into an improbable love story that comes out of nowhere. Martin Short’s B.E.N., an abandoned robot taking over for Ben Gunn in the novel, grinds the film to a halt every time he appears. Ever since Robin Williams was let loose on Aladdin, various films in the Disney canon have thrown in rapid-fire comedians to bring anarchic secondary characters to life. What worked once to great charm has rarely worked so well a second, third, or fourth time.

The only character that really works is John Silver. I suppose in adapting Treasure Island making sure your variation of Long John Silver is a solid construction is not a bad idea, but it would be nice if he was operating against some well-rounded and engaging characters. The rest of them have all the personality of a 2D drawing, which they are technically speaking, while he gets a huge array of emotions and narrative twists and turns to play out. He transforms from cutthroat pirate to softer father figure over the course of the film, and he emerges as one of Disney’s more interesting, ambiguous and challenging characters in quite some time.

For a brief period of time in the early 2000s, hand-drawn animation was subject to 3D backgrounds in which the two styles never successfully merged together. I wonder what Treasure Planet would look like if the hand-drawn characters were painted with the same stylus as the backgrounds? Space whales in an early scene give an indication of how beautiful it could potentially look. Much like Titan A.E. and parts of Atlantis: The Lost Empire, the two styles never integrate well enough, and the characters occasionally look like flat cutouts on a model.

Treasure Planet is the embodiment of the phrase “all dressed up with nowhere to go.” If a film was measured entirely on how pretty its images are, this would leap to the top of the class. But somewhere along the way, they decided to skip out on developing the majority of the characters, added in three cutesy sidekicks, terrible songs by Johnny Rzeznik, and called it even. There’s some great stuff in Treasure Planet, but I can’t seem to muster up much enthusiasm for it.

Forsaking much of the typical studio fare, Lilo & Stitch is a welcome bit of smaller scale film-making. If it ever reminds you of Dumbo, it’s supposed to. After several notable bloated productions – Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Kingdom of the Sun (prior to transitioning to The Emperor’s New Groove) – ran over-budget, under-performed, or failed to materialize, the deciding powers wanted a quickie that put more emphasis on heart and character.

The roots of Lilo & Stitch go back to the mid-80s, as co-director Chris Sanders had done a preliminary sketch of what would eventually become Stitch. By the mid-90s, Michael Eisner, that era’s Disney studio-head, took inspiration from Dumbo’s quick production schedule and small budget, and demanded the creation of a like-minded film. Sanders brought along Stitch, a creation for a failed children’s book pitch, and the idea of isolating him in a remote location. At the time it was Kansas, but at some point it switched to Kaua’i.

Why is all of this important? Because when the studio stops trying to make glossy prestige films and gets looser limbed, operates within a limited budget, and forces itself to focus more, something magical happens. Lilo & Stitch is nothing but empathetic heart, a look at a lonely, traumatized, and depressed little girl who is struggling to heal, and finds a kindred spirit in a creature created in a laboratory. There are many moments of quiet heartbreak to be found in Lilo & Stitch, and it is one of the most openhearted and warm films to come out of Disney.

Lilo, especially, is one of the more relatable and understandable protagonists in a Disney film. She lost both of her parents in a car crash, is capable of great imagination (the film is littered with quirky episodes detailing the eccentric ways she deals with grief), is lonely and misunderstood, but capable of great humor, innocence, and empathy. She’s been traumatized and is looking for a friend, for a connection to help her deal with it all, and sooth some of her pain. A scene where her older sister, Nani, overhears her praying is tremendously moving. Even better is a scene between the sisters where they cradled each other.

Nani and Lilo’s dynamics make up a large amount of the film’s running time, and you hope and pray that they figure out a way to make it all work. Nani is a figure of deep sympathy for me. She’s clearly in over-her-head, and not always the best guardian for Lilo, but she’s trying hard and doing the best that she can with what she’s been dealt. How can you not root for these two to survive, thrive, and succeed? Their happy ending is hard won and battle scarred, and deserved.

My only problem with Lilo & Stitch is the jarring juxtaposition of the alien stuff which bookends the film, or frequently interrupts the human drama at the center. It seems inevitable that it would be present, and dropping it after Lilo adopts Stitch under the disguise that he’s some kind of strange looking dog would be dishonest and lazy writing. Yet I can never shake the feeling that these two sections of the film are too at odds tonally to merge smoothly. They’re still a ton of fun to watch, and the designs of the various ships and species are clever and original.

If the Post-Renaissance has a film that comes closest to being a masterpiece, this one is the obvious choice. Lilo & Stitch has lively animation, a series of lovely watercolor backgrounds, memorable characters, a lot of heart, laughs, and thrills. I hope the years are kind to it, and it ascends to a higher level in the Disney filmography. I’d be happy to see Cinderella get swatted down and something like this take its place.

