The AristoCats is an interesting animal (intentional pun), because, on the one hand, its story is deliberately lifted from past Disney features; but, on the other, it’s more adult and original than anything I’ve seen from them since the fairy-tale era.  In watching something like 101 Dalmatians – of which this borrows from – you never really felt these were human characters shrunk into animals.  Sure, Pongo and Perdita‘s problems have been faced by humans; but you never believed Pongo and Perdita, themselves, were human.  Here, O’Malley, Duchess, and all the other characters, could have been human and simply transformed into animals.  The AristoCats is Disney pushing the boundaries of what children enjoy, but includes things they hopefully won’t notice.  It’d been a long time since I saw this, but I believe The AristoCats is more enjoyable for adults than children; and I recommend adults give it a second chance.

Duchess (voiced by Eva Gabor) and her three kittens have lived the pampered life with the wealthy Adelaide Bonfamille.  One day, Adelaide tells her attorney that her cats will inherit everything at her death, much to the chagrin of her butler, Edgar.  Edgar, soon, hatches a plot to get rid of the cats and collect the money for himself.  Unfortunately, nothing goes according to plan and the cats are stuck on their own.  Streetwise alley cat, Thomas O’Malley (voiced by Phil Harris), soon discovers the family and plans to get them home safely.

Let’s orient ourselves for a second.  The 1970s were a shaky time for the Walt Disney company, in general.  The AristoCats was the first film to be released after Walt’s death, as well as being the last film approved by him, personally.  The company was also working towards an opening date for Walt Disney World in Florida, which was a huge financial risk for them.  Thankfully, on a four million dollar budget, The AristoCats took in $55 million and was considered a success.  It should have been considering the amazing talent assembled for it.  The cast of people assembled here would go onto stay with the Disney company through several other movies, and/or were huge stars to get for a children’s film.  In the acting category, you have Phil Harris playing our lead, O’Malley; Harris was Baloo in last week’s The Jungle Book.  There’s also Eva Gabor as Duchess.  Gabor was famous for Green Acres at the time, but she’d be well-known to children as the voice of Ms. Bianca in The Rescuers series, which we’ll get to in three weeks.  You also have Disney repertory voice actor Sterling Holloway as the hilarious Roquefort, and Scatman Crothers as Scat Cat!  Of course, Thurl Ravenscroft is a voice here, and if you don’t know who he is, then you better be looking him up.  I also adored the voice of Pat Buttram as the voice of the dog Napoleon.  I recognized Buttram’s voice immediately from an episode of Rugrats!  The music, written by the Sherman Brothers, was arranged by the legendary George Burns; and Maurice Chevalier came out of retirement to sing the title song!  Whew, that’s a lot of huge stars to pepper a movie with; and yet, none of them overpower each other.

The actual plot of the movie isn’t particularly original, and the movie really takes its time before establishing where it wants to break out of the shell.  The concept of kidnapped pets immediately reminds you of 101 Dalmatians, and the “country cat/city cat” story invokes images of Lady and the Tramp.  The AristoCats borrows those elements, but infuses them to create something more original and adult.  The humans are incidental – as they were in Lady and the Tramp – and are actually colder and two-dimensionally crafted in comparison to the animals.  The animals are the well-rounded characters in a way that the previous two Disney animal films weren’t.  I mentioned it already in my intro, but the characters and situations feel more akin to human problems than animal ones.  O’Malley is a bachelor playboy who wants to help out a beautiful woman, only to discover she has baggage in the form of three children.  The kittens’ hope that O’Malley will become their father in a typical “setting up mom” story.  Even peripheral characters like the geese twins and their drunken uncle Waldo (voiced by Bill Thompson) can be seen as full-fledged human caricatures.  For the most part, the movie never treats these characters like “animals in danger,” but “people in danger.”  I say “for the most part” because there are a few scenes in the beginning of the movie where the camera cuts to the faces of Duchess and the kittens in peril and their mutual looks of anguish.  Typical of Disney, the lone little girl Marie is the one constantly falling off things and needing to be rescued (she’s also the one constantly spouting that O’Malley’s lines are “so romantic).

When Duchess and O’Malley meet, the plot becomes a typical road-trip romance; however, it feels different from the standard “I’m a pompous rich girl and I’m beneath the poor man.”  Duchess never takes on airs, despite living in luxury.  O’Malley is the one telling Duchess it won’t work because he’s poor, whereas Duchess fears it won’t work because she believes Adelaide won’t want another cat.  I found that refreshing, not having a typical rich bitch (in this case, cat).  The scenes between Duchess and O’Malley are oddly sexual.  I had to chuckle as I wrote down “cat seduction,” but you really see these two characters flirting and engaging in serious seduction techniques on par with humans.  Harris sounds like he’s channeling Robert Mitchum, with a vocal technique that inserts a lot of “baby’s” to his lines.  He grows to love Duchess and her children, in a way that doesn’t feel like he’s obligated because she’s in danger.  (You know how I feel about relationships blooming amongst disaster.)  Other adult moments come across in the script.  Uncle Waldo is a goose who’s literally about to be cooked, but feels he shouldn’t have been basted in white wine; “Being British, I’d have preferred sherry!”  Also, there’s a hilarious dialogue exchange about “swinging” that made me think of The Princess Bride: “I do not think that word means, what you think it means.”  I found myself praising the script several times.  It’s easily one of the wittier Disney efforts I’ve seen in the last month or so.  There’s fun character lines such as Duchess telling O’Malley “Your name seems to cover all of Europe;” and, most hilariously, Roquefort saying “He got me” after getting “shot” in the gut with a cork.

The movie isn’t flawless, and what is flawed feels like it shouldn’t be.  The script and characters are so well done, that what you notice as being bad feels like things they could have easily been fixed or explained away.  There’s no storybook opening to this, but simply uncolored scenes from the movie over a pastel background.  For some reason, Marie is the only one of the children with a British accent; whereas, Berlioz and Toulouse have the Frenchiest names and the most American of accents.  Furthermore, for a film set in Paris, there’s a duo of country bumpkin hounddogs and British geese.  Other less than developed plot points include the tired device of having characters “dream” what we’ve just seen, and Roquefort saving the day by going to find Scat Cat, only we’re never sure how he knew where the alley cats were.  I did find fault with why lengthy lines of dialogue had to rhyme.  I’m not sure if the source material (IMDB lists it’s based on a story) had rhyming, but it’s a device that’s not used throughout, so when it does happen it feels weird and stilted; not natural at all.  I also didn’t understand why Edgar actually goes back to the country hounds in order to get his bowler hat, and the basket that carried the cats.  Was it because we needed to see the hounds again?  Or because Edgar needed a purpose?  It’s the one moment that screamed “padding!”  Oh, and we get another lovely Asian stereotype involving Siamese cats.

In terms of music,  the song, The AristoCats, sung by Chevalier is probably the weakest of the songs assembled.  The rest of the songs are a blend of genres, highlighting both Duchess’ and O’Malley’s worlds; her’s being classical and his being jazz.  I sang “Scales and Arpeggios” for a choir concert and it’s still a fun song with a lyrical tongue-twister for lyrics.  ”Everybody Wants to Be a Cat” is the defining song for this movie (sorry Maurice) and is a jazzy cacophony of delight.  I also found myself singing O’Malley’s theme song that includes his full name. (“Abraham De Lacy Giuseppe Casey Thomas O’Malley.  O’Malley, the alley cat.”)  The songs are consistently good, the animation less so.  I mentioned that the xerography process had been significantly refined in The Jungle Book.  I’m not sure what went wrong here.  The characters are notably darker – with thicker lines – than the backgrounds, and seem to walk in a constant state of rear projection.  It’s not nearly as noticeable when the animals are around.  In fact, the animals look beautiful, particularly in HD.  The humans are that scratchy, unfinished style that they were in 101 Dalmatians, and feel so jerky that it’s like they’re not finished.

I will say, for the flaws I mentioned, they didn’t do a lot to lessen the impact.  The AristoCats was surprising to watch because I never liked it before; now, I’m aware of how well-shaped it is.  The characters are human and feel as such.  I loved Duchess and O’Malley, but they didn’t stand a chance compared to Roquefort.  I think this is Sterling Holloway’s best work, so far.  Roquefort is dressed like Sherlock Holmes (which we’ll see later on in The Great Mouse Detective), and is just hilarious because he’s so tiny; everything he does is wrong, but lovable.  I might actually go buy this on DVD; not because it’s perfect, but because it’s great in a long line of so-so.

Ronnie Rating:

NEXT WEEK: I’ve been dreading this one; Robin Hood.

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For 20 years I’ve been living a lie.  Before today, I had believed I’d never seen Robin Hood all the way through.  In my mind, I’d seen the first 20 or so minutes, then gave up due to my general disinterest in movies with talking animals.  No, that all changed today because apparently I’ve seen this movie, all the way through, BEFORE.  In watching it again, I kept saying “I remember that.  I saw that.”  When it was over, I’d seen it all before.  With that, there’s a reason I didn’t remember much prior; it’s not that memorable of a movie.  The voice work is good, as it usually always is in Disney films, but the plot recycles far too much, right down to animation sequences and jokes.   The anachronistic choices never define a time or place outside of Robin Hood and England (although the abundance of Southern accents belies that point).  The movie isn’t terrible – even the worst Disney movie is generally watchable – but a general blah structure only holds so much enjoyment.

The legendary story of Robin Hood (voiced by Brian Bedford) is told with the aid of animal counterparts.  The rascally outlaw finds himself stealing from the villainous Prince John (voiced by Peter Ustinov) in order to help the poor people of Nottingham.

I had low expectations for this movie based on my past experiences with it.  I have revised my prior opinions on quite a few movies during my Disney Vault time (just see my review of The AristoCats last week), but I doubted that would happen here.  For starters, I’m not a fan of the Robin Hood myth, in general.  The story is well-tread with clearly delineated good and evil, so that it’s left up to the actors to make or break it.  It’s similar to my views of Little Women; you can’t judge the plot since it’s been done to death, so you have to leave it up to the acting and general entertainment value.  With that being said, the voice cast is phenomenal, combining first-time Disney actors and veterans of animation, and there are some fun jokes and sequences.  It’s just not all brought together to make a cohesive story.  There felt like a lot of moments where characters were running around, either towards or away from something.

Originally, Disney had plans to do a movie around a similar character to Robin Hood: Reynard the Fox.  Much has been written about the lengthy development, and eventual disbanding of the Reynard the Fox movie.  The film was so far into production that animation had been drawn up and scripted.  Unfortunately, the story was never able to sufficiently convince the audience that Reynard was a good character.  Thus we ended up with Robin Hood who holds similar comic sensibilities to Reynard.  Both are rascally characters who could be seen as heroes or villains.  Regrettably, I think this film is as close as we’ll come to a Reynard movie.  I will say that Brian Bedford brings the perfect sense of English gallantry to the role of Robin Hood.  His voice is light and akin to Errol Flynn, but he’s not overly Shakespearean.  The character of Robin is a rascal, but only to those who have it coming (essentially all the bad guys).  The character is paired up with Little John who’s Baloo with a little hat on.  Making the connection stronger is the fact that resident Disney fun-guy Phil Harris provides the voice.  Harris always brings frivolity to his voice work, and Little John is no different.  He’s funny, snazzy, and furthers the anachronistic tendencies of the film by using a lot of jazz words (and his love for words ending in “britches”).  Unlike Jungle Book or AristoCats, Little John is really second fiddle to Robin Hood, nor is he as quippy as in prior outings.  The strongest voice, though, is Peter Ustinov as Prince John.  Ustinov would do a few Disney movies and he’s deliciously smarmy as Prince John.  The man/lion has mommy issues that create a lot of fun, although he’s not at all a threatening character.

The problem is that the evil-doers are the “aw shucks” yokel characters.  In this case, it’s the Sheriff of Nottingham as voiced by Pat Buttram who we also saw in AristoCats.  The characters that are meant to be villains are so bumbling, that it’s hard to feel threatened by them at all.  In The AristoCats, the contrast between human and animal made you fear for the animals safety, since the humans were seen to be all-powerful.  Here, the Prince and Sheriff are strictly comedic, so there’s no real momentum to the action since Robin is always four steps ahead.  It could explain why there’s so much filler meant to entice children.The second banana feeling extends out to the plot and animation.  The animation, in general, is nothing special.  It’s on par with a Mickey Mouse cartoon.  The colors are lush, but look too polished and copied.  It makes sense, since about 40% of the animation is recycled (I’m guessing).  The march of characters at the bottom of the opening credits is reused, and Marian’s dancing during the party sequence is the same dancing employed by Snow White and Duchess from The AristoCats.  Furthermore, the character of Sir Hiss is the exact character as Kaa, right down to him attempting to hypnotize Prince John.  It made me think that the Reynard movie was planned so far in advance, that when it was dropped the animators were forced to cobble a story and use as much existing animation as they could.  It also explains the hodge-podge mixture of American and English actors that are assembled, as well as the 1970s soundtrack in parts.  The former issue really bothered me the most, although it shouldn’t have since the Kevin Costner version is just as bad.

We do open with the storybook, and I continue to praise Disney for connecting these movies back to their literary origins; hopefully, inspiring children to seek out the books.  We don’t have a narrator introducing the story, rather the rooster known as Allan-a-Dale (voiced by Roger Miller).  In a complete transformation from the credits we’ve seen previous, this series of opening credits shows the cast of characters with their names and voice actors displayed.  It’s similar to live-action movies of the Golden Era as well as acknowledging the voice actors contribution to the films.  It’s an intriguing change, that makes the audience believe these characters exist in some form, although I took offense to have Maid Marian labeled “a vixen,” unless the word means something I don’t know.  Running below the credits are a series of comic gags, which I figured might be used to entertain the kids during a sequence that has words they might not be able to read.

The general feeling in this, more than any other movie previously seen in the Disney canon, is that it’s a picture best for children and children only.  I mentioned the comic gags during the credits, that the animation looks like a Disney cartoon, and there’s a gaggle of child characters we spend far too much time with.  The kids are a group of tiny bunnies, and a turtle, that run around and try to re-enact Robin Hood’s adventures.  They’re cloying characters that made me think I was watching a television show on the Disney Afternoon.  The desire to please children makes sense when you look at the film as a whole.  Keep in mind, I wouldn’t deign to call this a musical which is a sharp divergence from past precedent.  The only songs sung in this movie are in moments of frivolity, like Robin’s party, or by Allan-a-Dale.  There is a love song for Robin and Marian, but it’s sung over their courtship scenes.  The only time characters actually engage in song is during moments where singing is necessary to the plot.  I understand some people don’t like unprovoked song sequences, but in a movie that tries so hard to please little kids, it felt like another thing that had to be excised so children wouldn’t get bored.

