Reviews by JxSxPx

Tarzan, the last film of the Disney Renaissance, is a fairly simplistic action-adventure story, and nothing more. For this reason, I have always enjoyed it. It aims to tell a exciting story and does so very well. Of course, after the high-mindedness of so many other films in the Renaissance, films whose ambitions sometimes exceeded their grasps, it’s a slightly unsatisfactory way to wrap up the era. 

A few concessions are made towards exploring themes of race and identity, but they’re abandoned in favor of watching Tarzan swing through the trees. Using a newly created technology called Deep Canvas, Disney appears more concerned with flashing their cool new tech than crafting a deep story. Probably for the better, as the Tarzan story is loaded with questionable racial imagery, but part of me wishes that they leaned harder on the ludicrously pulp-y nature of its origins.

But Disney was smart enough to know that this new technique would create eye-popping visuals. Watching Tarzan traverse the trees, vines, and various parts of the jungle with the ease of extreme sports player is thrilling. Strangely hypnotic even, as he demonstrates the skills of a surfer, skier, and a gymnast as the camera tracks his every movement, twisting along with him. This is possibly one of the most gorgeous looking films of the era.

Taking place in an African jungle of the imagination, it’s easy to get lost in the fantasy of it all. That is, until Phil Collins’ truly dreadful songs start playing over the background. Abandoning the typical musical structure, these songs don’t melt into the narrative so easily, but rest upon scenes. This wouldn’t be a problem if any of them were any good, but they’re sappy and unmemorable. The Best Song Oscar win feels like the votes just mindlessly checking off the Disney film, which they consistently did throughout the Renaissance.

I just wish I could place my finger on exactly what is missing from Tarzan to make it leap from good to great. The character designs are enjoyable. Seriously, Tarzan is one of many leads in a Renaissance film that was clearly an early indication of my sexuality, what with this tight torso, thick thighs, and broad shoulders. (Aladdin, Prince Eric, Prince Adam, and Hercules join him in this group.)

The film moves along at a consistent pace, never really losing momentum or taking unnecessary side-plots. It’s a tightly paced 90 minutes, or so. But there’s just something missing. Perhaps it’s the lack of a notable villain? Clayton is more bravado than threatening until the last act, and Sabor has as only two scenes to make an impression. Sabor makes one hell of an impression during the opening, a heart of darkness in an otherwise family-friendly film as it depicts the shipwreck that lands Tarzan’s parents in the African jungle.

I don’t know what exactly is missing from it, but I just know that there’s a spark gone dim here that burns brightly in other films. It feels like a roller coaster, moving from one high-octane moment to another, only taking long enough to pause for your stomach to regroup before the next drop. 

Starting with 1992’s Aladdin, Disney produced a series of films which diversified their output during the Renaissance. Typically, a Disney feature is a western Euro-centric musical, slightly homogenous in appearance and style. These stabs at diversification are not without strains and problems, occasionally leaning very hard on coded racial imagery, intentional or not, with lead characters featuring more European features than the villainous and supporting characters.

Mulan is one of the better tries at expanding what a Disney film can look like, or what kind of story it can tell. But like a few other films in the Renaissance, it feels slightly scared of venturing too far out of safe waters. This is what I have a hard time separating in my mind, I keep thinking about the movie Disney could have made instead of the one that they did.

I don’t think I can be entirely blamed for this, the seeds for a more daring and adventurous film are right there. The original folktale, or the most well-known version, has a young girl cutting her hair, taking her father’s place in the army, and becoming a highly decorated and trusted warrior, returning home after a dozen years a hero, and shocking China after discarding her male disguise to reveal their greatest hero was a warrior woman. It plays with gender conventions, and gives girls a bad ass hero to look up to. Mulan follows this in the broad strokes, but undermines it slightly in the end.

The presence of goofy sidekicks proved problematic in a few other films, notably The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Mulan has a similar problem going for it. Cri-kee and Mushu are nowhere to be found in the original tale, additions to increase revenue and merchandising opportunities within the studio. I would prefer a version with their absence, Eddie Murphy’s rapid-fire delivery is at odds with the more serious film surrounding it. The cricket just adds nothing to the story, a fact which the film-makers knew during production, but they thought it was cute.