The Emperor’s New Groove’s troubled production is the stuff of legends, yet you wouldn’t know it from watching the film. Originally an epic genre mash-up called Kingdom of the Sun, Disney executives balked at the production overruns and hot on the heels of the underperforming, overly ambitious latter films of the Disney Renaissance, they demanded numerous changes. What was left was a slapstick heavy film that lasts about 75 minutes, and it’s one of the underrated gems of the Disney output.

The original production re-conceived The Prince and the Pauper as a musical epic in the Inca Empire, complete with plans for grand dame baddie Yzma to call upon the god of death, Supai, to destroy the sun, turns the real emperor into a llama, and makes the impostor do her bidding. Practically none of this appears in The Emperor’s New Groove, aside from a few names, and the typical Disney homogenized variation of an ethnic culture. The film’s treatment of Latin American culture, and the Inca Empire in particular, is as hodge-podge as the vaguely Arabic garnishes of Aladdin.

Where The Emperor’s New Groove excels is in creating memorable characters, a string of strong gags, and numerous quotable passages of dialog. This film tosses out the typical Disney playbook, borrows liberally from the humor found in The Simpsons, The Muppets, or Chuck Jones’ shorts, and is all the better for it. There are only so many glossy, prestige-chasing films one can watch before you wish for something different from the studio, and this one delivers big time.

Kuzco, our hero, is quite the little twat, who deserves to be taken down a few pegs and learn some humility. David Spade’s bratty vocals are a perfect fit for the character, and he really sells the snarky humor. Kuzco comes armed with a series of sassy one-liners, and his transformation into a llama only escalates his acerbic disposition. He bounces off of John Goodman’s empathetic and humble Pacha quite well, and the film is a solid buddy comedy road trip.

Even better is the dynamic between Eartha Kitt’s Yzma and Patrick Warburton’s Kronk, her dim-bulb, sweet, brawny henchman. Kitt plays her role for all of the hysteric camp potential she can find, and she can find a lot. Yzma is a most pleasing villain, not because she’s threatening, but because she’s so grandiose and melodramatic. Watching her is a lot of fun given how much pleasure she takes out of being evil and chewing the scenery. Kronk is a nice contrast to her, as he frequently finds himself fighting between wanting to do the right thing and helping Yzma complete her goals. The revelations that he’s an excellent cook, can talk with squirrels, and argues with the angel and devil on his shoulders only add to his charm.

It’s also nice to finally encounter a film with some bravura vocal work from the cast. Goodman would go on to voice several more roles for Disney and Pixar, and his warm tones are a nice contrast to Spade’s whiny quips. Warburton has become omnipresent in animation by this point, but Kronk is still one of his greatest roles. Yet the entire show belongs to Kitt, who steals every scene she’s in with her purrs and large gestures.

This was the first of a series of films that would pull back in scale, offering the studio the chance to make better films that didn’t feature nondescript princes and princesses, numerous songs, and images that scrambled for a Best Picture win. The magic of a good Disney movie is in creating characters we want to spend a lot of time with, and giving us memorable moments. All you have to do is look across the various corners of the internet to find memes, clips, and various quotes used recycled for new jokes. The Post-Renaissance years weren’t great for the Disney studio, but they did produce a series of minor cult classics. This is one of them.

Technically proficient, occasionally even breathtaking and artistically pioneering, but narrative inert, Dinosaur plays like a less memorable retread of The Land Before Time. While that film gave us several memorable characters, both from their presence in the original film and the fact that they were franchised in such a manner as to even make Disney blush, Dinosaur gives us hollow emotions but pretty images. It’s enjoyable, but almost in spite of itself.

As with most reviews, Roger Ebert nailed it by stating: “An enormous amount of effort has been spent on making these dinosaurs seem real, and then an even greater effort was spent on undermining the illusion.” Truly, Dinosaur is most engaging when it sits back and just observes these animals, and comes to a grinding halt when it tries to make them as cutesy and cuddly as the forest denizens of Bambi or pride land dwellers in The Lion King. The original idea was to have Dinosaur be completely silent, making it essentially an upgrade to “Rite of Spring” in Fantasia. The first five minutes plays out how this film would have played out, and it’s the unquestionable highpoint.

We follow the journey of a random Iguanodon egg from the nest after its mother is forced to flee following an attack by a Carnotaurus to an island of lemurs. Once we land on this island, and all of the characters start talking, the problems quickly compound upon themselves. The lemurs and dinosaurs rarely appear to be occupying the same frame, with the dinosaurs covered in cracked lizard-like skin, and the primates looking like leaping bits of cotton balls. They’re so fuzzy and soft, sometimes to the point where they look like more traditionally animated critters next to the realistic dinosaurs.