Robin Hood was as I expected it to be.  The lively plot is as good as any past Robin Hood story, and the vocal talent is stellar, as always.  The desire to please children, the wanton recycling of animation, and the undefined sense of place leaves the plot lacking cohesion, though; the script feels slapped together.  The worst that can be said about a Disney movie is that it’s “okay,” and Robin Hood is simply that.

Ronnie Rating:

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Robin Hood (Most Wanted Edition)

Winnie the Pooh can be placed alongside Mickey Mouse as one of the Disney company‘s enduring characters.  In fact, you could consider the Winnie the Pooh gang to be just as vaunted as the Fab Five, themselves.  The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is really a gathering of three Winnie the Pooh shorts, with a wraparound story.  It works to great effect, especially considering the idea that it’s presented as a collection of stories in a book.  It’s an improvement on the package films of the 1940s but if you’ve seen any of these shorts individually, it can feel tedious.  The characters, though, are all lovable; the animation is the best of the decade; and the movie plays as a whimsical adventure that we haven’t seen from Disney in a while.

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh tells three core stories: In Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, Winnie the Pooh (voiced by Sterling Holloway) plans to eat his beloved honey.  On the way, he raises the ire of a hive of honey bees, and gets trapped in Rabbit’s (voiced by Junius Matthews) front door.  In Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, a wind storm crashes Owl’s (voiced by Hal Smith) house, and Pooh meets Tigger (voiced by Paul Winchell) who teaches him about Heffalumps and Woozles.  In Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too, Rabbit’s efforts to get Tigger to stop bouncing meet some resistance.

Watching The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is akin to revisiting a childhood book or event.  You always expect it to be exactly the same, and you can invoke the  feelings you felt as if you were still a child.  The film can do that, as well as tell its own story through the eyes of the little boy, Christopher Robin (voiced by various actors).  Christopher Robin eventually grows up at story’s end, just as the children watching this will as well.  And yet, you can immediately turn this on and feel as if you’ve never left; as if Pooh and his friends are still there waiting for you, just as they wait for Christopher Robin.  With all this sentimentality, it makes sense that we see the closing of several chapters behind the scenes at Disney with this film.  The first short in the Winnie the Pooh universe, Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, came out in 1966 (before Walt Disney’s death).  He was actively developing the franchise, and had advised a lot of the stuff going into Blustery Day, which would be released in 1968.  Several historians consider this the final work Disney had his hand in, although I’d dispute that since the finished product was simply combining all three shorts.  Similarly, this was the final film work for Barbara Luddy, Matthews, and Sebastian Cabot.  Luddy, who was the voice of Lady in Lady and the Tramp, as well as Kanga here would die two years later; Matthews, who voiced Rabbit and Archimedes in The Sword in the Stone, along with Sebastian Cabot – who narrated this as well as voiced Bageera in The Jungle Book – would die a year later.

With all the sadness of these final performances, it creates a relaxed and peaceful calm in watching this film.  There’s no rising tension or suspense that you believe is truly tragic.  Sure, Pooh and Piglet may find themselves in danger of being swept away during a flood, but you never fear as if this is the end for them (it’s not Toy Story 3!).  The comic timing and one-liners are enough to make you smile, even if Pooh is the world’s worst houseguest or Rabbit is a stick in the mud.  Gopher’s puns are great for those of us with vocal skills, as they’ll sail over the heads of the youngest child.  When he says “Gotta get this bear outta here.  He’s blocking the whole project” it’s a solid joke because Pooh’s entire body can’t be removed.  Pooh’s pleading that he wasn’t going to eat the honey, “just taste it” reminds adults of all those times you backtracked on what you were eating or doing; you were just having a bit!  The unique element of Winnie the Pooh is that it’s self-aware.  The narrator mentions how certain events can go on for several pages, but the characters understand they’re in a book, as well.  The only one who doesn’t get what’s going on is Tigger, which results in a laugh-inducing “Who are you” when the narrator starts talking.  The fact that it’s taken over an hour for anyone to ask who Cabot’s character is, is the source of the mirth.

The individual stories are cute.  Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree is about Pooh’s quest for honey with disastrous results.  The high point is when he gets stuck in Rabbit’s front door, causing Rabbit to find ways to decorate Pooh’s backside – framing it and painting a moose face on it.  Blustery Day is the one I remember most, as it introduces Piglet and Tigger.  The “Heffalumps and Woozles” is the part remembered most.  Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too feels the weakest of the bunch.  Rabbit isn’t the best character as he’s a crotchety old man who doesn’t like fun.  At the same time, Tigger can be too abrasive and one-note.  The combination makes for a short that felt long and undefined.  One bad short out of three isn’t too bad, though.

The last couple of Disney works have felt high concept, as if the everyone at Disney is stretching to make a story that will please children and their parents; animation feels secondary.  Here, the source material is a beautiful book for children that is good for adults due to script and voice work.  Some argue that Disney ruined the heart of A.A. Milne’s work, and I can’t comment towards that as I don’t recall anything from the books.  If anything, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh feels like the animators, directors, and screenwriters were able to breathe.  Then again, that’s probably because these were released as shorts and only a wraparound story had to be composed.  Regardless, the plot is simple, the characters are solid, and the animation is lovely!  I was breathless watching a return to sheer beauty with these scenes.  You can see the pen strokes in the characters; like they walked off Milne’s page and onto the screen.  If you can watch this on a Blu-Ray or HD, it’s the only way to go.  The songs are also whimsical and fun.  ”Up, Down, Touch the Ground,” “(I’m Just A) Little Black Raincloud,” and “The Rain, Rain, Rain, Came Down, Down, Down” are guileless, innocent, and sweet.  They’re songs you can sing when you’re doing something, or to sing to your children.  The best remembered are “The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers” and “Heffalumps and Woozles.”  The latter is heavily inspired by Dumbo’s “Pink Elephants on Parade,” although it’s not nearly as subversive or frightening as the Dumbo original.

One can’t ignore the voice acting here, as the characters are defined wholly through the vocals.  Sterling Holloway has been in numerous Disney works that we’ve reviewed previously, but it wasn’t until recently I noticed he was the voice of Pooh.  In his past work, like playing Kaa in The Jungle Book, his hypnotic voice has been used for malevolent characters (or in the case of the Cheshire Cat, ambiguous).  Here, he’s gentle and sweet.  He may be a glutton and a terrible person to invite to dinner, but his voice is so soothing that you can’t stay mad.  Piglet (voiced by character actor John Fiedler) doesn’t show up till The Blustery Day, but his nervous, high-pitched voice makes you yearn to protect him.  Not to mention, Piglet gets my vote for favorite scene when he luges under Owl’s table.  Interestingly, Eeyore’s voiced was provided by Ralph Wright.  Wright only ever voiced Eeyore, and is actually credited as a writer for The Jungle Book, The Aristocats, the Pooh shorts, and several episodes of Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.  I know PIXAR gives voice roles to their employees, is it possible this was something similar?  Wright’s voice is booming, and somber in a way I don’t recall from the voice of Eeyore now.  He gives the character a drawl to his words that I don’t recall, or maybe I’m not remembering correctly?  And let’s not forget, Clint Howard was the original voice of Roo!

The Winnie the Pooh group aren’t beloved in my household, but I can appreciate them more after watching The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.  In starting this Disney series, I wanted to revisit characters and stories from my childhood.  Winnie the Pooh is the apotheosis of that.  When you hear the Winnie the Pooh theme song you instantly know the words; you know how you felt when you first met that fluffy bear, and you know what it’s like not to have the security of childhood toys or the time to spend with them.  In a word, Winnie the Pooh helps you visit your childhood, and your innocence; if only for a moment.  I recommend it!

Ronnie Rating:

NEXT WEEK: The final Disney film of the 1970s, and our first to garner a sequel.  It’s the 1977 film,  The Rescuers.

The close of the 1970s marks a turning point in the Walt Disney Company.  We’ve seen turning points before with individual films, but none more so than in The Rescuers.  The film would be the last hit for Disney until 1989, and would signal the close of the longest “golden age” in Disney history; spanning 30 years from the time of Cinderella.  The adventures of two little mice is the epitome of everything Disney originally set out to achieve (remember, it all started with a mouse) while entering the somber, dramatic storytelling that would define the animated films of the 1980s.

Two mice of the international Rescue Aid Society set out to help a lonely little girl in need.  The glamorous Miss. Bianca (voiced by Eva Gabor) and dour janitor Bernard (voiced by Bob Newhart) must journey to desolate Devil’s Bayou to save Penny (voiced by Michelle Stacy) from the evil Madame Medusa (voiced by Geraldine Page).

The Rescuers is based on a series of popular books by Margaret Sharp about the Rescue Aid Society and its star, Miss. Bianca.  The finished product set a few milestones, that boded both good and ill for the company.  This was the last film to be nominated for an Academy Award (Best Original Song for “Someone’s Waiting for You”) until 1989′s The Little Mermaid.  It was also the first box office success since The Jungle Book, ten years ago, and the last until The Little Mermaid.  When it was in theaters, The Rescuers broke the record for the longest box office gain on opening weekend.  With all that, The Rescuers is an underrated film that doesn’t have nearly the clout of Disney’s other cinematic gems.  It doesn’t have a Disney attraction, and I’ve never seen photos of any costumed characters at the park, and yet this movie originally sold out when Disney first put it out on DVD!  I say it’s time to reclaim The Rescuers!

The characters are a colorful blend of kooks with the average Bernard and Miss. Bianca roped into things.  The original intent was to bring back Cruella de Vil in the role of Madame Medusa, and I applaud the animators for not doing so.  Madame Medusa is one fantastic villainess because she’s over-the-top, but still grounded in reality.  The best way to describe her is as a combination of Miss. Hannigan from Annie (particularly Carol Burnett’s interpretation although I wonder how much Burnett was inspired by this), and our aforementioned 101 Dalmatians villain.  Madame Medusa may wiggle around like a jazz baby, and look like a pasty drag queen, but she’s  got determination.  Geraldine Page’s vocal stylings give the character an air of sophistication in spite of her trashy appearance.  The scene with Penny where Medusa is trying to gain the little girl’s trust is one of my favorite Disney moments.  She wants Penny to like her, calling herself “Auntie” Medusa, but she has no tact when she tells the child she won’t get adopted because she’s “homely.”  Added to that is Medusa taking off her make-up, and the half-done up appearance alerts the audience that the makeup doesn’t hide her ugly soul.  The odd couple pairing with the male character, Snoops (voiced by Joe Flynn in his last work) is also unique because I don’t recall a female/male pairing before this.  Yes, Cruella had male goons who did the heavy lifting, but here they work as a team despite Snoops being berated by Medusa at every turn.

Our main heroes are the conventional duo, but Bernard and Bianca are the prognosticators of the crime-solving husband/wife teams of the 1980s (Hart to Hart, Moonlighting, etc.).  I like to compare our mice heroes the Charles’ from the Thin Man series.  Bianca is elegant and pampered whereas Bernard is humdrum.  The voice casting works to set-up their identities with the foreign Eva Gabor playing Duchess in some ways, but Miss. Bianca is more enduring a character.  This is my favorite Bob Newhart role because there’s nothing special about his voice, but that’s what makes his character memorable.  Bernard works as a janitor while aspiring to be a member of the Rescue Aid Society.  His superstitious fears of the number 13 enhance his character and make him believable to inhabit our world.  I’ve focused on the attempts to make animal characters relatable to a human audience in several of these reviews, and I believe The Rescuers is the authoritative interpretation of what an animal character should aspire to be.  Apart from being small and animated to look like mice, Bernard and Bianca are human.  They have mouse clothes, mouse umbrellas, and have to pack before any car trip.  With that, the mice also have human flaws such as the Chairman of the Rescue Aid Society fearing that it’s no longer “a man’s world,” so he’s not surprised Miss. Bianca wants to take on Penny’s case alone, but she’s a woman and needs to be chaperoned; Bernard agrees.  Other than that, Bernard and Bianca’s relationship is that of equals with both being in danger at certain points (a breath of fresh air that live-action movies can’t seem to do).  At its heart, the Rescue Aid Society takes on the cases that no humans want or care about, making the mice better people than humans themselves.

The animation continues to show the potential of the xerography process.  The animators utilized color inks for the first time, so the characters aren’t lined in dark blacks, but lighter colored blacks.  This was the last film to be animated by all nine of Disney’s “Nine Old Men,” and the quality is apparent.  The opening credits are painted and the paper background creates a beautiful contrast to the watercolors on top.  The opening credits are rather beautiful, setting up the downbeat tone of the movie by showing the tragic journey of Penny’s bottle.  Her hopes and dreams are contained to one bottle, and as the water pushes it along – almost dashing it against the rocks – the animation becomes darker.  It’s reinforced by the melodious songs of Shelby Flint.  The original intent was to get The Carpenters to sing the songs, and Flint has a similar vocal quality as Karen Carpenter.  All three songs sound similar with “The Journey” conveying its meaning best.  The opening credits show the bottle going on its journey as the song rises and crescendos like the waves on which the bottle is propelled. Since the plot is so serious, it doesn’t make sense to have characters sing, so the three songs do enhance the feelings of the character (usually Penny with two out of the three).   Again, all three have the same progression so I’m not sure I’d call them Oscar-worthy, but they’re nice and don’t obstruct the narrative.

The Rescuers exemplifies the simple stories of the 1970s, and marks a change in the Disney model.  The five animated films of the 1980s are all adaptations of classic literature and/or are firmly in the vein of the fantastical.  The Rescuers is the most human, down-to-Earth story Disney set out to do, and I’m glad I got to re-experience it with adult eyes.

Ronnie Rating:

NEXT WEEK: I’ll be taking a break (something I’ll start doing when we close a decade) next week, but April 6th we’ll kick off the 1980s with a discussion on The Fox and the Hound.

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The Rescuers: 35th Anniversary Edition (The Rescuers / The Rescuers Down Under) (Three-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo in Blu-ray Packaging)

While I didn’t have glowing praise for 20th Century Fox‘s adaptation of Tender is the Night, just released on their Cinema Archives label, I found it in this 1948 comedy.  Apartment for Peggy is a prototypical post-WWII tale about soldiers acclimating to life after wartime, and the wives who live in fear of not being enough.  Lumped into all of that is a baby, and a suicidal old man who feels life’s not worth living.  Despite its fluffy exterior, aided by a gregarious performance from Jeanne Crain, Apartment for Peggy is a charming comedy that doesn’t get bogged down in too much melodrama, but walks the fine line between comedy and social commentary.

Professor Henry Barnes (Edmund Gwenn) believes there’s no purpose for him anymore and decides to kill himself.  On the same day, he meets the bubbly Peggy Taylor (Craine) who’s going to have a baby and needs to find an apartment for her and her husband, Jason (William Holden).  The two, with baby making three, will be homeless if they don’t find something soon.  Surprisingly, Barnes has a small attic that Peggy thinks would be perfect.  As the Taylors make themselves at home, to the chagrin of Barnes, the stodgy old professor finds the ability to live again.

