King Kong is described by showman/director Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) as “the eighth wonder of the word,” and the movie equivalent is living proof of that.  The stop-motion animation may look cheesy, but there’s something inherently majestic and other-worldly about King Kong that allows audiences to sit back and take it in.  The sense of adventure is pure and unadulterated, and probably will never be experienced again (it certainly didn’t work in the 2005 Peter Jackson remake).

A film crew goes to the mysterious Skull Island where they hope to shoot a movie.  Unscrupulous director Carl Denham has other plans in mind when he discovers the island natives live in fear of a gargantuan gorilla.  When the creature, named Kong, kidnaps the film’s leading lady, Ann (Fay Wray), Denham believes he’s found his chance to make his fortune bigger by bringing the animal back to New York.

King Kong is an extravaganza of moving parts, all vying for equal footing and coalescing into an action/adventure movie in a spirit far removed from anything out today.  From the moment the overture plays, you’re transported to a world that’s set-up to be ominous, exciting, and foreign.  The fast-paced, suspenseful, and crashing score composed by Max Steiner places you in the right place to enjoy the movie and it deserves the distinction of being the first use of thematic score in a film; and what a score it is!  Other uses of revolutionary technology – at the time – include the use of stop-motion, miniatures, and rear projection.  It’s easy to grow complacent with these elements which were utilized to such an extent in classic films, and yet to the original 1933 audience watching Kong, it was magic.  In the last week, I’ve commented quite a bit on the implementation of practical effects in movies, and I have to credit Kong in taking primitive techniques, primitive to us now, and injecting them with whimsy.  Special effects guru Ray Harryhausen passed away recently, and there’s a bonus feature on the Blu-ray where he discusses special effects and how King Kong inspired him (I’ll discuss more on the Blu-ray in a second).  The practical effects and sets are fantastic, and the Skull Island gate was recycled for the burning of Atlanta in Gone With the Wind; they’re intimidating yet cryptic if you know this was all filmed on a studio lot.

It would be easy to create the Kong figure to be a hollow, lifeless monster; but much like James Whale and Frankenstein, there’s a lot of emotion and expression on Kong’s face.  He beats his chest when he’s aggressive, conveys lust at the sight of Ann, and gets a little anthropomorphic as he rubs his eyes and grabs his throat when he’s attacked with a smoke bomb.  His actions in that smoke bomb sequence could be a lampooning of silent era histrionics, especially when placed next to Ann’s “screen test” where she uses similar broad gestures to convey fear; Kong is illustrated to be just as human and capable of feeling as anyone else.  Speaking of Frankenstein, there’s a similar crucifixion sequence between Ann and Kong, with both being strung up and presented to a hungry audience (Ann being presented to Kong and Kong to the audience).  However, there’s a delicate balance between Kong’s human attributes and his animal ones.  When Kong becomes vicious – chewing people, dropping a woman out a window – the audience is reminded that he isn’t human and doesn’t have the finesse of morality that humans do.  It could have been just as easy to make Kong a human trapped in an ape’s body, as it would be to show him as a mindless mongrel.

For  several people, you might know King Kong as Donkey Kong; the correlation is intentional, as the video game creators utilized this film as inspiration, and sadly that’s my pet peeve about the movie.  Fay Wray became the “Queen of the Scream” with this film, and while she’s gorgeous with a killer set of pipes (that should have been exhausted by the hour mark), her constant screaming becomes a barrage on the ears.  Furthermore, she’s relegated to being the damsel, practically paralyzed with fear from the moment she’s kidnapped by Kong, till the end.  I grasp that this is a sign of the times but it becomes ridiculous; look at her inability to get off a bed to avoid Kong’s hand in the climax for proof of her helplessness.  She’s the girl who must be saved by all the menfolk, or she’s the victim about to “raped” by the creature.  There’s a litany of rape imagery when Ann is “sacrificed” to Kong; the phallic bolt sliding to open the gate, Ann tied with her arms spread, and the first appearance of Kong’s face, in close-up, emphasizes his lust as he beats his chest and grins.  The infamous sequence of Kong taking off Ann’s clothes is also a fumbling assault gesture; and while Kong grows to love Ann, his relationship becomes obsessive as he goes to great lengths to secure her for himself.  Of course, the rest of the men are no better, particularly the “love interest,” John Driscoll (Bruce Cabot).  Driscoll gets sore that Ann is coming on-board the ship, chalking it up to a general abhorrence for women on boats; “Women can’t help being a bother.”  When he declares his love for Ann it’s romance soaked in clumsiness: “I guess I love you.  Anne: But Jack, you hate women!”  And thus, a romance is born!  Driscoll is apologetic, but that doesn’t mask his blatant chauvinism.  Carl is no better, declaring that any woman placed in front of John can make him “soft.”  (I wonder if that comment alludes to possible homosexual leanings considering John is on a boat populated with men?)  And I can’t forget to mention the constant animal attacks against Ann during the jungle sequences; she must be giving off crazy pheromones.

Regardless of the usage of women, King Kong is a still a perfect movie.  The adventure, animation, and script are populated with thrilling events that make you excited to go to the jungle (“It’s money, and adventure, and fame!”).  The Warner Brothers Blu-ray is exquisite and hearkens back to old-style marketing.  The front cover isn’t glossy, but has an original painted poster that feels like an old book.  Inside the Blu-ray box, with the disc nestled inside, is a 32-page booklet detailing the movie’s production.  It’s a taste difficult to read for fear of the disc popping out (if it’s not playing) but it’s an intriguing story.  The disc itself includes audio commentary with Harryhausen (bittersweet) and Ken Ralston, with interview excerpts of director Merian C. Cooper and Fay Wray thrown in.  It’s an interesting way to present an audio commentary, particularly if the people involved are no longer around.  There’s also a seven-part documentary detailing the production, original test footage (including snippets of the dumped spider pit sequence), a featurette on Cooper and the trailer.  I adore this movie, and I recommend that if you feel the same that you grab this on Blu-ray.

Ronnie Rating:

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King Kong [Blu-ray Book]

Better late than never, right?  The Lion King is another feather in the Disney cap and the last as Disney’s grandiosity and need for awards caused them to enter shaky territory.  The studios take on Hamlet (or Kimba: The White Lion depending on how much you believe Disney plagiarized) and it is a visual and aural delight; not to mention the best voice cast, in my opinion.  It’s time to find out what it’s like to be King with The Lion King.

The pridelands are ruled by noble Mufasa (voiced by James Earl Jones) who is training his son, Simba (voiced by Jonathan Taylor Thomas) to one day rule.  However, Mufasa’s brother Scar (voiced by Jeremy Irons) wants to dispose the King and rule himself.

The Lion King wasn’t the Best Picture nominee that Beauty & the Beast was, which did draw some concerns despite positive critical reviews.  In terms success, it was a commercial blockbuster and was the highest grossing home video release for the year.  The famous wildebeest chase tested the strength of the burgeoning CGI system Disney had employed; ultimately, taking three years to perfect the wildebeest from running without bumping into each other.  Unfortunately, the songs ended up being recognized come awards time.  The film would win for Best Original Score and Best Original Song (“Can You Feel the Love Tonight”), while getting nominations for another song (“Circle of Life”  and “Hakuna Matata”).  So with the Original Song category dominated by this film, why didn’t anything else?  Putting on my armchair Oscar predictor cap for a second; it probably didn’t get anything higher because the 1995 Oscars were glutted with quality films, and two heavy-hitters fought for the majority of the awards: Forrest Gump and The Shawshank Redemption.

I could be rehashing the same points I stated in last week’s Beauty & the Beast review, which all apply here; the casting, the script, and the animation are all first-rate.  There’s two distinct halves to The Lion King: cub to lion, and comedy to drama.  The first half follows Simba when he’s a little boy – and voiced by 1990s icon Jonathan Taylor Thomas.  The songs are all capricious and establish Simba as a selfish boy who has to get over his own ego.  It’s a build that’s necessary to get kids prepared for the events of the second half of the movie.  It’s a courageous part of the script to tackle parental mortality, a moment that you don’t often see in kid’s flicks.  When Simba and Mufasa are father/son bonding, Mufasa explains that one day he won’t be around – if he only knew! – and goes on to present a vision of the afterlife where the past kings become stars.  It’s a remarkable sequence that isn’t filled with religious posturing, cements the seriousness of it, and shouldn’t traumatize children.  Of course, it’s necessary once Mufasa is killed and Simba is left on his own.  Thus, we enter into the second half which isn’t particularly my favorite half of the film.  Part of it is Matthew Broderick’s vocal work which screams of “A-list casting” and just never seemed to fit the character for me.  While you have the dynamic duo of Timon (voiced by Nathan Lane) and Pumbaa (voiced by Ernie Sabella), the movie takes on a significantly darker tone by story’s end.

Speaking of the voice cast, it’s first-rate here specifically Jeremy Irons as Scar; he enters the pantheon of top villains including George Sanders as Sher Khan and George C. Scott as McLeach.  Scar does present some issues in the “dandying” of villains that would continue over the next few movies, and would give academic writers countless theories to use with regards to Disney and homosexuality; we’ll get to that next week.

Ronnie Rating:

NEXT WEEK: Disney goes historical with Pocahontas!

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The Lion King (Two-Disc Diamond Edition Blu-ray / DVD Combo in Blu-ray Packaging)

Margaret O’Brien is scrambling up the ranks to becoming one of my favorite actresses, and in watching Tenth Avenue Angel you understand why she was so popular; she is able to elevate a non-existent plot to tolerable lengths with her effervescence and blithe spirit.  None of this makes the actual film tolerable or particularly memorable, but once O’Brien is on-screen, it’s easy to gloss over the issues.

Flavia Mills (O’Brien) is a girl growing up in the dark times of the Depression; the only thing she knows are the various superstitious stories her mother has taught her in order to keep Flavia’s hope alive.  Flavia has been told that her Aunt Susan’s (Angela Lansbury) boyfriend, Steve (George Murphy), is returning from a trip around the world when he’s really been in prison.  With Steve’s arrival comes a series of challenges that will test the beliefs that Flavia has learned.

For a film with little plot, it was hard to coherently boil down the narrative for the above synopsis.  The script is a pastiche of aphorisms that Flavia is able to dispense amongst the handful of people who live on her street.  The script, and the audience, is supposed to root for Flavia as her strength in her mother’s little white lies are tested, but the problem within the narrative is far too dull to create an impact on Flavia’s worldview because no genuine problem exists until the final minutes.  Steve’s release from jail is never properly set up, outside of his working in some unexplained shady business with gangsters, and we’re told that he’s gotten in with them again.  I expected a darker story about a little girl’s beliefs triumphing over gangsters, but Steve isn’t the central character and he gives up being a gangster after thirty seconds with no repercussions.  In fact, outside of O’Brien, the adult characters are on the periphery of the plot.  They walk through and dispense “wisdom,” but none of their actions engage in the plot, nor do they do anything to influence it.  O’Brien carries the entire film and seems to be skating through scenes in hopes of finding something to do.

It’s a triumph to O’Brien’s acting abilities that she’s the reason you can stick with this film at all.  Flavia is close with her community, and always quick to help a friend; she’s best friends with the downtrodden blind newspaperman, Mac (Rhys Williams).  Her moral center is strong, a by-product of her mother’s love, and she believes wishes and miracles are around every corner.  O’Brien is just as devout in her beliefs here as she was as Tootie in Meet Me in St. Louis.  She’s endearing, precious, and joyous throughout every scene; when she laughs, you laugh and when she cries, you cry.  I found myself comparing her against the cynical, real-world demeanor of Natalie Wood in Miracle on 34th Street.  Speaking of that film, I have to wonder if the year-long delay in Tenth Avenue Angel’s release was because of Miracle.  The two aren’t carbon copies, but both deal with miracles and earnest little girls; both films culminate with a “Christmas miracle” although Tenth Avenue Angel’s threatens to result in the death of Flavia’s spirit as personified by her sickly mother.  The stand-out moment is Flavia giving a speech dressed up as Lady Liberty.  The little girl is darling with her star-spangled costume, but the impact is a bit on point when the camera abruptly cuts away from the girl to a picture of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to remind you this is a Depression piece.  The rest of the cast is flat and barely intersect with the story.  They perk up when O’Brien is around which is a shame because Angela Lansbury is wasted as the pining Aunt Sarah.

There’s effort put into furthering Margaret O’Brien’s career and this is the only reason to check out Tenth Avenue Angel.  The movie continues to prove how amazing O’Brien was for a child star, and her hopeful optimism is beautiful to watch and truly believable.  If the material of the script was better this movie could be gold; instead, it’s a missed opportunity to further it’s tiny leading lady, but she’s up to the challenge and creates a character you want to love.

Ronnie Rating:

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Tenth Avenue Angel

We’re down to the final three films of the 90s – the Disney Decade – and it’s evident that the company was resting on their laurels.  Everything from the animation, the songs, and the stories screamed of recycling and an overall loss of heart that we hadn’t seen since the beginning of the decade.  Mulan is a derivative take on material we’ve watched previously; the true story (complete with mystical elements and a wise granny) are torn from Pocahontas, while the theme of perseverance despite being an outcast in society was just done in Hercules.  Mulan is significantly better than the latter film, but fails to be as consistently entertaining or as well-assembled as the former.  Sadly, Mulan fails to touch on any of the Disney Renaissance films and continues to ring the death knell for animation that would be coming in a few short years.