The asteroid attack is quite beautiful, looking like heaven crying hot white tears, but it’s so dark in comparison to the rest of the film. The Carnotaurus is appropriately frightening, but the complete evisceration of the lemur island is an entirely different subject. As are the numerous scenes of dehydration, starvation, and general cruelty, Dinosaur can’t decide if it wants to be a faux-nature documentary or a silly kiddie film. It splits the difference, and ends up being a bit of a mess. The faux-wildlife documentary is the approach I would have taken, with occasional bits of narration to really sell the illusion. Yet I get the choice to make them talk and appear more humanistic. Would children and families have sat through an entirely silent, slightly scary and dangerous movie about dinosaurs being actual beasts?

But for special effects work that is fifteen years old, it’s still surprisingly solid to look at. Age shows in spots, mainly in the asteroids hitting the earth, the lemurs, and trying to stick cute, big Disney eyes on its heroic dinosaurs, but most of it is still gorgeous. That opening scene is a wonder, effectively combing live action backdrops with CG animals to create images that look like they could have plausibly happened in the era. The hulking mass of these animals is felt in numerous scenes of them interacting with dirt, rocks, water, or each other. Maybe the best way to watch Dinosaur is to mute the sound, and just bask in the images. The plot and characters are unimaginative and nondescript, but it’s combination of live-action and animation is still shockingly sturdy.

“Fantasia is timeless. It may run 10, 20, or 30 years. It may run after I’m gone. Fantasia is an idea in itself. I can never build another Fantasia. I can improve. I can elaborate. That is all.” – Walt Disney

Fantasia was intended as something of a repertory picture, a film that would be revived randomly with new segments phasing out older ones, and expanding beyond classical music into bits of jazz, world music, anything instrumental in nature. The goal was create an experience in which the film was never the same twice. But Fantasia’s commercial failure and tepid critical response shelved these plans indefinitely. Yet the dream for a Fantasia franchise never died, and the spark was reignited during the Renaissance years.

The 1991 theatrical reissue was a major hit, and the home video sales were gigantic enough to merit a look into a sequel. So Fantasia 2000 was born. Made piecemeal in-between projects during the Renaissance, it kicked off the new year, and a new era in Disney’s oeuvre. The film isn’t bad, but it is generally disappointing in comparison. The original Fantasia was slightly pretentious, and it carried a general air of creative invention. One watches the film and can feel the animators practically squealing with glee at the new effects, concepts, and modes they’re allowed to get away with. Creativity bursts through every frame.

Fantasia 2000 is not as daring or ambitious. It appeals too broadly, with too many needless celebrity cameos to introduce the segments and a general sense of being just good enough. Only two segments announce themselves as worthy heirs to the original, several of them are very good, and the other two are “Pomp and Circumstance” and “The Carnival of the Animals.” If I never have to sit through “Pomp and Circumstance,” here given the imagery of Donald Duck playing Noah’s Ark for some odd reason, I will die a happy man. Many of the musical choices here are safer, and the images play closer to the intended interpretations of the work rather than the playful hard left turns the original made with compositions attached to narratives.

“Rhapsody in Blue” is a safe, obvious choice for a musical number in this, but it works beautifully. Marrying the music to Al Hirschfield inspired Manhattanites, primarily in various cool colors, is a smart choice. This combination is pleasing, even clever in how it details various lives intersecting and interacting across the city, and Hirschfield’s style adapts itself incredibly well to animation. It’s one of the two great segments.

The other is the grand finale, “Firebird Suite” which has a wood sprite awakening, playfully interacting with an elk, then combating a demonic firebird, which scorches the earth and appears to kill the sprite. Of course, nature is eternal, and the eventual rebirth is a thing of beauty. The firebird is a wondrous vision of hell fire and malevolence unleashing upon the earth. It’s epic, grand, mythic in proportions and scope, beautifully animated, and a solid use of the score. It’s the best part of Fantasia 2000, and they were wise to save it for the very end.

“Pines of Rome” about flying humpback whales, “Symphony No. 5” which opens the film with flying abstracts of darkness and light, and “Piano Concerto No. 2” doing a riff on The Steadfast Tin Soldier are all solid if unremarkable. “Piano Concerto No. 2” comes closest to greatness, but misses it by sacrificing the melancholy and heartbreak of Hans Christian Andersen’s story in favor of a happy ending, which is something of a running commentary on their Andersen adaptations that aren’t The Little Matchgirl.