My other major problem with Mulan is the romance, which feels shoe-horned into the narrative. An attraction between the two is fine, but they spend so little time together that the finale’s reunion of the two as some grand statement of love is odd. Maybe even off-putting, as so much of Mulan’s character has been about dismantling the confining gender roles in her society that her character returning to domesticity with the prospect of a handsome husband feels incongruous to her character. There’s no spark to this romance.

A minor problem is the villains, they’re just not very threatening or memorable. They’re an off-screen threat for much of the film, and more boogeymen than anything else. Their appearance is slightly distracting from everything around them. Their grey skin, haute couture fashions, and black eyes with yellow pupils read more as alien than anything else. Which could be read in a distressing manner if you wanted, I suppose. I find it just an odd artistic choice since they look like they wandered in from an Alexander McQueen photoshoot.

While I find these facets of the film off-putting, everything else about Mulan works well. The animation borrows from Chinese watercolors, giving the smoke patterns massive amounts of swirls and fluidity of movement. The character designs are more simplistic, more angular, but no less expressive, another way Chinese watercolors influenced the art. One musical number literalizes this homage by creating a moving watercolor painting. It’s lovely to look at, and creates several sequences a tremendous bravado and technical skill.

Even better is how Mulan fulfills the promise of the more proactive heroines in these films. While Ariel and Jasmine got side-lined so the boys could save the day, and Pocahontas was a personality-free blank space for various men to project onto, Mulan is the driving and dominating force. Her choices and agency is never called into question, and she frequently calls out sexism against her. Yes, this feels several centuries ahead of its time, and like Western ideology intruding, but I’ll take it if it means better female characters emerging from the studio.

Doing to Greek mythology what the studio has long done to Grimm’s fairy tales, Hercules takes a few names and recasts them into an original story. Strange that instead of leaning into the mythic, operatic workings of the original story, Disney is happier to play it all as laughs. Doesn’t mean it’s bad, it’s very fun and very funny, but it’s the slightest film of the Renaissance since The Rescuers Down Under.

It’s easier to see Disney re-crafting the pieces of the story into something happier, the original Greek myth goes dark but still ends with Hercules regaining his immortality. Yet other choices have always bothered me. This film came out when I was ten, and in the middle of an obsession with learning all about the Greek myths so I was wildly looking forward to it. I’ve always enjoyed it, but my appreciation for it has always been somewhat complicated.

Hades never seemed like the obvious choice for a villain, and he remains somewhat unsatisfying. Turning Zeus and Hera into a functional couple, and Zeus a goofy loving dad type is just strange. Some of the natural drama and psychological complexity has been cut off at the knee. Any depth in Hercules comes purely from Megara, who is one of the most pleasing leading ladies to come across in some time. Even then, so much of the film has played for slapstick, laughs, satire, and low-stakes that its third act rush for some depth feels somehow unearned.

Very little territory is mined from the father-son dynamics, and the romance between Hercules and Megara is rushed, to say the least, so her about-face feels like the plot mechanics loudly whirring by instead of an organic growth of their relationship. Where Hercules shines is as a satire of merchandising blitzes, overnight stardom, and pop culture references. This is probably as close to eating its own tail as Disney will ever get.

Yes, there’s something self-aware about Hercules in these moments. With the opening narration of Charlton Heston, Ben-Hur himself, something of a pointed tongue-in-cheek nod to where we’re headed. He then hands off the narration to a literal Greek chorus, the Muses, who complain that he was making the story sound more dramatic and tragic than it really is. The Muses are the brightest spot in Hercules, even when the film gets flabby or weird, they swoop up in with a gospel-tinged musical number to liven up the proceedings.

Hercules actually has a stronger cast of female characters than male ones. Granted, Hera is rendered practically mute, but Megara and the Muses are far more memorable than the dumb-but-sweet hero. Their duet, “I Won’t Say (I’m in Love),” rekindles some of the group harmonies and old-fashioned pop brilliance of The Little Mermaid’s “Kiss the Girl.” Oh, Megara, how I love your sardonic nature. She’s like Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve to Hercules’ Henry Fonda. She could probably do better than this guy, but what he lacks in brains he makes up for in heart and tenderness. So I guess she could do much worse.  

