Best of Disney Animated Features (13-4)

13. Cinderella (1950)
Most of the stereotypes that people associate with Disney are present in this movie and that is not a bad thing.  This is as archetypal and standard as it gets with Disney, this is them in their element.  Cinderella is a popular, basic fairy tale but Disney adds some cinematic fantasy elements as well as making the lead feel more like a real person than a princess.  Fun, catchy songs and the most subtle villains in Disney's catalog.

12. Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977)
Recently rewatched this and I always love this movie.  The humor in Winnie the Pooh is so unique.  Most humor tends to be harsh, but this is just pleasant.  The characters are all classics and the Sherman Brothers gifted this with some of their best work.  The Hundred Acre Wood is a fun world with a distinctive fantasy logic.  Whimsical and charming, it is just like childhood but with a lot of intelligence in the dialogue.

11. Lady and the Tramp (1955)
One of the most iconic romances in all of cinema.  The story of a good girl and a bad guy has been told a lot, but never this well.  This puts the perspective on the good girl character and her development is very natural as she develops along with Tramp.  This is just such a sweet, idealistic romantic movie.  The perspective that the dogs have of the human world is also very clever.  Different than a fantasy movie, but it still represents how great Disney animators are at creating characters.

10. Peter Pan (1953)
One of the screen's best fantasies and best adaptations of Peter Pan.  The flying scenes are perfectly animated and Never Land is very well designed.  The character of Wendy is often overlooked, but her character arc is a great look at growing up.  Of course the real scene stealers are Captain Hook and Smee.

9. Lilo & Stitch (2002)
Every time I watch this movie I get something new out of it.  When I first watched it as a kid I was amused by Stitch's antics, then around middle school I related to Lilo, then I understood the Ugly Duckling metaphor and now I see how much is going on with Nani.  This is a movie unlike any other.  It finds pathos in a family, sci-fi comedy centered around surfing and Elvis.  This movie has its own style and heart, great characters and a really good story.  It manages to be both touching and unconventional.

8. Aladdin (1992)
A great fantasy and adventure movie.  All of the characters are great and leave an impact.  The supporting characters are fun and expand the four leads who all have a lot going on.  The Genie is one of the best comic relief characters of all time and the work of Robin Williams and Eric Goldberg on the character still stands out as the perfect combination of voice actor and animator.  The movie and music can be energetic and hilarious, but it is always able to be meaningful and deep.  You laugh at this movie, but you really care too.

7. The Lion King (1994)
One of the most popular movies of all time.  This was an enormous success that Disney has not been able to replicate since.  This movie has a huge scale to it, but it still very personal in its story and humor.  The songs are great and the characters have become iconic.  This has a lot of great replay value and holds a special place in the heart of many people.

6. Bambi (1942)
This was never my favorite growing up, but the last time I watched it I was completely blown away.  Disney has improved on the look of nature many times, but this is their best nature backgrounds.  This is a very tight movie, only 79 minutes, but it accomplishes a lot.  It really is a very in depth coming of age story.  People are quick to point to this movie as sad, but that sad scene is very deserved and perfectly executed.  This movie balances fun and cute with harsher realities about life, without going too far either way.

5. The Little Mermaid (1989)
One of the biggest game changers in animation history.  This was the first Broadway style Disney musical and created the format that dictates Disney films to this day.  This has an three-dimensional princess, memorable songs, a distinctive fantasy world, menacing villain, vital supporting characters and clever writing.  It does so many things that were repeated by lesser movies right.  This movie and the following three Disney musicals were so critically and commercially successful because they aspects that were marketable (the songs, comic relief characters, princess) all work along with the great story.

4. Fantasia (1940)
The amazing thing is that this was not even the most ambition thing Walt Disney had ever attempted.  Definitely the most successful non-narrative film of all time.  Not a success on its initial release, but quality won out on later releases and it is now considered to be a masterpiece.  The film is structured as a concert and each of the shorts feature some of Disney's most creative animation.  The highlight is easily Mickey Mouse's best appearance in Sorcerer's Apprentice followed by Dance of the Hours and Night on Mount Bald.  The shorts are all different, but feel like they belong in the same feature.  It is a shame that Disney has not played with the format and intention of the animated feature this much again.  This is pure experimentation that did something really magnificent.