Yet the biggest problem I had with Fantasia 2000 was the heavy reliance on the celebrities to add commentary between segments. The original had radio host Deems Taylor provide sharp, witty commentary, but he never approached the eye rolling that Penn & Teller do here. It feels like Disney thought the audience would need a lowbrow laugh to deal with the slightly pretentious enterprise. I don’t disagree with the choice to have a host, and several choices in this film would have made fine ones – James Earl Jones, Angela Lansbury, Quincy Jones, Itzhak Perlman, all solid choices. Only Steve Martin and Bette Midler feel a little belabored, with Midler cracking jokes about failed segments, and Martin tasked with doing his usual routine (which I normally love), but this isn’t the right context for it.

Fantasia 2000 is solidly entertaining, but a weak sequel to the original. The difference is like watching a great orchestra versus watching a pops concert. They’re both perfectly fine at what they do, but one of them is more consistent and stronger. Fantasia 2000 has some moments of true beauty, some pedestrian choices, and is generally a solid entry. In the context of the Post-Renaissance though, it’s a minor classic.

The outbreak of World War II caused a majority of the films released in the Golden Era to bomb at the box office, this one didn’t even manage to get its production costs back. For me, knowing that this one was a box office bomb has never bothered me. There’s nothing explicitly wrong with Bambi, I just find it the most anemic of this period’s films, both thematically and emotionally.

Much of Bambi is just watching cute little baby animals interact with their idyllic forest, learning the ways of life, and discovering the natural ebb and flow of things. That’s about it when it comes to plot mechanics and narrative thrust. It plays out as a series of dynamite moments wedged into between heavily sentimental glimpses of forest life. Bambi’s relationship with his mother is touching, and her off screen death is still an emotional gut-punch, but the film never finds the balance between its cutesy majority and dark call of the wild denouement.

Critics at the time were split, with many proclaiming that the lack of fantasy elements and heavy dose of nature conservation were detracting points. I disagree with this sentiment, as I find Disney’s penchant for taking a left turn after the previous film’s right to be one of the highlights of watching the Golden Era. Dropping fantasy for a “realistic” look at wildlife isn’t a bad choice, and Disney would go on to make numerous films with animal protagonists. It’s more that the film sticks a few memorable characters, some gorgeous animation, and beautiful backgrounds into a narrative that’s slight to the point of being a wet tissue.

Nothing very interesting is worked towards in Bambi. It is only as interesting as any given scene. The heavy influence of his time as a child makes a certain amount of sense given that it is technically a children’s entertainment vehicle. Older Bambi, Thumper, and Flower just aren’t as interesting to watch as when they’re learning to walk, talk, and interact with the world around them. The film rouses itself for the horrific intrusion of man upon the forest, an unseen terror that only announces itself through gunshots and the sweeping hell fire.

Not everything is a total loss when the character’s hit puberty and start falling in love, though. Bambi and Faline’s reunion is cutesy to the point of causing cavities, but the more impressionistic fight scene he was with another buck is exciting. The forest becomes expressionistic, and their bodies black stains highlighted by streaks of yellow and blue. I will give Bambi this, even when the narrative falls far short of engaging, it’s always beautiful to look at.

This wouldn’t be the first time Disney created a film of beautiful aesthetics and forget to include an equally strong narrative, and it would be far from the last. But the level of detail is astounding. The awkward prance of the young deer is well studied and animated flawlessly. Numerous scenes of terror are effectively edited together, precision timed to crank up the fear of the characters, and audience by extension. A frantic group of forest animals running away from the presence of hunters, announced by Bambi’s stumbling upon their camp and an increasingly panicked bird’s fateful decision to fly away, is particularly effective. This scene slowly unfolds into the climatic forest fire, as memorable a vision of all-consuming hell as “Night on Bald Mountain.”

I could never say Bambi isn't very good, because it is, but it's missing that extra spark. After the thematic might of Dumbo, Bambi plays as a group of unfocused sequences, many of them marvelous, looking for an anchor. But, my god, is it beautiful to watch. The oil backgrounds give the film a distinct look from the others, the character animation is top-notch, and certain moments are among the best of the period.

It may not have the gargantuan production values of the prior films, but it substitutes something else in its absence: a gigantic heart. The way some people feel about The Lion King and its demonstration of parental love? That’s how I have always felt towards Dumbo. On some deeper level, I’ve always felt some kind of identification with that lovable little elephant toddler.

Cranked out as a way to recoup some of the money lost from the twin failures of the prior year, Dumbo was never intended to be a classic. The gambit worked, as only Dumbo and Snow White were financial successes during this era. While those other films are enormously ambitious, their scopes are roughly the size of DisneyLand, Dumbo scaled back to tell a simplistic fable about finding strength in that which makes us different, and how families come in all shapes and sizes.  

