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

[mathkid.livejournal.com]

I think I have the same feeling as you on your blue/green choices -- with the exception of Mulan, which I rather like. But you must see Hercules and The Emperor's New Groove [note the icon]! I'd say those two and Mulan are my top three "2D" Disney films to come out after that magical line.

--Oh, and that line -- I think it has less to do with target age and more to do with Disney having a notable drop in quality around then...

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I just amended that line to include Pocahontas since I remembered that I had learned the lyrics for Pocahontas, and it was the last film I bothered to learn songs for.

I liked Mulan and Tarzan well enough-- they were pleasant and cute, but I basically forgot them and they didn't stick in my mind or leave a significant impression. I might appreciate them if I rewatch them now as an adult, but it won't be the same.

Looking at the list, I'm thinking now I should start with Hunchback and just go forth in order, and watch the ones I missed. Skipping, of course, Fantasia, which I want to see the next time its re-released in IMAX.

[clodia-risa.livejournal.com]

I actually really hate The Brave Little Toaster - I think it freaked me out as a kid, and so I can't stand to watch it since then. I'm not certain what it even is anymore that I can't watch, I just rapidly flip the channel any time it is on.

[faoiltiamatani.livejournal.com]

Those non-Disney films you listed are mostly Don Bluth, with the exception of Duck Tales, Jetsons, Toaster, and Iron Giant - Don Bluth owns my childhood, I've decided. He also did Thumbelina, Rock-a-Doodle, and a Troll in Central Park.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is one of my top Disney movies. I'd give it another chance! It has some of the best songs, the darkest themes and what might be my favorite Disney girl.

My all time favorite Disney movie remains Aladdin, although I have a huge soft spot for the Emperor's New Groove.

It's a good thing Disney's going back to hand-drawn films! The Princess and the Frog and Rapunzel, their two next, are both being hand drawn.

I'm a big Disney nut, there are few Disney movies I don't actually like. I would hate Hercules for how it screws with Greek mythology, but I find I can't - Hades is too fun, and the music is awesome.

[faoiltiamatani.livejournal.com]

Emperor's New Groove is fantastic and so very underrated.

[hecatehatesthat.livejournal.com]

Am I the only one who feels like it's not a "real" Disney animated feature if its not 2-D style animation?

No! That's totally how I define a real Disney movie, too. Actually I define it as 2-D animation with singing. I love Lilo & Stitch too, but as you said, it's an exception. I consider Tarzan and Emperor's New Groove kind of borderline real Disney movies because they're musical, but the majority of the songs aren't sung by the characters. (But I second the opinion that you really must see ENG because it is HILARIOUS.)

My list would look a lot like yours, although I cannot recall anytime that I ever took myself too seriously to openly love animated movies. Actually I remember when I saw The Lion King I thought I was old enough that I'd come out the other side of being too old for kid stuff and could like it in a cool, patronizing way.

But I would draw my line after Mulan (which is sometimes my favorite and always in my top 3) because I consider it the last real Disney animated movie, 2-D and with singing. Also I would (duh) have to put Mulan in red because it always makes me so happy inside. I think it's the only one I saw in the theater twice, actually. I'm just a sucker for girls who crossdress and kick ass! Plus I like that her dad is neither a body builder nor roly-poly, and that her relationship with him is so important while the romance is kind of in the backseat. And Shang is totally hot.

[donna-c-punk.livejournal.com]

My sister and I saw Hercules at a pre-screening back in '97. I thought it was great fun. James Woods as Hades was frickin' gold. I still have the little Hades pin I got before the movie.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

My list would look a lot like yours, although I cannot recall anytime that I ever took myself too seriously to openly love animated movies.

I'd say for me it was more of a lack of interest than than being worried about "openly" loving them--if I'd loved them I would have been open about it. In fact, anime was the first and only kind of tv or movie or I ever felt self-conscious about loving. It's just that around Pocahontas I stopped caring, and then didn't like Hunchback, so my general interest disappeared.

If you don't mind me asking, how old are you? I was born in 1984, so the first movie I really remember being released is the Little Mermaid.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I'll probably watch it after Hunchback.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Don't they make Hades the villain, though? Man, I'm going to get intellectually frustrated watching it, I can already tell. I always do for this sort of thing. I was a really terrible person to be in the car with on the drive home from Troy.

[donna-c-punk.livejournal.com]

As somebody above said, it really fucks with Greek mythology. However, I was able to roll with it. So ...

