Quote:
Originally Posted by NeoMaximuz
I never really bothered, and don't think I will, to watch any of the Disney animation post Pocahontas--after that it went severely downhill in my opinion. I have a brand new copy of Dinosaur that I got through the DMR, and I don't know if I should open it or not.
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Um....THAT one you don't have to feel bad about if you don't bother.
Running down the rest (with 5-star ranking):
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Hunchback (2/5): Has its defenders (hoo boy!
) for its elegant "serious!" tone, but still feels like Disney, fresh off their Broadway success, trying to sell us new stage musicals before the paint's even dry on the film. Um, are we allowed to decide whether we like the "classic" movie
first, before we buy our $100 New Amsterdam tickets and t-shirts?
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Hercules (5/5): Audiences at the time couldn't
stand the sitcommy "burlesque" spin on Greek myth, but given the right mood, it wins you over after a while. It's Musker & Clements, so definitely put yourself in a kinetic Robin Williams/Aladdin mood, as it ain't Hunchback.
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Mulan (4/5): Herc and Hunch had been disasters in theaters, so Disney went back to formula and made a good narrative film, with a spunky female character, instead of a Broadway commercial. It's got all the "classic" ingredients (even a comedy relief that isn't irritating...much), and got Disney out of their 90's hole.
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Tarzan (3/5): Unfortunately, this one took longer to make, because of a new tech development on the CGI system, and came late to the party--Just as Mulan was starting to break out of the "Melodrama story" and "Sniffy villain", etc. mid-90's conventions, this one arrived still carrying some of the old baggage. It's good looking and has good (if identical) Phil Collins songs, but it's just not as epic as it very much
wants to be.
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Emperor's New Groove (3.5/5): Have to put this one in historical context--Disney's troubles were getting deeper with the audience, a serious Mayan project had folded in production, and so it felt like a clean slate to just kick back with some kinetic toony silliness. Even for those who (yeesh!) couldn't stand Mark Dindal's hyperactive gag-toons on Chicken Little, this one manages to bridge the gap back to Hercules/Aladdin, and give us gags you don't
mind laughing at...Yes,
even David Spade. Really.
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Atlantis (1/5): Trousdale & Wise were originally contracted to do "Journey to the Center of the Earth", thought it was too "dull", wanted an original faux-Verne with "more monsters", and the budget and schedule didn't have time for any. And so long, long passages of story were left blank, with nothing to fill them except offsettingly quirky and unlikable characters doing their business, which is mostly to school-bully our poor underdog hero. Just imagine how good this movie would have looked with an actual story.
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Lilo & Stitch (3.5/5): When it came out during the Troubles, this was seen as some sort of anti-Eisner "revolution", just because the characters and tone were a big quirkier, and it basically became the Tim Burton of Disney Animation at the time--With a cult saying "It's so cute and weird!" Well, it's not
that weird, and the characters are likable, just...not so much in this story, which jumps in a hundred directions without even remotely letting us in on any of the main characters' cute-'n-quirky heads. The title characters are ultimately lovable in their way, but don't feel badly if it takes you more than one viewing to figure out who the heck is the main protagonist and what the heck is going on.
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Treasure Planet (4.5/5): There are a dozen reasons why this one "flopped" in theaters, and very little have to do with the actual film. Like Hercules, it's an example that Musker & Clements have enough instinct to put one good scene after another in just about any atmosphere, and despite some attempts at comedy relief (a few of which, yes, stay true to the book), it's as reverent to Robert Louis Stevenson as you can want it to be.
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Brother Bear (1.5/5): Think the best term here is "You can dress 'em up, but you can't take 'em out"--Beautiful Alaskan scenery, a predictable story, and intrusively cheap gags that don't belong next to gorgeous shots of the Northern Lights. Gets a half star for the SCTV comedy reliefs, which is all most people remember.
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Home on the Range (3.5/5): Yes, it has Roseanne in it. Yes, it looks "funny". But y'know, it...ain't that bad, really. Made for the same reasons as Emperor's New Groove, and funny on the same kick-back "farewell to the serious project" level.
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Chicken Little (1/5): (Never mind, you know this one. And when Eisner bows down and kneels before Zod...er, Dreamworks after Shrek 2, somebody had to GO--Never mind that Mark Dindal
without Groove's cuddliness--and an almost resentfully by-the-numbers turning of standard hyperactive-CGI tropes up to 11, 12 and 13--can make you
wish you were only watching a Dreamworks comedy...
)
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Meet the Robinsons (5/5): There was a shakeup at the studio, and the exec who gave us Chicken Little was replaced by the Pixar Guy--In mid-film. You can actually see the transition onscreen, as repellently hyperactive characters in the first half actually become huggy, supportive Pixar-esque characters with an exciting Pixar-climax story in the second half. This was the statement we wanted to hear from the studio, and the message about "hope for the future" fell on the right ears.
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Bolt (4/5): Like Groove and Range, another "cleanup" project, but with Lasseter and the Pixar Brain Trust at the helm, they decided to turn troubled storyboards into an actual story with sympathetic characters instead. The story feels a little "improvised" on default rails because of that, but like Robinsons, they all find their way out by the end by asking us to
like the story, for a change.
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Princess & the Frog (3/5): Yes, I was waiting for the "return" of 90's films too--And while it's not
bad-bad, and pretty good-looking in fact, you keep asking yourself "What's
missing?" You're halfway through the film while waiting for it to "begin", and realize somebody forgot to bring whatever usually created the emotion in a M&C film. Maybe it's that the setting and the story seem to be on an awkward first blind date without ever having met, so there's no sense of atmosphere to go with the newly-thought-up characters.
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Tangled (5/5): What was "missing" in Princess&Frog?:
THIS. A classic-fairytale source updated imaginatively, a sympathetic heroine who's spunky without being obnoxiously empowered, a good hero, some genuinely funny animal sidekicks, an appealingly nasty villain, songs that feel Broadway without being Hunchback-stagey, and the right sniffle/wonder moments in the right places (which had been the hardest part for the other movies to figure out). Seems to have hit all the right notes almost by accident, but like the similarly "happy accident" Mermaid, if Disney keeps copying it to try and figure out What Went Right, that's perfectly fine with me.
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Winnie the Pooh (4/5): This was more of a Studio Statement--"Take back our classic 60's Pooh!"--than an actual A-B storyline, but for those of us raising the banner, it's not a bad wander for an hour or two, in the spirit of the old Saturday-morning series before it got too commercialized. Stays true to the originals, although, like Disney's Muppets, there's an occasional sense of "Retro-imitation" a little TOO hard for the sake of cuddly fan nostalgia.
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...So, er, yeah. There ARE a few to check out.
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