At barely over an hour, Dumbo packs enough heart and tenderness for several films, and this emotional honesty is equaled only by its charm. At twenty-eight, this movie can still easily make me cry as it did when I was a child. It just hits some very specific nerves, and imprinted upon my psyche at a very early age. This is the only Golden Era film that I do not remember viewing for the first time, it has always been.

Dumbo tells the story of Mrs. Jumbo, a single mother and it is never explained what happened to her husband, who yearns to be a mother. When a Stork finally drops off a bundle of joy, after a lonely night in which she heartbreakingly watches as every other paired off animal couple gets a newborn (or several), she’s delighted. She names the baby Jumbo Jr., but it isn’t long before his deformity, a pair of comically large ears, is revealed. The other elephants are cruel to him, but the human are worse. In a fit of rage, his mother attacks an unruly brat who was making fun of him, causing her to get sent to the “mad house,” and disrupting their familial unit. With no one left to care for him, Dumbo eventually befriends a showboating mouse and a group of crows, learning to embrace his unique nature and turn it into his greatest strength.

I cannot oversell the amount of primal power this film has given me over the years. I can remember very vividly being talked about and treated differently for my innate nature by relatives, and Mrs. Jumbo’s maternal protectiveness reminded me a lot of my own mother’s. I just wanted to hug Dumbo, tell him that I understood his sadness and isolation. This is the power of the film. It reaches into those memories and feelings, and it acts as a soothing tonic for those ugly emotions.

Snow White and Pinocchio had fantastic ensembles, and Dumbo is another proud addition to that tradition. There’s the lovable Dumbo, a mute creation who reacts like a silent movie clown. Timothy Q. Mouse a fast-talking, good-hearted friend who does everything in his power to make Dumbo feel happy again, reunite with his mother, and embrace his individuality. A group of gossipy elephants (led by Disney perennial Verna Felton in her first role with the company, she also voices Mrs. Jumbo), the blow-hard Ringmaster, Mr. Stock (voiced by another Disney perennial, Sterling Holloway), and the group of crows (led by Cliff Edwards, a Disney mainstay during the 30s and 40s).

The crows are controversial nowadays, and I’m not entirely sure I can completely write them off as racist caricatures. Voiced by the Hall Johnson Choir, who also provided the vaudevillian routines and dance moves the animators used for reference, the crows are a reminder of what used to pass as socially acceptable, but they’re also surrogate fathers to Dumbo. Their song is filled with intricate word-play and puns, they endowed Dumbo with the confidence to learn to fly. A mainstream film that positioned black characters as heroes during this era is exceptionally rare, and I suppose I lean harder on taking the victories where you can get them.  

I mentioned earlier that Dumbo was also an examination of maternal love. The crux of the film is “Baby Mine,” the reunion scene between Dumbo and his mother. While she is still locked up, she sticks her trunk between the bars, loving caressing him before cradling him. It’s beautiful moment in which their bond overcomes all obstacles. There’s more emotion in this scene than in any of the prior films. In fact, there may be no more emotional and tear-inducing scene for me in any other Disney film. It still makes me cry to this very day. But their connection, and the heart string pulling, was in play long before this scene. An earlier one where Dumbo plays in a bubble bath, his mother looks at him adoringly, before they play a game of hide-and-seek.

Disney was smart to put a majority of the emphasis on the narrative, and save the big-money animation for a few moments. “Pink Elephants on Parade” follows immediately after “Baby Mine,” and is as playful and inventive as that prior scene was heartfelt and touching. Surrealism first appeared in Fantasia, and Dumbo continues that trend as a drunk Dumbo blows bubbles that turn into hallucinatory elephants. They shape-shift and contort into all manner of strange objects. It’s an enchanting moment, and a nice reprieve from the heartache of so much of the film. It’s never as dark or disturbing as Pinocchio, but far more realistic in its depictions of the torment of growing up.

Charmingly unpretentious, Dumbo is economic story-telling done right. Instead of serving up leftover materials of what had worked previously, Disney strove to tell a good story remarkably well. Mission accomplished on that front. But it’s the genuine warmth, humor, and empathy of social pariahs, the variety of family units on display, and the uplift (both literal and emotional) that make it an unadorned classic. All Dumbo has to offer you is its immense heart, and that is more than enough. 

The runaway success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was massive enough to excuse anyone for thinking they were a new filmmaking god. With this in mind, Walt Disney decided to push the very limits he had set with that film. Pinocchio up-ended fairy tale story-telling only one film after those conventions were created and Fantasia threw out the playbook entirely.

Fantasia is the vision of artistic hubris let loose. I mean that as high praise. Only a lunatic or a genius would think of creating something this sprawling, diverse, and beautiful. Yes, it’s probably a bit pretentious, even wild to think of gaining prestige by animating classical musical pieces, but that ambition and daring is what makes it so appealing. It’s so great because it dares itself to be.

