The Aristocats: Disney dies and THIS is what comes out next?! For shame.
Robin Hood: this is not a bad movie...it's actually very cute. Those animal children are spot on!
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: always reminds me of my dad because he tried to read this story to me in Latin (don't ask why). I like how they incorporate the book pages into their visual presentation; the story is otherwise unremarkable.
The Rescuers: other than having an adorable orphan girl named Penny in it whom I'm obligated to like because my sister's name is Penny this little movie is lame and greatly distressed my 2 year old niece.
The Fox and the Hound: it took me three different tries to watch this whole movie and I fell asleep every time. An incredibly low point in Disney history.
The Black Cauldron: this movie is significant for a few reasons - it's Disney's first PG rated film, it's the first film that has the credits at the end of the movie instead of the beginning, it has the only princess that hasn't been inducted into the official cannon of Disney princesses, and Tim Burton worked on this movie (sort of). Everyone should read The Chronicles of Prydain, which is the book series this movie is based on. It is awesome.
The Great Mouse Detective: the first Disney movie to employ computer animation and it looks fabulous! It's so well integrated into the movie that you don't notice it at all.
Oliver and Company: Also uses computer animation...which I didn't even know until after I watched this movie. Oh, and I don't like this movie, I think it trivializes the point Charles Dickens was trying to get across with his novel Oliver Twist, of which this is based on.
The Little Mermaid: Ok, I have WAY more than two sentences worth of stuff to say about this movie so the rest of this post will be focusing on it.
I love this movie, especially after watching 8 movies that are varying degrees of mediocre to bad; this film is a breath of fresh air. It's so cleanly drawn and full of life.The music is brilliant and the plot is near seamless. Oh, and the graphic qualities in the composition give me goosebumps. Just look at the scenes when Ariel transforms into a human, or when Eric's ship gets caught in the storm. It makes me giddy to think about!
I know a lot of feminists who hate this movie due to a belief that it is anti-feminists (how strange that feminists would get all bent out of shape about something being anti them). I will concede that I can see their point but I have to disagree. Sure, Ariel can't speak and Ursula persuades her to get her point across with sex appeal but can I just take a moment to point out that Ursula is a witch? Of course she's going to try to convince this poor unfortunate soul to use improper methods to get what she wants. That's how evil creatures work. Not to mention I think it's rather one dimensional to say the only way to show a man you're worth it is with words. That seems like a rather harsh discredit to the mute community. And I feel like Ariel does show a lot of personality very innocently. She's enthusiastic, curious, and adventurous. Oh, and can we please remember that she is 16 and behaves very much like an idiotic 16 year old.
Which brings me to a different point: I don't consider this movie to be as much of a love story as it is a story about a father/daughter relationship. For me, this story is more about a father learning to let his daughter grow up and make her own mistakes and choices than it is about a girl falling in love with a boy.
Fun facts about this movie: it was originally considered for production in the early 1940's and Disney said he didn't care who the prince married, so long as it wasn't the Little Mermaid. The original concept art was created by my man Kay Nielsen who died in 1957 and his name is in the credits of the 1989 movie. AND Ursula is not an octopus, she's a squid....she has six tentacles, not eight.
Everyone should read the original Hans Christian Andersen story because it's awesome and melancholy....like everything he wrote.
Also, does anyone else wonder what it does for the economy of a seafaring/fishing nation to have a mermaid for a queen?
So after The Little Mermaid comes The Rescuers Down Under and I have very little to say about this flick so I'll just tack it to the end here.
This movie is the first movie to have Pixar in its credits. It's also Disney's very first canonized sequel. I find it interesting that at the time this movie came out Disney had been around for 57+ years and this was its 29th animated film. Pixar on the other hand, has been making full length movies for not even 15 years, has 14 movies and 4 of them are sequels with another two sequels in the works. I don't know what that means to you, but it speaks volumes to me.
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