When you scrub out the sexuality from Greek mythology, what you’re left with is a lot of violence. Hercules doesn’t shy away from showing him beating up or killing various foes. The battle with the hydra is memorable, but the finale is even better. The rolling fat and jiggly bits of the Cyclops as he takes on Hercules are hypnotic to watch. I mean this as a compliment, as the animators have created a fluidity of movement with the character that is almost graceful. In fact, I found all of the Titans to be among some of the best animation the studio has produced during the Renaissance. They’re strange, frightening creations that tower so large they can’t be contained within the frame. Shame that they last for so brief a time in the film.

Perhaps that’s another problem with Hercules, as there’s a bounty of odd creatures and gorgeous sets to visit, and the film tries to cram them all in. The Underworld is appropriately atmospheric and creepy, with the large looming skull, river of souls, and a Cerberus that is truly menacing looking. Mount Olympus doesn’t do as well in this translation, as it is all swirling clouds and nothing more. Frankly, I’d rather hang out in the Underworld. And the trials of Hercules make a brief appearances – there’s a centaur, a caged bird, a lion (Scar in a cameo), mentions of the Amazons and the stables – but aside from one or two, nothing much is done with them.

This is probably my biggest frustration with Hercules. Yes, it's funny and charming, and I find the art direction to be stellar, it borrows liberally from Greek vase painting to create an interesting new wrinkle in Disney's house style; yet, it doesn't engage with the source material in any meaningful way. It is, in fact, highly entertaining, but it's a comedown from the lofty ambitions of the three prior films, regardless of their quality.

One of the strangest turns in the Renaissance found Disney crafting more substantive and emotionally mature works. You can see and feel the tension between the artists trying to expand what a Disney film could be, and the higher-ups demanding measures be taken to ensure a healthy chunk of merchandising profits. The Hunchback of Notre Dame suffered the worst from this tension.

Half of the film is a thoughtful, dark examination of religious hypocrisy, xenophobia, steeped in Catholic symbolism and a villain who is terrifying for being all too realistic. The other half is cutesy sidekicks cracking wise and making various pop culture references. It’s messy, but it’s grandly ambitious. I think it succeeds more than it fails, and its potential for greatness is evident, even if it is final form is muted and compromised.

There is no way to properly tell this story and include a happy ending for its main characters. Disney finds a way to include one, but it feels like a cheat. In fact, this ending, and the presence of the gargoyles as mere slapstick and comedic sidekicks, hinders the film each time it tries to soar. While the city of Paris is burning to the ground, Disney cheats the logical conclusion of the narrative and keeps everyone alive that is good, killing only the villain.

It’s easy moralizing from a film that so frequently skirts around it. Much of The Hunchback of Notre Dame takes a long, hard look at Judge Frollo’s religious hypocrisy, delivering a villainous character who is utterly frightening. Sure, one of Disney’s specialties is crafting memorable villains, but so many of them were entertaining in their outlandish scheming and grotesque behavior. Frollo is easily identifiable in our real world. A man who claims piety and deep religious belief while using it as a weapon against mass groups of people he deems unworthy, conflating his suppressed desires and lusts as witchcraft put upon him by a wicked female.

When The Hunchback of Notre Dame focuses in on the more realistic and disturbing aspects of the story, it never fails to impress. The backgrounds are a step above anything else in the Renaissance thus far. The cathedral faithfully represented, and the amount of detail staggering. By this point, Disney was pouring large amounts of money, time, and resources into its animation department. The character work is fluid and dynamic, and the various musical numbers gloriously rendered.