Like the prior films of this era, I first encountered this one during a revival in the early 90s. This was a favorite of mine as a child, I loved that it didn’t have a narrative, but gave me several different ones to chose from. It blew my mind about what a cartoon is, what an animated film looked like, and a deep appreciation for the technique and artistry involved. For a brief period of time I wanted to become an animator for the company, I think a field trip to their Burbank studio helped foster that dream. Then I realized I had a hard time consistently drawing the same character on model. Oh well, some things just aren’t meant to be.

Critical reaction was mixed upon its initial release. Mostly positively received, the bulk of the negative criticism was about the film being pretentious, that applying animated sequences to classical music pieces would rob them of integrity, or that the film was just pure kitsch. I can’t argue against the film being pretentious in spots, think that the second argument is purely reactionary and pearl-clutching, and find that parts of the film are pure kitsch. And god bless Fantasia for being different, for revealing a new color or tone with each new segment.

Production started on Fantasia in 1936 as a way of bringing back Mickey Mouse’s popularity. One of the few segments with a coherent narrative, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is a decent enough section to begin talking about the film as a whole. It was based upon a poem by Goethe, which Disney attached to a musical composition by Paul Dukas, and produced as an extended Silly Symphony-like cartoon, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is pure fantasy. Untied to a strict narrative, it moves with a strange dream-like logic. It plays more like a coherent music video, and it’s arguable that Fantasia was the music video in embryonic form.

Over the twenty-five-years I’ve watched this film my love for various segments has changed over the years. “Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria” used to freak me out, but now I think it’s unquestionably one of the greatest achievements of the Disney studio. “Bald Mountain” owes a debt to Faust, and it’s the strangest bit of demented surrealism to come out of the studio during an era when feverish, hallucinatory sequences was a must. While a demonic figure presides over a mountain top, he raises the dead, conjures up dancing imps, nude succubus’ fly around, and hellfire explodes. It all comes to a crashing halt as the church bells ring, and monks carrying lights expel the darkness away. While the orgy of brimstone and monsters are drawn in a clearly representational manner, the monks are abstractions of black robes and yellow circles making their way towards a cathedral that is nothing but bright light.

“Rite of Spring” is one I have always loved. Granted, the composition omits some of the harder sequences of Igor Stravinsky’s piece, and the orchestration is a little blunted of its force, it’s fun to watch Disney animate a sequence detailing the Big Bang, evolution, dinosaurs, and their eventual extinction. The animation is, of course, stellar, and all of your favorites are presented in scientifically accurate (for 1940) manners, even if they shouldn’t be occupying the same frame as they’re separated by millions of years. Still, it’s freaking dinosaurs!

“Dance of the Hours,” after “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” is the most beloved sequence. It doesn’t play like something from the stately Disney brand, it plays much closer to the manic Looney Tunes. A comic ballet in four sections, there’s ostriches, hippos in tutus, elephants blowing bubbles, and horny alligators. The anarchic spirit is strong with this one, and its joyous from the first moment to the eventual destruction of the palace. If nothing else, my appreciation of this one has grown larger as the years have gone by.

Time has not been quite as kind to “The Pastoral Symphony,” a hit-and-miss Greek Mythology 101 with satyrs, cupids, centaurs, Dionysus, Zeus, and a general feeling of being too cutesy. It’s not bad, there’s some animation in spots that is quite lovely, but it doesn’t feel entirely satisfactory. A similar thing happens with “The Nutcracker Suite,” a piece of music that’s just as well-known as the dance that accompanies it. It’s refreshing to see Disney tackle the piece without the titular Christmas object anywhere in sight, but some parts of it are just better than others. The luminescent fairies are great, the bowing mushrooms are not, but it averages out to be decent.

The only parts of Fantasia that could qualify as having to be endured are the more abstract ones. “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” which begins with live action shots of the orchestra, before fading away into abstractions of their instruments is pretty to look at, but not very engaging. The craft and special effects on display overpower the simplicity, and I spent more time wondering how they accomplished these effects than what was happening before my eyes. And the “Meet the Soundtrack” introduces an animated character in a straight line, then has it twist and distort itself into personifications of the various instruments. It seems at odds with the flamboyance of the rest of the film, but I guess Disney considered that the audience needed a spoonful of sugar to make the high culture go down.   

Yes, Fantasia is only as good as any particular segment is, but the batting average is insanely high. Later films like Melody Time or Make Mine Music would try to borrow the formula, but they were lacking in the bravado to make it really work. After its failure as a road show picture, Disney would never again challenge his audience quite as much as he did here. I wonder if this had been a big hit, what would the company have produced in the following years? Would Fantasia’s originally conceived plan of revivals have gone through? Who knows. We should just appreciate that he had the madness to make this at all.

If Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was to witness the invention of feature-length animation, then Pinocchio is to see the limits of the form being pushed against, expanded upon, and animation establishing itself as a legitimate film art. If this isn’t the greatest movie Disney has released, then it’s only real competitors are Fantasia and Sleeping Beauty. It’s definitely in the top three Disney animated features, it has to be.

Like many great films, Pinocchio was not a success during its initial run. Its costs ran up to nearly $3 million, only half of which it made back, and it wasn’t until later re-releases that its artistic and critical reputation began to soar. By the time I saw it in the 1992 theatrical re-release, I was five and the film was already considered a masterpiece. With damn good reason too, and it’s always been one of my all-time favorites.

With the heavy-lifting groundwork done with Snow White, Disney and his merry band of co-conspirators were free to go crazy, and so they did. That film relied upon animating recognizable human forms, but Pinocchio is more daring and ambitious. We have a talking cricket, donkey-boys, two humanoid con artists, various wooden puppets and clockwork inventions, a pet cat and goldfish, a monstrous blue whale, and, of course, Pinocchio, who moves like he never finished reading his own instruction manual. It’s a larger ensemble, massive even when you factor in the amount of boys on Pleasure Island, the inky demonic forces that help the sadistic Coachman, Stromboli, and numerous others.

Disney saw the massive success he had with Snow White, and decided to challenge his audience with something larger. Snow White played safely within recognizable story confines – cutesy sidekicks, musical numbers every few minutes, a pretty princess, a handsome prince, one central villain, and a happy ending. Pinocchio puts its characters through numerous trials and tribulations, daring its characters to act morally and not succumb to temptation, and then it makes the temptations look so good. But the characters must always pay for their crimes.

Who could forget Pinocchio’s nose growing? It happens only once, but so disturbing a vision is it that it haunts the rest of the film. He spends far longer with the remnants of his time on Pleasure Island than he does with his nose growing. And lord, seeing the nightmarish descent through the forest in Snow White as a challenge, Pinocchio provides true terror with the transformation of Lampwick into a donkey, or the sight of speaking donkeys begging for forgiveness and to go home. It is the stuff nightmares are born from, and the animators beautifully render it.

Then there’s Monstro, not so much a gigantic blue whale, and more of prehistoric force of nature. A super-monster seemingly as big as the ocean itself, his frame cannot be contained within the confines of the image. He bursts across the screen. His underwater chase is terrifying, yet it’s contrasted with Geppetto’s more humorous attempts to fish while stuck inside his belly. Perhaps Disney felt like the audience needed a break from all of the gloom? After all, Pinocchio is stuck with the donkey ears for the remainder of the film. This happy reunion doesn’t last long, as they must escape his stomach. Their daring escape, and Monstro’s off screen presence is scarier than anything else in the Golden Era, except for maybe “Night on Bald Mountain” in Fantasia.

If Snow White was a simple fairy tale, then Pinocchio is a frightening morality play. It reaches deeper into our psyches and emotions for something true and real. This can all be found in Carlo Collodi’s source material, which is even more despairing and weird than this film, if one can imagine such a thing. While Pinocchio has no shortage of darkness, it plays everything for sweetness and innocence by re-working the titular puppet into a sympathetic figure from the amoral brat he is in the novel. Disney’s long history of playing fast-and-loose with source material really starts here, as Snow White played it relatively straight as an adaptation of its material.

It’s a smarter idea here, as Pinocchio is now a root-able hero, a naïve little boy that want to get his head straight and do right. We want to see him overcome these obstacles, to see the Blue Fairy take pity upon him and grant his wish. While Disney would eventually over-play the fake death and instantaneous revival, it’s actually upsetting in Pinocchio. Deeply, deeply unsettling, as Pinocchio’s life-less corpse is viewed in lovingly rendered detail, yet his final act also grants his wish so we still get our happy ending.

Even when Pinocchio is frequently disturbing us with its various narrative turns, the animation is always of the highest caliber. Not just the character animation, which is fabulous, but the various effects that go into making the film so memorable. The Blue Fairy is highly detailed to standout from the more cartoon-like characters, and her glittering effects work is amazing. Even better are the numerous water effects. Not even The Little Mermaid created so alive an undersea world, or so hypnotic and fluid ocean waves. The chalk details on Figaro’s fur add nice flourishes, but every frame of Pinocchio is filled with these tiny details.