Apartment for Peggy is the follow-up to director George Seaton‘s excellent holiday classic Miracle on 34th Street.  This film has similar attributes in terms of having exuberant personalities at the helm, and a magical uplifting heart to it.  I would say there’s a darker, realistic quality here as opposed to the Christmas classic, but it’s never outright tragic – which I do consider a slight against it considering the subject matter.  The movie does have depth to it in exploring the importance of education, at any age and regardless of gender; the creation of makeshift families in post-WWII America; and the ability to find a purpose in life.  The opening credits are actually show the GI Bill housing rules which establishes why the trials the Taylor’s go through are important.  It helps future viewers understand the tribulations the characters are up against.

After the horrors of WWII, comedy was in demand and several films during this period focused on the housing shortage and the struggles returning vets faced in acclimating to normality.  I reviewed Love Nest during my Month With Marilyn which tread similar territory to dull effect.  Apartment for Peggy throws in practically every item a normal couple faces throughout their life by compressing it and adding the struggles of post-war malaise.  It’s refreshing not to see the courtship between Peggy and Jason; we start after courtship, marriage, consummation and pregnancy have been achieved.  Really, we see them through Dr. Barnes’ eyes; a man who has lived his life out, he believes, and finds there’s nothing more to look forward to.  Gwenn was also following up his turn as the magical, lovable Kris Kringle in Seaton’s last film, playing a character that couldn’t be more different.  Barnes feels that amongst young men who have lived, and died, that there’s no room for a stodgy academic who doesn’t appreciate the beauty in the world any longer.  By killing himself, his house could go to a family that needs it.  His logic is morbid, but philosophical.  His main reason is: Why wait till you get sick to die?  In a way, Barnes is living the James Dean model of “Live fast, die young.”  Barnes never makes the tone of the movie morbid, nor is his suicide particularly dramatic.  He saves up sleeping pills throughout, and when he makes the actual attempt he’s never revealed to be in any danger.  The thrust of the story is in watching him regain the will to live.  At times, the dual storylines can be at odds because Gwenn is so serious, but it’s never to the film’s detriment.  Gwenn is just as believable as a suicidal professor as he was playing Santa Claus!

Alongside Barnes’ story is that of the Taylors.  Their story is congruent with the typical tales of this period focused on a couple dealing with a fixer-upper (in this case, Barnes’ attic) and mixing with a curmudgeonly neighbor.  The themes are presented through them, and they’re relevant themes that I wouldn’t have expected to see in 1948.  They extend not just to the older, wizened Professor, but to the young, dewy-eyed couple, as well.  Jason and Peggy are equals in a loving, committed relationship.  They’re well aware of the other’s flaws, but never use them as a creation for conflict within the relationship.  Jason adores Peggy in spite of her making up fake statistics to prove her arguments, whereas she is the picture of supportive in his dream to become a teacher.  The script doesn’t need to show their courtship because through dialogue and interaction we see how well they know each other.  And it’s apparent they’re sexually into each other, and I’m not just saying that because Peggy is pregnant; we actually see them mention, suggestively, that they enjoy a healthy sexual attraction which is rare in films of the period.

Each character has their own desires that tie into what the movie wants to say, overall.  Jason wishes to become educated and be a teacher, and yet his hoped-for job is at odds with providing for his burgeoning family.  He feels at a loss getting a degree in teaching when “we spend twice as much on liquor as we do on education.”  Jason’s a realist who needs to make money, but the moral implications of what he could be capable of aren’t going to lead to billions of dollars.  He feels as useless as Henry because he’s supposed to be the breadwinner in the family, but Peggy is the one forced to scrimp and find ways to keep them afloat.  As her husband, Jason believes she deserves more.  Holden doesn’t scream “teacher” to me (how I wish teachers at my school looked like Bill Holden), but he works the realistic anger without artifice or staginess.  He’s played veterans before, and here he’s not the broken man who needs a woman to care for him.  His interactions with Crain are sweet and developed, and through it all her love is all he needs to keep going.

The heart and soul of Apartment for Peggy is the namesake played by Jeanne Crain.  Crain is adorable, and while her fast-talking innocence could be construed as annoying, I found it endearing.  She’s introduced by literally filling in the audience with her entire life-story in two minutes due to how fast she talks.  Henry, completely flummoxed by this young lady detailing a lifetime’s worth of problems to a total stranger, simply says “My dear, I have great difficulty following your conversation.”  Crain and the character of Peggy are a walking ball of sunshine and exuberance, and while she’s giving the audience (and Henry) an information overload, you can’t help but smile.  Here’s where I wish the DVD had subtitles because Crain speaks so quickly it’s hard to catch everything.  Crain is so delightful in this movie that no matter what, you want her to persevere because she believes in everybody.  Her “grin and bear it” attitude does become a tad insupportable when she doesn’t mourn the loss of her baby, only that Jason abandons his dream to be a teacher in favor of a paying job at a car lot.  There’s no reason a woman shouldn’t be able to mourn for the loss of a child; she’s not betraying her husband by doing so, especially since we see Jason so destroyed by it.  Of course, Peggy has a problem that’s shared by the fellow wives of the army vets.  All of them fear that with their men going to school, they’ll look uneducated in comparison and their husbands will seek smarter women.  In a roundabout way, this causes the ladies to seek higher learning.  Their feelings of obsolescence is as a group, as opposed to Henry and Jason’s individual concerns.  It’s intriguing what this film says about female education; mainly, that it is important and can create a set of leaders for the future!  When we see two men watching the class, one responds with “Perhaps the husbands should stay home with the children, and the wives should go to class,” it’s obvious we shouldn’t side with them.  With the 1950s housewife looming in the future, it’s surprising to see a movie advocate for female schooling.

As the movie progresses, all three create a family and get what they want.  Henry finds a second family (after losing his wife and son) and a second chance at life, whereas Peggy and Jason get a happy ending with a second baby after the loss of their first.  The revelation of the pregnancy in the last two-minutes of the movie feels tacked on, but I understand the logic behind it; we can’t end the movie with the loving couple who started out with hopes for a baby not getting what they want.  Overall, Apartment for Peggy is a sentimental, surprisingly sweet comedy that holds a lot of questions for the future.  With a trio of delightful performances, particularly from Jeanne Crain, I recommend purchasing this on the 20th Century Fox Cinema Archives label.

Ronnie Rating:

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Apartment For Peggy

The next five weeks sees us navigating the hostile waters of the Walt Disney Company in the 1980s, which will eventually end with us entering the last golden age Disney’s had for a while.  The Fox and the Hound continues the trend of downbeat stories we saw in The Rescuers, but adds in real-world prejudice that hits home.  The animation is good, but nothing spectacular; no The Fox and the Hound lives and dies in the performances and screenwriting.  Stripped of happy woodland critters, and catchy songs, The Fox and the Hound might be the most realistic Disney film we’ve seen.

Tod (voiced by Mickey Rooney as an adult, and Keith Coogan as a child) is an orphaned fox raised by a kindly widow.  He meets hound dog Copper (voiced by Kurt Russell as an adult and Corey Feldman as a child), who is being trained to become a hunting dog.  The two become friends, but come to realize that their owners have different paths for them, and after a harsh winter apart they return to face each other as enemies.

Let’s discuss where we are in Disney history because the 1980s was an unstable decade for the company, in terms of animation output. As a whole, the Company was doing great with the opening of Euro Disneyland (now Disneyland Paris), Epcot, and Tokyo Disneyland.  In the animation sector, power was tenuous with Ron Miller – Walt’s son-in-law – wanting to appease the teen market with darker and grittier films which weren’t box-office successes.  Animator Don Bluth led a walk-out around this time, delaying production of The Fox and the Hound by a year, taking key animators to start his own production company.  Eventually, the Company would face a hostile takeover, Roy Disney voicing concerns over leadership, and the eventual removal of Ron Miller in favor of CEOs Michael Eisner and Frank Wells.

With all this conflict, it’s not surprising that the stories would reflect that antagonism.  I haven’t seen The Fox and the Hound in a while, and I can see why; it makes Bambi look like Barney.  If you aren’t a vegetarian, anti-fur, PETA supporter by now then this movie could change all that.  The original book, written by Daniel P. Mannix is outright depressing involving mass deaths, so I thank Disney for keeping the body count to a minimum.  You note the departure from past Disney classics right in the opening credits which are shown in total silence, with the occasional animal noise to punctuate the stillness.  The sense of danger and unease rises till a little fox carrying her baby crashes through the foliage to the strains of baying hounds; this is our opening, folks!  Of course, I mention Tod is an orphan so there’s no surprise that Tod’s mother ends up next to Bambi’s within the first ten minutes; this movie doesn’t waste time in killing off parents!  Unfortunately, the movie breaks up this drama with levity, introducing the bird trio of Big Mama (voiced by Pearl Bailey), Dinky (voiced by Richard Bakalyan), and Boomer (voiced by Paul Winchell).  It’s understandable that there needs to be some laughter to keep kids from losing their minds, but to introduce them with Dinky and Boomer breaking through a tree to eat a worm doesn’t gel.  I applaud the voice casting, and Dinky and Boomer are throwbacks to the classic Chuck Jones style of comedy, but they belong in a different movie.  The attempts at padding the runtime stand out in a big way, and they’re part of it.

The first half of the movie establishes the adorable, childhood friendship between Tod and Copper.  The animation, combined with the vocal talents of young Keith Coogan (credited here as Keith Mitchell) and Corey Feldman, creates maximum cuteness.  Baby animals in Disney films have always been adorable, but they’re removed entirely from existence in the past.  You can believe that Tod and Copper are real in this film.  They’re not overly expressive, and their movements are bound to reality.  The animation on small things, like Copper’s nose when he sniffs the air, is genuine and wouldn’t catch your attention because all dogs look the same when sniffing.  I apologize for offending anyone, in advance, but The Fox and the Hound definitely has some homoerotic subtext in the opening that cannot be ignored.  You have two best friends whose friendship is considered unnatural (each being identified as predators in one form or another), and society eventually instills prejudice to poison their relationship and drive them apart.  The first scenes with Tod and Copper lying around and playing with each other could easily be construed as a love relationship in the future.  Outside of that, the movie’s moral message details the laws within nature and society as invoked by the duos masters.  Tod and Copper are conditioned to be who they are through their biological make-up, as well as their masters.  They’re continually at war with their inner feelings, which is conflict with all they understand.  This is prominently seen in the character of Copper.  Copper starts the movie as a puppy seeking love and companionship, and yet his owner, Amos Slade (voiced by Jack Albertson…ruined Willy Wonka for me now), plans to break Copper of that habit.  In Amos’s mind, there’s no need for love in a dog trained to kill.  Another sign of the times is the pronounced presence of guns in this movie.  In Bambi, we didn’t see the hunter at all, but here we get several sequences where guns are pointed, aimed, and fired (although we never see anything shot and killed).

Amos Slade is a despicable Disney villain, probably the worst of the worst because he exists in the world.  We see that not only is Amos bent on hunting, but he hates women, as evidenced by only referring to Widow Tweed (voiced by Jeanette Nolan) as “female” or “woman.”  I  can’t say that Disney does any good to women in this movie, as they’re all given generic female monikers; Big Mama for example, and even Tod calls Vixey (voiced by Sandy Duncan) “female” at one point.  All the women are either mothers or sex objects.  Vixey is where the movie gets lost.  She’s the hot fox (get it?) who sounds dumb, and acts coy.  The movie establishes her relationship with Tod, and forces the audience to diverge from the core narrative to see them fall in love.  Keep in mind, at this point in the story, Tod’s life is being threatened by Amos and Copper.  I have to wonder if this is the film’s attempt to present a heteronormative relationship so that weird audience members like me, who assume homosexuality, can be debunked.

The third act kind of skids off the rails for a bit, but makes up for it overall.  We see Copper’s mentor Chief (voiced by Disney regular Pat Buttram) getting hit by a train and thus kicking off the climax with Copper declaring revenge on Tod.  We pull a Scotty though, à la Lady and the Tramp, with Chief since he doesn’t die.  The movie lets us believe Chief has been run over by a train – and really he should be dead – only to reveal he’s hurt his leg.  It lessens the impact of Copper’s vow for revenge though because Chief lives on.  The threads start to unravel after this with Widow Tweed “protecting” Tod by leaving him in a game preserve.  Um, he’s a domesticated fox whose never been on his own before.  Does that sound like a good idea?  The idea of a domesticated fox learning life in the woods is a far longer story that gets truncated here, both padding out the story yet feeling rushed simultaneously.  Also, Amos knows right away that Tweed has left Tod at the preserve.  Tweed is well aware that Amos has no respect for the law, so does she expect Amos to give up on killing the animal?  And furthermore, who the hell is patrolling that preserve that gunshots ring out and a fire happens?!

Overall, I applaud Disney for ending on a bittersweet note.  There’s no resolution or pat ending where Tod and Copper are friends at the end.  Society and nature have run their course, and the two friends are too different; too much has happened to make them forget the negatives and embrace the positives.  Big Mama’s prophecy of time changing things is true.  By the end, you’re left saddened, not that anyone has died, but that self-imposed differences have forced two creatures so far apart.  It’s a “what could have been” ending.  The Fox and the Hound is very bleak at times, the animation isn’t astounding, there’s filler, and the songs aren’t there (they’re more lyrical poems), but I appreciate this much more as an adult.  It’s a tear-jerker with realistic expectations and no easy solutions. With the way our differences define us now, we’re all Tods and Coppers in our own way.  The Fox and the Hound marks the start of a bleak time in the Disney company, but opens up a discussion on nature and society.

Ronnie Rating:

NEXT WEEK: We get to the film that almost sunk Disney animation entirely: The 1985 fantasy The Black Cauldron

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As a child, The Black Cauldron was the “red-headed stepchild” of the Disney canon.  And not just the stepchild, we’re talking the stepchild you kept under the stairs!  The movie was a commercial failure, and almost cemented the demise of Disney animation entirely.  The problems with the film are myriad ranging from too many cooks in the kitchen, the jamming together of two epic novels into a 90 minute feature, and the overall fear of presenting a movie that was too dark/too intellectual for its target audience; I’m also tempted to say that Ralph Bakshi‘s 1977 animated adaptation of The Hobbit tread over much of the same material earlier.  As a first-time viewer I knew this wasn’t for me.  The 1980s were filled with fantasy sword and sandal epics which I’m not a fan of (see my review of The Sword in the Stone).  As a whole, The Black Cauldron is ambitious and probably Disney’s sharpest divergence into darker waters, but the story is paper-thin with characters that are introduced, a flat-out MacGuffin and an ending that doesn’t belong with the movie.  The movie is at the mercy of the those behind it, and I’ll detail the full-story below, but it’s a missed opportunity that feels unfinished.