Three moments always manage to stick with me each time I view the film. “Out There,” Quasimodo’s heartfelt plea to join in with the rest of the world, to find a place of belonging, to connect with others, is a beautiful moment. “Topsy Turvy” a song explaining the day of celebration, and it’s an explosion of color, whimsy, and mirth-making. But the best moment in the entire film is “Hellfire,” Frollo’s condemnation of Esmeralda, his denial of his own lustful thoughts, and a conversation with his own suppressed guilt and thoughts. It’s the most mature musical number in the entire catalog of Disney films, rich with images of Catholic guilt and religious symbols. Disney hasn’t gone this dark and twisted, but loaded with hefty meaning since “Night on Bald Mountain” in Fantasia. I wonder if non-Catholics can appreciate it as much as this (heavily) lapsed one?

Not to say that the rest of the score isn’t phenomenal, because it is. Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz dig deep in religious music for the score, as it is loaded with hymns, chants, and phrases lifted straight from a mass. “God Help the Outcasts,” a lovely prayer for the poor and downtrodden, sung by Esmerelda hammers in on the point the film is trying to make – we are all children of god, and we should look after each other, love one another. She clearly believes in a loving and forgiving god, reminding us that Jesus was an outcast in his time, and it is a beautiful sentiment.

But then there’s those damn gargoyles. I agree that Quasimodo needed characters to interact with, and the film briefly flirts with making the gargoyles figments of his imagination, as he has been kept isolated and emotionally abused his entire life. Yet, the film also wants the gargoyles to be real, and to be childish moments of levity. These moments puncture holes in the atmosphere and tone that the film had so consistently been working towards. If I could change one thing, I wouldn’t change the talking gargoyles, I wouldn’t even change using them as moments of levity, but I would change how they are used in these moments. Hearing Jason Alexander’s voice cracking post-modern jokes really takes you out of the moment.

And this points to a bigger problem within the Renaissance – the insistence on celebrity voices can occasionally take you out of the film. It was weird enough hearing Mel Gibson as an English settler in Pocahontas, but Demi Moore as the Romani Esmerelda is distracting. It  doesn’t help that her vocal work is merely adequate. Jason Alexander, Mary Wickes, and Charles Kimbrough as the gargoyles are distracting to the point of consciously taking you out of the narrative momentum. Kevin Kline, Tom Hulce, Paul Kandel, and Tony Jay, especially, all do solid to great work in their respective roles.

Yes, it is WILDLY inconsistent in tone, but I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I find it’s ambitious nature quite charming. I appreciate that it’s an American animated film that tried to push the art form away from just mindless family entertainments. It didn’t entirely succeed, but I think it’s an essential viewing experience for even daring to soar so high.

Aladdin is the first film in the Renaissance that I just don’t believe deserves its status within the studio’s output. If you focus solely on how enjoyable the Genie is, how nefarious Jafar is, or how adorable Abu and the magic carpet are, you’re on steady ground. Once you start expanding beyond these characters, things get problematic quickly.

Racial coding has been a problem with Disney since the Golden Era, and Aladdin leans into it heavily. While Aladdin and Jasmine are more Euro-centric in looks, Jafar and the various villainous characters are caricatures of Middle-Eastern facial characteristics. It doesn’t help matters that Aladdin and Jasmine are significantly lighter in skin tone than the villainous characters. Or the hyper-sexualization of various female characters. It just makes for awkward viewing as an adult.   

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about some of the other problems with Aladdin. The story reminds me of many of the Silver Era prince and princess films, the boring-but-noble leads weigh it down, and it’s only lively when the villains and adorable sidekicks are allowed to take center stage. Jasmine, in particular, is all lip-service to more forward-thinking ideals. Her tough talk is all bluster, as she’s frequently tossed aside when decisions need to be made, or in the action-packed finale.

While the story is slight, frequently lopsided in favor of Robin Williams’ manic vocal mugging, this is both the blessing and undoing of the film. While the genie is missing for the first thirty-minutes or so, the film manages to dive deep into fantastical imagery. The lead-up to his reveal is in an awe inspiring new location, and Williams gives the movie an energy no other film had before or since in the canon.

But this would also prove to be a problem going forward, both with the film and in the studio. Williams overtakes Aladdin, and when his character’s mad-libs aren’t center stage, everything appears slightly dull. His presence would lead the studio towards filling in various comedians as the main hero’s sidekick, providing anachronistic musing and bits of humor. It works here, as genie is an immortal character, who has been shown to travel in time, but it would prove problematic in later films.