There’s a loneliness at the heart of Pinocchio, and a hard-fought sense of victory at the end. These characters deserve this happy ending because of how much they have suffered to get there, before during the narrative and before it. The high-caliber of animation, the memorable characters, and the beloved songs, everything about Pinocchio works incredibly well. God, I just love how challenging, weird, and daring this movie is. No other Disney movie comes close, except perhaps its fellow 1940 release, Fantasia. Those two films are the studio running at a level of artistry that it would never touch again, ever. Snow White laid the groundwork, but Pinocchio set the standard.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is one of the few classic films that I can tell you exactly when I saw it. In 1993, I was six-years-old, and Disney had re-released the film in theaters a few months before the eventual VHS release. My mom took me to see it, and the magic mirror on the wall freaked me out, but in a way that I found enjoyable. I think  this was the exact moment I realized I’ll always love the villains more than the heroes in many Disney films.

Who could blame me? It’s not like Snow White or her prince are given much in the way of personality. No, they’re both handsome blobs of color and shape, chess pieces used by other characters to move the plot along. I thought then, and still believe now, that the magic mirror needed a good cleaning if it thought that pubescent girl was more beautiful than the Evil Queen, a glamorous and enigmatic figure, dripping with the promise of malice and cunning.

God, what a difficult film to talk about as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs practically added itself to the canon the moment it was released, after a three-year production period that left Disney praying it would connection. It did, in a major way. Hailed as a masterpiece by Sergei Eisenstein, who would know a thing or two about making film masterpieces, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was a huge hit, and a promise of things to come. So what left is there to talk about?

Well, I hope to find something to add. Who knows if it’ll be of any value.

Let us first look at the technique on display. Prior to Walt Disney and Max Fleischer pushing animation to the brink of its creative and artistic promise, cartoons were regulated to children’s entertainment, six-to-ten minutes of filler between live-action shorts, new reels, and the features. They featured crudely drawn characters acting out popular songs, everything appeared rubbery and bouncing away. Or, backgrounds were static and the characters were lively and energetic creatures, bounding around the limits of the frame causing chaos.

Fleischer pushed the short into more daring and artistic realms, while Disney decided that the world was ready for feature-length animated films. No one else saw his vision, and the press was quick to dub the film “Disney’s Folly,” a cynical jab at his quest for bringing prestige to the art form and his own studio. The production was not easy, Disney mortgaged his house, and the production ran over budget to the final tune of roughly $1.5 million, an unthinkable sum for a feature in 1937. It took three long years, but when the film was finally released it silenced everyone.

No longer were the characters confined to a static frame, no longer were the backgrounds immobile, everything was free from the limitations of physics and gravity, and the only limit was the artist’s imagination. The multi-plane camera allowed the camera to pan through locations until arriving at the final destination, much in the way a tracking or dolly shot allowed for in live-action. An off screen breeze caused the leaves to blow, birds spiraled in and out of the corners of the frame, and the feeling of possibility is alive in the film.

The story may be slim, even at 83 minutes there does appear to be some padding, but the animation is hypnotic to watch. The quality of the drawings are impossibly high, the characters designs specific and unique, and the big-money moments highly memorable and well done. Snow White’s frightening trip through the forest is the stuff of nightmares, as she imagines branches turning into monstrous hands, trees into demonic figures, and floating logs into crocodiles. It is still wonderful to behold this sequence, as it is so imaginative and alive.

Even better are the segments where Snow White and the forest animals clean up the dwarfs house, or our first interaction with the dwarfs in the diamond, and everything with the Evil Queen is stellar. No sequence is more disturbing than her transformation from glamorous queen to old hag. Her hands changing still creeps me out, now that is some primal power.

With a slim source material, the fairy tale is only a few brisk pages in my copy of The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales, it was necessary to add to it. The dwarfs barely occupy a few sentences in the source text, but they’re the true stars here (along with the Evil Queen). Disney would revisit the ingredients here many times over, but to watch this film is to see them being born before your eyes. So yes, some of it plays awkwardly, even unevenly at times, but these growing pains come with being the first major work of its kind.

I don’t hold these moments against the film. How could you? This had never been attempted on this grand a scale before, and what it lacks in narrative coherence it more than makes up for with the quality of its animation, memorable segments, and beloved characters. I’ve always been partial to the stuttering Doc, surly Grumpy, and the Harpo Marx-like Dopey, who appears to have a second center of gravity in his pelvis and frequently leads with his lower half.  Without this film, there would be no Disney feature films. But there also wouldn’t be an entire secondary movie industry, no Disney means no Pixar, Studio Ghibli, DreamWorks, and all the rest. Undoubtedly, this is one of the all-time greatest films. The following three films would surpass it in the Golden Era, and various films from the other eras would as well, but it somehow seems unfair to compare to what came after.