Based on the fantasy series The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander, The Black Cauldron tells the story of Taran (voiced by Grant Bardsley), tasked with protecting a magical pig named Hen Wen.  When Hen Wen is kidnapped and taken to the Horned King, Taran meets a cadre of characters who believe that finding the Black Cauldron might be the key to getting Hen Wen and stopping the Horned King.

The Black Cauldron had several factors working against it.  Despite being technologically advanced – being the first film to use CGI – it suffered from a dark source material and copious editing.  The movie had been in development since the early 1970s, when Disney first bought the rights to Alexander’s work; however, nothing was done with the film until the early 80s.  While in development, the movie had to be re-edited to get a PG rating (being the first Disney animated film rated higher than a G).  Depending on who you talk to, several top brass in charge of animation just didn’t get this movie.  Eventually, the animators were forced to cut scenes after the movie had been produced.  This marked the first time since Snow White that scenes had to be edited in post-production, and the reason why is because unless you plan on re-animating scenes to make everything gel, you can usually tell when stuff’s been cut.  A whole lengthy argument ensued between Disney animators and animation head (at the time) Jeffrey Katzenberg.  Katzenberg’s logic was the movie needed to be family friendly – a disastrous test screening resulted in crying children forced to endure scenes involving the undead – while the animators felt Katzenberg had no idea what went into making a successful animated movie, at all.  Eventually, Katzenberg kicked the animators out of the editing room and started going at the film with a pair of scissors, eventually excising twelve minutes of footage.  The Black Cauldron didn’t see a theatrical re-release like past animated films, and has been heavily edited for air on Disney channels.  It wasn’t until 2010 that a DVD release with some of the deleted content finally came out.  The movie has gone on to achieve cult status, but to Disney it’s the 12 year (5 actually spent in production), $25 million dollar mess.

With all of that, it’s easy to see the flaws being aided by the convoluted production process.  The tone is wildly divergent, getting extremely dark and mythological in the middle, before slapping on a smile and literally having the heroes skip into the sunset.  In telling such a rich mythology, you need a longer format in which to tell it.  I’m not advocating for a three-hour opus here, but at an hour and twenty minutes, Taran’s journey feels incredibly easy.  He’s told to take Hen Wen out to the woods because supposedly the Horned King knows about her; we’re not sure if he’s actually coming for her, but he knows of her.  Boy and pig walk around for a few minutes, meet some people, and the pig is kidnapped.  The scenes revolve around characters stumbling upon other characters that can help them, and all of them come together in the climax.  About 50 minutes in, the pig is saved and taken back home!  If you ever needed proof that Disney could use a MacGuffin, look no further than Hen Wen from The Black Cauldron.  We get a throwaway glance of her watching the happy ending, but you discover she served no purpose other than getting Taran to the third act.  This is probably due to the editing and the desire to keep this within the requisite 80 minute runtime of most Disney films.  Unfortunately, telling such an epic story such as this doesn’t work.  In its finished form, The Black Cauldron is the typical Arthurian legend, The Sword in the Stone with a darker gloss.

1977 saw the release of Ralph Bakshi’s The Hobbit, which is universally beloved by animation fans; The Black Cauldron is a pale, and obvious, imitation.  We have an animation style that is suspiciously similar (then again it also is the same as the eventual style used for the Disney Afternoon cartoons), and the trajectory is the same.  The supposedly cute, I found him annoying, character of Gurgi (voiced by John Byner) sounds eerily like Gollum from the newer Lord of the Rings series.  Speaking of the animation, it is sloppy as all get-out.  I rag on the xerography process, but the animation here shifts sharply, again possibly because of the editing and the need to cobble story elements together in order to have the scenes appear smooth.  The set design of the Horned King’s lair is impressive, filled with dark passages and bizarre etchings.  The magnificent, ominous score works beautifully to introduce the Horned King as a creäture created in the pits of Hell.  Furthermore, the Cauldron Born, the undead creatures the Horned King makes are chilling, although they were excised from the finished cut due to children being frightened of them.  As the plot progresses, though, the animation goes through a weird rollercoaster of not looking quite right.  This was the first, and last, time the multiplane camera would be employed, and the layering looks great.  In certain scenes the animation looks out-of-focus or muted, though; characters will talk but their mouths aren’t moving.  Clearly, this is the result of the editing, but the finished product doesn’t have the high standards of a Disney feature.

There’s really nothing more to say about The Black Cauldron.  Because it is so short and breezy, the plot whisks through and doesn’t deliver a significant payoff.  Gurgi ends up being the hero leaving the audience to wonder, again, why we’ve spent so long with Taran and the damn pig.  The princess does nothing more than cower or say Taran’s name, and the latter doesn’t even have her moving her mouth making me believe she did less before the editing.  The Black Cauldron is an intriguing idea, but the Disney rules force it to be an outcast.  The plot is too shaky, the animation more so, the characters are cardboard, and the ending wraps a ribbon on a corpse to prevent children from being too traumatized.  The Fox and the Hound was a great example of presenting dark material to children.  Here, when you’re attempting to showcase fantasy with real consequences, it doesn’t work; it’s too fantastical.  I recommend it for those who are Disney completists, or want to see something different that the studio will probably never undertake again.

Ronnie Rating:

NEXT WEEK: We discuss my favorite Disney movie, and the kick-starter to the next Golden Age of Disney animation, the 1986 mystery/adventure The Great Mouse Detective.

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The Black Cauldron: 25th Anniversary Special Edition

With 1986′s The Great Mouse Detective we’re inching ever closer to the Disney Renaissance that would go on into the beginning of the 1990s.  It’s not commonly known, but this film is attributed as the originator of the Renaissance, although the most commonly cited movie is 1989′s The Little Mermaid.  It’s a shame we never saw further adventures of Basil of Baker Street, despite an erroneous title citing “The Adventures Of…” but The Great Mouse Detective was the first Disney movie that made me love the studio from its witty British sensibility, engaging mystery, and a bravura performance from Vincent Price as Professor Ratigan.

When little Olivia Flaversham’s (voiced by Susanne Pollatschek) toy-maker father is kidnapped, she enlists the help of the arrogant Basil of Baker Street (voiced by Barrie Ingham).  When Basil discovers that the missing father is bound up in a plot led by the nefarious Professor Ratigan (voiced by Vincent Price), Basil and his assistant Dr. Dawson (voiced by Val Bettin) are on the case.

After the utter failure of The Black Cauldron, Disney was fortunate to nab a successful hit with The Great Mouse Detective, both critically and commercially.  But it’s saddening that nothing further came out of this potential franchise.  The movie saw a title shift after the 1992 re-release, becoming The Adventures of the Great Mouse Detective, after it was decided that nothing further would be done with the series.  From what I’ve read, this was meant to be the lead-in to a slew of stories involving Basil of Baker Street that, for one reason or another, never came to fruition.  With the influx of love for Sherlock Holmes today, I’d love to see what could be done with this series, but I doubt that’s going to happen.  The narrative device of Dr. Dawson narrating, and the mystery being revealed right before the opening credits, could have been familiar tropes of any future films.

As a stand-alone movie, The Great Mouse Detective is an underrated favorite.  I’m not  sure what it is with mice, but Disney’s always been able to create a fully realized world with their mouse protagonists.  Much like The Rescuers, we see a carbon copy of the human world built underneath human feet.  Basil and his friends are shrunken people given mouse features, and it works.  To enhance the connection between Basil and our famous deerstalker-wearing detective, there’s a brief sequence where we see that Basil lives in the famous Baker Street house of Holmes, himself, complete with silhouetted views of Holmes and Watson.  The world-building isn’t as pervasive as in The Rescuers, mainly because the modern day contrivances are removed.  Since the plot is mystery based, there’s no real need to create as many mouse-sized locations and sets, outside of one riverfront bar.  The majority of the action involves the mice climbing and jumping.

The finale, set inside the machinations of Big Ben, marked the first wide-spread use of CGI in an animated sequence, and it holds up today.  We’ve come a long way from the usage of Big Ben in Peter Pan.  There, we only saw the outside as the Darling children and Peter looked for the “second star to the right.”  Here, Basil and Ratigan have a brawl within the cogs of the clock marking a Disney shift from internal to external, hand-drawn to CGI.  The music is not as show-stopping as past and future films, and has less songs, but they’re all catchy and fun.  ”World’s Greatest Criminal Mind” and “Let Me Be Good to You” are early views of what Disney would come up with in the 1990s.

For me, the characters are the perfect blend of camp and British mystery, especially Ratigan.  The animators found themselves sketching Vincent Price while he was performing, so the Shakespearean gestures and facial expressions on-screen were Price’s!  Ratigan is the high camp of villainy that I believe inspired later characters like Ursula and Governor Ratcliffe, the latter is so obvious it’s in the name.  The flamboyance with the character, the ability to laugh at him, makes him more dangerous when he does something you don’t expect.  Has anyone actually heard the lyrics to his theme song?  They’re pretty cruel, revealing that he’s drowned widows and orphans.  He presents a false front because he’s so damn grandiose, but of course it’s all to hide the fact he’s a rat masquerading as a mouse.

The other characters are equally fun.  Barrie Ingham as the voice of Basil and Val Bettin as Dr. Dawson are practically perfect for their characters.  I’ll say this as we get further into recent Disney works, but I miss not having A-list vocal talent because you can enjoy the performance and not worry about spotting which actor is which.  Basil isn’t far removed from the Sherlock we know and love; he’s egotistical, and highly perceptive, and of course he understands “it’s elementary, my dear Dawson!”  Instead of a love interest for the detective, which could seriously bog down a story that’s only an hour and fourteen minutes, the victim is a little girl, which allows Basil to show how much he dislikes children.  Olivia’s sole purpose is to be the damsel, though, and doesn’t add anything other than being a bargaining chip throughout, although she is nabbed in a toy store that’s reminiscent of Pinocchio.

The Great Mouse Detective isn’t an epic story with show-stopping songs, but it makes up for all that in a fun caper story with flamboyant characters and an old-timey mystery.  It’s the diamond in the rough for Disney that could have blossomed into a small, but fun franchise if given a chance.  Disney found themselves adapting books over the next few movies, but I think their strongest effort to start was Basil of Baker Street!

Ronnie Rating:

NEXT WEEK: Disney goes Dickens with Oliver and Company.

Interested in purchasing today’s film?  If you use the handy link below a small portion will be donated to this site!  Thanks! 

The Great Mouse Detective (Two-Disc Special Edition Blu-ray/DVD Combo)

This week’s installment of Journeys in the Disney Vault is special because we are officially halfway through the entire Disney animated canon (there’s 53 movies – the last of which comes out this year – and I did round-up)!  I’m proud of myself that I’ve gotten this far, and can’t wait to get into the movies that I identify and know the most about.  With that, next week kicks off the official start of the Disney Renaissance but, before we get to that masterpiece, we gotta wade past the swampy moat…and that moat is Oliver & Company.  I didn’t care for Disney’s take on Oliver Twist when it came out, and I still don’t care for it now.  The root of the problem is that the movie is EXTREMELY dated; like shoulderpads and mousse dated.  That, and the fact that the movie wants to make this the Billy Joel show creates an unbalanced tone for both kids and adults.  I still don’t care for Robin Hood, but this is one of worst Disney films right next to it.

Disney does Dickens telling the story of orphan cat Oliver (voiced by Joey Lawrence) who is taken in by a gang of streetwise dogs led by Dodger (voiced by Billy Joel).

Oliver & Company was a box-office success upon release and actually did a lot of good for the company.  It was Disney’s return to musicals since The Fox & The Hound, it employed an increased amount of CGI (to the point of needing its own department), and marked Disney’s now standard schedule of one animated film a year.  However, it’s the last film before the Disney Renaissance, the storm before the dawn.  It was went through a convoluted development process as it marched in a new group of animators after Disney’s original Nine Old Men had all retired.  Animation geniuses Glen Keane, Ruben A. Aquino and others all cut their teeth on this before becoming the legends they are.  In terms of story, this was originally intended to be a sequel to The Rescuers (the completed sequel would be released two years later) with Penny returning and detailing her new life in New York with her dog, Georgette.  No matter what’s been said about that idea being shelved, I maintain they simply tweaked a few things and presented that original idea.  Seriously, Penny in The Rescuers and Jenny in this (voiced by Natalie Gregory)…a little too close for comfort.

Jenny is a regurgitated Penny, continuously in trouble and having zero personality.  Other things Disney utilized for the stock little girl: Annie (Oliver is the Annie to her Daddy Warbucks), and can someone explain to me the fascination with poor little rich girls that went on in animation during the 80s-90s?  Jenny is wealthy and her parents aren’t around; its similar territory tread in other animated movies of the time, the one that immediately comes to mind is We’re Back!  A Dinosaur Story (yes, I remember that movie).  We also see the reused idea of a spoiled poodle, here voiced by Bette Midler.  I will say that Georgette, Midler’s character, gets the one memorable song of the movie which hits all the high notes needed for a big Broadway showstopper.  The songs would only get bigger, and more presentable to a future Broadway audience, from here on out.  Oh, and just an aside, does anyone think the cover image for Oliver & Company is a slight reconfiguration of the All Dogs Go to Heaven poster?  Think on that.

If you look back at all the Disney movies that came before, there’s no one particular quality that “dates” the film.  Snow White takes place in a far off land, and outside of the animation it could be anytime in the past.  Even The Rescuers didn’t have anything that would define a particular time period.  Every inch of Oliver & Company screams 1980s; every…damn….thing.  The animation is gritty, worn, and reminiscent of those cartoons that would tell kids to recycle or tell their parents if someone is being abused.  It’s muted and unfinished in a way that’s worse than the xerography process of the 1960s (after The Little Mermaid, hand-inked/drawing would be replaced with computers entirely).  The movements and expressions on the characters are stiff and delayed, a far cry from the fluid work of Disney in the 1930s-1940s!  The opening theme song, the first from legendary composer Howard Ashman, sounds like easy listening music in an elevator.  The two songs defining the movie, “Streets of Gold” and “Why Should I Worry” are as dated as it gets.  The former sounds like any young girl in the 80s with that shout sound effect employed, and the latter is prime Billy Joel; both of them are filtered to sound like Michael Jackson.  The problem with both songs is their so nondescript, either because the 80s just had all music utilizing the  same basic beats and techniques, or because the composer believed people wanted stuff that sounded like what they listened to on the radio.