Mulan (Ming-Na) is a Chinese woman forced to go into the Imperial Army after her father is called into service.  Masquerading as a young man named Ping, Mulan must keep her secret in order to destroy the Huns.

I have little background knowledge on the true story of Mulan (although a cursory glance at Wikipedia mentions it’s generally perceived to be true, although chronology is spotty), but Disney had hoped the movie would smooth over relations with China after the studio released a pro-Dalai Lama documentary the same year.  With Pocahontas, the story was well-known in American popular culture and thus the problems with it arose from knowing our own history; with Mulan, we lose that because American audiences possess little to no knowledge about Chinese ideology.  The culture within Mulan shies away from showing the stereotypical horrible things we’ve come to consider integral to Chinese culture – such as foot binding and concubines – but we’re immediately told to see this culture as backward.  Mulan’s meeting with the matchmaker is considered the apotheosis of family honor, and when she acts like a fool – due to more unnecessary cuddly side characters – it’s believed to be the worst thing she could do.  Women are cattle in this time period, and while China has improved in their treatment of women, they’re still the subservient class due to cultural ideology all of which is lost on American audiences.

In its place is a decent attempt to tell the tale of a woman fighting for position in a world, and a profession, that doesn’t accept her gender.  Sadly, all of this is undermined by the end when Mulan ends up getting everything she wanted, as well as securing the love of Shang (voiced by the awesome BD Wong) which is what will make her family and society happy.  See kids, you can have everything in an oppressive society that never needed to change!  Yes, similar to Pocahontas, the society never changes, but Mulan adapts to it.  In order to be taken seriously she must become a man, which would be a strong way of showing how poorly respected women are, and how Mulan is better than her male comrades; but it’s all lessened by placing Mulan in situations that felt ripped from Just One of the Guys, such as a nude swimming sequence that should be great to explain to your children.  Of course, there’s also a need to push away from cries of homosexuality, or in the belief that what Mulan is doing has anything to do with her desire to live life a different way.  Case in point: a slew of “drag” jokes that feel anachronistic and downright hostile to transgendered and transvestite viewers.  It’s understandable that for children these topics are intense, but why throw in jokes like the ancient gods talking about “your granddaughter was a cross-dresser” or the climax involving Mulan’s friends dressing up as women…but Shang dressing like a man?  It sends a mixed message that cross-dressing is unnatural or the punchline to a joke.

As it was with Pocahontas, the script turns the Chinese religion into a fantasy based on magic, complete with a giant dance party involving “ancient ones” at the end; we’re also given a jive-talking fairy godmother in the guise of Mushu (voiced by Eddie Murphy).  The casting directors wanted to be as authentic as they could with the vocal cast…which is why Mulan, Shang, and a few side characters are voiced by Asian actors.  The rest includes the aforementioned Murphy, Harvey Fierstein, Miguel Ferrer, and June Foray!  Diversity, everyone!  Keep in mind that none of the singers are Asian (another similarity to Pocahontas).  Murphy takes a page from Robin Williams and James Woods’ playbook by doing schtick with no connection to the time period; he gives a sermon complete with gospel music that made me start looking for the Muses from last week’s film.  If you think June Foray’s voice and character of Grandma is similar, you’re not wrong.  The voice isn’t the same – Linda Hunt voiced Grandmother Willow – but the animation and purpose of the character are essentially the same; there’s also a sequence involving Grandma crossing the street that helped me think I was watching a Mister Magoo movie.

So you know what I dislike about Mulan, but what about what I do like?  The vocal cast of Ming-na and BD Wong provide authenticity and elevate the movie above a children’s film and into serious drama.  If only this wasn’t tamped down by additional cutesy characters including a dog, a cricket, and the aforementioned Mushu.  Wong and Ming-na have a suitable chemistry for a vocal cast, and don’t perform with  irony.  The songs are also okay, although the best are “Honor to Us All,” “Make a Man Out Of You,” and “Reflection” which are all sung early in the film.  The middle song is the best, combined with a fighting montage that is a fantastic bit of animation.  The animation itself is a discernible improvement over last week’s television-esque drawings.  The facial features of the characters are sharp and austere, with Mulan appearing to have similar features to Pocahontas.  (It’s also frustrating that Mulan in the theme parks and marketing is wearing her matchmaker clothes, as opposed to her warrior wear; a similar problem that befell Pixar’s Princess Merida this year.)

Mulan is another faux-true story that desperately wants to recapture the spirit of Pocahontas and only mildly succeeds.  The songs are split between memorable and disinterested; the animation is a notch above last week’s film, but there’s no “wow” moments; and the story is just a taste problematic for American audiences.

Ronnie Rating:

NEXT WEEK: Disney goes to the jungle with Tarzan!

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Mulan / Mulan II (3-Disc Special Edition) [Blu-ray / DVD]

My expectations for Gidget Goes Hawaiian weren’t particularly high.  The title is a dead giveaway to its cheesiness, and the fact that no one reprises their role other than Moondoggie (James Darren would be in all three) were indications this wouldn’t be the best movie; I just didn’t know how bad.  Deborah Walley puts on a good imitation of Sandra Dee – screeching and all – but the plot is a hodgepodge of bland conventions that lack the emotional punch, or the sly tongue-in-cheek humor of its predecessor.  I also had to wonder what the contract terms were for getting Darren back, because Gidget Goes Hawaiian skirts the line into musical territory at times, all on top of other bizarre “performance art” that creates an interminable hour and forty-one minutes.

Gidget (Walley) and Moondoggie (Darren) are reunited after a summer apart; but when Gidget’s parents tell her they’re going to Hawaii, a series of complications causes her and Moondoggie to break up.  Winging her way to Hawaii, Gidget meets the snobby Abby Stewart (Vicki Trickett) who doesn’t like that the girl surfer monopolizes all the boys.

This was my expression during the film.

Gidget Goes Hawaiian is the stereotypical Hawaiian installment that permeated the landscape of films and television throughout the 1960s.  The island is a mysterious and glamorous locale where the people play with fire, dance, and are nothing more than the “native population.”  The location itself is incidental and could easily be replaced with New York or the original location of the first film (which we see for about five minutes in the beginning).

It’s sad how the sequel  rewrites the story set down within Gidget, right down to and including flashback scenes of Gidget and Moondoggie’s courtship from the first film.  If you saw the original (and audiences would have had two years in-between), then these flashbacks were cheap recreations of events already laid down in audiences’ minds; it’s a slap in the face by inserting Walley into sequences where Dee was, such as the initiation sequence.  I understand the need for the gimmick, since home video wasn’t in vogue and audiences of the time won’t remember, but if you’re watching these back-to-back it’s ridiculous.  We also lose the sly innuendo that the first one was known for.  In my review of the original Gidget, I was taken aback by the subtle references to Gidget losing her virginity.  Her interactions with the boys is never  overtly sexual, but the body language of the men all lead the audience to believe Gidget is losing something by, while keeping it relatively clean for teen audiences.  Gidget Goes Hawaiian is more overt with the references and it loses its luster quickly (probably because it’s not integrated into a plot like surfing where bodies come together in more salacious, albeit unintentional, situations).  Abby Stewart, our villain, spreads a rumor about Gidget being “one of those girls” who is involved with all the boys on the beach and that’s the plot.  Said rumor ends up spreading like wildfire and ruining Gidget’s relationship with her parents and friends; a whole movie about slut-shaming!  Surfing takes up about ten minutes of screentime; I didn’t expect the plot to be a total rehash of the first, but Gidget’s in a place known for great surfing, and doesn’t do it!

Compared to the original, the first Gidget had the innuendo blended alongside a female character who didn’t know – and didn’t care about – boys, so you were able to ignore any stark sexual allusions; moreover, the narrative followed Gidget learning to surf, and gaining the respect of the boys.  With Gidget Goes Hawaiian, the plot is a conventional girl goes to the beach story ripped from the Frankie and Annette movies.  Vicki Trickett is a lovely girl, but she’s written to be the sophisticated bitch and thus we never explore the differences (if any) between Gidget’s friendship with boys vs. girls; Abby becomes proof that women can’t be friends.  Additionally, Abby takes on a lot of the roles Gidget used to for the first half of the movie as our titled heroine spends the time moping over Moondoggie.  Her boy-crazy mentality is another damaging element to Gidget Goes Hawaiian.  In the first, Francie Lawrence was a girl who didn’t want to engage in a “manhunt” with her friends; she wanted to go explore the ocean, and take up a hobby like surfing (which just happens to make her cool with boys because she’s not a stereotypical young lady).  Gidget was a girl with a brain who put herself in situations that she could extricate herself from; she has a moral compass that doesn’t waver.

All of that is thrown into the ocean with this sequel.  From the minute Gidget and Moondoggie are reunited (after a summer where Gidget has undergone a complete body/facial transformation) gone is the independent young lady whose maturity was grander than her height.  In her place is a pie-eyed, boy-crazy girl who believes that Moondoggie’s pin makes her his wife!  Sandra Dee’s Gidget would never start picking china patterns!  And Gidget may have had her moments of over excitement where she became shrill, but even that’s replaced with a bipolar Gidget that’s happy one minute and sobbing the next.  There’s also an unnecessary subplot involving her parents (who are played by different actors) that appears to aim for adults but just keeps the story going on and on.  We also have dream sequences that look like rejects from the “Gotta Dance” number of Singin’ in the Rain; one particular sequence with Gidget being pregnant was a tad risqué, but only aids in the slut-shaming storyline.

I can’t fathom how much worse Gidget Goes to Rome is, and I’m a bit scared to find out.  Gidget Goes Hawaiian has the makings of a television sitcom (which would happen four years later) and Deborah Walley is cute, but she isn’t given any material to work with other than crying and smiling.  James Darren has several songs in this movie, that all sound exactly the same.  He’s still okay as Moondoggie, but the character is just too perfect.  Here’s hoping Gidget Goes to Rome doesn’t ruin my love for the first.

Ronnie Rating:

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The Complete Gidget Collection (Gidget / Gidget Goes Hawaiian / Gidget Goes to Rome)

The second film of Cary Grant week is a memorable tale of man vs. house.  Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House has inspired a slew of terror house films including The Money Pit and Are We Done Yet?  The movie isn’t a rip-roaring affair, but a subtle tale of a family given the ability to do whatever they want with a house, and getting in way over their head.  It’s also the first of two pairings we’ll see this week between Myrna Loy and Cary Grant, which creates an entirely new dynamic compared to Loy’s regular companion, William Powell.

Jim Blandings (Grant) and his wife Muriel (Loy) live in a cramped house with their three children in the big city of Manhattan.  When Jim hears of a beautiful house in the country, he believes he’s found the respite that will propel him into the future.  However, the house is a “fixer-upper” with enough fixings to drive him and his family crazy.

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is hard to relate to today as the country continues to rebuild after the housing bust of a few years ago.  The antics of the upper middle-class Blandings, who can afford to spend $15,000 on fixing up a house (in spite of Jim’s horror at the rising cost) can place the audience at a distance.  I rolled my eyes at the “horrors” the family goes through, and envisioned countless other things to do with the money; of course, it’s not enough to ruin your enjoyment of the film.  Mr. Blandings is a quaint and charming tale of a family realizing they don’t need to have everything.

It starts with Melvyn Douglas narrating the film as family friend, Bill Cole.  He informs the audience, documentary style, of the bustling world of New York City; its modern technology, beautiful climate, and sense of community are all contrasted with crowds, noise and other unpleasant elements.  We understand the hustle and bustle that wear down city dwellers, and the film seeks to prove that country living is the way to go.  You really can’t find a better example of America than the Blandings.  Even their name – Bland-ings – proves they’re just average Joes trying to make it in the world.  Jim Blandings is the bread-winner and motivator within his household; it’s a refreshing change to watch him wake up the family, and start alerting the household to a new day, a job usually reserved for the wife in these movies.  As Jim zigs and zags, anticipating his unpredictable children’s every move, you understand this is a routine embedded in his DNA.  Grant is an ideal father representation; he’s dashing, compassionate, and has the most hilarious flabbergasted face I’ve ever seen.  A subplot of the film involves him coming up with a slogan for ham that allows the African-American maid, played by Louise Beavers, time to shine in the climax.