Unsung Disney Legends: Andreas Deja

We all know the characters, the movies and the songs but it is easy to forget that we are not watching actual characters.  Many people designed and worked on them.  I am starting a series of retrospectives on Disney Legends that are easy to overlook.  Today's is Winsor McCay Award winner Andreas Deja.

Roger Rabbit

Deja had already worked on Gurgi in The Black Cauldron and Queen Moustoria in The Great Mouse Detective, but his first supervising animator’s credit was not at Disney in Burbank but over in London as part of Richard Williams’ staff on Who Framed Roger Rabbit.  Deja animated the titular character, showing depth and emotion in a classically inspired wacky cartoon character.

 

Mickey Mouse

Deja was Disney’s go to Mickey Mouse expert, working on the character several times.  Initially in the character’s famous, but brief cameo in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.  Deja also was supervising animator on the character in his two roles in Prince and the Pauper.  Deja’ association with the mouse continued as an animation supervisor on Runaway Brain, animator on Fantasia 2000 and animation consultant for Epic Mickey.

 

Gaston, Jafar and Scar

Deja was a supervising animator on the initial success of the Disney Renaissance, animating King Triton in The Little Mermaid.  But with Beauty and the Beast he started a run on three consecutive Disney villains: Gaston (who he based on ‘90s beach buffs), Jafar from Aladdin and Scar from the Lion King.  He was also the initial supervising animator on Yzma back when Emperor’s New Groove when it was in production as the Sting musical, Kingdom of the Sun (Deja was excited about animating a character that the great Eartha Kitt would voice).  He naturally was also the supervising animator of Queen Narissa in Disney’s Menken fairy tale throwback/subversion Enchanted.

 

Hercules

After animating three of Disney’s greatest villains he was naturally offered more evil characters, but the diverse animator did not want to become typecast so he chose to stretch himself by animating the lead.  This was reportedly more strenuous as Scarfe’s designs required many more drawings than a traditional animated feature.  Deja does include a nice reference to his previous character, Scar, whose skin Hercules wears in a portrait.

Lilo

It is interesting to note that the Disney animator who specialized in bad guys and cartoony characters such as Roger Rabbit and Mickey animated what is arguably Disney’s most human character.  The small, innocent and broken lead of Lilo & Stitch is both tragically and hilariously expressive in her small, chubby frame.  My all time favorite Dejas scene is Lilo trying to get away from her older sister Nani and just giving up and collapsing.  It is timed perfectly enough to be funny but still continues the story’s emotional arc.

 

Mama Odie

Traditional animation was getting less and less exciting and ended for a while with Home on the Range, in which Deja was the supervising animator on the minor character Wesley.  After Disney switched to solely computer animation (a field Dejas experimented in but felt he had nothing to add to) he found work on the character of Atka in the direct-to-video Brother Bear 2.  But once Disney brought back in house 2D animation with Princess and the Frog Deja was of course involved.  He had said that, “I always thought that maybe we should distinguish ourselves to go back to what 2D is good at, which is focusing on what the line can do rather than volume, which is a CG kind of thing.”  Deja animated the lively Mama Odie for her memorable, optimistic number.

 

Tigger

Andreas Deja may just be the best thing to ever happen to the character of Tigger in 2011’s Winnie the Pooh.  Tigger proved to be much more effective in his limited screen time than he was in his recent starring roles.  Deja is a perfect fit for his angular, slender design and exuberance (calling to mind his earlier animation on Roger Rabbit).  This may unfortunately be Deja's last Disney character as he has left the studio, which has again given up on traditional animation.  But it is clear that he has left a great legacy for audiences and animation aficionados.

Treasure Planet Review

How does one begin to discuss Treasure Planet?  It is one of the biggest box-office bombs in history, costing $140 million to make but only recouping $109 million in international box-office receipts.  Treasure Planet is infamous for signaling the end of the traditionally animated feature.  Despite its supporters (it was nominated for an Oscar, something that superior features such as Tangled and Winnie the Pooh weren’t nominated for), there is an infamy that it is one of Disney’s worst features.  The truth it that while there is certainly much valid criticism around Jon Musker and Ron Clements’ adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic, it does not deserve the unfortunate reputation that it currently holds.