I like Aladdin, but in terms of Renaissance films viewed so far, it definitely is the bronze medal winner. Some of this is a feeling of over familiarity with the scenarios, characters, and situations. 1940’s The Thief of Bagdad was an obvious influence, if I am being generous in my word choice. Disney borrowed many situations and characters from the film, Jafar and the Sultan being prime examples. In comparison to that imaginative and enchanting epic, Aladdin is a pale imitation. A typical fairy tale story dressed up in exotic costuming. Not the worst film in the Renaissance, but it’s definitely middle of the road, only beloved because of Robin Williams’ memorable and endearing Genie.

Is this the undisputed masterpiece of the Disney Renaissance? If it’s not the top choice for that honor, it’s damn close. It plays less like a traditionally animated Disney feature, and more like a long-lost MGM musical. The animation is lush, the characters are memorable, the songs are lively, and it’s no wonder that this was the first animated film to get a Best Picture nomination, as it is one of the highest points in Disney’s filmography.

Sure, when it comes to filmed versions of the fairy tale this is second fiddle to Jean Cocteau’s masterpiece, but this one also does nicely on its own. Shockingly, this version retains a strong fidelity to the source material, Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s well-known variation of the tale. Being Disney, much of the implicit sexuality has been scrubbed clean, but the rest of the basic materials and story beats are all there.

This is the sight of the studio producing something while all of the talents involved are working at their peak artistic capabilities. Not an ounce of story time is wasted, every major character is developed with clear wants and needs, and every song is in service of the story. The vocal talent, an ensemble of beloved Broadway veterans and character actors, is first-rate, and the animation is elegant.

The Little Mermaid first brought back the multi-plane camera and various other tricks from the Golden Era, but Beauty and the Beast used them more grandly. It’s clear from the opening pane through the forest to the Beast’s castle that we’re dealing with a huge budget, and much time and effort has been placed into this. The sweeping romance of the ballroom sequence has become as memorable a sequence as Cinderella’s transformation or Pinocchio’s nose continuing to grow as he lies.

Much has been made about the central romance, but I never placed much stock in the reading of it as Stockholm Syndrome. Belle never feels romantic yearnings towards the Beast until he exhibits a clear change in temperament and personality, until he essentially grows up. When she gets the chance to leave his castle, she runs away, only returning to the castle to nurse the Beast’s wounds or try and stop the villagers from harming him. She consistently stands up to him, refuses to engage in his tantrums, and calls him out every chance she gets. Romance only enters her mind after she realizes he’s an outcast kindred spirit, much like her, and finds an empathetic connection with his wounded soul.

If I could pinpoint the lone element that ties it all together and makes it work so beautiful, it would be that fantasy is a medium of ideas of things and not their actuality. Filmed fantasy stories need to be built upon a foundation of dreams and imagination, not on actuality. Beauty and the Beast presents us with places and dangers that feel more dream-like than real. Beast’s castle is all glowering and menacing gargoyles, stacked one on top of the other, as far as the eye can see, or a library the size of three rooms. The woods around his castle are filled with wolves that are more glowering and vengeful than they would be in real life, comprised mostly of fangs and hunched shoulders.

The only element that feels even remotely like an intrusion from real life is Gaston and his band of merry assholes. Gaston’s the pinnacle of heteronormative patriarchy ran amuck. He feeds into every stereotypical gender role, every male power fantasy, and I’m certain every girl has at least three stories about men like him. Knowing that a gay man wrote the lyrics to his call to arms against the Beast, this film’s version of the mysterious “Other,” adds an extra dimension to his dangerous nature. Gaston’s urge to unite the masses with fear and propaganda against it, and to ultimately try and destroy it feels like the real world poking through the fantasy. Every fantasy film has this moment, and if done correctly makes the fantastical elements pop more and tie together better. It’s done very well here.