The arrival and construction of the eponymous “dream house” is where the film finds its footing and where the comedy hits its stride.  There’s a sequence where Muriel and Jim imagine what the house will look like once it’s finished – a golden dream home – that’s similar to the “knight in shining armor” bit in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer.  I don’t know if it’s a direct carry-over, but if you’ve watched the latter film recently you’ll take note of it.  Loy and Grant are a darling couple, but they have an entirely different dynamic than Loy and William Powell.  Loy and Powell are classy, elegant; their fights are spats filled with quippy dialogue that are resolved in seconds.  Loy and Grant are a natural and realistic couple; they’re refined, but average.  Their fights are drawn out over several scenes and are well-known in the Blandings household (their children’s refrain is “bicker, bicker, bicker”).  Loy and Grant have fine chemistry and look gorgeous together.  One can’t forget Melvyn Douglas the third wheel in the Blandings marriage.  Another side plot has Jim becoming jealous that Bill and Muriel are spending too much time together – Muriel and Bill were also sweethearts in college.  It never develops into a full-scale argument where punches are thrown.  The climax revolves around Jim discovering Bill has spent the night alone in the house with Muriel, but it takes on the tone of niggling annoyance as opposed to marriage-crushing moment.  It could have been excised in favor of more housing issues, but then we wouldn’t get the amazing Douglas.  Douglas isn’t the austere wuss of Too Many Husbands; he’s a dapper gentlemen with a charisma and flirtation that would lead me to believe he could snag Myrna Loy or Jean Arthur.  Bill also acts as a conscious for the Blandings family, especially once they become overwhelmed with the house.

The third act sees the Blandings become extravagant and extremely particular in what they want in the house.  Muriel and Jim start out with good intentions – he wants additional closets to her additional bathrooms – only to transform into snobs desiring “flower sinks” and playrooms.  They embody the type of people you associate with Bill’s narration: pushy, materialistic snobs.  The dénouement is neatly tied up, and the Blandings don’t end up losing everything.  In the end, they discover family is what’s important.

I can’t end things without including my favorite moment.  Once everyone moves into the house it’s discovered there’s no windows in the window panes.  When Muriel asks Jim to “go and lock all the doors,” he responds with “Why?  There’s no windows anyway.”  Mr. Blandings Buils His Dream House presents a dreamy situational comedy about a house from hell.  Myrna Loy, Cary Grant, and Melvyn Douglas are all in top form and the film is a sweet comedy worth your time.

Ronnie Rating:

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Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House

The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer is worth remaking today, and by the same token it’s witnessed in every film made in Hollywood currently.  The tale of an older man being forced to date a teenage girl could easily slip into dark and disturbing territory, but with loveable leading man Cary Grant and perpetual ray of sunshine Shirley Temple in the roles, you’ll find yourself laughing at the predicament.  This is the second pairing of Myrna Loy with Grant, and while their romance is the “acceptable” one, it doesn’t have nearly the comic effervescence of Grant and Temple, leaving the audience to wonder if this May-December romance could work out.

Richard Nugent (Grant) is a womanizing playboy whose landed himself in the courtroom of Judge Margaret Turner (Loy).  When Margaret’s little sister, Susan (Temple) falls for Nugent there’s a simple solution: force Nugent to date the girl in order to help her get over her attraction!

A film with this premise should have the makings of a cautionary tale.  Just imagine the ads: “A young girl, like a moth to a flame, compelled to love a man old enough to be her father.”  It was unplanned, but that Cary Grant joke from Gidget Goes to Rome perfectly encapsulates this film (read the original review if you missed it).  The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer explores the unrealistic expectations of young girls, and the idea that an older man may be attractive but there’s little emotional connection in that sort of relationship.  Someone might want to clue in the rest of Hollywood because nowadays it’s not surprising to cast a forty-something actor against a twenty-something leading lady.  The May-December romance may be condemned in this movie, but it’s enforced and encouraged in the system that creates moving pictures.  The script by Sidney Sheldon is frivolous enough, along with the leads, that you’ll forget the disturbing implications inherent within the plot; there’s also quite a few sequences where Richard explains to Susan the nature of her infatuation, and isn’t shy about stating they have nothing in common.  Richard never takes advantage of Susan, nor does her encourage her to prove her inexperience (à la Kahuna in Gidget…yes, another Gidget reference).  While Richard does play along to a point, it’s more to bother Margaret and get out of the relationship entirely.

Of course, this leads into questions of the Electra complex, which Sheldon’s script believes is alive and well.  Margaret’s quasi-boyfriend, Tommy (Rudy Vallee), and her Uncle believe Susan’s rebelliousness stems from the lack of a father figure.  Thus, the entire relationship between Susan and Richard takes on a psychological attempt to find a father.  Unfortunately, the notion isn’t dispelled by the end, as Susan abruptly turns about-face and gives up Richard at the insistence of her uncle.  Why didn’t he threaten her with a spanking – which he does – at the beginning?  It leaves a bitter taste in the mouth as well as a sour note for the climax.

Thankfully, the performances are the cream of the crop.  It must be so unbelievable that Myrna Loy (42 at the time) would have a 17-year-old daughter, so the script places her as the sister to Temple; here’s another moment where the film plays with conventions of age, reinforcing the desire for a sexy (and young) leading lady.  Loy plays the straight man against the wacky hijinks of Grant and Temple.  In Mr. Blandings, Loy and Grant were a no-frills couple hunting the American Dream; here they’re the pinnacles of law and order (Loy) butting heads with spontaneity and frivolousness (Grant).  It’s a different dynamic than Blandings, but Loy never comes off as comfortable in the guise of a tough, no-fun woman.  There’s an absence of fun scenes or moments to shine for Loy; she’s bland, and relegated to being so.  Grant is the colorful one in the bunch and this is his movie.  He’s the knight in shining armor to both Temple and Loy (envisioned by both ladies in a dream sequence that, again, is similar to the house fantasy from Mr. Blandings), and comes with a non-threatening sexuality that makes the uncomfortable plot palatable; not to mention he gets the best lines: “I told that to 500 little girls!” Attorney: “Let’s not get into that.”  When Grant takes the reins and decides to start acting like a teenager he’s setting himself up for a similar role in Monkey Business.  He does it better here, with a cockeyed fedora and his refrain of “You remind me of a man…”  Temple is the requisite bobby-soxer, and doesn’t necessarily contribute much other than wide-eyed naïvety and name recognition.  It’s shocking to consider that Temple, the embodiment of perpetual childhood was already married with children when she made this!

I always enjoy watching The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer.  It’s absurd plot reveals real issues with relationships, albeit in a hilarious manner.  Grant is having fun opposite an authoritarian Loy and the innocent Temple.  Remember those innocent days when a grown man could be forced to date an underage girl?  Well, see it here!

Ronnie Rating:

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The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer

This, as well as the next two weeks worth of Disney movies, will be first-time viewings for me which should spark interesting discussions in the comments.  I avoided Tarzan when it came out initially, mainly because the Tarzan story didn’t appeal to me and because Disney had mined similar territory two years prior with George of the Jungle.  Watching it now Tarzan has some worthy animation, and somewhat decent (although vastly underwritten) characters; the use of “Deep Canvas” animation is also unique to look at, although we lose a lot of the fine details Disney’s known for.  What ends up bringing Tarzan down to a lower-tier Disney flick is the soundtrack.  Although not nearly as devastating to the film as the use of Billy Joel in Oliver and Company, Tarzan has some jarring musical cues to introduce the Phil Collins soundtrack which starts to sound like one song on a loop by the end.  Tarzan ends up being a soundtrack with a translucent plot spliced in.

Raised by apes in the jungle, Tarzan (voiced by Tony Goldwyn) struggles to assert himself despite the protestations of ape leader Kerchak (voiced by Lance Henriksen).  When a bumbling scientist and his daughter, Jane (voiced by Minnie Driver) come upon Tarzan, the ape-man must come to understand his identity.

The Edgar Rice Burroughs story about a man growing up amongst apes has been adapted countless times.  (It’s up there with Dracula as one of the most adapted sources).  Counting on Burroughs turned out to be a blessing because this was the first Disney movie to go to number one since Pocahontas (we loved outdoor movies about prejudice in our 90s animation).  The claim to fame with Tarzan was the revolutionary process of Deep Canvas wherein two-dimensional animation was integrated seamlessly into a three-dimensional background.  For 1999 it was a way to separate itself from the dearth of animated films out there, and return Disney to being innovators of animation, but it creates a rather blah film to look at.  The colors are suitably dark or light depending on the time day, and the characters are drawn well – especially Tarzan whose body could only be designed through animation – but the backgrounds feel muted and uninspired; there’s only so many ways you can draw foliage, but even when Tarzan looks back at the island from a boat, it’s a rather flat and typical representation of an island, lacking the punch of either 2D or 3D.

The characters are also fairly one-note, with no one character doing much to separate themselves from the herd.  Tony Goldwyn’s Tarzan isn’t a big talker, so there’s nothing for him to provide in terms of vocal quality.  Tarzan is animated with an interesting array of human and ape characteristics, but that’s all.  By the same token, Jane, her father and game hunter, Clayton (voiced by Shakespearean legend Brian Blessed) are underdeveloped; Jane is the girl, her father the buffoon and Clayton the villain.  I do admire Disney for not drawing Clayton from the same pool as Gaston, which I expected upon first seeing the character.  Clayton and Gaston are complimentary to each other; both are tall, strapping men with congruent facial features and a one-track mind.  However, Clayton doesn’t show any affection for Jane and treats her no different from her father.  Blessed’s voice, and the character, hew closer to George Sanders voicing of Shere Khan from The Jungle Book.  (There is a leopard that threatens the apes and Tarzan’s parents, who I assumed with a formidable foe, but he’s dispatched within the first thirty minutes.)  It’s a shame that Blessed doesn’t get to go as wild as past villains.  And while Minnie Driver is a cute Jane, she’s purely something for Tarzan to rescue and fall in love with!  What, because the main character is a male that means we can’t have an equally engaging female?  Driver is great with her vocal performance.  Her ad-libbed description of Tarzan is filled with interjections including the capper “And Daddy!  They took my boot!”  I just wanted her to do something, anything other than cry, fall down, and swoon over Tarzan.

I will say the script curtails the use of cuddly side characters that was growing to critical mass in past efforts.  Sure, Tarzan has two friends named Terk (voiced by Rosie O’Donnell) and Tantor (voiced by Wayne Knight) but that’s minor for a Disney movie.  Unfortunately, Terk and Tantor are a discount Timon and Pumbaa, but with an enhanced annoyance factor.  I’ve never understood why movies believe inserting a character with a thick New Jersey or Brooklyn accent equals instant humor.  Terk is an anachronistic character who doesn’t fit in!  One minute she’s trying to assert how Tarzan isn’t her best friend during a childhood sequence, and then she’s upset over his leaving her.  Neither one of these side characters develops a lasting bond with Tarzan; they’re created to service the plot and show that he didn’t grow up entirely alone.  Again, they’re Timon and Pumbaa without the big musical number.

And this leads us  back around to the singing.  Disney hoped to move away from the showtunes structure of their past movies, and while it’s good to try new things, the Phil Collins soundtrack plays like anything on radio today.  There’s nothing particularly special about these songs other than their connection to the plot.  They’re all catchy, but other than “You’ll Be in My Heart,” the songs are unidentifiable.  They sound the same to the point of being on a loop.  Due to the songs not being sung by the characters (actually, I think the “Trashing the Camp” sequence is the only one where characters could be singing) the musical cues appear confused.  The first song slams into the first minutes of the movie, so instead of identifying and connecting with Tarzan’s parents plight you’re saying “Hey, is that Phil Collins?”  The songs come from out of nowhere, and it’s not until the climax that the plot is allowed to rise above the stifling soundtrack.

Tarzan is far from a terrible Disney movie, it’s mediocre at best.  The soundtrack is what’s meant to sell here, not the story.  The characters underwritten with one collective trait, and while the side characters are managed better, they’re rip-offs of better written characters.

Ronnie Rating:

NEXT WEEK: We return to the world of Fantasia with Fantasia 2000.

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Tarzan (Special Edition)

I reviewed the first installment of Fantasia last September (shocking that this feature closes by the end of this year) and felt that the 1940s experiment in music and animation was a “pretty screensaver;” so I wasn’t too excited to watch the failed continuation of the series, Fantasia 2000.  I’ve been surprised a few times covering this series, and watching Fantasia 2000 is just such a surprise.  I still wouldn’t pop this in my DVD on a whim, but the movie isn’t as dour as the original attempt with fun stories that aren’t as esoteric (although the early 2000s CGI is still questionable).  It’s easy to understand why Fantasia 2000 never opened the door for continued installations (as the original did in 1940), but it is an unforeseen gem.

The mix of animation and classical music continues with several stories driven by the grand masters of the classical era.  In Fantasia 2000 you follow a group of humpback whales to “The Pines of Rome;” follow watch the lives of 1930s New Yorkers to “Rhapsody in Blue;” and watch the tale of “The Steadfast Tin Soldier.”

The original Fantasia aspired to be a serious film with hopes of turning on children and adults to classical music through animation.  While it has its own devout fans, I was less than impressed, except in the case of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” which felt the most like a Disney cartoon.  It either worked so well in the original, or the animators wanted to remind the audience that this was a Disney movie, because in the brief runtime of Fantasia 2000 they put it in the original “Sorcerer” animation; no changes, no upgrading the animation, the same short.  Yes, it takes us back to the roots of Fantasia and gives that dose of Mickey Mouse, but it’s also as if the animators didn’t want to do a new Mickey short and relied on what worked.  It’s always a fun short to watch, but if you’ve watched the original Fantasia recently, you’ll want to skip past it; and with only an hour and fourteen minute runtime, I wanted something wholly original.

