Reviewing - Disney's Sunset Era (1999 - 2007)
Toy Story marked the beginning of a revolutionary period of animation - one dominated by computer animation studios like Pixar, Dreamworks, and whoever it was that made those Ice Age movies. In a time where the number of successful competitors was growing, Disney was beginning to stumble after its string of highly successful films from the previous decade. With the exception of one or two commercially successful pictures, Disney was quickly losing its place at the top of the animation heap. And when they made the switch to computer animation for themselves, things only got worse. If Disney was Woody - the old favourite - Pixar was Buzz Lightyear. And Woody was getting old fast.
Fantasia 2000 (***)
In which Donald Duck tells us a Bible Story
It’s not often I find myself liking a remake or spiritual successor more than the original film, but I definitely had a better time here than I did for the 1940 flick.
Even though I like this one more than the original, I admit that this one wouldn’t have been possible without the innovation that preceded it. Fantasia 2000 aims to continue a long-abandoned tradition that Walt Disney hoped to establish. It’s an idea that I doubt would have come to fruition by any other means than by Walt’s will. That said, there’s two main things that I think made this second go-around a more enjoyable experience for me. Firstly, it’s significantly shorter. The whole thing is just longer than an hour, whereas the original was over two. I remember watching certain segments of the original film, wondering when they were going to be over. This time, I never actually got bored of any of the animated sequences. I think a big part of that has to due with the compressed runtime.
The other thing that I think gives this film an edge over the original is the great distance that animation has come over sixty years. I was able to appreciate the artwork of some sequences from the original film, but there were bits from this film that absolutely astounded me. The fire-bird sequence was positively breathtaking, and the flying whales had a dreamlike awe-inspiring quality to it. I’d never seen any of these sequences before, and getting to see Disney get more use out of the CAPS system was so satisfying. These segments look amazing.
Donald in the Noah’s Ark segment was beautifully animated and also very funny, and I honestly wondered why no children’s pastor I know had ever used the clip as a sermon illustration. The only segment I didn’t particularly care for was the one that was almost entirely CGI, but I get how they were trying to be as ambitious as Walt was way-back-when. Although the structure of this film is a re-tread, it feels every bit as ambitious as the original. The artwork is simply brilliant.
As much as some of the segments were very cool, this film suffers from the same problem that I think the original faced. The structure isn’t one that I think is best suited to a theatrical release. Watching any of these segments on their own (or perhaps as shorts to precede a feature film) would be fine, but watching them all together seems to create something less than the sum of its parts. I’d recommend watching some of the sequences in here for sure, but this is definitely not a must-see.
Dinosaur (***)
In which dinosaurs suffer from a massive meteor strike, but it’s cool now because that probably won’t ever happen again
Visually ambitious and a major departure for Disney Animation Studios, it’s only Dinosaur’s plot that holds it back from greatness.
It’s kind of weird that this is even an official Disney animated film. In strictest terms, it doesn’t look to me like Disney’s animation team worked on the movie. Wikipedia states that Dinosaur was animated by “The Secret Lab”, a hodgepodge of a previously acquired studio and some of Disney’s computer graphics team. Sure, it’s still Disney making the film, but most of the names in the credits don’t ring any bells to me for having been in other Disney animated pictures.
Beyond the fact that this is the first Disney film with solely computer-animated characters, it also marks a departure in that it uses a considerable amount of live-action footage. Disney went out and filmed shots in exotic locations, and then put CGI dinosaurs into the scenes. It looks great, don’t get me wrong, but it’s just so different from what they’ve done before. Dinosaur could compete with The Black Cauldron for Disney’s least “like the others” animated film, to say nothing of its quality on its own merit.
On that note, let’s look at what they did right. Most importantly, the dinosaurs look great. It’s not surprising that this film really started to take shape shortly after Jurassic Park came out – it had been in development before then, but seeing the level of realism that Spielberg’s team had been able to pull off must have been quite the catalyst to start leaning more heavily on CGI. There were a few shots here and there that reminded me a little bit of a video game cutscene, but most of the time I had no trouble believing that I was looking at a flesh-and-blood dinosaur. The Carnotaurs in particular were really cool, and it was nice to see them pick an antagonist that wasn’t a T-Rex. Not that I would’ve complained, mind you.
The music is also a huge part of what makes this movie work. James Newton Howard’s score is a surging, epic, triumphant addition to the film. It gives so much emotion to scenes that would otherwise fall flat. I’ve watched this film many times, and in this most recent viewing I noticed that there actually isn’t as much variety to the score as I would’ve hoped. The individual tracks that were composed are fantastic – it’s just that there aren’t as many of them as you’d expect. Either way, I have no doubt that without James Newton Howard this movie would have suffered greatly.