            At first glance it is easy to pass off Jim Hawkins as a cheap marketing gimmick.  The filmmakers took an innocent boy and turned him into a ponytailed, space surfing, action star with loads of teen angst.  But the character development and back-story is all there.  Jim’s father left him and his mother when he was young and he has been frustrated and restless ever since.  John Ripa animates these emotions consistently with a great vocal performance from Joseph Gordon-Levitt.  Animated features of this time tried to connect to the teenage audience, such as through bland generic tough guy Cale from Titan A.E.  However Jim earns his right to be reckless and smart.  He works to earn the audiences’ and characters’ respect to save the day.  His action scenes are grounded in emotion.  As odd as it is to hear a pop song in a Disney cartoon, I’m Still Here sung by John Rzeznik, embodies the character in an effective montage.

            The character that Jim Hawkins plays off of is naturally Long John Silver.  This being a cartoon allows the character of the sea cook to be much more versatile than a live action actor could portray.  There has been criticism that master-supervising animator Glen Keane was ill-suited to the sloppy, fat Silver as he is mostly accustomed to animating grace (Ariel, Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas and Tarzan).  But Keane gifts the character with a sense of warmness and slyness.  He maintains Silver’s infamous ambiguity while crafting a natural father figure for the lost Jim.   The highlight of the film is when the two misfits find comfort in one another.  Particularly after Jim feels he is responsible for Mr. Arrow’s demise and Silver provides tough love.  Silver is not an easy character to love and Jim is not instantly likable.  But the combination of the two makes for some of Disney’s most emotional and personal moments.

            The other characters in the movie are not as good.  There are three comic relief characters.  Each has their strengths, but they each weigh the film down in their own way.  Dr. Doppler (a combination of Dr. Livesy and Squire Trelawney) has some terrific subtleties to him as well as natural comic timing that come from voice actor David Hyde Pierce.  But he has too many unnecessary tangents that undermine various action and emotional scenes.  His character development seems extraneous from the main storyline.  B.E.N. (an android version of the marooned Ben Gunn) is amusingly voiced by Martin Short and is animated well (computer animated in a traditionally animated setting), but does not add a lot the story.  The final comic relief is Morph who seems the most natural and least intrusive, but still has a tendency to appear at the wrong time.  These three are the most responsible for the movie’s tonal shifts.  However they are not as bad as the gargoyles in Hunchback as they are actually part of the story.

            As for the other characters Jim’s mother works decently here and there but leaves little impact.  Both Captain Amelia and Mr. Arrow are memorable, but none of the rest of the crew are as imposing.  Which is a problem when Silver is supposed to be a threat when he has a band of forgettable comic misfits at his side.  The crewmember with the most personality is the terrifying Scroop (a substitute for Israel Hands), but he is almost undermined by a forgettable Disney death.  The other memorable side character is Billy Bones, creatively re-imagined as a dying snake turtle.

            The characters are responsible for the films highlights and lowlights.  But the movie is probably most remembered for its visuals.  The filmmakers wanted to make space feel less empty and the combination of pirate imagery in a sci-fi setting is certainly grand.  One has to credit this movie for having its own visual style.  It does not look like Star Wars or Star Trek, it looks like Treasure Planet.  There is also a lot of combining traditional animation with computer-generated images.  Computer animation embodies most of the creative sci-fi elements: such Silver’s cyborg components, B.E.N. the android and the action set pieces.  The two forms of animation blend pretty much perfectly, which is impressive for 2002.

            Revisiting Treasure Planet it is easy to say that had this been live-action it would have been hailed as a classic if not masterpiece.  The characterization and relationships are better than any live-action sci-fi and the visuals much more impressive.  The problems with this movie come from Disney’s problem of finding an audience.  The older blockbuster crowd it was going for were turned off by “kiddie” elements such as the comic relief and marketing while the kids and families were looking for something familiar.  Audiences will not take a chance on an animated film like they will on a live-action film, which causes animation to play it too safe.

            However please do not make this mistake anymore.  You can view Treasure Planet on Netflix right now.  While it certainly has its flaw it is definitely one of the better movies available.  Yes it is a traditionally animated Disney feature, but please view it with an open mind.  You may find a new favorite movie.