The rest of the segments range from good to really good; there’s little bad in this, overall.  The opening segment, themed to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, conjures up images of the original Fantasia where color was splashed indiscriminately at the screen.  It soon segues into the humpback whales sequence that is lovely, although the animation is that bizarre mix of early CGI and hand-drawn animation that would look even weirder in Dinosaur.  It is a lovely sequence, with “The Pines of Rome” being a delicate and beautiful accompanying song.  The strongest segment, from an animation standpoint, is the “Rhapsody in Blue” number.  The song presents a clear plot about the drudge and hustle of New York City life with a dull color palate of light colors that lends an odd note to the song.  My personal favorite was the story of the “Steadfast Tin Soldier,” mainly because I enjoy the fairy tale, but also because the song and animation is fantastic.  There is a weird waxy sheen to the characters, again the early use of CGI, but it gives an advantage to the animation; the toys are in that uncanny valley so you can believe they’re real.  “Carnival of the Animals” is a throwback to the “Dance of the Hours” segment from the first, only this time it involves a flamingo getting a hold of a yo-yo.  It’s a fun segment although very brief.  “Pomp and Circumstance” uses the titled song to create its own “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (which only emphasizes that the Mickey segment is unnecessary).  In this one, Donald Duck is working for Noah – of the fabled ark – to gather all the animals, two by two.  It’s a fun story and Donald is an expert at being the manic Job of stories like these.  The final segment is “The Firebird Suite” following a forest that’s decimated; it’s got beautiful animation but can leave the movie on a down-note.

What actually ends up dinging Fantasia 2000 is the Disney ride quality it employs.  If you’ve watched any of the recorded presentations shown within the Disney theme parks (Honey, I Shrunk the Audience immediately comes to mind) you’re aware of the random stars who just pop up with an “Oh, hi there. I’m [insert name of star who was popular ten or so years ago].”  The original was about the music, as evidenced by the conductor being the one discussing the songs.  Fantasia 2000 has every actor with a long-standing relationship, or who have voiced characters in a Disney movie, appearing to introduce the songs.  I can understand stars with musical backgrounds such as Bette Midler or Angela Lansbury arriving, but others like Steve Martin and James Earl Jones are distracting; Martin is especially, as the first presenter who sets up an uneven tone with wisecracks.  None of these stars will excite the children watching this -  sadly, I’m sure children today would ask who a few of the stars are – and it makes the film feel like an awards presentation.

Fantasia 2000 failed at the box office, and put the final nail in the coffin of resurrecting and adding new segments to Fantasia every couple of years.  When Bette Midler presents footage from segments that never made it into the film, both this and the original, it’s sad.  Fantasia continues to be a bold experiment, and it’s startling that the company decided to give it a second chance in 1999.  The animation is livelier, as is the music, and I enjoyed Fantasia 2000 far more than I anticipated; that still doesn’t mean I’d have seen subsequent performances.  With the ’90s coming to a close, Fantasia 2000 became an ominous prophet (in hindsight) of the company’s desire to remain true to its roots – in a campaign spearheaded by Roy E. Disney – and moving into gimmicks and 3D – controlled by Michael Eisner.  The entry into the 2000s would see Disney make drastic changes, including the eventual disbanding and removal of the 2D animation unit…but that’s a story for another time.

Ronnie Rating:

NEXT WEEK: Actually, Journeys in the Disney Vault will be taking a five week break.  On August 24th, we’ll return with a look at Dinosaur, kickstarting the final fifteen films in the series.  See ya then!

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Fantasia 2000 Blu-ray Special Edition

A quick update on that Laura post: We’ll celebrate Otto Preminger over the weekend that way i don’t break the flow of 24 hours devoted to one star.  I promise I’ll be back on track next week.

Margaret O’Brien has catapulted to the top of my favorite actresses list, so it was necessary to have her be part of my inaugural Summer Under the Stars.  The movies aren’t always winners (Tenth Avenue Angel) but her exuberance and maturity, all while remaining innocent and precious, always elevates the work.  The Canterville Ghost was a film I’ve been dying to see, especially as it was released the same year as her indelible performance as Tootie in Meet Me in St. Louis.  Her and Robert Young give heartwarming performances in a film that’s all about the war, whilst also being about a cowardly ghost seeking redemption.  I’ve heard it’s completely opposite from author Oscar Wilde’s original text, but with O’Brien in the lead it becomes a delightful supernatural comedy with good intentions.

Sir Simon of Canterville (Charles Laughton) is cursed by his father after fleeing from a duel.  His punishment is that he’s bound to walk the Earth until “a kinsmen” performs a brave deed.  Through the years all have failed, until the arrival of a platoon of American soldiers arrives at Canterville castle.  Cuffy Williams (Young) is a grunt who discovers he’s a descendant of the Canterville line, along with fellow Canterville heiress, Lady Jessica (O’Brien), the two will work together to free Sir Simon’s soul.

O’Brien was a spritely seven-year-old when she made this and Meet Me in St. Louis, and both characters have similar sensibilities.  In the latter, Tootie reveled in the macabre but kept it light due to her youthful nature; she didn’t understand death, but was aware of its inevitability.  In The Canterville Ghost, that element is played up for laughs, particularly when she recounts the gruesome history of the house’s inhabitants, becoming graver in her details only to end it was a big smile!  Her Lady Jessica fears the apparition and the darkness within the castle, yet revels in it because it makes life interesting.  O’Brien is quite the little comedienne, and rules the visiting soldiers with her stories; the camera defies audience expectations by emphasizing how small O’Brien is in the room full of tall men, and yet they’re captivated by her (when they discover that the “lady” is a little girl they all look down at her in a creative comedic moment).  O’Brien’s adroit comedic skills certainly make up for the total lack of British accent she has (a skill which would improve in The Secret Garden).  In a way, it provides its own comedy as Lady Jessica asks about the visiting American soldiers while sounding as American as they come.

The Canterville Ghost would be a perfect pairing with I Married a Witch, and it’s not because they star two of my favorite leading ladies.  Both films combine a historical curse with supernatural comedy; each one deals with a curse upon a family.  In Canterville, Sir Simon’s father curses him for ruining the family honor, while Veronica Lake’s Jennifer curses the Wooley clan for burning her at the stake.  The plots of each also involve a series of failures throughout history on the part of the men; although instead of several Frederic March’s throughout time we have one Robert Young.  I’ve mentioned my confusion of the various “Robert’s” in Hollywood; I easily mix up Robert Young with Robert Taylor and Robert Montgomery.  All that aside, I enjoyed Taylor immensely.  He’s the all-American man with a father-like chemistry with O’Brien.  They’re darling together in a way reminiscent of Shirley Temple and Buddy Ebsen; they just plan each others moves in advance.

Young provides a presence of comfort to the little O’Brien; the look of terror on her face is enough to instill tears in the audiences eyes, but Young is able to help O’Brien conquer her fears.  It’s a cute relationship despite the head-scratching moment of the finale; the final seconds have Lady  Jessica telling Cuffy she’ll be turning seven next year, in a moment that had me thinking of those “I’ll be 18″ moments in other films.  Did the movie just imply that there could be a relationship in the future between Lady Jessica and Cuffy? I’m assuming it was meant to be the admiration of a little girl for a person she sees as a protector, but he didn’t say anything back; they just hug and the movie ends.  I was also surprised that the movie never explicitly foretold of a male Canterville being the one to break the curse (unless you’re taking “kinsmen” literally), and ignored Jessica being the last of the Canterville line.  By the end, she openly sacrifices herself and it would have made for a tighter ending to have her be the one to redeem Sir Simon.  In the end, I left it up to Cuffy and her being a team in order to mutually save the day.  The narrative implications are perfect for 1944, with the war coming to a close.  Obviously, the relationship between the American soldier saving the life of an English blue-blood highlights the international cooperation between the Americans and the British during this time period, as well as acknowledging American intervention as being the turning point for the war itself; The Canterville Ghost may be a British tale, but the movie turns into a quasi-”America kicks ass” piece of propaganda…albeit entertaining propaganda.

You may be wondering why I haven’t touched on the titled ghost of the film, Charles Laughton.  Laughton is always a delight in movies, and he’s perfect as the anxious ghost who desperately wants to go to sleep.  The opening alerts the audience to the deep roots of the legend of the Canterville ghost, using a book entitled “Famous Ghosts of England” to literally set up the “once upon a time.”  The exposition unfolds as a grisly tale of horror, shifting into a forbidden romance à la an Errol Flynn movie (the actor portraying Sir Simon’s brother is especially Flynn-like).  The comedy comes from believing that the young strapping man would be the title character, only he defers the duel to the portly Sir Simon.  Cowardice runs in the family apparently, and it’s Sir Simon who’s punished for all eternity.  When Sir Simon’s father curses him, you start to sympathize with Laughton; everyone actually sympathizes with Sir Simon, even the foe who originally started the duel, telling Sir Simon’s father “It is thy son!”  The ghostly special effects are remarkable for 1944; the only ill-used one is when Sir Simon puts his head back on his shoulders, obviously a dummy.

The Canterville Ghost is a wonderful movie with another enchanting performance from Margaret O’Brien.  Robert Young and Charles Laughton also delight in a smooth family film that adeptly blends Gothic horror with a spoonful of heart and humor.

Ronnie Rating:

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Canterville Ghost

We’re back with the final films remaining in the Journeys in the Disney Vault series.  The 2000s were a time of great upheaval, more so than the passing of Walt Disney or the hostile takeovers of the 1980s-1990s.  The 2000s saw Disney floundering in an animation field that was rapidly changing.  With PIXAR leading the way with CGI, and other studios following suit, hand-drawn animation was seen as passe despite die-hard purists rallying to protect it.  The Disney output in the 2000s is wildly diverse ranging from hopelessly terrible to mediocre to really great.  Eventually, Disney would abandon their hand-drawn animation, and while they briefly brought it back for a feature film the studio hasn’t been shy about declaring 2D animation dead and buried.

That’s all in the future, of course; where was the studio at the start of the new millennium?  Dinosaur was Disney’s first attempt at entering the CGI ring and it is a dismal, $130 million failure (unofficial numbers put it closer to $200 million).  Fearing comparisons to other movies out at the time, the budget for this became as gigantic as the dinos depicted, and in the end it’s a blatant cobbling of countless better movies.  The background art (pictures superimposed with the animation) is the best part, and even then the technique is lazy.   Dinosaur is for Disney completists and hearkens back to the crappy films of the 1970s-1980s.

Aladar (voiced by D.B. Sweeny) is an orphaned dinosaur raised by a family of lemurs.  When a meteor shower destroys the lemurs home they end up following a heard of similarly displaced dinos heading to the nesting grounds where it’s believed that water and protection awaits.  The journey is long, and predators are constantly hoping to attack stragglers.  As Aladar struggles to keep his family safe, he butts heads with Kron (voiced by Samuel E. Wright), the head of the herd who takes survival of the fittest to heart.

Dinosaur is a patchwork of various elements that end up creating a goulash of mediocrity.  Is it a film about dinosaurs?  Yes.  Does it have blatant religious connections/thoughts on American history? Sort of.  Is it pretty much Tarzan meets The Land Before Time?  Hell yes!  Dinosaur feels like the bastard child of Tarzan and Land, which is bizarre considering the lengths Disney went to in order to avoid comparisons to the latter.  Land Before Time seems to be connected because of the dinosaur element, but there’s just far too much I saw in Tarzan that’s recycled here; the baby raised by a different species, a father figure slightly hesitant to love, a villain with weird designs on the female love interest (creepily enough the love interest is the sister to Kron).  You also have sequences that are copies of past Disney movies; when Aladar almost loses his father, Yar (voiced by Ossie Davis) in a stampede it looks to be the same situation as the death of Mufasa in Lion King (only Yar doesn’t die surprisingly).

Michael Eisner vetoed the idea of having the animals remain mute – he would have had zero faith in Wall-E – which was the original intent of the filmmakers.  That’s a wasted opportunity because the animals voices are terrible.  D.B. Sweeney and Julianna Marguiles are blah, possessing no conviction or emotion to their performances.  If anything, they made me think of the days before A-list stars voiced cartoon characters because I didn’t recognize their voices at all.  Also, it was fun to hear the return of Samuel E. Wright who voiced Sebastian in The Little Mermaid.  I have to give the man a hand because there’s nothing that would indicate Sebastian and Kron are voiced by the same man.  Wright provides sufficient menace to the role, and his voice is gravelly and fierce.  You also have British actress Joan Plowright voicing Baylene; Alfre Woodard, the previously mentioned Ossie Davis, and Della Reese are also in the cast.  The worst voice work, though, has to go to Max Casella as Aladar’s lemur friend, Zini.  Zini is essentially if Gurgi from The Black Cauldron and Terk from Tarzan had a lemur baby; he’s annoying and unnecessary.  The voice performance comes off as if Casella is auditioning for Goodfellas and it takes you completely out of the already ridiculous premise.  Disney really needs to realize that New York accents aren’t effective comic relief.