So it looks great and sounds great, but what keeps this film in the three-star range is its plot. It’s just too simple to be unforgettable. The opening scenes are fantastic and really gets the ball rolling. It’s very reminiscent of The Lion King’s opening, where no characters speak and we just get a front row seat into this brand new world while a magnificent soundtrack plays. But once the plot really gets going, it becomes clear that this is no more and no less than a story of survival. There’s no great emotional growth that any of our leading characters experience. All of the drama and tension comes down to whether or not they will get to the fabled “Nesting Grounds” – and of course we know they will because this is a family film and we need some sort of happily ever after. Because there’s no other major tension in the movie, the plot feels relatively plain. This can be spotted most clearly at the end of the film, where the main character’s actions are almost useless. Aladar inadvertently leads a Carnotaurus to the main herd in his attempt to bring them from a dead end to the real path to the Nesting Grounds. He and the herd leader have this big fight for supremacy, and because Aladar wins, he safely gets everyone past the Carnotaur except the ex-leader. The ex-leader is the only casualty. If Aladar had NOT come (let’s say he just waited at the cave entrance instead), it’s a possibility that the Carnotaur wouldn’t have found the herd. The herd would’ve reached the dead end, realized they needed to turn back, and bumped into Aladar during their back-tracking. Even if the Carnotaur DID find the herd, he likely wouldn’t have killed more than one dino for food. The herd would’ve fled and ran back the way they came, once again bumping into Aladar. I mean, yeah, it was cool to see Aladar and all the other dinos roaring down the Carnotaur, but realistically speaking they just needed to sacrifice one of them to appease the monster and they could’ve gone on their merry way.
This movie has a special place in my heart because it’s about dinosaurs, but it’s not a must-see. Check out the soundtrack though for sure – it’s a blast.
The Emperor’s New Groove (***)
In which Kuzco interrupts his own movie - but if he’s a llama in those moments, wouldn’t that mean these interruptions occurred BEFORE he turned back into a human? Unclear
Jam-packed with laughs, Kuzco’s adventure has enough heart to be distinctly Disney but nothing to make it great.
After the ambitious releases of Fantasia 2000 and Dinosaur, The Emperor’s New Groove brings Disney back to its traditional animated roots. Interestingly, this film only came out a year and a bit after Tarzan. It must have been a busy time for Disney, having four films all being released within a nineteen month period. This film in particular had a really hard time making it to the big screen. Originally titled “Kingdom of the Sun”, the story began taking shape way back in 1994. There’s a whole documentary titled “The Sweatbox” that goes into how tumultuous the production was, and I hope to watch it sometime soon.
The big difference that I think sets this film apart from the flicks of the Disney Renaissance is its extreme emphasis on jokes. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not complaining about the comedy in this movie. It’s a VERY funny movie. Kronk has so many hysterical scenes, like his self-soundtracked spy bit, his shoulder-angel conversation, and any part where he’s cooking. Kuzco is ridiculously full of himself, in a snarky and charismatic almost Tony Stark kind of way. I suppose the difference is that Tony has reason to boast, whereas Kuzco doesn’t. Kuzco’s moments where he interrupts the movie are also pretty funny, even if the kind of fourth-wall breaking cynicism he presents are kind of cliché in today’s age. The thing where a movie freezes and then a character says “Yep, that’s me...you’re probably wondering how I got here” or something along those lines is a big joke online now. But in this film, the trope was either still new or the execution was competent enough to be forgiveable.
So it’s not a bad thing that this movie is so funny. The point I want to make though is that this film emphasizes and focuses on humour in a way that pretty much all of the Disney Renaissance films didn’t. Even Aladdin – which had Robin freaking Williams – kept Aladdin’s struggle to tell Jasmine the truth at the heart of its story, while the Genie played a hilarious and supporting role. Because the focus is on the jokes, the heart of the film or the potential for truly poignant moments gets a little bit thwarted. Kuzco, our main man, is a funny character. As a result, he can’t really have a big emotional revelation in the same way that Simba, Quasimodo, or Belle could. He still grows as a character, but he’s never straight-faced for very long.
The animation is fine, but the shading and CGI integration that I loved so much about the Disney Renaissance is virtually nonexistent. There aren’t really any shots that take your breath away. Like I said, this film wants to make you laugh, and not much else.
As a comedy, this is good stuff. Compared to Disney’s prior work, I suppose it’s a bit of a letdown, but on its own merit it’s certainly not a bad movie.
Oh yeah, and did you notice that Piglet’s voice actor John Fielder provided the voice for the old man that threw off Kuzco’s groove? I never noticed that until this time watching the film.
Atlantis: The Lost Empire (*)
In which we learn that if you speak the ancient derivative language of a modern dialect, you can speak literally any language instantly
Not only is this probably the most off-brand Disney film since The Black Cauldron, it’s also the worst theatrical thing they’ve done yet.