In terms of characterization, at only an hour and ten minutes there’s zero time to get into personality so all the characters are stereotyped to hell!  Oliver and Jenny are milquetoast, Georgette and Rita (voiced by Sheryl Lee Ralph) are women – seriously that’s their characteristic, oh and one is spoiled the other isn’t – there’s two other dogs who aren’t particularly interesting at all, and there’s Tito (Cheech Marin).  Ah yes, Tito, the stereotypical Mexican.  Tito is an annoying pre-Jar Jar Binks character who encompasses the worst in stereotyping.  He loves burritos, he calls Georgette “woman,” he’s voiced by Cheech Marin, and he listens to a sound that’s a discount version of “La Bamba,” and he’s a Chihuahua.

If Tito’s the character you hate, that makes Dodger the character you’re supposed to love; I mean he’s so cool in the book, right?  No offense to Billy Joel, but he should stick to his day job.  Dodger is meant to be hyper-cool, but for a 1980s movie he’s stuck in the 1950s.  He has an affected accent and dialogue that sounds ripped from the pages of West Side Story.  He truly reminded me of MC Scat Cat (look him up if you’re a late 90s kid)!  And of course, the animators have to remind the audience that Joel is voicing the character, so the parents aren’t bored I guess, by having “sly” references to Joel’s previous work; we see Dodger playing a piano, and inducting Oliver into the “Uptown chapter” of the gang.   Do I need to say dated again?  I have always enjoyed Dom DeLuise‘s voice work, and his work as Fagin is no different from similar roles he’s voiced before. I think his role as Tiger in the Fievel series is a better take on the character.  Wait, wasn’t he in All Dogs Go to Heaven, too?!  Robert Loggia as Sykes is also great because he’s a real-world villain implanted within a children’s film.  The one element of true darkness is within the Sykes character, and while it never works fully with the story that precedes it, he’s one of the better Disney villains and similar to George Sanders in Jungle Book.

Thankfully, Oliver & Company is only a passing blip before the epic reveal of the Disney Renaissance.  On its own merits, the movie is a cheap quickie whose frugality is seen in the lackluster animation, and songs utilized to sound like everything else at the time.  Its worst offense is how dated it is.  Children today might be swayed by the cute animals, but I doubt they’ll be tempted to watch the entirety of the movie.

Ronnie Rating:

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Rent It

Oliver & Company

Buy It

Oliver and Company (20th Anniversary Edition)

I’m surprised how often this is compared to the 1945 Joan Crawford melodrama, Mildred Pierce, because they’re strikingly different.  Sure, they both feature determined mothers yearning to please their daughters, but Stella Dallas is rooted in reality unlike the latter (not to say that I don’t love Mildred Pierce, but it’s sudsy).   While I wasn’t fully believing the overall trajectory of the narrative, another attempt to give Barbara Stanwyck freedom only to give her an eleventh-hour taming, Stanwyck overpowered me with her tenacity and adoration for her daughter.  It provides melodramatic catharsis which frustrates the viewer but makes for a strong tear-jerker.

Stella Martin (Barbara Stanwyck) comes from a working-class family but dreams of marrying successful businessman Stephen Dallas (John Boles).  Her dreams come true, and the couple have a daughter named Laurel (Anne Shirley), but things change once Stella declares Laurel should have the best of everything.

The comparisons to Mildred Pierce aren’t unfounded, but I found Stella Dallas to be just as entertaining as the former film in an entirely different way.  Mildred Pierce is pure noir condemning working mothers and the daughters who resent them.  Stella Dallas is pure soapy melodrama with the message that money can’t buy happiness; Laurel is also infinitely more likeable than Veda.  Stanwyck is earthy and determined, but she’s unbelievable as a “well-bred and refined” woman, leaving the audience to realize right away this role doesn’t look good on her and won’t last.  Stanwyck takes the character of Stella and creates a woman given a taste of wealth, and believing that she has to keep validating herself to justify it.  There’s nothing malicious or scheming with the characters, and she’s not a gold digger which I appreciated.  She simply wants to better herself, and the only way to do that is through a man.  She uses opportunity and doesn’t wait for Stephen to come to her.  Stephen is also an opportunist, marrying Stella to get over a bad breakup, and in this way the couple are perfect for each other; however, they’re both lying from the go.  Stephen believes he loves Stella the way she is, but once they enter society he nudges her to “adapt” and be refined.

Before the story switches to being a tale of mothers and daughters, Stella Dallas is about a woman’s place and identity after marriage.  Stella is good enough for Stephen to marry, but once she’s around his type of people she’s no longer on the same level.  Once Laurel is born Stella doesn’t understand why she can’t go out and have a good time now and then; she seeks activity, not laying down.  These are common issues women were facing all through the 1930s and into the 1950s, and while Stella Dallas drops the plot once Stella discovers her maternal instincts, it must have been a conversation starter in 1937.

The switch to Stella and Laurel is where the movie turns into schmaltz, albeit good schmaltz.  Stanwyck may not evoke images of a refined lady, but she excels at playing a mother (interesting considering her real-life relationship with her son).  The scenes where Stanwyck plays with the baby are enough to make me want to be a mother like her.  You can see a connection between mother and child, and while Stella’s transition from wild party girl to mother feels abrupt, Stanwyck’s personality is believable.  I respected the script’s desire not to contain the characters into boxes labeled “good” and “evil,” which happens a lot in Mildred Pierce.  Neither Stella nor Stephen are terrible characters.  They may have gotten divorced but they still care enough about each other to want the best for Laurel.  Since Stella is the main character we watch her make poor decisions, but they stem from her background.  She doesn’t believe in education and wants Stephen to buy Laurel a fur coat instead of books.  To Stella, Laurel’s interest in culture is a result of being amongst the wealthy, and her greatest fear is that Laurel will come to the realization that her mother isn’t good enough (becoming a Veda).  While Laurel never blames her mother for anything, it is society that sees Stella’s ridiculous love of wealth, taking it out on Laurel in a scene where no one comes to the girl’s birthday.

Similarly, Laurel is a decent young girl who believes in what’s really important: family.  Where Veda sought material wealth and was willing to eat anyone who got in her way, Laurel seeks domesticity; a normal house with a garden and rooms for everyone.  I have to wonder if Laurel is a response to the hedonistic views women were adopting in the 1930s.  “Be careful ladies, you’re going to ruin your children if you aspire to wealth.  All they really want is a home and someone to love them.”  It eventually leads Stella to want to do what’s best and leave Laurel to wealth.  I found the ending to be highly disingenuous, effectively stating that if you’re too embarrassing or can’t fit into the right society, than remove yourself from it entirely.  Stella is neither the flower or the goddess that Helen Morrison (Barbara O’Neil) is, and she shouldn’t try to be.  The ending leaves nothing for Stella except sadness and loss.  She loses her daughter for what?  Out of a misguided belief that the child is happier?  I don’t understand the “I need to make them hate me so they’ll leave and be happy” endings and it leaves a sour taste.

Regardless of the ending, Stella Dallas is a strong soaper with a stunning performance from Barbara Stanwyck.  There’s no outright cruelty from the characters, they’re real and not really ridiculous.

Ronnie Rating:

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Stella Dallas (1937)

We’re officially at the end of the 1980s!  The Little Mermaid ushered in a string of hits, both commercially and critically, that would spark off the Disney Renaissance.  From here on in, the studio was taken seriously, eventually working their way into the Academy Awards.  The Little Mermaid is probably my favorite Disney movie.  It’s the first one I saw, and the one I’m still able to quote incessantly, which is not to say that’s the story is perfect.  The original story is downright depressing, and I won’t be inventing the wheel with my opinions against it, but seriously…the story is misogynist and a taste creepy.  Regardless of all that, though, I adore this film.  The perfect vocal cast, the introduction of catchy, Broadway-esque songs, and a love story supplemented by beautiful Disney animation.  The Little Mermaid is a classic in my house, and always will be.

Ariel (voiced by Jodie Benson) is a teenage mermaid who dreams of going to the surface to become “part of that world.”  When she gives up her voice to the sea-witch Ursula (voiced by Pat Carroll) in exchange for legs, the little mermaid has a short amount of time to make a human fall in love with her.

The Little Mermaid was a huge blockbuster for Disney, grossing over $200 million dollars at the time.  It also ushered in a new model of home entertainment, getting released on video eight months after its release in theaters.  It also introduced the composing team of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, who would create some of the most enduring songs between this and Beauty and the Beast.

Based on the premise alone, my main issue against The Little Mermaid is apparent.  The theme involves a young girl (remember, Ariel is only 16, so not an adult) giving up her voice for a man she just met.  Furthermore, the movie shows that you don’t have to be an eloquent speaker so long as you have a good body and pretty face.  Ursula’s song, “Poor Unfortunate Souls” does detail all this, and the fact that the villain is stating it should imply that it’s wrong, but the movie never contradicts that.  Even at story’s end when the couple are reunited, there’s no discussions between them or anything else to make Prince Eric love Ariel on a more than superficial level.

With that out-of-the-way, allow me to gush sycophantically about this movie!  I remember seeing this at the age of five, and after that I became a Little Mermaid addict – complete with bed sheets and wallpaper.  The underwater world of the movie is filled with a monarchy free-floating (pun intended) world of beauty.  The animation here has never looked lovelier, and while I know people say the ballroom scene is the best example of Disney animation, I’d argue that the underwater sequences are just as spectacular.  The trickiest thing was getting Ariel’s hair to flow, and it’s entirely natural; a testament to the fantastic usage for the CAPS system that Disney was employing.

The songs, voice cast, and pacing all work to the story’s advantage.  There’s never a moment that feels like filler, and all the songs are fantastic and catchy.  Composers Menken and Ashman were geniuses at creating big, show-stopping numbers, and it all started here.  “Poor Unfortunate Souls,” “Part of Your World,” and “Kiss the Girl” are inventive compositions with distinct shifts in tone and direction.  The first, sung by the gravelly voice Pat Carroll, is a strong burlesque number that isn’t sung but growled.  The character of Ursula was modeled on drag-queen Divine, and Pat Carroll imbues the character with a flamboyant, boozy demeanor that makes you fear her as you laugh at her.  Jodie Benson has such a sweet voice and makes “Part of Your World” not a teen’s angsty lament, but a soulful yearning for freedom.  Benson is one of my heroes and she even when she’s petulant (as all 16-year-olds are), she’s fierce.  Samuel E. Wright also have a great calypso-tinged voice that he lends to “Kiss the Girl” and “Under the Sea.”  The sheer amount of songs that people are aware of, I think, makes this a more popular movie (musically) than Beauty and the Beast or Lion King.

I love this movie, unconditionally and despite its flawed story.  I grew up with Jodie Benson, Pat Carroll, and others telling me of a magical world under the sea, and I’m not ashamed to admit it; I still want to be part of that world!

Ronnie Rating:

NEXT WEEK: With the close of another decade I’ll be taking a week off.  I’ll return May 18th, kicking off the 1990s with the first Disney sequel: The Rescuers Down Under!

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The Little Mermaid (Two-Disc Platinum Edition)

**This is my contribution to the Mary Astor blogathon.  You can see the rest of the contributions over at Silver Screenings  or Tales of the Easily Distracted 

Meet Me in St. Louis came highly recommended to me due to its place as a musical classic, and because it’s got the downright angelic Margaret O’Brien who I praised heavily in my Christmas review of Little Women.  So, as I tend to do with blogathons, I used my contribution to cross a recommendation off my list.  I won’t sugarcoat it: I have A LOT of crow to eat….read on.

In the year 1904, the year of the St. Louis World’s Fair, the Smith family get lessons in life and love.

The plot of Meet Me in St. Louis has a lot to unpack, and yet it’s all wrapped around one prime location for the two-hour runtime, so apologies for the brief plot synopsis.  Regardless, it’s a well-acknowledged fact that I don’t care for the work of Vincente Minnelli.  Generally, I find his visuals and slavish devotion to abrupt song and dance makes for an overrated experience; story comes third to songs/dances and visuals.  However, I absolutely fell in love with Meet Me in St. Louis!  I won’t say I love Minnelli (it’ll take a few more movies), but I laughed and cried like a baby.  The nostalgic reverence for the turn-of-the-century is lovingly depicted in this sentimental drama with an emotional punch you don’t see coming (at least I didn’t see it).  Since the plot, based on a series of books by Sally Benson spans several months there’s no time to superfluity, of which I find Minnelli is the master of; at a little under two hours, the time flies by.

Some brief history emphasizing why Meet Me in St. Louis is the seminal movie musical that it is: It ushered in the golden era of movie musicals, mostly under producer-lyricist Arthur Freed.  It ended up being the second most successful film for MGM behind Gone With the Wind.  This was Minnelli’s third film which I also believe is to his advantage as he couldn’t get wrapped up in needing to find a consistent style or series of tropes (again, something I find to be in all his subsequent works).  This also marked a turning point for Judy Garland‘s career, being her first major success post-Wizard of Oz (although she was playing 17 at the age of 22).

Meet Me in St. Louis is commonly considered a Christmas movie, and while there is a Christmas segment I probably wouldn’t add this to my Christmas movie list.  The connection probably comes from the romanticized version of living the movie presents.  Being released in 1944, the movie provided hope and a return to the normality for many at the time.  The passing of the seasons are represented by filigree tintype cards that are lovely and present that sentimental look at the world that we yearn to return to.  From there, the plot follows the Smith family and becomes an ensemble.  As a whole, the story comprises the basic progression of not only the Smith’s, but technology and the formulation of a city; a key piece of the movie is the St. Louis World’s fair, and the invention of the telephone.  The world is presented through rose-colored glasses and it makes for a lovely adventure.  The principle twist involves the family moving to New York.  It’s significance wouldn’t have been lost on 1940s viewers; a move from a large, urban, metropolitan area; the loss of innocence, the end of an era, and the loss of an uncomplicated way of life.

The acting is what excels, and each member of the family truly feels as if they’ve known each other forever.  I didn’t see actors, but a true family experiencing life’s trials and tribulations – much of which is in Benson’s original novels.  Judy Garland is the name star of the group, playing Esther Smith, and she’s riddled with complexity.  She’s introduced acting snobbish, warning that her older sister Rose (Lucille Bremer) needs to get married soon because she “isn’t getting any younger.”  While Esther worries about her sister, she yearns to find love herself, specifically with the boy-next door, John Truett (Tom Drake).  Garland’s the mistress of the starry-eyed expression and when she’s pouring her heart out, searching for magic in love, you believe it just like you did when she wanted to go over the rainbow.  Her first song, about the eponymous boy, is an ode to neglected girls everywhere and the emotions are heightened by close-ups showing the secret feelings she can’t express.  (Minnelli employs the camera to convey emotion, which he loses in subsequent films when it’s about dance sequences.)  Garland’s voice is beautiful, obviously, and pervades your soul.  Her rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” always puts me in tears, and with the added visual of her singing and baby Margaret O’Brien sobbing, I was a mess!