At only an hour and twenty minutes, there isn’t much plot to go off of.  The movie is a journey from one place to another, and Darwinism is attacked all the way.  Here’s where the movie takes on a bizarre blend of being a religious allegory as well as a history of American migration and social Darwinism.  At one point a character actually says it’s “survival of the fittest.”  Because the villain is saying this the audience is told that Darwinism is bad.  I won’t debate the various pros and cons of the theory, but to condense something as heavy as that into a kids movies requires the removal of all context on what Darwinism actually is.  These are dinosaurs; we’re aware that in a few hundred million years they’re all dead anyway, so why comment on Darwinism at all?  Speaking of, the final voice-over where the movie is summed up is hilarious: “None of us knows what changes, big or small, lie ahead.  One thing is certain – our journey’s not over.”  Hate to break it to you, but eventually you’ll all be dead.  It comes off as vain hope that the audience won’t realize that the dinosaurs are extinct!  As for religious connections, Aladar’s original name was meant to be Noah and the story of the dinosaurs trek conjures up images of the Jews walking for forty years in the desert – in this case barren, meteor ruined terrain – until they reach the promised land, or valley in this case.  There was also a weird, nixed decision to have the velociraptor have feathers to connect them to Native Americans attacking of settlers (I’m not kidding, this is on IMDB!) and there’s definitely the idea that America was founded by banding together against evil oppressors.

The animation and character design is just weird; plain, old weird.  The backgrounds are beautiful before they’re photos with the animation superimposed.  It’s lazy as all hell, but it’s beautiful compared to the terrible 2000-era CGI we were employing.  Despite the lack of rubber used to create the characters, they all have a rubbery appearance to them that looks mannequin-like.  It’s similar to the characters in The Polar Express.  What irked me was how stupid the animators assumed the audience is because every dinosaur has a connection to an animal in the real-world, apparently contradicting that “Darwinism is evil” theme since everything survived in a slightly different guise.  You have a spiky dinosaur that is a dog (complete with love of fetch and slobbering tongue); the raptors look like crocodiles, there’s egg-eating chicken dinos, and the T-rex is a supersized Carnotaurus (for fear that The Lost World would be too prevalent in people’s minds).  I also couldn’t ignore the design choices for the female love interest of Aladar’s.  In case the male and female voices confuse you as to gender, the two dinosaurs are animated differently so as to have their gender explicitly depicted.  Female Neera is given slender hips, a higher backside, and her feet have an extra spiky toe-thing that gives off the impression she’s wearing high heels!  Yes, apparently women were able to wear high heels all the way back to when they were dinosaurs.

Dinosaur is pretty, although you could argue that the backgrounds are great screensavers negating you actually needing to watch the movie.  The overly anthropomorphic dinosaurs are shoddily animated with weird anachronistic elements that have you asking if this is a dinosaur movie, or humans dressed up as dinosaurs.  The plot is non-existent, the vocal cast is bland, and the various story elements are confusing and underdeveloped.  Everything about Dinosaur feels uninspired and cold.  It’s a flat-out skip for me.

Ronnie Rating:

NEXT WEEK: Another movie with a convoluted creation history is featured in The Emperor’s New Groove

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Dinosaur

Cat People is one of my favorite horror movies, so when I culled together my list of actors/actresses for Summer Under the Stars I wanted to spotlight Simone Simon.  Her output isn’t prolific or revolutionary, but her role in Cat People is indelible and I’ve been fascinated by her for years.  I recently acquired the Cat People double feature on DVD and figured this would be the perfect time to watch the 1944 sort-of sequel, Curse of the Cat People.  A sequel in name only, The Curse of the Cat People tells a bewitching story about the loneliness of childhood, and the mistakes parents make in their children’s lives.  I enjoyed this as much as Cat People, but in a new, separate way.

Amy Reed (Ann Carter) is the isolated daughter of Oliver and Alice Reed (Kent Smith and Jane Randolph).  Desperate to find friends in order to please her father, Amy conjures up a magical friend named Irena (Simone Simon).  Unfortunately, Irena is Oliver’s decease first wife – killed whilst battling the belief that she was a magical cat person.  As Amy and Irena bond, this new-found invisible friends place the little girl’s life in danger.

The Curse of the Cat People is a sequel as well as an individual tale wholly separate from the original source of its title.  Iconic 1940s movie producer Val Lewton wanted to title this film Amy and Her Friend, but was compelled by the studio to capitalize on the success of 1942′s Cat People, thus the title was changed and the core trio of Smith, Randolph, and Simon were brought back.  The cast reunion aside, there are a few connections to the original film: A group of boys attack a black cat; the main character holds a bizarre belief that only she believes in; both films focus on female isolation and motherhood.  In Cat People, Irena’s belief in turning into a cat person separated her from her husband.  Several theories about the true meaning of the cat people abound, but one included Irena’s fear of sexual consummation and motherhood.  The Curse of the Cat People plays up on the motherhood theme through Amy’s relationship with the various people in her life.  She’s isolated from her friends; her mother holds no authority in the home and is told “not to interfere” in the discipline of her child.

A key subplot of the movie involves the elderly Mrs. Farren (Julia Dean) and her daughter, Barbara (Val Lewton contract player Elizabeth Russell).  Mrs. Farren believes that Barbara is an imposter sent to spy on her, and that the true Barbara died at the age of six – the same age as Amy Reed.  Mrs. Farren and Barbara provide an interesting relationship to the film because they feel so lost in the overall story.  The theory I worked with is that both women exhibit what Amy could become with improper parenting.  She can stay lost in her fantasy world – perpetually child-like – as Mrs. Farren is, or she can be forced to grow up and conform to lying in order to please her parents, leaving her bitter and distant.  It is up to Oliver and Alice to change their personalities and how they respond to Amy’s fantasy life.  This proves difficult as their characters have learned nothing from their original interactions with Irena.  I didn’t believe it possible to hate these two characters more than I did in Cat People, but Alice and Oliver truly prove how much they deserve each other!

Oliver was the All-American boy in the first movie; a waffler who leaves Irena the minute things get tough to shack up with another woman.  Here, he’s an intolerant parent that would rather have his daughter lie to him than live in a make-believe world where she’s seemingly happy.  In one scene, he threatens Amy with a spanking if she continues to say Irena is around.  By threatening her with punishment, you’re only forcing her to lie to avoid that, right?  Concurrently, Jane Randolph is pointless in the thankless role of Alice.  Anyone could play her somewhat concerned mother who lacks any engagement with her child.  In the end, Amy relies on her father and Irena to get her out of certain situations, seemingly emphasizing that Randolph is around for continuity’s sake.

The magical tone of the movie is reminiscent of Rene Clair or similar fantastic directors of the era.  It’s said Lewton included autobiographical touches to this film, and he captures childhood perfectly.  Ann Carter is astounding in the role of Amy, taking another otherworldly turn after playing Veronica Lake’s enchantress daughter in I Married a Witch.  Amy is quiet, reserved, but still precocious and curious.  She investigates a house because someone calls to her, and enjoys the company of older people who listen to her and enjoy spending time with her.  Kids are cruel, and Amy learns that she doesn’t need them to be happy; it is her parents – and by extension society – that causes her to believe her fairy-world is wrong.  Yes, she is isolated, but isn’t childhood supposed to be about believing in the wondrous and fantastic?  The invisible friend story could be mined for horror, and Lewton places a few touches that compel you to believe Irena is dangerous, but it’s never enough to move this into horror territory.  You understand that Amy is thrust into a confusing world where parents tell you stories about Rapunzel and magical mailboxes in hollow trees, but you’re never expected to believe they’re true.  It is this contradiction that leads to the confusion in which Amy finds herself.

This brings us to Simone Simon who literally plays a good fairy/fairy princess as Irena. She’s an angelic presence that, again, could be perceived as evil because she is so ethereal.  Standing in the snow in a white cape singing French songs (mind you, her character in the original was Serbian), is almost holy.  Simon has friendly chemistry with Amy; she realizes that both are kindred spirits, and while Amy finds comfort in Irena, Irena believes Amy is the afterlife she’s been seeking.  In the end, both females are lonely, and feel they’ve lost something they wish to get back, dovetailing with Mrs. Farren and Barbara.  Have I mentioned that Jane Randolph and Kent Smith serve no purpose because they stick out like sore thumbs amidst all the glowing compassion?

If you’re seeking the horror found in a Cat People story, you might be disappointed.  The Curse of the Cat People is an enchanting, sweet story of childhood friendship and unseen companionship.  Ann Carter, Simone Simon, and Elizabeth Russell are amazing while Kent Smith and Jane Randolph are about as good as they were in the original.  I enjoyed this on a different level from Cat People, but I also found it to be a fuller story.

Ronnie Rating:

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Cat People / The Curse of the Cat People (Horror Double Feature)

I belatedly close out my Summer Under the Stars with my favorite movie of all time: Singin’ in the Rain.  This is one of the hardest movies for me to review because there is absolutely nothing I dislike about it.  Nothing!  This is a film that could never exist today, that both reveres the time period it’s depicting while applauding the world of progress (both personal and cinematic).  It’s a spectacle in every sense of the word with hilarious and fun acting by Jean Hagen, Debbie Reynolds, Donald O’Connor, and Gene Kelly – in order of preference.  Let’s say goodbye to summer by singing – and dancing- in the rain!

Don Lockwood (Kelly) is one high of a successful Hollywood movie couple opposite the impossible Lina Lamont (Hagen).  When the talkies arrive to undo silents, the studio of Monumental Pictures is at a loss as to how to hide Lamont’s terrible speaking voice.  As Don and Lina struggle to change, the actor falls for beautiful bit player Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds).

If A Star is Born shows the perils of romance between celebrities, Singin’ in the Rain celebrates it.  Come to think of it, Singin’ in the Rain celebrates everything about film.  It’s a joyous movie showing how far Hollywood has come and where they’re headed.  The movie is about progress, both in Don Lockwood’s life and the history of cinema.  The movie charts the personal progression of Don starting with his revised history of his youth – a typical device used on stars of the period.  As he recounts the cultured upbringing he led, it’s contrasted with the reality of him performing in dive bars and vaudeville.  It’s no different from the romanticized world of the French Revolution that’s created in The Dueling Cavalier; Hollywood is all about revision for the sake of entertainment.  Don has no problem integrating into the talkies, but he must get over his own ego and learn to adjust his acting talent for a new medium.  In a way, Kathy Selden acts as Kelly’s muse to bluntly tell him “if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”  By the end, as Don goes through the “Broadway Melody” (a.k.a. the “Gotta Dance” number), it’s the culmination of all his progression.  He starts out as the young hoofer paying his dues, going to seedy joints – a way of acknowledging his real past? – and being discovered only to have the next “big thing” come his way.  You can take the “Broadway Melody” scene in a positive or negative way.  For the former, movies have endured and will endure just as actors like Don Lockwood will if they can change with the times; conversely, there will always be progress, the next “Next Big Thing,” that could unseat an actor or a medium.

The dancing in this film is unparalleled from all involved.  Donald O’Connor’s “Make ‘Em Laugh” number consistently appears on lists involving musicals or just best scenes and it’s all warranted.  To me, O’Connor’s tried to recapture Singin’ in the Rain through his future pairings and other musicals, and never lived up to this.  “Make ‘Em Laugh” is intensely funny through the various comic techniques O’Connor employs such as slapstick and facial humor.  The song and dance lives up to its name because I never stop laughing.  O’Connor’s dance main dance interlude with Kelly, “Moses Supposes,” is another tour de force; it’s hyper masculine moves and the way O’Connor and Kelly remain in-sync is just startling.  Remember, musicals of this era actually stopped moving the camera so you could see the fancy footwork of these guys!  Kelly gets almost all the numbers to himself, and thankfully he’s the master of fancy footwork (sorry, Fred).  The title song, the aforementioned “Broadway Melody” and “Moses Supposes” always reaffirm the sheer artistry in every step Kelly took.  Debbie Reynold was a girl when she made her début here, and was famously yelled at for so long by Kelly that she started crying.  She only has two dance scenes, the opening title and “All I Do is Dream of You.”  The dancing isn’t particularly taxing, but Reynolds certainly proves her worth.  I also want to give kudos to Cyd Charisse in the film that inspired my love of her.  She’s briefly in the “Broadway Melody” sequence and as much as I love Reynolds, Charisse was the true partner for Kelly.

As if this movie can’t embody perfection anymore, the comedy is spot-on.  Jean Hagen dominates the laughs as the screechy-voiced Lina Lamont.  All of Lamont’s lines are comedic gems that I quote endlessly (“I can’t make love to a bush!” “I’m a glittering star in the cinema firmament”).  You should have seen my face when I watched Hagen in something else and discovered her voice was just as beautiful as she was!  All the character take the material seriously, but Lamont is a character who takes everything – including her publicity and the perceived romance between her and Lockwood – as serious as a heart attack.  Debbie Reynolds also has a few moments to shine, but never enough.  Her peals of laughter when Don rips his coat always gets me; I think because her laugh is so infectious.

I’ll keep this review brief or else it’ll be come a sycophantic gush.  Singin’ in the Rain has been an endurable classic for decades because it’s timeless.  The movie may feature the transition from silent film to talkies, but it’s all about transition and progress no matter the situation or decade.  The dancing, the songs, and the comedy are perfect; the acting from all included is the best of the best.  If you haven’t watched this yet GET GOING!