Okay, so this film is not the worst movie of all time. The blend of CGI and traditional animation is perhaps some of Disney’s most ambitious work to date. The submarine thing and the Leviathan are pretty cool, and there’s some other flying things that are fairly eye catching. The score is also nothing to sneeze at, composed once again by James Newton Howard. Michael J. Fox gives a spirited performance as the lead character, and the final action sequence isn’t bad.
But none of that matters, and here’s why. The most important part of a movie is the story. Without the story, you’ve just got a bunch of components that don’t really work towards anything. And the story of Atlantis is just the worst.
First, Milo Thatch is a linguist, apparently. And he makes the argument that some ancient text has been misinterpreted as “Ireland” when it should actually be “Iceland” with regards to a clue to Atlantis. Except that’s not how language works. You don’t get one letter wrong in a foreign word like that. Think of translating the French “Je m’appelle” to the English “My name is”. It’s not as though the third letter of “Je m’appelle” directly corresponds to the third letter in “My name is” – they don’t even have the same number of letters. The odds of Ireland AND Iceland both being the same number of letters in a foregin language – and THEN having the second letter be an important delineation between the two – is an astronomically small possibility. And guys, you don’t have to be an expert linguist to figure that out. I’m an English major. I have literally the most common (and some would say useless) degree in the Western world.
While we’re on the topic of language, let’s talk about the moment that the Atlanteans and the explorers met. All Milo had to do was speak their language (a dead language, let’s remember, that no one had ever spoken to him before) a little bit before they spoke a line of Latin, then a line of French, and then English for the rest of the film. The explanation?
“Their language must be based on a root dialect,” Milo says.
What?! What the heck does that mean? English takes many roots from French, but that doesn’t mean all English speakers can figure French out in two seconds! And that’s just two languages that are close together. Try jumping from a DEAD language to a modern one in that amount of time. Expecting me to believe that this just makes perfect linguistic sense is bonkers. Why not just say the magic crystals help people understand each other? You can’t argue with magic, but you can sure as heck argue with a linguist.
The problems just continue from there. If Kida (the lead lady) thought that the explorers could help them, why did they jump out at them with weapons raised? Five seconds later, she’s all like “Welcome to Atlantis”, when just a moment ago it seemed that they weren’t welcome. And what is with Milo’s grandfather? He gets mentioned a few times in this thing, but he never seems to play a major role at all. And why is the eccentric professor guy so dead-set on honouring a promise to a dead man? He really seemed to have ulterior motives, but they never showed up. And why did he hire such sketchy mercenaries if he’s such a good guy? These mercenaries seemed to be doing their own thing from the get-go.
Worst of all for me is the way Milo falls into the “White savior” category. I’ve talked about this trope before when I reviewed Pocahontas or The Blind Side, and in both cases it’s a bit of a grey area at best as to whether or not they fall into that category. But here, it’s so blatant that I actually don’t understand how some reviews of this film have praised it as being culturally significant. Normally, the white savior narrative gives us a guy who’s come to a new place full of exotic people who need saving. Here, not only do the Atlanteans need to be saved from evil white people, they don’t even understand their own culture. Milo is a white guy telling people he’s never met what their culture is. How messed up is that? You’re telling me these people just forgot how to read their own writing, but a white guy who’d never been there before was able to figure it out? For Pete’s sake, he was able to figure out how to turn their weird flying car things on in thirty seconds. If you ask me, Milo’s knowledge of Atlantean culture makes it look like they’ve just been sitting on their butts for a few thousand years.
Last of all, the colourful cast of characters just doesn’t work for me. I’m all for a ragtag crew of adventurers – just look at Pirates of the Caribbean, the original Star Wars trilogy, or Joss Whedon’s Serenity for examples. There’s just something about this group that doesn’t stick the landing. Maybe it’s the runtime – we don’t have long with these characters, but we’ve got a medic, a dirt guy, a demolition expert, a mechanic, and an old lady all scrambling to get their moment in the spotlight. We’ve already got two antagonists, a love interest, and the entire city of Atlantis to contend with. Any member of that crew had a line or two that I suppose could have been funny, but it seems like they really overstuffed their cast. As a result, the whole thing buckled under its own weight.
Atlantis is a movie with machine guns, people getting punched in the face (and bleeding), sexual innuendos (I’m looking at you, weird dirt guy), and a overly complicated plot with some racist undertones. It’s hard to believe it’s a Disney film, even with the animation behind it.
Lilo & Stitch (***1/2)
In which a CIA agent decides to become a social worker but can’t fathom losing the uniform so he decides to just run with it
Although it widens the thematic divide between the films of the Disney Renaissance and the following decade, Lilo & Stitch’s popularity signifies an audience ready for something a bit different.
