I've had this strange hankering for Disney canon lately.

[timepiececlock]

Two days ago I rewatched Beauty and the Beast, which was every bit as lovely and fun as I remembered. It also had a very "Broadway" feel, which I only recognized now as an adult who's been to more live performances. The way the songs were written, especially the opening piece "Belle" and the time-lapse love song "Something There" have that effect of multiple characters talking and then singing then talking then singing, and condensing serious plot and exposition into the song itself, rather than having the Plot | Song | Plot | Song | Plot format that some Disney films, like the Little Mermaid, do.

I rewatched The Little Mermaid a few months ago. I also watched Lion King 2 for the first time this year. Right now I've got a desire to rewatch The Hunchback of Notre Dame which I saw once on video and remember not liking, possibly thinking I was too old for it. Although I checked the date and it came out when I was 12 so I really shouldn't have been too old... maybe I watched too long after its release and had passed that magical "line" of being the target age group verses being an appreciative adult audience member. Anyway, it got a lot of reviews so I should probably give it a chance.


Here's where the Disney feature films fall for me, in terms of my childhood experience.

KEY:
blue = seen and loved it as a child
green = seen it, didn't care much
red = seen it and loved it as an older teen / adult
gray = never seen it


1 -27 ....all other classic Disney movies made before I was a sentient move watcher
28 The Little Mermaid 1989
29 The Rescuers Down Under 1990
30 Beauty and the Beast 1991
31 Aladdin 1992
32 The Lion King 1994
33 Pocahontas 1995
------------------------------------ the magical line of my Disney childhood experience ending
34 The Hunchback of Notre Dame 1996
35 Hercules 1997
36 Mulan 1998
37 Tarzan 1999
38 Fantasia 2000
39 The Emperor's New Groove 2000
40 Atlantis: The Lost Empire 2001
41 Lilo & Stitch 2002

It appears I hit "the line" at 10-11 years old, which is, well, young. I probably took myself too seriously. Though whether it was before Pocahontas or after I'm not sure, because I remember I didn't particularly go ga-ga over Pocahontas , but I put the line after because, I reasoned, Pocahontas was the last Disney film where I memorized the lyrics to the major ballads.

I haven't seen any of the feature films since Lilo & Stitch , probably because most of them were CGI and weren't musicals. I like the musicals. The exception to that being Lilo & Stitch which was not a traditional musical but which I adored to insane little pieces anyway. It's the only Disney animated feature I've seen twice in theaters.

I'm also probably one of the few people who hasn't seen Fantasia 2000. I never went when it was on IMAX (I wanted to though) and now it's not playing anymore, that I can find. And I don't think I want to see it on a regular tv size.

Am I the only one who feels like it's not a "real" Disney animated feature if its not 2-D style animation? Not that they can't use CGI to support it (Beauty and the Beast was the first to do so), but to me "Disney" is a musical cell-style hand-drawn animated film. CGI movies or Pixar movies are in a category of their own, especially since they tend to not be musicals. Did I mention I liked musicals? I was subjected to a great many as a child.


EDIT: There have been many non-Disney animated films that I loved, some even past that line in my childhood, which I put down to simply good quality film-making:

The Secret of Nimh, An American Tail, The Brave Little Toaster, The Land Before Time, All Dogs Go To Heaven, Duck Tales, Jetsons: The Movie, Fern Gully, | Anastasia, The Iron Giant

Comments

[faoiltiamatani.livejournal.com]

Ahaha, yes, but those also deal with a child and with birds, not someone who could potentially have a romance, which is what I think of with major Disney films. (I had totally forgotten about the Three Caballeros!)

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

not someone who could potentially have a romance, which is what I think of with major Disney films

Now that is interesting-- thinking about how we each define what our idea of classic Disney films includes. For me, The Jungle Book is part of the fabric of epic Disney movies of my childhood (I only saw The Three Caballeros once and barely remember it) even though it doesn't have a romance. Pocahontas, on the other hand, did have a romance but is by no means one of the films I felt particularly attached to. On the other hand, the most purely "romance" of the movies (amend: of the ones I've seen) was for me Beauty & the Beast, because it had no other other storyline, plot, or adventure outside the romance, and that's one of my favorites.

[faoiltiamatani.livejournal.com]

I think I may also be influenced by the fact that I didn't watch The Jungle Book much at all (I actually watched The Three Caballeros more), and it seems to be generally considered a Disney classic by people who are not me, haha. Pinocchio is also a Disney classic but doesn't have a romance, which may be why I often forget it, hah. Also Alice. In my mind, the classics tend to have romantic heroes, starting out with mostly main female characters falling for princes and then moving over to having main male leads. I'm not sure why I define it this way - maybe just because those were the ones I was most exposed to. In many of the early Disney films, the male love interest wasn't fleshed out at all - in fact, you could practically trade them in for one another, haha. Cinderella and Snow White were certainly this way. Prince Philip in Sleeping Beauty is the first one I remember showing signs of individuality, which then got stronger in The Little Mermaid's Prince Eric.

I don't tend to like movies as much when all it has is the romance as a storyline, which may be why while I like B&B, it isn't one of my favorites. My favorites all have a lot of other stuff going on at the same time.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

*although now that I think about it, Lady & The Tramp was also a romance. ...Okay, and so was Snow White. I suppose. Though Snow White was to me as much about getting out of the house and about the relationship between the girl and her stepmom, and the guy was incidental, being only around at the end to kiss her. Snow White and The Little Mermaid had major romances but I never felt that romance was The Point--rather it was escaping an oppressive environment. For Beauty & the Beast, I thought romance was The Point, and that's why it basically had two protagonists instead of one.

[faoiltiamatani.livejournal.com]

Right, exactly. Snow White hadn't hit the point yet where the love interest was important besides being the necessary love interest. Cinderella was the same way. It was her story, not his.