[gojira007.livejournal.com]

I second the major love on "Lilo and Stitch" wholeheartedly. I would argue it may in fact be one of the single best movies Dinsey's ever done, period; it's just THAT good. Like you, it's one of the few movies I've ever seen fully in theaters, except I saw it about...four times total, I think; the only movie I've seen in theaters more often than that is "The Lion King", another huge favorite of mine.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

6/10 Don Bluth, yep.

I watched Thumelina, in theaters actually, and remembered thinking it was a really terrible movie. I was bored. I barely remember it now. I vaguely remember RockaDoodle, but I think I only saw it once. Never saw Troll in Central Park.


It's a good thing Disney's going back to hand-drawn films! The Princess and the Frog and Rapunzel, their two next, are both being hand drawn.

Rapunzel, from what I read, is going to be a sort of hybrid-- partially hand drawn and then CGIed to look like the style of classical artists. From what I've read Princess and the Frog will be mostly hand-drawn, though. I'm excited, especially since I love New Orleans and can't wait to see how it's done for Disney.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

My all-time favorite is somewhere between B&B and Lion King. I love B&B for art style and music and for the fact that it's a romance before anything else, and I love Lion King for the epic story and the sheer ambition and beauty of it.

[hakeber.livejournal.com]

I never cared for Pocahontas, but lovelovelove Emperor's New Groove. I also am quite fond of the first and third Lilo and Stitch. The second one was just a glorified series premiere.

A Goofy Movie and Brother Bear are also ok. And Cinderella 3 is oddly not bad.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I saw it once or twice ages ago... I wouldn't mind seeing it again for kicks.

I do remember the vaccuum cleaner scared me, and I got upset by the sadness of the appliances being lost or abandoned or whatever they were.

[faoiltiamatani.livejournal.com]

Mm, you're right about Rapunzel. I'm more excited for that one, although I am definitely looking forward to the Princess and the Frog as well.

I loved Rock-A-Doodle as a kid, and the troll from A Troll in Central Park was my imaginary friend, haha.

[faoiltiamatani.livejournal.com]

Mm, I love the Lion King a lot too. I'm not as big of a fan of B&B, even though I was told I was 'Belle' as a kid because I had the same habit of walking around with my nose in a book ignoring everyone else.

Aladdin was the first time I really enjoyed the main male character, though - which makes sense, as it was the first Disney film to have the main character be male (and not just serving as the love interest who has to save the day, although B&B broke that role too, even if Belle was the main character). It was also the first Disney film to not be based in Europe, which was something I enjoyed a lot.

[faoiltiamatani.livejournal.com]

Turn off your intellectual side when watching it! Trust me on this one. I'm a big fan of Greek mythology, so Hercules drove me up the wall until I told myself I just had to forget it was supposed to be based on the myths at all, haha.

Yes, he's the villain. But he's a hilarious villain and the best part of the movie, so if you can just go in accepting that it destroys every Greek myth it touches, you should be okay!

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I assume you're talking about "first film" in the sense of the list above, correct? Because there have been many main male characters and many settings for Disney in totally of Disney film canon. Even the one before Little Mermaid--Oliver, was set in America I think, and had a male lead.

[faoiltiamatani.livejournal.com]

You're right, but that was still a setting familiar to American filmgoers. Aladdin was smashed by critics at first for setting in it an Arabian country, because that "was not Disney".

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

The Three Caballeros and The Jungle Book also pop into mind, but I do see what you're saying. The vast majority of Disney films in the past and even till today are in settings familiar to western audiences.

[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]

I was scared by the scene where that "repair guy" was taking parts of appliances and mixing them all together in a freakish monster-movie way.

[hecatehatesthat.livejournal.com]

Ha, I just reread what I wrote and realized I forgot to mention that I was like ten when Lion King came out. Actually now I think about it I was totally taking myself too seriously, just in a very selective way.

We're the same age! Little Mermaid is the first movie I ever saw in a theater, actually. It made an impression.

anime was the first and only kind of tv or movie or I ever felt self-conscious about loving

Yeah, me too. I think that's why I stayed away from it so long, aside from what got dubbed and aired in the US (and I watched pretty much everything that aired for a long time, even though I could tell much of it kinda sucked). I just didn't let myself like it as much as I could have. I guess I thought that's what you meant about taking yourself too seriously to like Disney movies for a while. But the Pocahantas-Hunchback-Hercules period was one of vague disappointment for me, too, so at least you picked a good time to lose interest. *g* I liked all those movies, but I didn't love them like the earlier ones. But then Mulan happened and I knew Disney still had the stuff.

[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.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Oh, god, B & B.

That is my favorite disney movie, and I have had such a desire to rewatch it recently.

Beast was so awesome and strangly handsome and compelling, and Belle was so easy for me to empathize with - a reader, with brown hair and blue eyes....

[crzysheelf.livejournal.com]

"CGI movies or Pixar movies are in a category of their own"

I agree entirely!! This whole missing-hand-drawn-Disney is why I'm so excited for The Princess and the Frog. Hope its good!! (Not to mention Rapunzel - sp? - though its CGI, I think... I dunno, have my hopes up for it too, though).

[clodia-risa.livejournal.com]

I could never see it because I'm a purist when it comes to Greek mythology, but my entire Classics department absolutely loved it. I never could get it.

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

IAWTCC. I freaking LOVE that movie. It's so...a-typical Disney, while being totally Disney. And it's hilarious. Just really off-kilter humor. *lovelovelove*

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

I rewatched Pocahontas a few months ago and was really surprised at how adult it is. I have memories of hiding my face in my parents' arms when we went to see it in theatres, and I remember wanting to learn more about her and my parents telling me to look it up in the encyclopedia and so I figured out how to spell her name because it was on my velcro shoes...man, what year did that come out? Oh I was like seven okay. Anyway, it's a movie about people who are grown-up and dealing with culture clashes not through the eyes of kids who are more open to new ideas but through the eyes of people who are well-grounded in their stereotypes--and there's no little kid to help them see the way through, either. What saves them is grown-up love. Also, Pocahontas and John Smith are ALL OVER EACH OTHER. It's still not one of my favorites, but I was really startled when I rewatched. It does have one of my favorite soundtracks.

I definitely agree about the whole 2-D musical prerequisite for Disney movies. I mean, I freakin' love Pixar, but Pixar is only presented by Disney and right now is only still part of the company because Disney realized they were going to lose all their money if they lost Pixar. ENG is my main exception for the musical rule, because it is hilarious.

Also, in the general trend of me vs. a lot of my friends, I prefer The Little Mermaid and Sleeping Beauty to Mulan. (We all love Beauty and the Beast because we're ALL book nerds like Belle, so that doesn't count.) I know a lot of my friends really, really like Mulan because she's so kick-butt, goes-out-and-does-stuff, and while I like that and all, I also really like the basic princess stories with the princes rescuing the girls. (Part of the reason I couldn't love Enchanted was because it made fun of that aspect of Sleeping Beauty, and I did not appreciate that.)

I can't wait for the The Princess and the Frog.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

It might do me good to rewatch Pocahontas, since I haven't seen it since I was in sixth grade. Hmm...

One of the things I loved about B&B was that Belle was not rescued by her prince in the end. In the middle, sure, the Beast saved her from wolves, but in the final conflict the Beast was fighting Gaston in order to NOT GET MURDERED, which is infinitely better than fighting for a third party's love. Life is a better thing to fight for.

I remember thinking Mulan was nice, but just appeared too late for me to truly get into it. I was past my Disney phase.

I adored Enchanted. I... I have no complaints. It was pretty and sparkly and meta to the extreme. I don't, however, consider it a traditional Disney feature despite the fact that it had animation in the beginning.

[fani.livejournal.com]

Naaaaw, Rapunzel's FULLY 3D. Quoted from director Glen Keane: The film will be made in CGI, though Rapunzel will resemble traditional oil paintings on canvas: "There’s no photoreal hair. I want luscious hair, and we are inventing new ways of doing that. I want to bring the warmth and intuitive feel of hand-drawn to CGI

Full article: http://news.awn.com/index.php?ltype=cat&category1=Events&newsitem_no=17907

[fani.livejournal.com]

Aladdin was smashed by critics at first for setting in it an Arabian country, because that "was not Disney".

The time Disney tries too hard to be "Disney" they get criticized by moron critics too. There's really no pleasing people.

[fani.livejournal.com]

Personal fave in your gray list: Fantasia 2000.

Also, despite what everyone says, the Dreamwork's Sinbad movie is AWESOME. It's a great adventure movie, pre-Pirates with Michelle Pfeiffer and Dan Wagner struttin' their stuff as the best animated villainess ever, Eris. SHE WAS ANIMATED IN 0.1 PEN I CAN NOT GET OVER THATTTTT!!!

The Road to El Dorado is also really funny and enjoyable. I LOVE Rodolphe and his team's performance on Chel.