Ronnie Rating:

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Singin in the Rain (60th Anniversary) [Blu-ray]

We’ve seen Disney go through restructuring of a film before it ends up in theaters.  The Black Cauldron has an insane backstory involving directing coups, detrimental cuts, and multiple scripts which I detailed in my original review.  Even last week’s Dinosaur  saw Disney CEO Michael Eisner veto mute dinosaurs.  And recently, Disney’s animation partner PIXAR changed directors mid-project with both Brave and The Good Dinosaur.  Up until 2000, the worst production story was The Black Cauldron; they hadn’t seen The Emperor’s New Groove.  I enjoy this movie and the direction it would put Disney in over the next couple of movies; i.e, a more sardonic, self-aware film where the adults could get the jokes and the kids could be taken in by the animation and action.  However, once you hear and see where this movie started out, you’ll be a little miffed at the massive restructuring that took place.

Emperor Kuzco (voiced by David Spade) is the immature ruler of a Peruvian village.  He’s recently made the decision to evict a hilltop town, overseen by peasant Pacha (voiced by John Goodman) in order to erect a mansion “complete with waterslide.”  Unfortunately, the peasants aren’t the only ones unhappy with Kuzco; his recently fired adviser, Yzma (voiced by Eartha Kitt) plans to kill the emperor and rule in his stead.  Due to a mix-up, Yzma ends up turning Kuzco into a llama.  Losing him whilst disposing of his body, Kuzco ends up with Pacha and the two must work together to achieve their goals.

The Emperor’s New Groove started out as a dramatic film called Kingdom of the Sun, set to be directed by Roger Allers who did The Lion King and Mark Dindal who did Cats Don’t Dance with Sting composing the score.  The plot was an Incan Prince and the Pauper where the emperor – called Manco and to be voiced by Spade – would trade places with Pacha – originally voiced by Owen Wilson.  Yzma discovers the switch and turns Manco into a llama, while Pacha is forced to do her bidding.  Eventually things are fixed and Pacha settles down with the emperor’s betrothed, Nina (voiced by Carla Gugino).  The movie was 50% complete when poor test audiences put the kibosh on things.  After a massive overhaul, including a complete reworking of the story and script (culminating in the loss of Allers and animator Andreas Deja), the ended up as what you see on-screen.  The one good thing to come out of the mess was a documentary entitled The Sweatbox, directed by Sting’s wife Trudi Styler.  The documentary originally followed the creation of the film, and Sting’s participation in it, before becoming a condemnation of Disney for taking the project away from the creators and firing everyone with no regards to the work.  Of course, Disney didn’t want to be portrayed in a negative light and the documentary was quickly seized and locked into the mysterious Disney Vault.  Bizarrely, last year unfinished copies of the documentary leaked online and you can find it if you search.  It’s a pretty sad exploration of the company that would end up being even more prophetic as the years go on.

With all that happening behind the scenes, The Emperor’s New Groove doesn’t suffer from the issues that plagued the troubled Black Cauldron.  The latter film was frenetic due to the sheer amount of rewriters and cutting that went on; whereas, the complete overhaul of Emperor’s New Groove keeps the structure and tone relatively consistent.  This, Atlantis, and Lilo & Stitch were rather experimental for Disney, with a focus on subtle humor for adults and a sardonic tone.  Unfortunately, Disney either failed to embrace this, or didn’t offer the directors/screenwriters enough as the fad died down rather quickly (although there are brief moments in Bolt and Meet the Robinsons that fit the criteria).  The Emperor’s New Groove is a Disney film that would have been great in the 1990s, particularly when David Spade was a household name.  I find the movie to be charming, occasionally witty, and ridiculously quotable.  The characters of Yzma and Kronk (voiced by Patrick Warburton) are a zany, slightly psychotic duo who steal all their scenes.  Their unresolved domestic relationship allows for more risque humor, such as Kuzco asking about Kronk’s age and acting like a concerned child: “He seems….nice.”  Eartha Kitt enters the pantheon of fantastic vocal choices for Disney villains (up there with George Sanders and George C. Scott).  Her kittenish voice goes well with Yzma’s look which is a kitten mixed with a grinning skull.

David Spade is good, but his voice and brand of snarky humor is an acquired taste.  He’s perfect for the role of an immature selfish king, although it’s laughable to have a heavily Peruvian story with all white actors in the vocal cast; Spade’s voice will cause you to lose all belief that this is set in any brand of Latin American country that isn’t a Taco Bell.  John Goodman is always a welcome addition to films, and has become a Disney staple of late.  His Pacha becomes a father figure/mentor to Kuzco, who refuses to believe that one man can be so heartless.  Pacha is that old-fashioned family man (he has a pregnant wife and two kids at home) who believes in righteousness, and kindness; he’s a saint in the movie.

What audiences may be against is the anachronistic structure of the plot.  It isn’t nearly as pervasive as Hercules (nor is it used for nefarious purposes like marketing to children), but the lack of place is ruined from the word go.  The rich history of Peru and the Incas is pushed aside for jokes about waterslides, greasy spoon diners, and a finale that takes from the wizard’s duel in The Sword and the Stone.  The movie could have been anywhere at any time – look at the white voice cast for further proof – and isn’t nearly as unique as it wishes to be.  The snide humor is funny, especially for adults, but the storytelling isn’t as rich as in the past.  So much of this screams “1990s” that the bizarre Peruvian touches just stick out.  It never hindered my enjoyment of the movie, but if you’re hoping for a rich time and place, it’s missing here.  The humor though acknowledges that kids aren’t dumb.  The movie is incredibly self-aware with characters commenting on things that don’t make sense (my personal favorite is the questioning of how Yzma and Kronk ended up in one location before Kuzco and Pacha).  The script is aware of audiences knowledge of movie conventions, and one thing The Emperor’s New Groove gets right is accepting and admitting that this is a cartoon.

The movie’s Tex Avery finale, snarky humor, and witty banter shifts Disney into post-modern stories where fairy tales are abhorrent and the jokes have to be smarter because the kids are smarter.  This could turn off audiences wanting a purer “Disney” experience, and sadly Disney would revert back to their old formula with time.  The Emperor’s New Groove was able to move past its dark beginnings and cobble out a story that’s consistently funny (albeit short of depth).  It’s an underrated Disney film, especially in the tempestuous, post-millennium era.

Ronnie Rating:

NEXT WEEK: Next week we’ll be going on an undersea adventure with Atlantis: The Lost Empire

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The Emperor’s New Groove – The New Groove Edition

For being a lost empire, Atlantis certainly has kept up with technology.  This whizz-bang action adventure was touted as Disney‘s foray into “serious filmmaking,” casting aside songs for adventure and action.  It was a gamble that didn’t pay off  in a world where CGI and live-action films were better mediums for the type of story Disney featured within Atlantis.  There’s several missed opportunities here to create a unique world, pre-Avatar, but the script has little interest in characters or plot, skipping along until an action sequence jumps into things.  I didn’t enjoy Atlantis: The Lost Empire when it originally hit theaters, and sadly that sentiment hasn’t changed.

Milo Thatch (voiced by Michael J. Fox) is an explorer obsessed with discovering the lost city of Atlantis.  With the help of an intrepid group of adventurers the group discover Atlantis and save it from extinction.

The issues with Atlantis stem from Disney’s desperate attempts to please the teenage market, while at the same time creating shiny animation to bring in children.  However, each market was already being catered to with far bigger, and more expensive films, glutting the market at a time when a Disney film looked passe and infantile.  In the months during Atlantis’ release, both Shrek and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider were in theaters and doing big business, making Atlantis: The Lost Empire the also-ran playing catch-up.  Atlantis and Lara Croft have some bizarre associations, predominately in the old-fashioned presentation of an adventure movie and finding a great civilization/conspiracy.  The old-fashioned look of Atlantis was designed by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, and while the appearance of Atlantis is beautiful and lush, it clashes terribly against the blocky, amateurish design of Milo and his crew.  The character animation in Atlantis: The Lost Empire makes the xereography process during the 1960s look brilliant!  Milo is a series of sharp angles and block shapes with no definition to his features.  When the character wears a tank top you can see the lines of his clavicle on top of the t-shirt, turning it into a cheap cartoon drawing created at Disneyland.

The movie is set in 1914, leading me to believe they were going for some type of Victorian steam-punk atmosphere, but it never comes off right.  In fact, the animation comes off as a throwback to the Disney sitcom style we saw in Hercules, only the animators ran out of time and crudely finished.  I understand the idea of making the humans personalities come out via their body shapes, but the overall effect looks half-cooked.  It’s a shock because the Atlanteans are drawn in the regular Disney style of rounded shapes and lush colors.  Speaking of the Atlanteans, there’s a pronounced anime style I took note of, particularly in the opening sequence as Atlantis is decimated.  I have little knowledge of anime, and yet I picked up on the style immediately.  Color me surprised when I read that the creators were accused of plagiarizing from a 1960s anime film, only to have director Kirk Wise say he never heard of it.  He might never have heard of it, but considering Disney’s first partnership with the anime studio, Studio Ghlibi would be released the same year, I have doubts on how “uninspired” they were.

I’m going on a lot about the animation only because the characters are as flat as they’re drawn.  Because the script is so hell-bent on being about “action,” “adventure,” and “Explosions!” (yes, complete with capital “e” and exclamation point), there’s no room for the characters to blossom and develop a relationship.  This becomes entirely unbelievable once the group bands together with Milo, because friendships are never given enough time to take root.  The minute the characters sit down for a quiet moment, they’re given 2 minutes of talking only to be interrupted by a ten-minute action sequence.  The abundance of action sequence caused me to lose interest because I knew if I missed one another would show up in seconds later.

The rag-tag group of humans include a diverse cast of ethnicities that’s great to see, even if in 1914 there’s no way an African-American would have been a doctor amongst a group of white Americans.  That’s a problem with the time period itself; outside of the steam punk look, there’s no historical follow-through on things.  Other than brief mentions of The Kaiser and other pre-chewed references to say “We did research,” elements like racism and gender discrimination are ignored.  It would be worth it to have made this present day because nothing would need to be altered.  The rest of the characters, such as Cookie (voiced by the late Jim Varney) and Packard (voiced by Florence Stanley) are weird 1960s comic relief characters from a sitcom; and our femme fatale, Helga (voiced by Claudia Christian) is a 1940s noir character that talks like Breathless Mahoney from Dick Tracy.  Again, a hodgepodge of time periods could have been alleviated by simply being present day.  Other than Milo, the only character I felt bonded to in any way was the villain, Rourke (voiced by James Garner).  Garner is another perfect villain voice, even if his character is pretty much a terrible, money-grubbing American capitalist that would take on real-world implications post-9/11.

Once the group gets to Atlantis the Atlanteans are defined by the hot girl, Kida (voiced by Cree Summer) and the village elder/father of Kida, King Kashekim (voiced by Leonard Nimoy).  That’s it, the entire world of Atlantis is two people.  For a culture that we’re desperate to hear about I was disappointed at how little interest the plot has in telling us about this world and its way of life.  The only thing we learn is that people are perpetually young?  Or that Kida is perpetually young?  It’s confusing because the entire world of Atlantis is left swinging in the breeze, undefined.  Drop a few action sequences and tell us why we should care about this culture other than it’s special and magical.

If you can’t tell, I don’t care for Atlantis: The Lost Empire.  The movie is swirling in a wave of explosions, more interested in mimicking Michael Bay than focusing on Disney’s methods of story and character first.  The time period, the characters, and even Atlantis itself, become irrelevant in favor of high-octane CGI fights that seem derivative of other live-action movies.  If they were hoping to cash in on the teen market, there’s nothing to excite teenagers and there’s little to invest for adults and children.  Atlantis has gained a cult following, but for those who have followed Disney throughout the years, it only highlights the company’s further attempts (and failures) to remain hip and cutting-edge.

Ronnie Rating:

NEXT WEEK: Disney goes Hawaiian with Lilo & Stitch

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Atlantis – The Lost Empire

Lilo & Stitch has become a movie audiences love to hate due to Disney dumping the character of Stitch everywhere they possibly could immediately after release.  He’s on merchandise, there’s sequels, a short-lived television show, and he even kicked out evil aliens and gained his own ride (to the chagrin of Disney World fans) at Walt Disney World.  Stitch overload has placed a damper on the movie, especially since the character changed from his original inception, à la Tinkerbell.  Ignoring all of that, Lilo & Stitch was a game changer for the Disney Company, and a return to form, propelling the humor and story into darker places.  I haven’t watched the movie all the way through in years, but rewatching it brought up a wealth of emotions and laughs as if it was the first time.

Alien experiment 626 lands on the island of Hawaii where he’s adopted by a lonely girl named Lilo (voiced by Daveigh Chase).  Unfortunately, Lilo has her own problems; her sister, Nani (voiced by Tia Carrere) isn’t having the easiest time raising her and could lose Lilo forever.