This film is as good as fairy tale cinema can be, and definitely one of the higher points in the history of Disney. Everything works here, and it can easily be viewed as an animated spin on a Broadway musical, no surprise that Disney quickly turned it into one. There’s Busby Berkeley style musical romps, sentimental ballads, lively group numbers, all in service of telling a solid story. Undoubtedly, the Renaissance’s answer to Sleeping Beauty or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Beauty and the Beast easily rests in their pantheon of great fairy tale adaptations.

The first official sequel produced by the Disney studio, The Rescuers Down Under sacrifices the bruised heart of the original in favor of razzmatazz and loud action sequences. There’s also a strange subplot involving John Candy’s albatross getting questionable medical care, played purely for slapstick but also completely unnecessary to the film as a whole. The Rescuers Down Under is a dip from the dizzy heights of The Little Mermaid, but it’s not the worst film in the Renaissance.

Reuniting with Bernard and Miss Bianca is pleasant, and it’s nice to see the latest development of Disney’s Nick and Nora Charles. Finding their way to Australia in search of a kidnapped boy, they team-up with a Crocodile Dundee-style mouse and a giant golden eagle, and take down an evil poacher. Never for one moment do we doubt that they’ll come out on top, and the various threats are never terribly threatening. There’s nothing here quite as fun as the smoky bayou chases or hungry alligators.

And our villain is a bit of a lame duck, never truly developing into something frightening, played too often for laughs, and he seems beamed in from a Mad Max movie. That last part would be particularly thrilling if they had managed to make him terrifying, but he gets involved with too many slapstick moments to register as truly deadly. Shame, as George C. Scott gives it his typical bravado and is clearly game to add a new name to Disney’s pantheon of movie villains.

Where The Rescuers Down Under really shines is in the chemistry between Bernard and Bianca, and the various flight scenes. Or when the film decides to scale back and just observe the Australian Outback. The landscapes are beautifully rendered, filled with warm hues and colors, and all manner of exotic flora and fauna. But the flight scenes are truly something, borrowing liberally from Hayao Miyazaki's flight scenes, they sweep us away: across a waterfall, through a forest, and up high into a mountaintop. If only the film had found a better story to wrap around these flight sequences. It's fun and entertaining, but incredibly slight and a comedown from the original's battered heart and empathetic connections.

The nostalgia is heavy with this one for me. Coming out in winter 1989, I was two-years-old and this was the first movie I saw in theaters. Apparently, the opening shark attack frightened me so that I refused to leave my mother’s lap until the appearance of Scuttle, at which point I had calmed down enough to sit on my own, and was completely enraptured by the viewing experience. I’ve since watched the film dozens and dozens of times, knowing practically every piece of dialog and song lyric.

What made me happy about this viewing experience, and it’s been a few years since I last watched it, was how The Little Mermaid still works. The jokes still land, the songs are memorable, Ursula is a glorious villain, Prince Eric an impossibly handsome prince, and Ariel the first of the new Disney princesses. The Little Mermaid signaled a, pardon the unintentional pun, sea change for the studio. Ushering in the Renaissance, it was a return to the big Broadway-style musicals from the studio, transforming beloved fairy tales into glossy family entertainment.

After the “just good enough” Oliver and Company, Disney lavished more time, money, and effort upon this feature. The why is easy enough to figure out, the major players working on the film knew they had something major on their hands and lobbied for more time and money. Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, the best things to enter the Disney studios in some time, pushed hard for greatness in their work, turning in a collection of songs that have become staples of the Disney songbook. The quality of these songs pushed the directors to lobby for more breathing room and effort, for a return to the quality of the Silver Era. Thank god they held out.

While The Little Mermaid is not perfect, some of the animation is not as lush as follow-ups, some of the backgrounds not as detailed, but it’s a quantum leap in effort from the prior era. This is a seismic change, and one watches the film with the feeling that something was happening within, as though a sleeping giant was awakening. Later films like Beauty and the Beast proved this feeling to be true, and The Little Mermaid holds its own nicely.

Granted, like many other prior adaptations, The Little Mermaid smooths over some of the darker edges of the story, transplants a happy ending in place of the tragedy of the original, and does put some effort into making its princess more lively and spunky. Ariel’s central romance is still weird, but her clear preference is the human world, a obsession that the film hints as being a life-long one. She treats Prince Eric as her tourist guide to wild world of humanity, seemingly uninterested in any romance, until a romantic boat ride accompanied by Sebastian serenading them with “Kiss the Girl.” It’s not the only story-telling problem that the film encounters.

For all of her personality, Ariel goes weirdly flat in the final act. Her agency, scheming, and smarts tossed aside so that Eric and King Triton can take on Ursula, leaving her cast off to the sidelines. For all of mold-breaking she did in the first two acts, she returns to the mute, helpless damsel-in-distress of the previous eras princesses. The Little Mermaid wanted to both change-up the formula, and return to it for revitalizing powers. Enough of it leans hard on shaking things up that these weird moments of problematic story structures can be forgiven.

And then there’s Ursula. If for no other reason, watch The Little Mermaid for it’s the grand bitch diva Ursula. A corpulent sea witch, whose bottom half is that of a black squid and top half based on Divine, she’s one of the greatest and most memorable of villains in the Disney canon. Her diva tantrums know no limits, and her penchant for quips and fabulous shade placed the germ for my love of drag queens.

If The Little Mermaid isn't as perfect as Sleeping Beauty, that doesn't mean it isn't one of the great benchmarks in the studio's output. Think of how beloved it is, and how it so clearly earns that reputation. Sure, it's outclassed by later films in the Renaissance, but it comes the closest to the Golden or Silver Era magic for the first time in roughly twenty years. It's a return to the lively musicals the studio used to put out with regularity, and just different enough from the set formula to points towards the later films in the Renaissance and beyond.

Wreck-It Ralph is the movie I had been waiting for the Disney Revival to produce. It creates a unique and original world, populates it with a combination of familiar and new characters, and brings about a big heart and moments of strong character development. It proudly wears its various references and knowing winks on its openhearted sleeve, causing me to have quite a few chuckles at the obscurity of them. But it is this kind of attention to detail that makes Wreck-It Ralph work so well.

What’s so strange to me about this movie is how its central narrative plays more for the adults in the audience than the kids. Struggling to prove that he is more the sum of his programming, Wreck-It Ralph escapes his beloved 8-bit arcade game to explore the other worlds. First stumbling into a modern first-person shooter, which owes a bit to the imagery of Aliens, and then finding himself in Sugar Rush, which is what would happen if Mario Kart and Candy Land had a kid. Ralph’s heroism will not only save the arcade from imploding upon itself, his game hoping as placed several games in jeopardy, but solve the mystery of game glitch Vanellope.

How does this play more towards the adults than the kids? Well, have children lived enough to feel the weight of labels and expectations placed upon them by society? If nothing else, Wreck-It Ralph plays like a milder version of Fantastic Mr. Fox’s mid-life crisis. Approaching the 30^th anniversary of their game, Ralph demands to be seen, to be accepted for who he truly is, and not his assigned role in the game. The loneliness and tenderness of the character is palpable, and you ache for him to feel a moment of sunshine.

Of course, this being Disney, he gets it, along with an easily digestible moral about not judging others based upon their looks, or the roles we have forced them into. Hammering home this idea is the film’s villain, King Candy. Modeled off of Ed Wynn, a beloved character actor from the studio era and the Mad Hatter in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, Candy is the pinnacle of deceiving looks. He’s also the most pleasing villain the studio has produced in the Revival era, aside from Dr. Facilier. The big reveal of his character is screamingly obvious to everyone, but the climactic battle is thrilling, and his character’s transformation disturbing and wonderfully animated.

It would be easy to scoff at Wreck-It Ralph as empty nostalgia, a lesser-brained spin on arcade gaming akin to Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’s love letter to cartoons. Any objections to the film are quickly obliterated by the high-energy and colorful designs. Each of the environments is smartly rendered. Ralph’s home world has splatters and liquids landing in square patterns, and the minor characters moving in jerky motions. Whereas the high-definition Hero’s Duty is all moody atmospherics and smoother animation for the characters, and when one of the characters gets drunk at Tapper’s, he runs continuously into the wall, reminding all of us of the problematic controls of modern gaming.

We spend most of our time in Sugar Rush, and it is violently colorful, with its various textures brought to imaginative life. Animation can create and populate worlds that live-action never could, and this is a prime example. The video game worlds must constantly create, destroy, and remake themselves, over and over again. This has given the animators freedom to let their wildest impulses go wild, and the various terrains of Sugar Rush look like the furtive scribbling of a highly creative child, and I mean that as high praise.

Since the Renaissance era, Disney has had a love affair with populating their casts with known names in place of voice actors. This has proven a mixed bag, but Wreck-It Ralph is one of the more successful attempts. John C. Reilly sounds defeated on a good day, and his lovable goofiness adds tremendously to Ralph. Jack McBrayer and Jane Lynch as cast to type as an eternal optimist and tough-talking survivalist, but it works. Sarah Silverman is perfection as Vanellope, finding the perfect balance between precocious likability and irritating childish behaviors. That her character is also a little cracked only helps matters. The real find is Alan Tudyk as King Candy. Who knew Wash could do such a solid Ed Wynn impression? Or go so maniacally twisted when needed?

Besides a few moments of plot predictability, if Wreck-It Ralph has a major flaw, it’s a continued concession towards modern pop cultural references. Typically, Disney avoids these as they quickly date the movies, badly, but here you’ll find a Rihanna pop song, wildly inappropriate given its lyrical subject matter, and a cameo from Skrillex. These moments took me out of the film. Disney is better when it gets pretentious, even stuffy, and goes against modernity, when it insists on being classical. These moments are mercifully brief, and Wreck-It Ralph works too well to held them against it entirely. And, goddamn it, it’s just too much fun. 

I’ve never quite figured it out, but Disney and A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh stories merge together pretty wonderfully. There’s a quiet, gentle humor, a slower pace, and endearing characters, all great ingredients for a solid Disney film, and the studio never flounders when adapting this particular property.

This version of Winnie the Pooh is another solid, commendable adaptation, but there’s nothing here that we haven’t seen before. Some of it feels like a retread of parts of the prior The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, yet it does all of it exceptionally well. It breezes along, perhaps too fast for my taste as the film is only a little over an hour.

You know, growing up I had only the slightest of interest in Milne’s world and characters. I watched a VHS about the gang celebrating Eeyore’s birthday quite a bit, but didn’t spend more time gathering up the various shorts, TV shows, toys, and games. In re-visiting and diving into the entirety of the Disney studio’s output, I’ve come to enjoy the Hundred Acre Woods and its various denizens.

Watching these films is a lot like wrapping yourself up in a comfortable and warm blanket. There’s a gentleness here that is quite pleasing. So many animated films have turned into frantic things which beat you over the head with needless celebrity stunt-casting, action scenes, and empty pop-culture references in place of humor. I suppose what attracts me to this film is its old-fashioned movie-making.

If I ever had a kid, either my own or as an uncle/godparent, this is the kind of film I would use to introduce them to the magic of the movies. Not only is a good indicator of what “all ages” fun can be, but it’s actually pretty pleasing and smart in the ways in which it dares to be different. Much like the 1977 original, this Winnie the Pooh interacts with the text of the children’s book, breaking the fourth wall to speak with the narrator (John Cleese, he’s wonderful), and two musical numbers which break away from the rest of the film.

“The Backson Song” is a moving series of chalkboard illustrations, filled with imaginative bursts as the ensemble decides what the creature is, what it wants, and how to catch it. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t immediately put a smile upon my face. The other is “Everything is Honey,” which sees Pooh’s hunger pangs turn into a fantasia of honey dripping everywhere, and objects turning into honey pots. It’s always a great moment whenever the animators were allowed off the leash and go crazy.

If the only major problem I can find with this film is a too brief running time and an over familiarity with the plot construction, I think we are on solid ground. It’s a classic storybook entertainment, and it feels displaced from an older era in the studio’s oeuvre. It’s a damn shame that this movie, much like The Princess and the Frog, didn’t find a larger audience at the box office. Something tells me that one-two punch caused the studio to rethink hand-drawn animation. I hope they return to the format one day.