When Lilo & Stitch was released, the animation business was in a state of flux. Toy Story had been released years ago, heralding the rise of computer animation and paving the way for traditional animation’s sunset. Shrek came out just a year before Stitch, lampooning the cinnamon-sweet reputation that Disney had worked so hard to cultivate for decades. Even within Disney’s animation studio, the traditional fairy tale model that had proved so successful in the past was beginning to take a backseat in favor of more unconventional films like Dinosaur or Atlantis. The Emperor’s New Groove in particular showed Disney that irreverence and cheekiness could be just as profitable as earnestness and poignancy.
Stitch’s ad campaign is proof that Disney recognized the changing landscape. If you remember the series of ads, Disney animated brief scenes where Stitch interrupted major moments from their previous films, like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. It was a very on-the-nose way of saying, “This isn’t like the Disney films we used to make”. On one hand, it’s nice that Disney was willing to not take themselves too seriously. On the other hand, it seems like Disney decided to follow a trend rather than create one. Either way, it’s hard to argue with the box office revenue that Stitch brought them.
Love him or hate him, Stitch is an iconic Disney character. He’s wonderfully weird, with an unmistakable contour and a voice that encapsulates just how different he is from his predecessors. Even though he’s not in my top ten list of favourite Disney characters (not that I’ve made one, mind you), I have to admit that he made me laugh out loud all these years later when my wife and I sat down to re-watch the film. The bit where he chucks the book at the social worker is just great stuff. His zaniness is exactly what makes him so fun for kids. He breaks all the rules.
As great as Stitch is, it’s actually Lilo who really defines the film. As a character, she’s thoroughly engrossing. As a role model for kids…she’s a nightmare. Lilo hits her sister, disobeys everyone in authority, makes voodoo dolls of her enemies, and gets in fights at school. It’s precisely these actions that make her a great character, but at the same time I can imagine parents horrified by their children replicating what they’ve seen onscreen. There are always characters in movies we don’t want our kids personifying, but the fact that Lilo is a kid herself makes this possibility more likely. The trouble is that Lilo is a ‘bad kid’ on purpose. She comes from a broken family, where her older sister is struggling to make ends meet and a social worker is threatening to take Lilo away entirely. This movie is ABOUT broken families, so we need to see a kid who’s having a hard time dealing with that. Watching this film as a kid, I just thought that Lilo was ‘bad’. But as an adult and as an educator, I see how much of Lilo’s behaviour stems from the grief she’s had to go through. Lilo needs help, and so does Stitch. They really save each other in the end, and that’s a beautiful thing.
The animation isn’t jaw-dropping, but there’s an artistic simplicity to the way they brought Hawaii to life. The music is authentically Hawaiian, with “Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride” being one my wife’s favourite Disney songs ever. The character design is charming, and Jumba and Pleakley are both terrific in shape as well as in personality. This isn’t the best Disney film yet, but it’s a charming addition to their library.
Treasure Planet (*****)
In which an intergalactic society has developed interstellar travel but not cellphones
Why oh why did this movie fail?
I’ve always loved Treasure Planet. It’s really got everything that I wanted as a kid – pirates, treasure, space, and laser guns. Disney’s adapted so many classic stories before and since, but they’ve never incorporated a thematic twist this dramatic. The closest thing I can think of would be when they did “Robin Hood” entirely with animals, but this is a whole other level. They’ve blended the old with the new, giving us a world that was deliberately ‘70/30’: 70% traditional pirate style, and 30% science fiction style. What’s so cool about this world is how sensible it is despite its being clearly fantastical. You can’t fly a pirate ship in space. But what if space was breathable? What if the sails on the ship absorbed solar energy to power the ship? With just a few quick decisions, the filmmakers gave us a world that’s wholly familiar, and yet unlike anything we’ve ever seen.
Treasure Planet is emblematic of the era of its time. The 90s-00s were a period of big change in the animation industry. Pixar and Dreamworks Animation were taking off, with the former dealing exclusively with CGI animation and the latter quickly embracing it. For better or worse, Disney seemed to be dragging their feet on the switch. Treasure Planet shows us an animation studio that was continuing to experiment with a new artistic medium, but was still keeping their feet firmly rooted in the past. Personally, I couldn’t be happier with the outcome. I’ve always spoken highly of traditional animation, in part because it’s impossible for me to tear the art from the artist. You can see the artist in the way the characters move, or in the brush strokes on a backdrop. I also love the colouring of this period in animation. It’s hard to describe, but there’s both a simplicity and a richness in the way two dimensional characters are coloured in during these years. CGI can certainly achieve new levels of detail and movement than traditional animation ever could, but as of yet, it doesn’t quite pop for me like traditional animation yet. Maybe it’s just me. But even if it is, you can’t deny how cool it is that they made a character like John Silver who was half-traditional and half-CGI. It’s absolutely seamless the way they worked those two methods together into one character.
James Newton Howard’s score is action-packed and triumphant, much like his scores for Dinosaur and Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Unlike the films of the Disney Renaissance, our characters don’t sing throughout the movie. The fact that this wasn’t a musical initially made me consider giving it less than five stars – after all, how can the “I’m Still Here” segment compete with any track from one of Disney’s earlier masterpieces? But honestly, this film doesn’t need to be a musical in order to be perfect. For me, a film gets five stars if every aspect of the movie works together to make something amazing. Just because this film isn’t a musical doesn’t mean it’s less effective than its predecessors.
Anyway, while we’re talking about the music, let’s get back to “I’m Still Here”. In Disney’s direct-to-video sequels, I’ve repeatedly complained about how they’re packed with cheesy songs sung by off-camera singers. You’d think I’d groan at this sequence, which follows essentially the same formula. Our main characters, Jim Hawkins and John Silver, are bonding over the course of a montage – backed by a track that neither of them can hear. There’s a few reasons that I think this worked so well where other Disney montages have failed. Firstly, it’s a good song. Where many of these montages are overly poppy and happy-go-lucky, this song talks about Jim’s struggle to find himself in a world that he thinks fails to understand him. It’s a teen angst song that actually sheds light on his mental state rather than reminding us of what we already know. I’ll admit that the song has a distinctly 2000s feel to it and that it may not age well as a result, but it’s 2020 and I still didn’t mind. The other reason I think this worked was because the montage itself was absolutely stupendous. It showed us Silver and Hawkins slowly grow together, and it showed us WHY Jim is so desperate for a father figure. The visuals are timed dramatically with the song, almost like a music video in the way that the movie gives us a stunning picture right as we jump into the chorus. The heart of the movie is wrapped up in this one sequence. Jim hasn’t had a father figure to guide him, and he’s finally finding that person in John Silver.
It’s no secret to any who know me that I have a soft spot for father-son films. My relationship with my own father is an unfortunate one, but it’s one that’s all too familiar to so many sons and daughters. Movies that unpack the tension and turmoil involved with fatherless sons or broken father-son dynamics really hit home for me. As a result, this movie gives me all the feels. Jim Hawkins had a father who abandoned him when he was very young. As he’s grown, he’s had to define manhood on his own. His mother’s phenomenal, and his love for her in the movie is very evident even when he rebels against her. But for all the needs that she fulfills, he’s still missing that male role model – and suffering because of it.
Along comes a charming, charismatic man who willingly spends time with Jim, joking with him and teaching him how to do things. Over the course of this montage song, Jim becomes super-attached to the guy – to the point where it feels like a stab in the heart for him to learn that Silver is a pirate. What really gets me is how real and common this scenario is. There are so many young men who are in desperate need of a loving father figure. Whether they know it or not, they’re so desperate to have that role filled that they’ll really take whoever they can get. Sometimes it looks like falling in with the wrong crowd, or getting a questionable job with a charismatic boss. It can be a gang or a club or a drinking buddy – but no matter who it is, I really believe that every man needs another man that he can look up to. And if no positive role model exists, we will settle for a negative one. John Silver is conflicted, for sure, but he’s also definitely more on the side of a negative role model. He’s a wanted criminal – probably a murderer, but at the very least he’s nothing less than a pirate. It’s great that he turns around (to some extent) by the end of the movie, but I think this film should be a sobering reminder to men of how important we are to each other. If you’re a kid or a young man, be careful who you look up to. And if you’re someone who might be someone else’s father figure, be sure that you’re not leading them astray.
The heart of the movie is the relationship between Jim and Silver, but there’s so much more to love about it. Morph is adorable and hilarious. Emma Thompson gives a spirited performance as the Captain, and her dynamic with the doctor character is really fun. There’s something about Jim’s mom’s voice that feels absolutely perfect – and I learned that it’s because she also provides the voice for Andy’s mom from the Toy Story franchise. I didn’t care that much for Martin Short’s robot the first time around, but he’s grown on me. More than anything else, the adventuring aspect of this film is one of my favourite things about it. Jim solar-sailing or jet-boarding (whatever you wanna call it) is awe-inspiring, and the sailing through space scenes are the stuff that animation was made for.
This movie has “Disney classic” written all over it. So why did it fail?
Treasure Planet never made its budget back at the box office. Ideas for a sequel and spinoff series were pitched after it became apparent that the film was a flop. People just weren’t going to see it. The reviews were fairly decent, but it wasn’t enough to turn things around. Nowadays, you won’t see any Treasure Planet references at Disney World, and the merchandise is non-existent. Whereas Lilo & Stitch (released just a few years before) continues as a brand to this day, Disney seems content to have left Treasure Planet behind them.
I don’t know why exactly the film didn’t resonate with audiences. Part of it may have been due to the failure of Atlantis: The Lost Empire. The two films are incredibly different, but from an aesthetic perspective I can see how audiences may have worried that Treasure Planet would follow the same path that its predecessor did. There also wasn’t a big A-list star behind Treasure Planet. I loved the performance of John Silver, but perhaps putting a bigger name under him would have benefited the marketing of the movie. Maybe it has to do with the rise of CGI animation. At this point, the Shrek, Ice Age, and Toy Story franchises were all well underway. Treasure Planet was a dying breed of film, and as great as it was, maybe audiences were just ready for a new kind of storytelling.
But as for me, I think this is yet another beautiful example of the artistic heights made possible by the blending of traditional and modern animation. It may be the last great traditionally animated Disney film, but someday perhaps we’ll see a resurgence of this stunning art form.
Brother Bear (**1/2)
In which a guy decides he’d rather sleep in a cave for the rest of his days with the son of the mother he murdered than retain his humanity
Brother Bear is nothing more or less than okay.
The animation is competent for its time, although I have to admit there wasn’t nearly as much CGI integration as there had been in previous films. The music was done by Phil Collins, although he wasn’t singing all of the songs, which I felt was a little weird. Having a variety of background singing voices just made the movie feel a bit mis-matched against itself. The story was fine – not overly dull but also not having anything particularly revolutionary in it.
Actually, I was a bit disappointed with two key moments of the story. There’s an ongoing tension in the film as we realize that Koda is the son of the bear that Kenai has killed. We know that Kenai is going to have to fess up at some point – but instead of showing us that scene, they kind of turn it into a musical montage where we actually don’t hear most of what is said. That scene should’ve been the heaviest hitter in the whole film, but they handcuffed it and I think the scene suffered as a result.
Also, why on earth would Kenai want to stay a bear? Remember “Emperor’s New Groove”? Kuzco did not enjoy being a llama. He was a person in the body of a llama, so stuff like eating grass or living in the wild did not suddenly come to him. Maybe the rules are different for this movie, but as far as I was concerned, Kenai was still a man in a bear’s body. Are you telling me he’s just going to be okay with not being able to read or write or sleep indoors?
Sure, he’s doing it to protect Koda, but if anyone should get transformed, it’s the bear cub. Kenai has a family and a home. Koda has some bear friends, but his mom is gone. He needs somewhere to truly belong. Why not turn Koda into a human so that Kenai can take care of him?
I mean, just think about it for a second. Kenai is a young guy. He’s going to want to get married at some point. Is he going to start having romantic attraction to other bears? Is he going to...you know...well, maybe it’s better left unsaid. All I’m saying is that I really think Kenai got ripped off here.
Oh, and Joaquin Phoenix played Kenai. I’ve never seen that guy in a normal role, so it was almost unsettling to learn that he was the lead voice for a Disney film.
Skip!
Home on the Range (*1/2)
In which cows drive a train
I’m not sure what came over Disney when they decided to make this film.
The Western film was a huge staple of earlier American cinema. It was at least as big as superhero movies are today. But times change, and westerns kind of faded like the setting sun. It’s not to say that the genre is completely dead – I’ve seen a few western flicks in theatres over the past decade. But the golden age of the western genre is certainly behind us, not ahead of us.
That’s the first thing that confused me about Home on the Range. 2004 saw the release of The Incredibles and Shrek 2, both of which were incredibly on-point culturally. Superhero movies were really gaining steam with Spider-Man and the X-Men movies, and Shrek’s lampooning of the fairy tale genre was the perfect response to the Disney Renaissance. To compete with a rapidly changing landscape, why would Disney turn back to a genre that had clearly seen better days?
Then there’s the fact that they chose to make the film about cows. Lions in 1994? Sure. Dinosaurs in 2000? Absolutely. Bears in 2003? Well, okay, that one didn’t work out super well, but bears in principle isn’t the worst idea. But why would you make a film about cows? Nobody cares about cows. Kids aren’t going to want to play with cow merchandise. Kids aren’t gonna see themselves in a cow. Kids will pretend to be lions and dinosaurs because they see characteristics they want to replicate. Nobody wants to replicate the characteristics of a cow.
So Disney picked a bad genre, and they picked bad protagonists. To top it all off, the animation is way too safe. Disney’s best films have pushed the boundaries of animation. Snow White was a landmark achievement in part because of its length, but also the beauty in every frame. The Renaissance films blended CGI and hand-drawn animation to make visually stupendous shots. But Home on the Range…I mean, there isn’t one stupendous moment in the whole thing. The most complex shot involves a bunch of hypnotized cows walking in unison. There’s nothing that makes your jaw drop or takes your breath away.
The reason I embarked on this Disney watch-through is because I believe strongly in both the importance of animation as an art form and the family film as one of the most culturally significant genres. The Spongebob Squarepants Movie is a kid’s movie. It’s a cartoon with stupid humour and no truly coherent narrative. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of stupid humour – but that’s not what Disney is supposed to be. And there’s nothing wrong with cartoons – but that’s not what Disney is.
Disney is not a cartoon studio. They’re an animation studio. Cartoons are cheap drawings made to elicit cheap laughs. Animation is art that tells a story. Can you really lump Spongebob and The Lion King into the same category? Yes, both involve hand-drawn images. But their purpose and level of complexity couldn’t be more different.
In the same way, Disney did not earn its reputation making kid’s movies. Disney makes family movies. Movies that parents learn something from. Movies that parents are proud to show their kids. Movies that shape young ones into the kind of adults we want to see in the world. And for me, you can’t just throw a good moral at the end of your movie and call it a family film. There needs to be more than that, and it’s movies like Bambi, Beauty and the Beast, or Cinderella that fit that roster. That’s why I genuinely get miffed when someone calls a Disney movie a ‘cartoon’. For me, it’s an insult to the art form.
Let’s get back to Home on the Range. This movie falls far short of the historic heights set by its predecessors. The animation seems cheap to me – with simply designed characters and settings. Where we usually have protagonists that are either growing up or young adults (Dumbo, Lady & the Tramp, or Tarzan, for example), these three cows all seem to be well-developed grown-ups. The villain is a guy who yodels to hypnotize cows. There’s just nothing about this that works. I can’t understand what part of this movie was appealing enough to Disney executives to make them give it the green light.
Is this the worst thing Disney’s ever done? Certainly not. Let’s not forget Atlantis or The Black Cauldron. But we can at least say that those films were ambitious. They were trying hard to make something big. I can’t say that about Home on the Range. It’s too small and too safe to get points for trying something new. It’s just a misfire, plain and simple. And that’s a bit heartbreaking for me, because it’s the failure of this film and the others around it that contributed to the downfall of traditional animation.
Chicken Little (**)
In which the testimony of two witnesses who corroborate a previously unsubstantiated report is immediately discarded – with disastrous consequences
Watching Disney’s first fully computer animated film is like watching an Olympic athlete trip at the starting line.
Pixar didn’t just enter the computer animated film business – they created it. Toy Story was an absolute game-changer in animation, and a number of wildly successful franchises popped up shortly after. Shrek, Ice Age, and Madagascar (each eventually amassing at least four theatrical films to their name) had all been released by the time Chicken Little came around. In a rapidly changing landscape, Disney struggled to find their footing with increasingly lackluster reviews of their traditionally animated films. Looking back, I’m not convinced that the problem was the animation itself as much as it was the stories they were attempting to tell. Nowhere is this more clear than in Disney’s big move of the era – the switch to computer animation that came with Chicken Little.
If we look at the films that had a major impact on Disney as a company, we see that a breakthrough in animation techniques was always married with an excellent story. Snow White, Cinderella, and The Little Mermaid all reinvigorated the company from a more obscure era by giving us a beautiful story that was beautifully animated. For a switch to computer animation, one would expect a similar level of quality. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Chicken Little is not stupendous in any sense of the word. Its animation is barely competent, and its story is wholly unremarkable. There’s something unarguably cartoonish about the design of this film. I’ve said in the past that there’s nothing wrong with ‘cartoons’, but that’s not what Disney has become famous for. What makes Disney Disney is those moments that take your breath away, and there’s not a single moment like that in this film.
Similarly, the story has neither spark nor spirit beneath it. Normally, I’m a sucker for father-son dynamics in film, but the heart of the film is weighed down by everything that surrounds it. Just like in Atlantis, the filmmakers have attempted to create a weird and wonderful crew of friends. Runt, Fish Out Of Water, and Morkubine Porcupine each try to earn our admiration as the wacky funny friend, but there’s not enough screen time for us to fall in love with any of them. To be honest, there might never have been enough screen time. Runt is funny once or twice, but for the most part all three of these characters dish out jokes and moments that just fall flat. They’re trying too hard to be funny. There are a few moments in the movie that made me laugh, but a few sour jokes can really ruin the impact of one good joke.
This is also a thoroughly weird take on a traditional story for Disney. Disney’s made their fortune on adapting well-known works, so on paper ‘Chicken Little’ makes sense. The problem is that this story is so dramatically different from the source text – thematically as well as in terms of content. It’s a story about a city of anthropomorphic animals being invaded by aliens. That’s a little weird. If Dreamworks had done it, I wouldn’t have batted an eyelash. But Disney? This is kind of off for you, isn’t it?
Chicken Little was a financial success for Disney, but at best we can say that Disney finally caught up with the times. Realistically, this was an embarrassing entry into an already-crowded cinematic genre that served as more of a cash grab than a genuine piece of art. For Disney animation, the sky wasn’t the only thing falling.
Meet The Robinsons (**)
In which a young boy is taken into the future to see a shining utopia of his own creation, whereupon he deliberately makes multiple decisions that interrupt the prerequisites for that utopia
Meet The Robinsons is overstuffed like a chocolate-frosted sugar bomb cereal – and I don’t mean that in a good way.
Time travel in and of itself is an exciting and complicated plot element. It’s barely been touched in previous Disney films (Cinderella III is the only one that comes to mind), but it’s almost a genre unto itself. One of the most important elements of a time travel movie are ‘the rules’. Though many films agree on certain specifics (like the idea that if you change the smallest aspect of the past, it could have huge ramifications for the future), each movie has their own individual set of rules. Some say you can change the future, and others say you can’t. Some employ one linear timeline that is set in stone no matter what (LOST being one example), and others say that time travel is really more like moving into and creating parallel universes at every turn (like in Avengers Endgame). Once the audience understands the rules, you can start telling your story. In Back to the Future, for instance, Doc has a scene where he literally draws it out on a whiteboard for Michael J. Fox. Time travel is confusing, so we need stuff like that.
Meet The Robinsons has no rules whatsoever when it comes to the implications of time travel. At times, it seems like travelling into the past has an immediate (or nearly-immediate) impact on the future. Goob or ‘Bowler Hat Guy’ travels back in time well into the movie to pass off one of Lewis’ inventions as his own. Back in the future, it takes a few seconds after Goob’s departure for everything to get adjusted. But over the course of those few seconds, the future is radically altered. At other times, travelling into the past does virtually nothing to influence the future. For example, grown-up Lewis doesn’t seem to express any understanding or memory that the events of this film are events from his own past – and if he did know about it, he seems to have taken no action to ensure things would work out appropriately. Young Lewis, who apparently was destined to make a great big beautiful tomorrow, has now had a vision of this future that will not impact its own development at all.
Now, perhaps grown-up Lewis was trying to ensure the timeline’s survival by allowing everything to proceed exactly as it had happened when he was young. But if that’s the case, why did young Lewis decide to alter the timeline at the end of the film by waking Goob up at the baseball game? In doing so, Lewis is essentially ensuring that Goob will not become a villain. And if Goob doesn’t become a villain, he won’t set in motion the chain of events that will necessitate Lewis’ travel to the future – thereby making it impossible for Lewis to know that Goob is sleeping at the baseball game in the first place. Has Lewis cancelled the events of the entire movie with this act? Or has he created an alternate timeline?
And why is there a delay in the changes brought about by time travel? When Goob goes back with a stolen invention to change the future, Lewis and Wilbur are able to have an entire conversation before Wilbur disappears Back-to-the-Future-style. Wouldn’t the change be instantaneous? Or what about when Lewis says “I am never going to invent you” to the robo-hat thing? There, the robot immediately shrivels into nothingness. So is there a delay or isn’t there? To top it off, couldn’t Lewis have made this declaration when he was in the alternate dark future? And if the robot hat was never invented, wouldn’t that also mean that all the events of this movie never happened? This movie basically kills itself several times without seeming to notice.
Now let’s pretend that all the rules of time travel made sense in this movie. It would STILL be a lot to take in because of the cacophonic cast of characters Lewis meets in the future. Lewis’ future family has SIXTEEN different members. You have Bud and Lucille (Lewis’ parents), Joe & Billie and Fritz & Petunia as Lewis’ uncles and aunts (although Petunia is just a puppet), Tallulah & Laszlo (Lewis’ cousins via Fritz & the puppet), Spike & Dimitri (not related to anyone else but they live at the house), Franny (Lewis’ future wife), Art & Gaston (Lewis’ brothers-in-law)…and then a weird octopus-alien guy named Lefty who works as their butler and a dog named Buster. Having a time-travel movie with a large cast of colourful characters is one thing, but there’s just so much tied to each of these characters that it’s absolutely dizzying. Was Fritz ever married, or has Petunia always been a puppet? Where did Spike & Dimitri come from? Is Art a pizzaman, a superhero, or both? How did they get an alien octopus as a butler? Why does Billie like trains? A little bit of wonder or mystery can be fun, but there’s just so much going on that the whole thing comes off as way too ridiculous. The family is beyond bizarre. They’re more than enough to fill a plot all on their own without there being time travel and T-Rexes popping out of thin air.
I like the animation a bit more this time around than what we saw in “Chicken Little”, but there’s still nothing truly beautiful or next-level about what we see. The animation is competitive at best for the era…it’s certainly not leading the pack. Despite all the craziness of what happens onscreen, the movie maintains momentum by focusing on how Lewis develops over the course of the story. It’s barely hanging together, but there’s enough of a story there for us to enjoy at least a little bit. The one thing that I really liked was the message of the film: how we need to keep moving forward even when we fail. The quote at the end from Walt Disney was a nice touch, and it was a cool way of bringing Walt’s spirit forward into this next generation of filmmaking.
But even so, part of me wishes I could go back in time and prevent myself from watching this movie.
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