Lilo & Stitch is analogous to Dumbo; both in terms of story, animation style, and its intent within the canon.  After the dismal failures of Dinosaur and Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Disney needed a hit; one that didn’t rely on flashy CGI and action, as those two hadn’t proved to be what audiences wanted.  Instead, they went with a smaller (i.e. less expensive to produce) , intimate tale of a Hawaiian girl and her pet “dog” named Stitch.  It was a similar format as when Disney produced Dumbo in the 1940s after the failures of Fantasia and Pinocchio.  The animation style also hearkens back to Dumbo as the animators gave up entirely on CGI and deep focus (used in Tarzan) in favor of watercolor backgrounds which hadn’t been used since, you guessed it, Dumbo.  The watercolor backgrounds are a beautiful return to form, and work perfectly for this picture considering it’s set on Hawaii.  Even though it’s apparent that the background are watercolors – with a muted tone compared to the foreground – it isn’t as marked a contrast which creates a sense of unity and community.

Where Lilo & Stitch soars is in the humor and relationships.  Director Chris Sanders (who co-directed, co-wrote, and is the voice of Stitch) has been known for his realistic, sardonic sense of humor and that’s what surprised me when this movie came out.  The humor is markedly “un-Disney.”  Ironically, Stitch is a character with the least amount of subversive humor, although there is a self-awareness of monster movies epitomized by Stitch creating San Francisco in Lilo’s bedroom and destroying it.  Lilo is the character with the blackest sense of humor, from the minute she punches and bites a girl at hula class.  Lilo is a girl you believe could exist in the world, or at least reminded me of myself.  Her gathering up of her friends – drawn on spoons in a mock voodoo ritual – and stuffing them into a pickle jar is something I could have done as a kid.  Daveigh Chase’s claim to fame in The Ring (she was the “seven days” girl) wouldn’t come out for another three months, but now her flat proclamation, “My friends need to be punished” still gives me shivers.

Believe it or not the family unit in the movie actually produced a bit of controversy upon release.  This was the first time a female matriarch wasn’t downright evil and wasn’t a mother!  Nani is Lilo’s sister, forced into a motherly role after the death of their parents.  That could have been all, but an added subplot sees a social worker, aptly named Cobra Bubbles (voiced by Ving Rhames), arrive to inspect Nani’s parenting.  At the time, some considered it “too real,” but Sanders and crew understand that characters and jobs like this exist and don’t require hideing.  Cobra Bubbles isn’t a villain – in fact, every character has a moral goodness within them, so there really aren’t any clear-cut villains in the movie – but wants to protect and do what’s best for Lilo.  The real-world applications pushed Disney into being relevant for the first time (and the removal of Sanders during Bolt effectively shut the door on any future relevancy within the company).  The theme of the movie is family, and finding where you belong, but also about finding your inner morality.  Stitch is built to destroy, and has to find where his boundaries are; the same with Cobra Bubbles and even the Grand Councilwoman (voiced by Zoe Caldwell).

Stitch himself is great, especially in the characterizations that lead you to believe he’s a dog.  Yes, they should have realized he isn’t a dog, but there are subtle tics around the ears and face that are dog-like.  IMDB says that there was a fear audiences wouldn’t understand Stitch’s emotions, and thus they gave him a more animated personality.  I never felt that for an instant.  The big expressive eyes on Stitch, with the movement of his ears, gave all the necessary emotion required.  The Stitch overload has died down in the ten years since this movie’s release (it’s been TEN YEARS!), and I think Stitch is worthy of being reclaimed as one of the best characters invented in the ’00s.

Add to this a rollicking Elvis Presley soundtrack – only in Hawaii – and you have the makings of the best film Disney made in the 2000s.  There’s a few more left in the decade, but so far Lilo & Stitch remains my favorite.  Stitch became a nuisance for a bit, putting a damper on the movie itself, but if you haven’t seen it in a few years go watch it!

Ronnie Rating:

NEXT WEEK: We’re taking another trip into literary adaptations with Disney’s Treasure Planet

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Lilo & Stitch (Two-Disc Big Wave Edition)

Walt Disney Animation Studios hits another home-run after the lovely Meet the Robinsons.  Sure, Bolt undoes the emphasis on smaller voice actors, but at its core it tells a rather substantial story about existence, purpose, and identity.  On top of that, the film is a sharp satire on Hollywood set amongst the backdrop of a group of animals trying to find a home.

Bolt (voiced by John Travolta) isn’t your average dog.  He’s a genetically altered superdog with the power to melt things with his heat vision and emit a thunderous boom with his “super bark.”  The problem is Bolt is the unwitting star of a television show, and when he mistakenly believes his owner, Penny (voiced by Miley Cyrus) has been kidnapped Bolt goes out to save her.  Lost and alone in a mysterious city where his powers no longer work, Bolt must team up with an alley cat named Mittens (voiced by Susie Essman) in order to get back home.

Bolt was the first film Walt Disney Animation Studios – the subsidiary animation company created in light of PIXAR’s removal from the studio – produced under the eyes of PIXAR head/Disney animation overseer, John Lasseter after PIXAR and Disney joined forces.  The humor isn’t quite as plucky and subversive as in Meet the Robinsons, but Bolt still possesses the winking self-awareness Disney was embracing.  The movie was originally set as the next film for Lilo & Stitch director Chris Sanders, but creative differences forced Sanders to part ways with the studio and directors Byron Howard and Chris Williams overhauled the picture.  Interestingly, Williams had previous experience on The Emperor’s New Groove and Howard would work on Disney’s return to the princess genre with Tangled.

The script, penned by Dan Fogelman, did its homework on Hollywood right from the action-packed opening acting as an intro to Bolt’s work on his television show.  The cross-cutting and intensity is reminiscent of ABC’s Alias and above and beyond what you’d expect from an animated film.  The television show sets up the necessary exposition and from there Bolt literally bolts from the studio and into the real world where his journey of identity unfolds.  The script is what sells the movie, with a blend of deluded one-liners from Bolt and his obsessive hamster companion, Rhino (voiced by Mark Walton), to the Hollywood satire of pigeons who are screenwriters – “Wait for it…” “Aliens.”  “Oh, snap!” – to the small-town pound owner who pepper sprays her fellow employees (the term “spicy eyes” continues to show up in my regular conversations).  The humor is consistent and a superb mix of physical and verbal to please a wide group of audiences.

Where Meet the Robinsons jokes never felt dated due to its futuristic setting, Bolt has a droll humor through poking fun at the nature of film and television production.  At times it’s seen as making fun of truly painful things that do happen in the entertainment industry; specifically Penny’s agent (voiced by Greg Germann) forcing Penny to do whatever she has to in order to gain publicity conjures up images of Cyrus’ own work in Hollywood.  Thankfully, his character is the only indication of the true underbelly of Hollywood as the rest is usually played up for laughs at how pervasive Hollywood is.  The aforementioned pigeons notwithstanding, Rhino is an overweight hamster who literally lives in a bubble surrounded by television images, and  characters mention Bolt’s face being familiar but unable to place him.  Coming from a background where I’ve read existential literature, Bolt’s journey felt very heavy for a child’s film.  When he finally discovers his life is a sham he asks the question man, and apparently dog, find themselves asking: What is reality?  If I’m not the person I think I am, who am I?

Underneath the existential qualities is the easier to digest theme of finding one’s home.  Mittens should be bosom buddies with Lilo of Lilo & Stitch and Jessie of the Toy Story movies; I’m unsure if that aids in her complexity or if it shows her as one-dimensional.  Regardless, Mittens is the streetwise alley cat whose been abandoned by her owners and thus hates the idea of family.  Interestingly, listen to the dialogue and it would be exactly the same if spoken by two adults, particularly two lovers.  Yes, it’s a tad eerie to hear Mittens’ attempts to get Bolt to stay with her while Bolt says Penny truly loves him without thinking of some type of love triangle, but it works towards connecting the audience with the animals; their problems are universal!

The vocal cast is good and comparable to Meet the Robinsons in terms of skill.  John Travolta is our titular hero and there’s no disguising his voice at all.  Travolta never tries to hide that he’s voicing the character, and I guess it’s better than him working to alter his voice, but there’s nothing special in his vocal talents; it’s a passable performance.  Miley Cyrus voices Penny, a character originally voiced by Chloe Grace Moretz (who have a few lines of dialogue as a different character at story’s end).  Of course, Cyrus is in this considering it’s the peak of her time at Disney, and again there isn’t anything special in her performance, but it’s not a dealbreaker.  The standouts are the side characters, Susie Essman as Mittens and Mark Walton as Rhino.  They are consummate voice actors who understand vocal inflections and create a performance with their voice.  Other appearances by character actors like Diedrich Bader, Nick Swardson, James Lipton and Malcolm McDowell will have you playing “Whose voice is that?”

Disney Animation continues to prove they’re facing changing mores head-on with Bolt.  A droll satire on Hollywood with an existential slant, the movie is fun and heart-warming even if the lead performances from Bolt and Penny are rather meh.  The soundtrack is a blue-grass style I enjoy a lot, especially Jenny Lewis’ (of Troop Beverly Hills fame) song, “Barking at the Moon.”  It’ll be interesting to revisit Walt Disney Animation Studios’ return to princessdom in a few weeks.

Ronnie Rating:

NEXT WEEK: Hand-drawn animation is resurrected with The Princess and the Frog

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Bolt (Three-Disc Edition w/ Standard DVD + Digital Copy + BD Live) [Blu-ray]

We interrupt our weekly foray into the Disney Vault – which I’ll be posting later – to look at a live-action film starring one of Disney’s beloved actors, Don Knotts.  While The Ghost and Mr. Chicken isn’t a Disney movie, Knotts created several enduring characters for that studio, and it appears said studio took a page out of the handbook Universal laid out with this film.  Spooky enough for a child to enjoy, but with a gooey, caramel-coated heart at the center of it, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken is a delightful Halloween treat for the young and young at heart.

Small-town typesetter, Luther Heggs (Knotts) is desperate to become a reporter.  The opportunity to achieve his dream is presented when Luther is asked to spend a night in the haunted Simmons mansion.  A night of mysterious noises and organ playing causes Luther to write the story of a lifetime.  But when the mansion’s new owner seeks a retraction, and Luther’s job, the local yokel will have to prove the house is truly haunted.

My mothers recommend this to me because she’s a huge fan of Don Knotts’ films; ask her about The Incredible Mr. Limpet sometime.  I’ve watched Knotts in his later films, and hadn’t watched the work he did after leaving the immense success known as The Andy Griffith Show.  With that, the cockles of my heart were warmed by The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.  This is a good, old-fashioned haunted house movie with a Scooby Doo ending.  The perfect throwback to Saturday mornings as a kid!  The air of menace exudes from the house the first time you see it and someone gets their head bonked on the sidewalk.  (IMDB mentions it was the house used in Harvey, but I swear it’s also the house from The Munsters.)  The small town of Rachel, Kansas is one where everyone is involved in each other’s business, and thus reputations are fairly rock solid.  Luther Heggs is commonly considered a buffoon eager to jump on a story no matter how ridiculous; thus, he believes a man whose been hit on the head has been murdered.

Don Knotts is a master of comedy, particularly of the facial and slapstick variety.  His hands do a lot of the action as he attempts to show off his skills at karate, but it usually involves slapping people’s heads or tree trunks.  A scene of him somersaulting into an uneven elevator had me in stitches, mainly because it looks like Knotts did his own stunts.  Luther is a man who just wants a chance; the typical nice guy who never gets the girl or the dream job no matter how hard he tries.  The movie’s plot comes into effect once Luther spends a lone night in the Simmons mansion; a house whose history of murder and scandal increases with every person who recounts it.  Knotts bug-eyed expression and nervous personality is like a Chihuahua and it’s not too long before he’s jumping at every bump in the night.  There isn’t much time spent in the house after that, and the movie turns into a courtroom procedural on par with the proving of Santa Claus in Miracle on 34th Street.  The final test involves the entire courtroom returning to the house to see the events Luther saw happen again, and a twist involving murder and kidnapping.  It becomes rather ludicrous but Knotts’ affability and the comic tone keeps everything light.  It has the previously mentioned Scooby Doo ending, but who doesn’t love live-action cartoons when they’re genuinely funny?

The rest of the cast is composed of television actors, several of whom also entered popular culture through their respective series.  Dick Sargent, aka “the Other Darren” of Bewitched fame, plays Knotts’ editor, George Beckett and his person as a father-like figure works.  Other Bewitched alums include Reta Shaw and Sandra Gould as members of a women’s society who support Luther, and Charles Lane as the lawyer out to ruin the newspaper.  The actors all have an intricate web of performances with each other, adding an additional layer of community to the movie.  Love interest, Joan Staley is sweet as the girl next door, Alma.  Her character isn’t complex, and only has a few scenes of smiling and going on a date with Luther, but that’s all you need for this type of film.

All in all, I enjoyed The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.  Don Knotts turns in a wacky performance in an eerie film which never becomes too intense for the youngest of viewers.  It’s akin to going to a haunted house run by your best friends; a small-town carnival of intrigue with a neat bow waiting at the end.