Rose and Esther’s love stories are never ham-fisted or cloying, but swirled into the drama of the rest of the group.  When Rose says there’s more to life than boys, you don’t believe her, but the movie never hammers home the fact that Rose is running on borrowed time.  Lucille Bremer plays Rose as a flighty girl who doesn’t realize she is.  In fact, her long-distance relationship with Warren Sheffield (Robert Sully) emphasizes the technological advances of the telephone and hilariously shows how unreliable it was for romance.  Being the eldest, she’s also the one to dispense advice to the others, such as telling Esther men “don’t want the bloom rubbed off.”  While the audience is aware that a woman’s virginity is highly prized, I was surprised that the script doesn’t hammer that home next to Rose’s age; talk about progress!

If Garland didn’t rope me in, I was utterly transfixed by the precocious Margaret O’Brien who was seven playing five.  I adored her as Beth in Little Women, but that was nothing compared to her as Tootie Smith.  For one, she’s looks like a little angel dropped down from Heaven, cute enough to eat with a spoon!  Also, she witnesses all the events and experiences them with fresh eyes, similar to the audience.  A child growing up in that era has a wholly different perspective of events than an adult, and that comes through excellently.  I loved the character traits she’s given, including a macabre sense of humor and a love of death.  She’s also a smartass, telling Rose that Warren hasn’t called because “he found another girl.”  She’s the type of five-year-0ld I wanted to be, or at least have as a best friend.  The two best scenes she’s given are at Halloween and Christmas.  The former has her going to perform a prank on a neighbor she doesn’t like – the neighbors are all aware of the pranks and simply ask the children to return whatever they “steal” – and the camera mimics her POV by tracking her at the same height.  As she gets to the door, the look of fear on her face gets bigger (and hilariously adorable) as she approaches the house, lit from below to increase the terror.  When she finally gets to the door and throws the flour on the neighbor, running away screaming, she’s relieved and happy to be declared “the bravest of them all!” Every experience Tootie is given mimics the universal reality of childhood itself.  The second scene returns us to that Christmas sequence with Garland singing.  If Garland’s song doesn’t make you bawl, the innocent face of O’Brien weeping will melt your heart (or prove you never had one to begin with).  Frustrated and feeling small, Tootie runs outside and decapitates her snowman family, blending and perverting her love of death.  It’s a powerful sequence, watching this small girl act out her rage, another moment of a character having to hide their true feelings, and its traumatizing watching this little girl be in such pain.  It’s a comfort watching Esther care for the little girl, and shows how heart-felt their sisterly bond is.

Of course, with all the excellent characters (including the aforementioned Mary Astor, Marjorie Main, Harry Davenport, and Leon Ames), I almost forgot the songs.  Other than the Christmas tune, I enjoyed “The Trolley Song,” if only because it’s indelibly linked with Garland.  I feared that after the first song, which had characters spontaneously singing and dancing, musical sequences would spring from nothing, but everything is organic and natural.

Meet Me in St. Louis is a perfect movie, and the first first-time viewing of 2013 to garner a five-star review!  I implore everyone to watch this and buy it.  I was fortunate to see this on Blu-Ray and it’s one of the best transfers I’ve witnessed.  The colors are rich and vibrant and it goes along with this jolly movie!

Ronnie Rating:

Interested in purchasing today’s film?  If you use the handy link below a small portion will be donated to this site!  Thanks!

Rent It

Meet Me In St. Louis

Buy It On DVD

Meet Me In St. Louis (Two-Disc Special Edition)

Buy It On Blu-Ray (Highly recommended)

Meet Me in St. Louis [Blu-ray Book]

The next four days will be devoted to the films of actress Jane Withers.  Why, do you ask?  A) Because I got a mess of her movies that I want to review and B) because the reviews lead up to my full interview with the star.  (I feel pretty proud to have nabbed an interview at all).  Since her movies generally run an hour or so, and because the Fox Archive DVDs lack any bonus content, I’ll be doubling up on reviews.  The first two movies spotlight Withers at her youngest, and poise her as a tangible Shirley Temple substitute (of which Withers said she never wanted to be).  Let’s kick off Four Days with Jane – I just came up with that – with Little Miss Nobody and Paddy O’Day.

Little Miss Nobody follows orphaned Judy Devlin (Withers) who escapes living in a reform school and meets up with a kind man (Ralph Morgan) involved in shady business dealings.

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment

When I say Withers’ early films poised her as a Shirley Temple clone, I point to Little Miss Nobody.  I mean, even the title sounds similar to Temple’s Little Miss Marker!  Thankfully, there’s nothing similar to Temple’s work other than the title and the general idea.  In watching all of Withers’ work, I find her to be a genuine, real-world little girl; I could never envision Shirley being placed in any of the situations Withers was in and not come off like a china doll.  Withers is the average American child, a lovable scamp in comparison to the idealistic Temple.  Withers plays pranks on those who “have it comin’” and only apologizes when she realizes she’s done wrong.  The only slight I noticed with Withers were the over-the-top vocal affectations that did feel similar to how Temple talked, although I found Withers to be channeling Carol Burnett more than Temple.

As for the film, Little Miss Nobody is a simple (only 70-so minutes) story about a little girl finding her family.  Judy does bad in the name of the good, such as switching name tags on a box to get her best friend adopted by a wealthy man, or stealing food for the orphan children’s Thanksgiving.  The only one who sees Judy for the sweet girl that she is is the kindly maid (Jane Darwell).  The movie is filled with a few song and dance numbers (another Temple trait, although Withers’ songs are modern in a way that Temple’s aren’t).   The narrative doesn’t pick up until Judy is sent to reform school – there’s realistic consequences in this movie! – and finds a man she hopes will be her savior.  Withers and Morgan take on an Annie/Daddy Warbucks scenario without the excess money and with an added dose of crime.  The actual ending is far too “Little Princess” with Judy’s birthright being discovered and the young girl forgetting about all the events that happened, but being only 70 minutes you have to make an exception there.  Little Miss Nobody isn’t as good as the other movie in this review, but it’s a fun, early foray into the marketing of Withers as a Shirley Temple-esque character, and I’m glad she never became an outright copy!

Next is Paddy O’Day starring a very young Rita Cansino (you’re not a true classic film fan if you don’t know that pre-Hollywood name!).  Paddy O’Day tells of an immigrant who arrives in the U.S. only to discover her mother is dead.  She goes to the wealthy family who employed her mother, and hopes that her loveable ways will inspire them to keep her.

Paddy O’Day’s claim to fame is that 17-year-old Rita Hayworth is present, and she is just as gorgeous here as she would be in Gilda!  She plays Tamara, a Russian immigrant and best friend to Jane’s Paddy.  Again, at only 73 minutes, the story founders in slapstick comedy but it’s entertaining due to how well-down Withers and Hayworth are.  Withers puts on a highly convincing Irish accent and exhibits strong comedic timing; when her dog starts barking on the ship she smiles and says, “sausages.”  The story is similar to Little Miss Nobody, and a few other Withers films, in which we’re meant to make fun of the wealthy.  Here, Paddy stumbles into a family who are the stereotypical selfish rich; they worry about the cat before worrying about their children.  The only member of the family with a heart is the bumbling Roy (Pinky Tomlin) is a bizarre combination of idle rich and country bumpkin.  Tomlin isn’t much of an actor and he’s nowhere near good enough for the beautiful Hayworth.  Hayworth is exotic and innocent but she does lose that Russian accent quickly.  I enjoyed Paddy O’Day, especially in comparison to Little Miss Nobody, especially for the sweet relationship between Withers and Hayworth.  A fact: Hayworth and Withers were great friends (as Withers was with several other actors in her films), and Withers gave the eulogy at Hayworth’s funeral.

Ronnie Rating for Little Miss Nobody:

Ronnie Rating for Paddy O’Day:

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Little Miss Nobody

Little Miss Nobody

Paddy O’Day

Paddy O’Day

Day 2 in the Four Days with Jane series, and we see another set of  movies dealing with the immigrant experience, and spirited teenage hijinks.  These two see Withers getting older, with the latter being the actresses’ solid foray into young adulthood.  Once again, one is better than the other, and each have their individual merits.

Addie (Withers) and her family are transients who sell trinkets to townsfolk out of their wagon.  When they reach New York City, they have to band together in order to prevent being split apart.

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment

Chicken Wagon Family is a bizarre little film that tries to blend a family comedy with social commentary; one is good, and the other is just basic.  With WWII on the rise, the story hopes to revitalize the belief in the American Dream, with the parents being immigrants and the older sister, Cecile (Marjorie Weaver) desiring wealth.  There’s a clash of wills presented throughout the movie that never feels truly resolved.  When the family moves to the big city you get shades of The Grapes of Wrath (or the East Coast version of the Beverly Hillbillies) and watch them compete in a world where money rules all.  It makes for some humorous sequences, such as Addie using the barter system, and the belief that if a house is uninhabited why not use it, that make for good social commentary.  The family makes use of all items and never let money get the best of them; if anything, Chicken Wagon Family teaches us how we should be better people.  The narrative takes a turn for the serious when the family’s financial problems become an issue.  Leo Carillo as the patriarch of the family has a tender-hearted speech he gives to the family mule; it may be an animal, but it’s the sweetest part of the movie!

As for Withers, this is the first movie I saw where she loses herself in young love.  As Addie, she’s the little sister with a strong connection to her father, and competes with her pretty, older sister.  In a few ways, the relationship between Addie and her dad is tighter than his relationship with his wife (father and daughter call each other “partner”).  While Withers is still hammy with her big eyes and arms always moving, it works for the character; she’s a natural huckster and could sell ice to an Eskimo!  I did appreciate Addie’s genuine surprise at being told she’s beautiful.  It’s obvious the girl has never been told that, especially when compared to the beautiful Weaver.  My issue is how that’s immediately contradicted by making Withers the dupe who doesn’t realize the guy she likes truly likes her sister.  It’s all easily resolved, but I could have done without it, and it would have made Withers’ character stronger.

Next on deck is Golden Hoofs (yes, I realize it’s Hooves, but that’s what the DVD calls it).  The story follows Jane Drake (Withers), who works on her grandfather’s horse farm.  When an idealistic man named Dean (Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers) wants to sell the farm, Jane has to find a way to get the man interested in the horses.

Golden Hoofs suffers from lack of time the most, clocking in at a measly 68 minutes.  Withers is the best of the bunch, but the movie wastes her in trite love stories.  The relationship between her and Rogers’ character is weird because she looks significantly younger than him.  On top of that, the script feminizes her too much – putting her in dresses and constantly having to remind her she’s pretty.  In Chicken Wagon Family, it worked because she was still a kid.  Here, she’s a tenacious, resourceful young woman who shouldn’t have to be reminded of her worth via appearance nor should it make her incapable of doing her job.  Of course we do get an abundance of cheesy moments such as Jane not realizing she’s singing out loud (although Withers is so fantastic at being precocious you can’t help but smile); I simply wish Withers was allowed to rise above, and not be reduced to the little girl lusting after the older man.  With that being said, Withers has such a natural rapport with the horses in the film, and it’s not surprising that those are the best sequences in Golden Hoofs; that, and the ending horse race is filmed well!

Out of the two, the edge goes to Chicken Wagon Family.  The close-knit ensemble works and there’s various layers in a way that’s lacking in Golden Hoofs.  The latter film is fairly one-note outside of Withers’ acting and love for the animals.  I’d say check out Chicken Wagon Family, and see Golden Hoofs if you’re a Withers completist.

Ronnie Rating for Chicken Wagon Family:

Ronnie Rating for Golden Hoofs:

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Chicken Wagon Family

Chicken-Wagon Family

Golden Hoofs

Golden Hoofs

The final three films in the Four Days with Jane series show  the good, the bad, and the ugly!  High School and Rascals are Jane at her madcap best, with the edge going to the latter.  The final one, The Farmer Takes a Wife, is a Jane Withers film in name only as the movie is really a leading vehicle for Janet Gaynor and Henry Fonda.  Unfortunately, this was the worst of the bunch and could have benefited from being released separately.  Overall, one downright bad movie is fine in a set of seven with the remaining six worth watching!

Set on the banks of the Erie Canal, farmer Dan Harrow (Henry Fonda) falls for a ship’s cook named Molly (Janet Gaynor).  The two want completely different things:  He wants to be a farmer, while she never wants to leave the water.  When Molly’s employer Klore (Charles Bickford) sets to pick a fight with Dan, Molly has to figure out where she truly belongs.

Let’s start with the movie that has absolutely no reason to be in this set.  Okay, it has some reason since it does have Jane as the precocious child, Della, whose got two scenes in the film; she shows up in the beginning and again an hour later (the movie is 90 minutes).  She’s cute, but she’s “the kid” and nothing else.  The rest of the picture is devoted to Dan and Molly who I detested!  Henry Fonda is a far better actor than he is here.  The director, the acclaimed Victor Fleming, wants Dan to be a mild-mannered, quiet man but Fonda just comes off as medicated.  He drawls out sentences like he has a hard time speaking, and it becomes irritating having to lean forward to hear him finish off a sentence.  I’ve never  seen Gaynor in anything, but if the little-girl who could throw a punch is the persona she perfected I’m happy to stay away.  All her lines consist of her love for “the Erie.”  I was so sick of hearing “Erie,” “canal” and “farm” that I could have gotten alcohol poisoning if I was drinking.  The problem is that the movie has zero idea where it wants to go.  It’s a boat without a captain.  Does it want to be a love story?  Is it about the issues between progress and leisure?  Is it for or against technology?  It’s all and none.  The first 40 minutes introduce all the characters in the sleepy town that we start in, and then we move on to Rochester (at least that’s where I’m assuming we ended up.  Gaynor just kept saying “Rochester” like a CD skipping).  Their love story is pointless because neither one wants to hear the other’s dream.  At one point Molly says Dan can never ever talk about getting a farm.  I’m sorry, but a woman who downright refuses to let you talk about what you want in life isn’t marriage material.  There’s little chemistry between Fonda and Gaynor, and you just want to slap Dan for believing that Molly would be a good wife.  Of course, the ending involves her coming back to him, simply because the movie has 30 seconds left.  The Farmer Takes a Wife also has the worst transfer out of all the films.  There’s a few moments where scenes are obviously cut and spliced together, and a few sequences where voice work is dubbed over nothing.  It’s the worst of the bunch, hands down.

Rascals tells of a loveable gypsy, appropriately named Gypsy (Withers) who stumbles on an amnesiac girl and takes her in.

Rascals is a cut-and-dry story involving a young girl, a traveling troupe of gypsies, and an amnesiac who of course turns out to be wealthy.  Here, we see Withers playing a role she perfected as she got older: that of a mother/wife stand-in.  We saw it a bit in Chicken Wagon Family with her relationship with her dad, but it’s more pronounced here with Gypsy being the only female in a group of men.  I had reservations about the whole thing, but Withers excels at playing the adult garbed in child’s clothes, and actually is more of an adult than the men around her.  The plot literally revolves around the two elements described, so the 77 minute runtime works to the story’s advantage.  The climax comes when Rawnie (Rochelle Hudson) goes in for brain surgery and doesn’t remember her gypsy friends.  It’s ridiculous, but the story makes it worth caring about.  Withers’ makes it so, especially in a touching sequence where the camera lingers on her face when she discovers Rawnie no longer knows who she is.  You don’t come to be invested in the poor little rich girl’s story, but you always return to Withers and her look of hopeful disappointment.

Finally, High School follows Withers as Jane Wallace, a rambunctious Texas girl forced to go to a snooty San Antonio school in order to interact with others.

High School is a fun film, portraying the typical “quirky girl gets sent to a snooty school and shakes things up.”  Withers is so bubbly and unrefined which makes you root for her more than any of the other students.  It’s believable that she’s a cowgirl whose not afraid to get her hands dirty (see my review of Golden Hoofs).  There’s a running theme throughout all her movies in that she’s a girl who never gives up or backs down from a challenge.  Again, I refer to Shirley Temple; Shirley never gave up, but things came so easy to her.  Here, Jane’s characters don’t live a life of privilege and still persevere.  Then again, when your arch-nemesis is a girl named Cuddles (Lillian Porter), there’s not much to fight against.  There’s also a pretty funny sequence here where Jane sings in Italian (impressive albeit intentionally poor).  Be on the lookout for Jiminy Cricket aka Cliff Edwards as an employee of Jane’s dad.

Ronnie Rating for Farmer Takes a Wife:

Ronnie Rating for Rascals:

Ronnie Rating for High School:

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Please remember: These films are made on-demand upon ordering and use the best prints available.

The Farmer Takes a Wife

Farmer Takes A Wife

Rascals

Rascals

High School

High School

I’ve returned with a new decade in the Disney Vault.  The nineties saw Disney churning out film upon film, so it’ll take almost all summer for me to get through this decade.   The Rescuers Down Under was the first Disney sequel (and one of the few, for several years, to see a theatrical release).  Unfortunately, Disney’s sequel to the 1977 The Rescuers is a misfire that doesn’t benefit, nor does it do anything for, the characters established in the first Rescuers film.  The movie capitalizes on the nineties love for Australia and environmentalism, and slaps “the Rescuers” on the box; a work of art for the Disney CAPS system (and the flying sequences are lovely), but don’t go into this expecting to see further adventures from Bernard and Bianca.

When a young boy is kidnapped, Rescue Aid Society members Bernard and Bianca (voiced by Bob Newhart and Eva Gabor) must travel to the land down under in order to save him from the villainous McLeach (voiced by George C. Scott).

As mentioned above, The Rescuers Down Under was a first for the Disney Company; the first animated film and the first all-digital feature (past films had used the CAPS system for a handful of scenes).  A third Rescuers feature was planned, but actress Eva Gabor passed away in 1996, scrapping all future plans for the series.  Who knows if any of that would have gone through had Gabor lived because this was such a commercial disappointment – making $47 million on a $37 million budget (Disney studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg was so disappointed by the box office that he pulled all advertisements for it after the first week).

For some reason, audiences loved Australia and saving the environment, particularly in children’s film.  For every Ferngully there was a Once Upon a Forest, all with the intention of teaching children that they had to do their part to save the little animals – or fairies in the case of Ferngully – from the evil villain known as “MAN.”  What better way to capitalize on all the things we love about the 90s than take two characters from a dour Disney movie, and inject them into a story that wraps up everything?  Unfortunately, you get The Rescuers Down Under.  I’m being a little harsh; it’s not a bad film by any means, simply unrealized.  The flying sequences, capitalizing on Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki who was making a name for himself on US shores, are beautifully rendered via the CAPS system; and you still get to see the always amazing Eva Gabor and Bob Newhart return to voice Bernard and Bianca.  The problem is the script has little interest in Bernard and Bianca themselves.

What worked for the first film was the Rescue Aid Society, an international coalition of mice who take on the cases that  humans don’t.   Here, the mice are no different from the countless other animals in the world.  Hell, the first thirty seconds have a talking kangaroo talking to the boy, Cody (Adam Ryen) who stands in for Penny.  There’s no real-world connections here, or grander stakes.  The absolute lack of context is unsettling, especially because the first film set up the world to a “T.”  They were underestimated throughout – “two little mice.  What can you do?” – and the ingenuity came in watching them craft a duplicate world that was so similar to ours.  It could be since audiences should have watched the first movie there was no need to waste time on filler, but there is absolutely nothing done to set-up this supposedly new and original story.  The opening credits are a generic sequence showing bugs on the ground before rapidly racing the camera towards a location.  An orchestral score – which is beautiful – ramps up the tension despite the lack of a discernible theme song, and lasts less than thirty seconds.  From there we meet Cody, who runs away from his house for reasons unknown, to go into the woods.  He’s apparently hearing a signal and wakes up all the animals, commanding them to follow.  What is his relationship to the animals?  Why does he feel the need to run away without telling his mom and wander aimlessly in the Australian outback (I’ll get to the use of location in a second)?  Furthermore, how can he talk to animals?  Penny was able to talk to the mice and Rufus the cat because she was so lonely.  In this, every animal talks  because they want to!  It’s jarring to have animals open up their mouths and speak perfect English without any build-up; And why can only certain animals talk?  The eagle that Cody is determined to save, and McLeach’s monitor lizard, Joanna, don’t speak.

Oh, Cody; the kid we’re supposed to care about.  Penny was a perfect victim because she was kidnapped and forced to put her life in peril.  The fact that she was an orphan worked to the Rescue Aid Society’s advantage because she had no family to report her missing, and thus the cops never became integrated into events.  The Rescuers Down Under desperately wants to court little boys, and thus the movie makes Cody a mini-adventurer who almost dies within the first two minutes.  He recklessly puts his life in danger, for no other reason than he’s the lone animal activist of the Australian outback, and McLeach simply explains away anyone finding him by throwing the boy’s backpack in crocodile infested waters.  A few times throughout, news footage is interspersed of the “search” for Cody, but since we never see Cody reunited with his mother I guess it’s assumed he got home whenever he damn well felt like it; maybe next time he’ll leave his mother a note!

McLeach is a villain on par with Shere Khan, where the voice is the distinctive part of the villain.  No man does frightening quite like George C. Scott!  However, McLeach isn’t utilized to full effect.  He’s got some terrifying sequences, such as his macabre performance of “Home on the Range,” but he generally just abuses his pet and drags Cody around.  In the first film, you believed Medusa was willing to kill Penny to get what she wanted; while McLeach threatens Cody with violence, and at the end decides to tie up loose ends by killing him, he keeps the kid confined as another simple solution to the plot.  The script sets itself up and then goes back over events by quickly having a character say something to cover up the flaws while hoping to enlarge the story.  By “enlarging” the story, it’s all surface level things, such as moving from the US city to the vast locale of Australia.  I apologize to those reading this from Australia because The Rescuers Down Under does nothing but stereotype your country.  McLeach and Cody are American (although Cody has an Australian mother) and the only character who lives in Australia and has an accent is the mouse, Jake (voiced by Tristan Rogers).  The movie could have taken place anywhere else since the only connections to the land are kangaroos and koalas – apparently the only representatives of the country (and don’t forget the fact that cities have nondescript names like  “Satan’s Gulch” and “Nightmare Alley…” or something to that effect).  How is it that audiences loved the country so much, yet screenwriters never took the time to accurately portray the place.

So I mentioned a new mouse, but there’s a vast panoply of characters in this.  There’s at least a dozen additional animal characters, and three running plots all within a 77-minute movie.  We have Jake, who’s the fly in the ointment between Bernard and Bianca as a quasi-rival for Bianca’s affections although the plot goes nowhere.  You also have a cadre of animal friends who are stuck in McLeach’s lair with Cody, including a lizard character named Frank (voiced by Wayne Robson) who’s another Gurgi, although less annoying, and you have Wilbur (voiced by John Candy) whose plot is that he’s hurt and being operated on by crazed mice.  And where do Bernard and Bianca fit in, you ask?  The script doesn’t bother to introduce them till 15 solid minutes into events!  Of a 77 minute movie!  With the sheer abundance of needless characters, Bernard and Bianca do little besides get in trouble.  In the original, the mice were able to work with what they had to achieve their goals and had agency.  You’d think that all the trees and open space would help, but Bernard and Bianca are forced to rely on other animals, or simply end up captured.  Ultimately, The Rescuers Down Under proves it doesn’t need the rescuers at all.

When the film is about Bernard and Bianca it’s good; when it’s about McLeach it’s good.  Overall, though, The Rescuers Down Under is not good.  Too many characters, too much story, and a thin script taxes the film and cuts down the good elements to a sliver.  A faltering step in the Disney Renaissance.

Ronnie Rating:

NEXT WEEK: Disney talks about inner beauty with Beauty and the Beast

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The Rescuers: 35th Anniversary Edition (The Rescuers / The Rescuers Down Under) (Three-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo in Blu-ray Packaging)

I’m writing this review later in the day for several reasons: 1) I watched the movie late at night and didn’t have the energy to churn out a decent review, and 2) I struggled to figure out the best way to convey my disdain for this film.  I picked A Summer Place for my entry into the Children in Film blogathon (all of the contributions can be found here) because it I had originally put this on my TCM Top Twelve last June, and I wanted to cover more of the work of troubled teen star Sandra Dee; I bet on the wrong film!  A Summer Place desperately wants to be a Douglas Sirk film (and for a while I believed Sirk was behind it), but it doesn’t have the panache or the inherent camp quality that Sirk did.  While this may have been hot stuff back in the early 60s, it’s tired, weird, and downright unlikeable.  Each character’s worst traits are painted liberally onto their character, and at times I wasn’t sure if the “heroes” were true, or simply the least hateful people.  So, get a coffee and put on the schmaltzy earworm from Hell known at the “Theme From A Summer Place” (Google it and you’ll instantly recognize it) and let’s explore this late 50s stinker!

Self-made businessman Ken Jorgensen (Richard Egan) returns to the small, coastal town of Pine Island with his frigid wife, Helen (Constance Ford) and sweet daughter Molly (Sandra Dee).  Ken also hopes to see the girl the got away: Sylvia Hunter (Dorothy McGuire), who has married drunken lout Bart (Arthur Kennedy).  As Ken and Sylvia get closer together, their children, including Sylvia’s son Johnny (Troy Donahue) are bristling to explore their burgeoning sexuality.

Director and screenwriter Delmar Daves had a prolific career, both behind the camera and on the page.  In running over his filmography he’s crafted one of the foremost romance films, An Affair to Remember (which he wrote), and one of the lesser Bogie/Bacall dramas, Dark Passage (director/screenwriter).  He’s certainly diverse, but here he hopes to create a paragon to Douglas Sirk without any of the technique.  Sirk was able to utilize melodrama to create layered narratives; he used irony, parody, and interesting camera angles to give the audience his true intentions while having the characters appear tirelessly corny.  While it might have been revolutionary – and the frank discussion of teenage sexuality are appropriately adult, when talked about by adults – here there’s too many elements that feel dirty.

The movie’s claim to fame is in the discussion of sexuality, which starts out well.  Ken and Helen live a sexless life, for reasons that are unknown outside of Helen screaming that sex is dirty and something that must be “endured.”  Because we’re meant to see Helen as a villain, you don’t need any further characterization.  Instead of wasting time having Ken and Sylvia discuss the merits of an affair, and how it could ruin lives, they simply say “Okay, let’s do this thing!” (Okay, they might have said it in a more eloquently).  The parents affair is intriguing because it’s acted and scripted with an eye on reality.  Helen finds out about the affair easily, and during a ludicrous conversation with her mother, decides to find a way to catch them.  Unfortunately, that’s dropped when the couple admits it.  However, the fallout feels very real, right down to Arthur calling Sylvia a slut!  Nice to know in 1959 there was no shame in calling a woman that word!  The problem is that once the affair is revealed, the plot meanders in discussing how everyone and the family dog knew Ken and Sylvia would get together, right down to Arthur telling Sylvia how he should have realized something was amiss when she called for Ken during the birth of their son…and you figured you’d be together forever?  If you can’t tell, the dialogue is meant to be sudsy, but comes off laughably ridiculous; no one talks like these characters do, forsaking eloquence for frankness.  Some of the discussions that take place are just uncomfortable, wrapped in the guise of showing a strong relationship.  When I reviewed Jane Withers‘ films, I mentioned how she tended to play the makeshift mother and had a strong relationship with her father.  In that case, it wasn’t uncomfortable; it was a relationship I wished I had with my dad.  Here, I got the heebie-jeebies!  I don’t know many girls that would discuss their parents sex lives with said parent, but Molly and her dad have such a great relationship they discuss the Jorgensen parents not having a fruitful sex life!  This is after Molly has admitted to her father that she left a neighbor boy spy on her undressing.  If the point is to make them bond, it comes off as completely unsettling.

When it comes to the teenage relationship the fear is that mistakes will be made; and really there’s no winners when it comes to teenage love in this film.  Helen wants to “desex” Molly, “as though sex were synonymous with dirt.”  Ken’s point is valid; there’s no way to deny these children are going to be sexual, so why act as if sex is so terrible?  Hell, Helen is nothing short of committing child abuse, particularly when she forces Molly to undergo a physical examination after Molly comes home from spending a chaste night on the beach with Johnny.  The problem is that with all this control of the teens, the actual kids are so underwritten that their decision making capabilities are never developed.  Don’t say that you believe these children will make the right decisions, and then create teenage characters who are so dumb they can’t make said decisions.  The adults have strong dialogue discussing sex, but the script treats the teens as little more than walking sex machines creating a contradiction in what these characters are supposed to say overall.

Dee and Donahue are fairly awful in their roles, Donahue in particular.  Dee is hampered by a weak script that’s content to have her say “Johnny” ad nauseum.  At one point I started to believe that by her saying “Johnny” over and over (literally every sentence concludes with it) that she’d get pregnant!  Dee relies on being scared all the time to convey all necessary emotions, and all the parents believe she’s too dumb to say no to sex.  Literally, the majority of conversations about Molly go along the lines of “Well she’ll meet a guy, and she’ll be so in love she won’t say no.”  This isn’t helped by Molly continually being seduced by Johnny and having him respond with how he’s sick of being “good,” by proxy making her feel terrible that she won’t sleep with him.  She seems to be doing a pretty good job of saying no, and yet the script creates a male lover for her that wants to force her into something she doesn’t want!

As for Donahue (I didn’t intentionally mean to quote Grease), he’s a living robot with blonde hair!  I’ve never watched any of his prior work, but I can only assume he was a teen idol based on looks because it certainly isn’t talent.  He has one moment where the intent is to threaten Helen if she hurts Molly, but Donahue’s delivery makes it sound as if he’s asking a question.  He’s flat and lifeless, and certainly not the man who you’d spend the rest of your life with!  And maybe I’m the only one skeeved out by this but step-sibling relationships…creepy or no?

The movie should have stuck to class distinctions and a dose of sexuality, maybe then it wouldn’t have been so unintentionally hilarious.  When Sylvia says to Helen, “You seem to have an infinite capacity to hurt” I believed she was talking to the audience about the movie.  I flat-out hated A Summer Place!  It desperately wants to be as grand as Douglas Sirk and ends up falling to the ground, hard.  The acting is hammy and over-the-top with non-existent motives and characterization.  Oh, and don’t forget the theme song which plays throughout the entire movie, and even when it’s not you’ll hear it; it still haunts me!  I’ll stick to Sandra Dee in Gidget, please!

Ronnie Rating:

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A Summer Place

Beauty and the Beast: The film that changed everything!  This was the animation feature that proved to the naysayers that animated films were just as compelling as live-action movies, and it said that all the way to a Best Picture nomination (a feat that wouldn’t be repeated until 2009 with Disney/PIXAR’s Up).  While the film has flaws inherent in its story – the common joke is that Belle is a victim of Stockholm Syndrome – the animation is wondrous, the songs are timeless, and the characters are brimming with characterization; this is the movie whose flaws I ignore, and that’s okay.

Belle (voiced by Paige O’Hara) lives in a small French town and feels like an outcast.  When her father is held hostage by a cursed man trapped in the body of a beast, Belle goes to save her father and ends up falling in love.

As usual, I’ll reiterate the problems with the story.  I consider myself an Ariel, but I identified a lot with Belle as a child.  The common refrain in her town is that she’s weird because she reads (don’t ask me how they found French town with a book store, and yet it’s bizarre to read).  I’m not sure what’s so weird about young women reading, but I found myself being told by my “friends” that my adoration of the library was weird and off-putting; I eventually had the good sense to find a better class of people to fraternize with.  By that same token, the movie wants to condemn misogyny while endorsing it.  Gaston (voiced by Richard White) is a macho man who wants Belle because he can’t have her, but the Beast (voiced by Robby Benson) is verbally abusive to her when she’s locked in the Castle.  I watched a documentary, entitled Mickey Mouse Monopoly, about the issues that are thrown at children in Disney movies and Beauty and the Beast was one where they actually asked schoolchildren what Belle should do in order to subdue the Beast; they’re responses, particularly from the little girls, was the Belle needed to remain sweet, and her inherent goodness would rub off on him.  Yes, this movie teaches young girls that all men need to change is the love of a good woman!  It’s really never known if Belle falls for the Beast because she’s a prisoner or not; the only way it’s “proven” is when she returns to him after he’s freed her, and even then it’s because she knows an angry mob is coming to kill him.

With that being said, there’s nothing but sheer majesty on the screen.  This is the top of the food chain when it comes to Disney movies, and I’d go so far as to say that Disney never topped this.  The opening village scene is rendered beautifully, although it makes me yearn for Fantasyland in Disneyland, but the ballroom sequence blows everything else away!  Utilizing the CAPS system to full effect, the sweeping grandiosity of the sequence is punctuated beautifully by the lyrical theme song, sung by Angela Lansbury.  There’s so much emotion conveyed strictly in the use of location, and while they recycled the dance sequence from Sleeping Beauty and transplanted it here, from the minute Belle sweeps into the ballroom the mood of romance is in place; it’s the same with the final mob sequence which is filled with smoke and fire, rising as the anger of the mob increases. I also have to give some kudos to the opening fairytale introduction.  We haven’t seen a storybook since Sleeping Beauty; there’s no storybook opened, but we do get a stained glass window and a “once upon a time” introduction.

The voice cast here is the perfect combination of stars and voice actors.  Jerry Orbach of Law and Order fame, and 80s teen idol Robby Benson were the de facto “stars” of the film and in Orbach’s case he sounds completely unrecognizable.  I remember hearing that Benson’s voice was altered for the Beast, but I’m not sure.  Paige O’Hara, as Belle, is just as good as Jodie Benson from The Little Mermaid and O’Hara is one of my Disney idols.  O’Hara and White, as the voice of Gaston, are probably my favorite non-famous voice cast and they definitely define the characters through their voice work.  I’ll say this a few more times, particularly when Disney starts to fill their cast with A-list stars, but I miss the days of voice actors.  You also have the final team-up between Alan Menken and Howard Ashman.  Ashman would die during the production of the movie, but did get to see rough sketches of scenes set to his music.  If you haven’t seen the documentary, Waking Sleeping Beauty, you need to see it; not only is it a fantastic and loving tribute to the studio, but there’s a touching segment about Ashman.  He is the unsung hero of the Disney Renaissance, and his songs for this film are all lyrical, gorgeous, and instantly memorable.

Overall, Beauty and the Beast is a stellar romance that’s perfect for showcasing Disney’s ability to appeal to children and adults.  The songs are at their peak, the animation is exemplary, and the vocal cast never upstages any of it.  There’s quality here, and I think Disney never hit these heights again.

Ronnie Rating:

NEXT WEEK: Travel to Agrabah with me as I look at the controversial Aladdin!

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Beauty and the Beast

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Beauty and the Beast (Five Disc Combo: Blu-ray 3D / Blu-ray / DVD / Digital Copy)

A persona anecdote for you all: Last semester I wrote a fifteen page paper about the use of ethnicity and dress with regards to today’s Disney Vault feature, so I’m both extremely well-versed and incredibly sick of watching Aladdin.  While I did rewatch it, I hope to refrain from letting my exhaustion with the text color my review.  In a nutshell, Aladdin is another masterpiece, showcasing Disney’s talents in animation and music that would dominate into the 1990s.  While the character of Princess Jasmine has fundamental flaws (which I wrote 15 pages on and will refrain from bringing up here) and the abundance of Robin Williams becomes inescapable, Aladdin continues to be a treasure in the Disney roster.

Aladdin (voiced by Scott Weinger) is a street urchin who unearths a mysterious lamp in the Cave of Wonders.  Upon rubbing the lamp a genie (voiced by Robin Williams) gives Aladdin three wishes, which the lad uses to secure the love of Princess Jasmine (voiced by Linda Larkin).

Aladdin was the first film to depict the Middle East and people of color, and boy did it create a firestorm upon arrival.  Certain songs, including the opening “Arabian Nights” had to have lyrics altered after outcries from the American-Arab Discrimination Committee.  In terms of depicting an Arab country there are problems from the beginning with a host of actors who are all white.  From there, the typical 1930s stereotypical depictions of Arabs are present including the mustache-twirling villain who has the ability to use magic, and the subjugation of the Princess in harem wear by story’s end; I swore I wouldn’t go into my paper.

In spite of all that, Aladdin does take the audience to new heights through its Broadway theatricality, fast-paced story, and Robin Williams as the Genie.  Williams went on to have a long-standing feud with the Disney Company after this, due to his image being overused in marketing.  The one hindrance to Williams is the sheer amount of pop-culture anachronisms that permeate the movie.  Yes, a few of them are fun but the entire point of the Genie seems to be comedian first and wish granter second; and the sheer amount of impressions on top of impressions gives you a headache.  Overall, they serve little purpose to the movie and while Williams and crew were upset that there was no awards recognition for the role, I have to agree with the Academy here.  Ad-libbing is always welcome to keep the actors fresh and spontaneous, but Williams spends 90 minutes mugging outright.

The rest of the cast, with Williams removed, are good and the movie is a brisk hour and a half of magic, adventure, and heroism.  Aladdin is created to be a product of his environment and the movie does a somewhat decent job of exploring class differences; and by decent I mean they abandon it once Aladdin takes on the guise of a prince.  I kid; he does learn the merits of not losing touch with one’s roots, and the production gives him a sweet opening ballad to establish that, but there’s never any clear resolution on what he actually plans to do to make Agrabah better.  In the beginning, he saves two kids from starving and almost being killed, but what is he going to do about that long-term?  I guess I’m asking too much of Disney, but it reinforces the fact that they tack on the “be yourself” ending as an afterthought.

Of course, the songs are in a vaunted place next to The Lion King and The Little Mermaid in terms of consistent hits.  “A Whole New World” became a key Disney anthem, but “Friend Like Me,” “Prince Ali,” and the aforementioned “Arabian Nights” are bombastic, ethnically tinged toe-tappers that lend themselves to a Broadway production (which performs daily at Disney’s California Adventure).

This review is short and sweet, mostly because I feel I’ve spent a lot of time writing about Aladdin.  In summation, it’s another home-run for Disney with the trifecta of characters, story and song.  Robin Williams becomes overbearing, and would open the door for the death knell of the voice actor, but the rest of the story is a bright star in the pantheon of Disney hits.

Ronnie Rating:

NEXT WEEK: I just can’t wait to be King with The Lion King!

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Aladdin (Two-Disc Platinum Edition)

The Longest Day is a three-hour opus following all the events leading up to and in execution of D-Day.

This 1962 docudrama has the distinction of being the most expensive black and white film made at the time (it would be ousted by Schindler’s List).  At a diffuse three-hours the title isn’t kidding and shows a thorough, practical depiction of the storming of Normandy and other events during D-Day.  Where The Longest Day differs from other motion pictures in the war genre is in illustrating these events as an international effort; this is considered one of the rare war movies to allow the actors representing different countries to speak in their accents.  The movie doesn’t say that America fought the war single-handed, and/or came in after the English had bungled it up and saved the day.  No, the US and the British cooperate to stave off the Germans.  In fact, the sequence of country introductions mimics specific countries involvement in the war.  The first thirty minutes details the German and British ways of fighting the war, with the American viewpoint being the last; the US was the last country to join the Allies.  It’s a refreshing change of pace from war and action movies that are staunchly “America fought every war by itself.”  Of course, it wouldn’t be a star-studded Hollywood film (produced at the same time as Cleopatra which caused a host of problems) without an all-star, and yes, international, cast.  Several of the actors here have cameos but regardless, the talent on display is unparalleled.   There’s enough rampant testosterone to cause anyone to swoon: John Wayne (who’s so tough he walks on a compound fracture!), Henry Fonda obviously, Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan, Robert Wagner, Richard Burton, Peter Lawford, Sean Connery.  I can envision myself rewatching this and noticing actors I hadn’t realized were there.  In that regard, it’s similar to modern war stories like Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down.  Clashing with modern war movies is The Longest Day’s usage of practical effects.  So much of our war footage is reliant on CGI, and in The Longest Day there’s train derailment, people parachuting out of planes, and other stunts that I can only imagine are practical effects.  The cinematography, particularly a POV shot from a plane has been recreated in countless war movies today.  I don’t consider this a film I’d pop in for a good time, simply because of that exorbitant runtime and the fact that there’s never a “fun” time to watch a war movie, in my opinion.  Other than that, The Longest Day is a somber look at a time in our nation’s history where we did come together to persevere.

The Joad family are indigent tenant farmers who have been kicked off their land and are forced to relocate.  With benevolent matriarch Ma (Jane Darwell) and parolee son Tom (Fonda), the family struggle in their desire to achieve the American dream.

The Grapes of Wrath is the quintessential novel/movie about America’s struggles.  Director John Ford has detailed the pioneer spirit, and the fears of progress in his other film that I reviewed, My Darling Clementine, but this struggle captures the time and spirit of the 1930s.  Countless families in the “Dust Bowl” were forced out of their homes and suffered torturous journeys to get California: the land of opportunity.  In Ford’s ode to the American spirit he emphasizes family, community, and the need to rise up.  Fonda has played several characters who fear rocking the boat or making too much noise; and while Tom starts out that way he understands a key element of change is striking out against the herd.  I might take some flack but this isn’t my favorite Fonda role, although he is fantastic as the temperamental man who wants to put his past behind him.  He’s the leader of the Joad family, whether he wants to be or not, and you can see Fonda’s heart tear in two when he makes the decision to help his family by leaving them behind.  All great men in America are who they are by creating something new, and Tom Joad could be one of those men.  Having watched My Darling Clementine before this, I might have colored my perspective.  Both films deal with the horrors of progress; where that film embraced it, this movie mourns its inevitability, exemplified by a man on a tractor – set to bulldoze a farm – telling one of the farmers that it doesn’t matter if he’s stopped, someone else will come in his place.  Throughout the movie anyone driving a slick car is immediately an enemy because it’s apparent that person doesn’t notice, or doesn’t care, about the growing gap in class and wealth.  The Grapes of Wrath espouses a populist way of life that’s considered Communistic by the police; when the Joad’s finally get to the camp that accepts them for who they are, the owner looks similar to Franklin Roosevelt.  We also understand that dispossession is part of our American heritage; the Joads pass a village of Native-Americans whose land was taken before.  It’s a cyclical story that’s never harped on but always present.  Other than Fonda, Jane Darwell is the soul of the movie as Ma.  She has so many scenes that convey raw, unrestrained emotion that is palpable.  Her and Tom have a relationship that is dependent (in her case), and yet she understands the need for progress.  I won’t go too deep in to the movie, simply for the sake of space, but there’s a reason The Grapes of Wrath finds itself on several “must-wach” lists.

In terms of bonus content: The Longest Day lacks any and all bonus features (maybe due to length?).  The Grapes of Wrath has a solid, scene-specific, commentary with film historians Joseph McBride and Susan Shillinglaw that’s worth a listen; it also includes the unique UK prologue that’s text-based; a 45-minute featurette on Darryl F. Zanuck that’s a brisk yet comprehensive look at the iconic producer alongside a MovieTone News feature on the film; there’s also a restoration comparison, stills gallery, and trailer.

The box set, overall, is worth a purchase for the mix of film genres represented and the performances Fonda gives.  You gain a true understanding of his diversity, regardless of the quality of the movie.  With that being said, not all these movies are good.  I enjoyed My Darling Clementine and The Ox-Bow Incident the best; I really enjoyed The Grapes of Wrath, Jesse James, and The Longest Day; I felt eh about Drums Along the Mohawk and hated Immortal Sergeant, The Boston Strangler and Daisy Kenyon.  If your dad enjoys Fonda, war/Westerns, or just a solid body of work, it’s worth a purchase!

Ronnie Rating for The Longest Day:

Ronnie Rating for The Grapes of Wrath:

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Henry Fonda: Film Collection

NEED MORE FATHER’S DAY IDEAS (OR WANT TO READ PAST REVIEWS OF THE HENRY FONDA BOX SET?).  CHECK OUT MY FATHER’S DAY GIFT GUIDE HERE.