Ronnie Rating:

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The Ghost and Mr. Chicken

Disney marked their return to princess territory with this 2009 film, after taking a ten-year break from all things girly (Mulan is considered their last “princess” movie in spite of the fact Mulan isn’t descended from royalty or becomes royal by story’s end).  The Princess and the Frog was a controversial leap, with Disney finally crafting an African-American princess.  After numerous story delays, the movie was a moderate success and it’s “meh” overall.  The plotting is the problem as Disney tries to be as delicate as possible with political correctness to the film’s detriment.     In 1920s New Orleans, a young woman named Tiana (voiced by Anika Noni-Rose) dreams of opening her own restaurant.  Unfortunately, she’s strapped for funds and, despite all her hard work, appears to be heading for failure.  On a whim, she kisses a nearby frog and becomes one herself!  It turns out the frog she kissed is really Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos), a debt-ridden prince whose made a deal with the Shadow Man (voiced by Keith David) to restore his wealth.  As Tiana and Naveen navigate their way through the harsh New Orleans swamp in the hopes of being turned back into humans, they start to bond and discover their dreams might be the same.

It’s been awhile since I’ve recounted a tale from “Stories of Disney’s Difficult Production History,” so here goes.  The Princess and the Frog originally started out as The Frog Princess, a more straightforward tale of a woman turned into a frog.  Right away cries of protest were heard from African-American groups who felt the girl’s original name, Maddy, drew connotations to the derogatory “mammy,” which were aided by Maddy being a chambermaid; French critics also protested the title, which they felt slighted French people (REALLY?).  Several other criticisms were raised, ranging from the ethnicity of the Prince, the introduction of the Shadow Man as a voodoo witch doctor, all the way to the belief the movie was mocking victims of Hurricane Katrina.  Disney did their best to please everyone and settled on changing the female character – now named Tiana – into the daughter of poor parents (no royalty) with dreams of opening a restaurant; the voodoo witch doctor stayed, and Prince Naveen became the prince of some unknown Indian country.

What was ignored was Disney’s return to hand-drawn animation with this feature, “retiring” after Home on the Range.  Brief snippets of 2D animation were seen in 2006′s Enchanted, but Disney wanted to make one final go of the format to please fans, and hopefully draw away criticisms.  The movie was a success, and proved the princess model was alive and well, but hand-drawn animation didn’t receive the resurgence expected and Princess and the Frog is, as of right now, the last hand-drawn animated Disney feature.

  With all that out of the way, Disney was always going to have issues with this story and its issues of race.  The 1920s setting prevents the audience from escaping what was going on with African-American people, especially in the south, at the time.  The Harlem Renaissance was thriving, and the movie plays on that with the jazz-infused score and Art Deco appearance, but make no mistake, African-Americans were still suffering wide-scale poverty and racism, especially in the South.  It’s explained in the opening sequence Tiana’s mother (voiced by Oprah Winfrey who was a technical consultant and voice of good will) is a dressmaker to the wealthy ‘Big Daddy’ La Bouff (voiced by John Goodman) and his daughter Charlotte (voiced by Jennifer Cody).  ‘Big Daddy’ is dressed like Colonel Sanders which doesn’t shun connections to wealthy plantation owners; the La Bouff mansion is animated in the style of a plantation.  The next scene cuts to the smaller houses of the African-Americans whose only happiness is coming together for food.  From there, you’ll find no mention of racism.  Tiana is treated like everyone else, except for the fact she works hard and can’t pay for the building she wants.  As with Pocahontas, Disney is at a crossroads.  No one wants to acknowledge our horrific failure as a country with regards to racism and slavery, particularly to young children.  But in removing all necessary context, the story slaps a happy shine on the whole event, almost retroactively saying the event never happened.  It doesn’t help that Tiana has no friends in her ethnicity – the other African-Americans she meets find her boring – and her only friend is the spoiled Southern belle, Charlotte.

Let’s talk about Charlotte for a second; a character who is either a meta poke at Disney, or just a really stereotypical depiction of what the princess model has become.  Charlotte is a fun Southern Marilyn Monroe, lovingly voiced by Jennifer Cody; she’s sweet, loud, and desperate to marry a prince.  The issue lies in Charlotte being a vapid, selfish, shallow princess.  She wishes on stars and does everything a good princess is supposed to do.  By the end, she does what’s right for her friend, Tiana, but audiences still connect with her character’s one dream in the entire movie: TO BE A PRINCESS!  I’m all for believing in the princess thing when you’re little, but to create a character over 18 whose only goal in life is to marry royalty, what are you saying to little girls?  Tiana on the other hand, isn’t much better, despite her goal of being a businesswoman.  Keep in mind, her business idea is inspired by her father, and she continually calls it “his dream.”  In the end, the dream is achieved in conjunction with her marriage to Prince Naveen.

I will say, one should applaud Disney for even creating a character with an aspiration unconnected to marriage.  Tiana is probably the first princess to have some type of achievable goal, and is probably the last one mired in any sort of realism.  Princess Merida of Brave is a deeper character, but her issues are applicable to the princess model.  I also appreciated having two female characters be friends, regardless of race.  I gripe about Tiana not having any friends of her own ethnicity, but we should recognize the themes of tolerance and friendship Disney creates in Charlotte and Tiana; it’s hard enough to see two women be friends in this day and age, let alone friends of different races.  Some of this universality is negated by Prince Naveen, the ruler of some unknown, but vaguely Eastern country.  It’s hard to fathom his swarthy appearance would make him a hit with white women, especially considering miscegenation laws were alive and well in this part of the country.

But how’s the actual movie, you ask?  It’s okay, nothing more or less.  The problem is the frog himself.  Once the frog is introduced, and Tiana is also turned into a frog, the movie becomes a boring adventure story of two humans turned into animals with not one, but several separate subplots on top of the main one: Not only do you follow Naveen and Tiana, but you also have Naveen being a spoiled douchebag; an alligator (voiced by Michael-Leon Wooley) who wants to be a human and play jazz like Louis Armstrong; a Cajun firefly (voiced by Jim Cummings) in love with the planet Venus; Charlotte wanting to marry the Prince Naveen imposter, who happens to be the real Naveen’s valet who is also in-debted to the Shadow Man.  Yes, all these stories, in two separate locales, all competing for space.  It’s easy to understand why there are 3 screenwriters, 5 story-by credits, and 5 additional story material credits on this puppy!  The script doesn’t believe in Tiana’s story, nor does it believe in the titled story, so it adds in all these colorful characters for you to divide your time when it only muddies the swamp.

The animation of the actual swamp is beautiful, although Disney’s never had a problem with nighttime imagery or forest settings.  The costuming on the characters and the Art Deco pieces are also rendered in an appropriate manner.  I also adore Keith David as the Shadow Man aka Dr. Facilier.  David is another frightening villain with a distinctive voice, but his motivations are strictly monetary which has never a good villain made.  His song, “Friends on the Other Side” is the only memorable piece on the soundtrack.  Sorry, but Randy Newman’s songs have always sounded hokey and repetitious; none more so than in this soundtrack where single lines are repeated ad nauseum (“Almost There” and “Ma Belle Evangeline” were the worst offenders).

The Princess and the Frog is a commendable attempt at racial tolerance, as well as a worthy jolt to the princess and hand-drawn animation process.  The relationship between Tiana and Charlotte is ground-breaking for Disney, even if it’s suffocated under the dogpile of plots the movie interjects.  Keith David is a great villain, but much like villains of Disney movie past, he lacks a worthy motivation and the screentime to have an impact.  The Princess and the Frog is better on a second go-round, but is evidence of Disney finding its sea legs.

Ronnie Rating:

NEXT WEEK: Disney goes back to old-school fairy tales with Tangled

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The Princess and the Frog (Single-Disc Edition)

Look to Tangled as evidence of how Disney treats their animated films today.  The 2010 CGI-animated feature is beautifully rendered, with a return to Broadway-esque songs and witty scripts, although self-awareness rules the roost along with questionable doe-eyed females.  Tangled may have put the nail in the coffin for hand-drawn animation, and cast Disney’s eye towards pleasing all genders, but you can’t ignore the infectious spirit floating off it like a glowing paper lantern.

Rapunzel (voiced by Mandy Moore) lives her life locked away in a tower at the behest of Mother Gothel (voiced by Donna Murphy) who kidnapped the child as an infant.  Rapunzel’s dragging golden locks possess magical powers which Mother Gothel employs to make herself immortal.  However, Rapunzel dreams of leaving her tower to watch the mysterious “floating lights” she feels are her destiny.  With the aid of a loveable rouge named Flynn Rider (voiced by Zachary Levi), the duo go on an adventure of exploration and romance.

I wouldn’t go so far as to declare Tangled the beginning of a new Disney Renaissance (there’s a few more movies to see), but the film is the foundation for an emerging resurgence in the company dynamics.  CGI is the official animation style, and thankfully the movie beautifully employs the model, romanticizing the style compared to wackier takes like in Meet the Robinsons.  Several sequences are living art, such as the lantern release and the forest where Rapunzel’s tower is housed.  The various characters are all lavishly costumed and animated to suit, and Rapunzel’s hair is minutely detailed to the point you can count the individual strands.

Recently, a Disney animator felt the need to comment about the problems of animating the “complex” face of female characters, and this movie sparks a trend of doe-eyed females with tiny waists (preliminary photos of the characters from Frozen are near identical to Rapunzel).  Rapunzel isn’t a glamorous animated character, nor is she particularly distinctive in her animation.  Mandy Moore’s voice is perfectly suited to the character who would be the girl next door, if her tower had a door.  Moore conveys sweetness, playful defiance, and humor in her voice work and I’m surprised she hasn’t done more.  You can see Moore’s face shining through the character.  It helps she has a melodious voice for the songs.  Unfortunately, aside from Rapunzel’s long, blonde hair, she’s the stereotype of femininity.  You don’t have characters with the flaming red mane of Ariel or the bookish appearance of Belle.  Remember the times when female characters in Disney films had eyes which didn’t take up over 50% of their head?

The main issue with Rapunzel is how ancillary she is to her own story.  She isn’t even allowed to narrate her movie, a job relegated to Flynn.  The script went through drastic changes after Disney perceived the movie would fail to attract male audiences (they followed the adage that women will go see any movie, while men won’t see anything marketed/led by females).  The failure of The Princess and the Frog was blamed on the title turning off men and the lack of any strong male figures, so it was “rectified” with this.  If you believe Disney hasn’t dropped its male-centric thinking, Google the comments made about the lack and desire for “strong male heroes” in Disney films as told by the guy who worked on Oz: The Great and Powerful.  Disney created the character of Flynn Rider to attract boys, and changed the movie’s title to the ambiguous Tangled; odd considering Rapunzel’s hair never gets a kink in it despite being dragged through the entire forest.  I can’t get my hair to cooperate in a ponytail!  Flynn is a decent leading man because Zachary Levi’s voice work is fantastic.  (I appreciate Disney getting smaller stars for this film.)  Flynn may be a hunkifed Emperor Kuzco, especially with his self-aware and anachronistic one-liners which are hilarious, but it’s entertaining.

The scene-stealer is Mother Gothel amazingly voiced by Donna Murphy.  I knew Tangled was a return to Disney musicals of old when I heard Murphy belt out “Mother Knows Best,” one of the best songs to come out of the Disney music department in years.  Gothel is the prototypical aging woman desperate to remain young, but there’s an element of loneliness and maternal control in her character.  Yes, she’s kidnapped Rapunzel for her own selfish ends, but, due to Murphy’s voice work, you hear her “I love you most” to Rapunzel as the genuine love of a mother.  The core of the story is the age-old theme of a young girl becoming a woman and the feared irrelevance of parents.  Mother Gothel is a passive aggressive villain, hewing closer to some of the worst traits of female stereotyping, right down to making a fat joke at Rapunzel’s expense.  Again, it helps that Mother Gothel is written as a passive aggressive villain – continually going back on her insults and calling them jokes – but must we throw in every terrible female trait in the book?  You didn’t see Ursula call Ariel fat, did you?

Alan Menken‘s score is a patch of heaven, and introduces the return of the Disney showstopper.  The aforementioned “Mother Knows Best” is akin to “Poor Unfortunate Souls,” and “I See the Light” will go up there with other romantic ballads like “Beauty and the Beast.”  You can hear the soul in these songs.  They don’t sound churned out from Disney Music 101.  We also see the return of the cuddly side characters, in this case Pascal, Rapunzel’s chameleon friend and Maximus the horse.  The former is far more entertaining than the latter, particularly because Pascal mimes all his actions.  Maximus is another one of those “horse that acts like a dog” characters, which is funny for a bit but dies quickly.

Tangled is an evenly balanced blend of flaws and praises.  Rapunzel may be unremarkable from an animation standpoint, but the animation around her is superb and the vocal work from Moore, Levi, and Murphy is the best it’s been in years.  Menken’s score is at the forefront of a resurrection of Disney musical magic, and the story is hilarious, romantic, and captivating.  The same foibles of past Disney films remain, but even they appear as part of a Disney tradition and a return to what we once knew.  Disney just had to return to what they knew to get audiences to remember they aren’t out of touch.

Ronnie Rating:

NEXT WEEK: We return to the Hundred Acre Wood with Winnie the Pooh

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Tangled (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo)