WORST film of the the official Disney Animated Classics canon

after Fantasia 2000, i don't even know what half this shit is

no 'victory through air power'?

out of the ones I've seen (which is like 30% of the list), the fox and the hound was pretty dire.

like i just moved to NYC and started hunkerin down on a real job and life n shit in like 2002-2004, an I have no idea what "Treasure Planet" or "Brother Bear" or "Home On The Range" is. I GIS'd Brother Bear and, as you can see, the poster has a shit joke. Are these good movies or wat

my kids love fox and the hound

hercules probably

Classic Disney direct-to-video features

shd have split the poll between classic era and "shit out one a year so McDonald's can do the happy meal toys" era. haven't seen enough from the latter tbh.

In my book, Lion King was the last one I'd call a "classic". Then again, that might be because it's the last one I paid much attention to. I'm sure I saw Pocahontas and Hercules but remember them being kind of shute.

brother bear has rick moranis and dave thomas doing bob & doug mckenzie, only as moose. iirc they were the high points in an otherwise by-the-numbers story. also hercules has james woods as the villain and the muses as gospel singers, so i will always cherish it.

the real answer is probably one of the cgi ones that have since fallen entirely out of the public consciousness. like, i've never met anyone who's seen or remembers "Dinosaur." i've never seen it either, maybe it's great, idk.

6 Saludos Amigos August 24, 1942 (premiere)
7 The Three Caballeros December 21, 1944 (premiere)
8 Make Mine Music April 20, 1946 (premiere)
9 Fun and Fancy Free September 27, 1947 [note 1][note 2]
10 Melody Time May 27, 1948 [note 1][note 2]
11 The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad October 5, 1949

this section is interesting, all compilations of material? have never seen any of them. s/d?

I haven't seen anything more recent than The Emperor's New Groove - which is actually pretty dope so I hope no one is considering voting for The Emperor's New Groove

my guess is that it's one of these that I haven't seen (haven't seen Princess and the Frog or Tangled either but from what I gather they're pretty okay):

42 Lilo & Stitch June 16, 2002 (premiere)
43 Treasure Planet November 17, 2002 (premiere)
44 Brother Bear October 20, 2003 (premiere)
45 Home on the Range March 21, 2004 (premiere)
46 Chicken Little October 30, 2005 (premiere)
47 Meet the Robinsons March 30, 2007 [note 6][note 7]
48 Bolt November 21, 2008 [note 6][note 7]

'the three caballeros' is awesome! in 2006 i described it this way:

a completely demented film from 1943 or so in which there is no plot whatsoever, just a series of surreal quasi-psychedelic episodes about donald duck going to south america and chasing (live-action) girls around for an hour. it's like a disney version of fear and loathing in las vegas!

Ichabod and Mr Toad is Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Wind in the Willows riff two-fer ... big fave when I were wee lad, but haven't seen in decades

got off the bus after Black Cauldron ... totally missed all the Nu Disney, but saw a bit of Aladdin with nephew ... that's one coked-out flick!

my guess is that it's one of these that I haven't seen (haven't seen Princess and the Frog or Tangled either but from what I gather they're pretty okay):

42 Lilo & Stitch June 16, 2002 (premiere)

Awww, I liked Lilo and Stitch. lol

Oh man I totally forgot about The Black Cauldron.

read the books, so hated it at the time

got off the bus after Black Cauldron ... totally missed all the Nu Disney, but saw a bit of Aladdin with nephew ... that's one coked-out flick!

is this a robin williams thing

31 Aladdin November 11, 1992 (limited)

Robin Williams being *very* Robin Williams.

You know you get those short "making of" featurettes that are really trailers - you see Robin Williams gurning into a mic and you just *know* how fucking annoying his character is going to be.

hercules or mulan

Tangled is fkn awesome btw

I liked Mulan.

Hercules is really bad, although it might just be that it came out at the age where I was no longer young enough to be really moved and end up crying at a Disney film. Although, I still well up at Toy Story and Snow White, maybe there's no logic here.

Black Cauldron is so so good.

hercules has RIP TORN as zeus you guys

also mulan is surprisingly beloved by the world of internet young ppl. i'm p. sure you can open any ONTD thread at random and post the line "LET'S GET DOWN TO BUSINESS!" and they'll reply with the rest of this song in its entirety:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSS5dEeMX64

that's donny osmond singing btw

MYSTERIOUS AS THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON~!!

The Lion King is shit, but I'm probably going to throw a vote to one of the more overrated from the first few decades. Bambi, probably.

Ichabod and Mr Toad is Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Wind in the Willows riff two-fer ... big fave when I were wee lad, but haven't seen in decades

― Ask The Answer Man (sexyDancer), Wednesday, July 27, 2011 6:45 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

I'll vouch for Ichabod and Mr. Toad. Ichabod is basically a Bing Crosby vehicle, with narration and songs.

The Three Caballeros is also great. I've never heard of the other package films.

I keep meaning to get around to watching The Black Cauldron.
As i haven't seen most of the latter ones, i'm also tempted to go for an overrated classic, thinking maybe Cinderella. Although of the late '80s stuff Oliver & Company is pretty horrible. Emperor's New Groove is really underrated.

lion king is legit great, this is obv

Surprised that I've seen all of these through Lilo & Stitch except a couple of the 40s comps; out of those my least favorite is The Emperor's New Groove, but I loathe David Spade so it never really had a chance. The late 70s/early 80s ones are poor, but as that's the Disney of my childhood it gets a pass.

Voting for Oliver & Company. I hate David Spade, but at least that movie had some good animation. O & Co has poor animation, Joey Lawrence, Billy Joel & Cheech Marin. Zero for four by my count.

The animation in O&C really was something of a low-point for the company

xp did you see Dinosaur? was it any good?

lilo and stitch is good; I've never seen all of Oliver but man it was bad from what i did see.
i'm actually going lion king here.

Meet the Robinsons the worst of what I've seen. Mulan the most recent that I can remember any songs from. I thought the last three (Bolt, Princess + Frog, Tangled) were all better than the bunch before them.

6 Saludos Amigos August 24, 1942 (premiere)
7 The Three Caballeros December 21, 1944 (premiere)
8 Make Mine Music April 20, 1946 (premiere)
9 Fun and Fancy Free September 27, 1947 [note 1][note 2]
10 Melody Time May 27, 1948 [note 1][note 2]
11 The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad October 5, 1949

What even are these? I'm assuming the first two have never been revived or re-released because they're extremely racist?

xp did you see Dinosaur? was it any good?

It was okay. The animation looked pretty good at the time, though I imagine it has aged worse than most anything on this list.

You know you get those short "making of" featurettes that are really trailers - you see Robin Williams gurning into a mic and you just *know* how fucking annoying his character is going to be.

I couldn't understand what he was saying for most of the film!

xxp actually not super-racist (although the latter does involve a bird named Pancho Pistoles who likes to dance around and shoot guns into the air) — Disney was actually trying to win over the Latin American audience at this point, under the auspices of the Good Neighbor policy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeWJRzfTeQg

(the parrot is Brazilian)

What even are these? I'm assuming the first two have never been revived or re-released because they're extremely racist?

― Matt DC, Wednesday, July 27, 2011 8:40 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

Three Cabelleros has been released twice on DVD. It's not particularly racist, as far as I can recall.

J.D. is totally OTM re: The Three Caballeros upthread. I saw this first in truncated form in the late 70s rerelease, then again recently and it is just as strange to my adult mind as it was to me as a child.

Three Caballeros is just great.

Of the ones I've seen -- which amounts to 32 of the ones on this list -- I'd probably go for "The Sword in the Stone" or "Hunchback of Notre Dame" as the most "Meh, don't need to see or think about that one again."

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is simply TERRIBLE, in a manner that left me aghast the entire time I watched it. I'm sure there are others that are actually worse but that one's getting my vote.

(I have very sentimental feelings towards Oliver and Company because I saw it when I was very young and it had cats in it, lol)

39 Dinosaur May 19, 2000 [note 2][note 6]
41 Atlantis: The Lost Empire June 3, 2001 (premiere)
44 Brother Bear October 20, 2003 (premiere)
45 Home on the Range March 21, 2004 (premiere)
46 Chicken Little October 30, 2005 (premiere)

this is a murderer's row of badness. i'll probably vote for Chicken Little, but Dinosaur's a strong runner up. None of the 90s movies can even compare, trust me... even Tarzan blows these away.

i think the last one of these i saw was pocahontas, it's not very good. i remember i saw it on a "date" but was embarrassed to admit that to my friends so i told them i saw it with my dad O_o

hunchback had that really fucked up and inappropriate Hellfire musical number, so I can't really hate it.

Pocahontas had a lot of great songs.

Most recent one I saw was Meet the Robinsons, which was surprisingly fun; and before that Lilo & Stitch, which is terrific.

With "Hunchback," I just picture some Simpsons-esque writer's room meeting in which some smarmy douchebag sits there and says, "Guys, I think I know what will really give this movie what it needs, and what Victor Hugo would do if he were here today: Wisecracking gargoyles. And one of them is George from 'Seinfeld.' You can thank me later."

The Emperor's New Groove is seriously, seriously underrated; Patrick Wharburton and Eartha Kitt are nonstop good times hilarity the entire movie

Hunchback was the last one I saw in the theatre, and was fairly decent: it didn't stint on showing the sexual tension.

like i just moved to NYC and started hunkerin down on a real job and life n shit in like 2002-2004, an I have no idea what "Treasure Planet" or "Brother Bear" or "Home On The Range" is. I GIS'd Brother Bear and, as you can see, the poster has a shit joke. Are these good movies or wat

― ennui morricone (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, July 27, 2011 2:37 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

not really. brother bear is creepy and awful, but it has some cool visuals at a few points. home on the range is just unremarkable crap. treasure planet's pretty solid, sort of in the 'boys adventure' vein of Titan AE or Atlantis but executed with much much more skill.

meet the robinsons is about when disney animation started to climb back out of the pit of suck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rj1v5tXs9Jo

i dont know what they were thinking with this, but it's awesome

fox & hound just makes me sob even thinking about it. loved that movie as a kid, but its so grim and sad...

With the exception of The Jungle Book and Winnie the Pooh, those '60s and '70s films are just so grimy and cheap and often joyless and usually boring. Those '90s ones are all too slick and formulaic (and I've got two girls, so I've seen them all too much). The Emperor's New Groove may be the funniest, most underrated of the entire bunch. Princess on the Frog makes me angry on several levels.

FYI, speaking of shit jokes, "The Lion King" was the first Disney film to feature a fart joke,

no wonder i love TLK

BTW, the new Winnie the Pooh is so good, such a salve, that it's no wonder Disney had no idea how to market it.

shoulda kept it to 1937-55

(surely Make Mine Music was some live-action feature w/ an animated scene?)

i haven't seen anything in full after the lion king, but i've seen clips and bits. so i have to imagine it's one of the post-1995 ones.

Pretty much every '90s Disney movie that's not Lion King >>>>>>>>> The Lion King

Seriously, those Elton John songs turn me into Alex in NYC.

haha that wasn't necessarily a vote for the lion king btw.

the lion king is great. better than kimba, tbh. it'd be nice if it was less racist, but its still a great piece of work.

The Emperor's New Groove is Top 5 among all these.

best 90s disney is rescuers down under though

^^^ probably true

man oh man i hated the new pooh

pinocchio
101 dalmations
jungle book
sleeping beauty

all top notch. i liked princess and the frog and tangled a lot, too

recently watched some of the early ones - The Reluctant Dragon is mostly a live-action tour of the Disney studios and the animation process. Make Mine Music is great, like a 40s popular music Fantasia.

Worst of these is Oliver and Company - the apex/nadir of 'grimy and cheap and often joyless and usually boring', with some 'creepy' sprinkled on top.

Oh man, I watched Three Caballeros so much as a kid. Had no idea it was from the 40s — the visuals seem so 60s.

Strangely I like most of the ones I've seen here. What the hell is Home on the Range? That must've been forgotten as soon as it was released. Which of these was the biggest monetary loss?

Remember Meet The Robinsons only because I was working at Blockbuster when it came out, and the promo DVD had the Jonas Brothers singing Kim Wilde's "Kids In America" with really strained references to the movie added in.

man oh man i hated the new pooh

― remy bean, Wednesday, July 27, 2011 10:52 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

The New Pooh Review

I remember The Great Mouse Detective being p.grimy and cheap as well — what on earth was responsible for this particular Disney aesthetic? it's like nightmare cartoon Dickens

xpost - lol you are old (like me!)

agree that this should've been split into two polls: pre- and post-Katzenberg. But it's still a nice poll all the same.

xpost Early Xerox animation techniques, iirc.

Which of these was the biggest monetary loss?

maybe Treasure Planet? that was a pet project for a lot of disney animators that eisner strung them along on for years, saying they could do it after they finish working on this, then this, then this... etc., and when it finally got made it was a highly compromised version that was pushed out the door with little promotion.

though of the non-disney classics bombs, Mars Needs Moms towers over them all

potentially interesting wikiknowledge:

[Oliver & Company] was the first Disney film to make heavy use of computer animation, since previous films The Black Cauldron and The Great Mouse Detective used it only for special sequences. The CGI effects were used for making the skyscrapers, the cars, trains, Fagin's scooter-cart and the climactic Subway chase. It was also the first Disney film to have a department created specifically for computer animation.[2]

This was a test run film before The Walt Disney Company would fully commit to returning to a musical format for their animated films;[1] Oliver & Company was the first such film to be a musical since 1981's The Fox and the Hound. For the next decade, all of Walt Disney Feature Animation's films, starting with The Little Mermaid (1989), were also musicals, except for The Rescuers Down Under (1990).

Oliver & Company was one of the first animated Disney films to introduce new sound effects for regular use, to replace many of their original classic sounds, which would be used occasionally in later Disney films. However, The Little Mermaid introduced even more new sound effects. The new sound effects were first introduced with The Black Cauldron, while The Great Mouse Detective released a year after the previous film used the classic Disney SFX. This included some sounds such as the then fifty-year-old Castle thunder and the classic Goofy holler.

in a way it almost makes sense that computer animation would seduce everyone into creating totally "realistic" (i.e. rendered in geometrically precise perspective) cityscapes and elaborate chase sequences and shit. then you just borrow a couple of lazy plot devices from a sufficiently 'literary' source and call it a day

I don't even remember The Great Mouse Detective beyond an instinctive childhood-driven YAY when I see the title

only apparently I was 13 when it came out???? jesus

xpost Why did you hate the new Pooh? It was just like the old Pooh.

remy - curious what you think of the new pooh. ive been dragging my feet when it comes to seeing it cuz ive never been a big fan of the character

omg I just looked at that Brother Bear poster

the juxtaposition of that joke with the big bear/smaller cub gazing lovingly into each other's eyes may be giving off the wrong message

the black cauldron/great mouse detective era was definitely a weird time for them. it's like they were trying to adopt some of the darker, "artier" animation quality/vibe from non-disney movies (bluth, bakshi, watership down, last unicorn/hobbit) from the late '70s/early '80s. those are also the first two movies where you can really tell that generation of disney animators was looking at anime. (iirc the great mouse detective climax was pretty directly...inspired by the climax of castle of cagliostro.)

oh cmon now

This doc is a pretty good look at the wilderness years of the '80s
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1159961/

The Fox and The Hound was a devastating, awesome movie; watching that while growing up as the only black kid in town made it really hit home for me.

Those mid eighties Disney films are so odd because Michael Eisner wasn't yet throwing bags of free money at animators.

the black cauldron/great mouse detective era was definitely a weird time for them. it's like they were trying to adopt some of the darker, "artier" animation quality/vibe from non-disney movies (bluth, bakshi, watership down, last unicorn/hobbit) from the late '70s/early '80s.

(NB I have not seen Black Cauldron, and haven't thought about most of the others in a long long time)

I went to Walt Disney World a lot during the mid to late eighties, and the divide between the the pre- and post-Little Mermaid cartoon and marketing era was immense. I couldn't even name The Great Mouse Detective's characters – Disney didn't give a shit.

yeah it just produced this weird mishmash where the design is still very cute (the characters don't look like they escaped from underground comics or that they're made of melting wax) but the overall vibe is very muted.

xpost

the juxtaposition of that joke with the big bear/smaller cub gazing lovingly into each other's eyes may be giving off the wrong message

http://fierth.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Yogi-Bear-Poster.jpg

also yeah i was probably more knowledgeable about this stuff when i was more obsessed with animation in general but i always thought it was just that some time in the late '80s/early '90s the parent corporation finally woke up one day and wondered why they were making scrooge mcduck level profits on these things anymore.

WERENT making, i should say

xxp: hoo boy, I'd forgotten about that too

what is it with cartoon bears and sex jokes

and once again a thread is derailed because of dan's obsession with bear anal

I can't help how God made me

anyway re: "Chicken Little", I only saw maybe 10 minutes of it but is most of the hatred directed towards it Braff fallout or are there worse problems?

Braff is the least of it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vnp4kj5lLOU

superior chicken little

Just look at the character design
http://disney-clipart.com/Chicken-Little/Disney-Chicken-Little-Friends.jpg

haha okay when you put it like that

ducks are apparently all alcoholics

Chicken Little is pretty fun. It's probably near the top of their 00s fare for me.

I've seen 7 of the ones from the 2000s, and Atlantis is by far the worst of those. It was an attempt to do an anime-style adventure movie that ended up being as generic and stupid as most anime, but without any style.

xpost Why did you hate the new Pooh? It was just like the old Pooh.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 27 July 2011 15:12 (18 minutes ago) Permalink

Yeah, I don't get hating the new Pooh either. I thought it was charming, and it worked for both my 3-year-old and my teenager; not many movies can do that. It's as close in look and tone to the '77 one as you could expect in 2011. (So close that the psychedelic "Heffalumps and Woozles" song has pretty much just been exchanged for "The Backson.")

Three Caballeros is the first Disney movie I showed to my daughter it is awesome and not racist, the music and animation are top-of-the-game

xxxxpost

what on earth was responsible for this particular Disney aesthetic?

Walt died.

it's like they were trying to adopt some of the darker, "artier" animation quality/vibe from non-disney movies (bluth, bakshi, watership down, last unicorn/hobbit) from the late '70s/early '80s.

also this but I would extend the period back even further - maybe to the first Rescuers movie (also Aristocats? which looks like shit). Rescuers is a very dark-looking movie, majority of it seems to take place either at night or in a swamp

Yeah, I just got Three Caballeros recently, it's great.

>>>also Aristocats? which looks like shit

wtf, I love the look of this movie!

The Black Cauldron was a very deliberate attempt to court the teenage male market that they felt they were missing out on. Probably applies to some of the rest of those too.

I loved The Black Cauldron at the time but I never saw it again

I was way into the books at the time it came out and remember being disappointed that they made Gurgi into this cute/fuzzy pseudo-Gizmo (from Gremlins) character. haven't seen it since though.

the great mouse detective has vincent prince singing the movie's one song, in which he brags about having invented his most evil plot ever, and a chorus of mice sings "EVEN MEANER? YOU MEAN IT? WORSE THAN THE WIDOWS AND ORPHANS YOU DROWNED?"

I remember really liking the Great Mouse Detective at the time and being all "ooh computers!" re: the animation on the clocktower sequence at the end

i loved it too, but then i loved sherlock holmes.

*vincent price, obviously.

i remember liking the black cauldron but also thinking it kinda pussed-out on the creepiness/intensity of the prydain books. keep in mind i was like 10.

kind of amazed no one has grabbed those in the 21st-century tbh.

Not animated, except for the title character, but Pete's Dragon is bizarrely dark, too. Orphan running away from abusive adoptive parents, alcoholism, woman whose fiancee is (ostensibly) lost at sea, carpetbaggers who want to capture the dragon and kill him ("Slice him up! Dice him up!") My 3-year-old was fascinated with the dragon, but it's too scary for him.

the prydain books were (variably) great (was especially in to the castle of llyr) but i've never seen the movie.

The movie rights to the Prydain series remain in the hands of the Disney Corporation. However, as of February 2011, no plans for a revival of the series have been announced.

maybe that's for the best, actually.

kind of amazed no one has grabbed those in the 21st-century tbh.

― apichathong song (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Wednesday, July 27, 2011 11:57 AM (56 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

golden compass and dark is rising both flopped, dont think studios are after epic ya fantasy series anymore unfortunately

i would kill for hbo or someone to adapt the dark is rising series

god i didn't even know they'd made (and bungled) a dark is rising movie u_u

yeah :-/

The reviews alone made me feel sad about how it was adapted. xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2kwsuGTAxY

anyway re: "Chicken Little", I only saw maybe 10 minutes of it but is most of the hatred directed towards it Braff fallout or are there worse problems?

Braff is not even the worst part of this movie!

And if you know how much I hate him, you'll know what a dramatic statement that is. The movie cannot decides what it wants to be, plotlines are abandoned midfilm, clunky sitcom writing, and not a single likeable character. It is not only the worst Disney, it is the worst animated film full stop.

golden compass movie was no good but seems 1000 times better than the seeker: the dark is rising

oof.

I remember sitting through "The Golden Compass" going "any second now, this is going to become great... any second now... just wait for it... oh it's over"

Stanton was also written to be American so he would be established as more of an outsider, culturally alien to the story's English setting.

i mean jesus h christ

transplanting Dark is Rising to America just makes no sense at all.

"englishness" or whatever is such a selling point of H Potter and LOTR

and Narnia

the movie's still set in england, the kid is just american, but his englishness isnt just a good selling point but one of the keys to the whole mythology of the book

personally I'm glad no one's made a shitty Prydain movie. the books are great as is, they would not be well-served by (another) piss-poor adaptation.

you know what I want to see, is a Tripods movie

IIRC there was a UK miniseries?

nicole is thuddingly otm - though i think shark tale just edges past it in the 'worst ever' sweepstakes - braff is the least of the movie's problems (i forgot he was even in it) and i basically hate the guy too

Walt died.

― No Broehner (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, July 27, 2011 11:44 AM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark

more importantly, the 9 old men had all died or moved on by the 80s and disney did nothing to prepare for their absence

earlier i was prepared to declare chicken little the worst on the list by a country mile, but then i started thinking about Dinosaur and Brother Bear and became fraught with indecision

i haven't seen either of those and although i imagine they're pretty dull, i can't seem them being as downright unpleasant as Chicken Little

you know what I want to see, is a Tripods movie

IIRC there was a UK miniseries?

― PAJAMARALLS? PAJAMALWAYS! (DJP), Wednesday, July 27, 2011 12:17 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yessssssss

Waking Sleeping Beauty is a great film btw

Seriously, anyone with an interest in Disney history should watch

yeah that looks really interesting. had never heard of it before now.

dark is rising movie was SO SO SO SO SO bad.

Alice in Wonderland is quite bad for creating a shitty aesthetic for Alice that wd've been better not created, it might be my least favourite Disney-era film.

I think I've only read the book of Dinosaur but jesus.

they invent a climax for the dark is rising that is so nutty and ridiculous and soap opera! i hate it so much

yeah the disney alice in wonderland has kind of become THE alice in wonderland iconography-wise hasn't it

fuck tarzan shit was garbage

xp

yeah similar to Winnie the Pooh in that both had great original illustrators that didn't deserve to be eclipsed

more importantly, the 9 old men had all died or moved on by the 80s and disney did nothing to prepare for their absence

right, this is what I was getting at. the old crew, helmed by Walt, was gone and they were casting about for new talent - most of whom had more in common with Bluth, Bakshi etc

tim burton's pooh reclaims the legend somewhat tbf

oh my god can you even

yeah the disney alice in wonderland has kind of become THE alice in wonderland iconography-wise hasn't it

erm, no. there have been a LOT of TV adaptations, and then the recent Burton abomination, and the OG Tenniel drawings are still in circulation/in print - there's a surprisingly wide range of visual interpretations of this material

I like the Disney version, for the most part.

I like the Disneey Alice okay, but I'm always gonna think of the Tenniel illustrations over Disney's.

its true that Dinosaur is 'only' dull but it's also outstandingly ugly and lazy. the live action backgrounds in that movie really rub me the wrong way

Carroll's own original illustrations are pretty cool, although not very polished

Burton wishes he was this weird
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19002/19002-h/images/image_082.jpg

^
wow

Seconding all the Three Caballeros love upthread--more sexist than racist (pretty o_O scene with the three birds strafing some girls on a beach from a flying serape) but excellent music and lots of proto-psychedelia. All of that on display here, skip to :45

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8VC0AaabjQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH0W3_iB21I&feature=related

more playful than sexist

I like when Donald's telescope gets an erection.

this is pretty great too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7l9d6g4jAC8

Three Caballeros is also actually the second film of Donald-goes-to-Latin-America movies iirc...? I haven't seen the first one in years and forget what it's called. it has a short about a Peruvian airplane, as well as introducing the parrot character

ah yes

Chilean airplane, sorry

its true that Dinosaur is 'only' dull but it's also outstandingly ugly and lazy. the live action backgrounds in that movie really rub me the wrong way
--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam)

Didnt see it, but this just secured my vote

Haven't seen Saludos Amigos. The wiki entry is interesting, given current political situations:

The film itself was given federal loan guarantees. These were necessary because the Disney studio had over-expanded just before European markets were closed to them by the war, and because Disney was struggling with labor unrest at the time...

At least I know if i ever have kids there will be a lot of cool stuff to revisit in the Netflix robo magicloud queue of the future

Walt and El Grupo is available on Netflix Instantwatch; lotta background on the history and context of the Latin American films
http://www.waltandelgrupo.com/

earlier i was prepared to declare chicken little the worst on the list by a country mile, but then i started thinking about Dinosaur and Brother Bear and became fraught with indecision

I'm so thankful I've never seen either of these now. I can't even imagine what could be worse than Chicken Little.

I never saw Atlantis, but I remember my dad took my sister to see it while my other sister and I saw Jurassic Park 3. I wonder which of us had the more disappointing viewing experience.

oh man... I never saw Atlantis but Jurassic Park 3 baaaad

*was

also another terrible thing about the seeker colon the dark is rising: it had christopher eccleston as the dark rider, which i thought would be great casting, and they just had him endlessly riding over bridges and being tedious. seriously that movie hated it's audience and wanted them to suffer

Okay, so here's the problem with the new Pooh: it's not a movie. It 'gets around' the normal dramatic expectations of, say, plot and character, by slinging a lot of text features up onto the screen – page-turning transitions, letters falling out of the book, an interactive narrator, a live-action framing device – so we give it a whole lotta of rope and say 'oh look, it's so innovative and it interacts with the text, and it's just like the experience of reading a book' but that is basically all there is to say about it. It's structured, I suppose in such a way to recall the stories: lots of meaningless incidents and petty misunderstandings that open and close serially, and a slapdash villain called a BACKSON (read: 'Heffalump' but Disney felt they couldn't say Heffalump, because in 2005 they released a movie called 'Pooh's Heffalump Movie') who gets a musical number and not much else. It clearly intends to mimic the episodic structure of the book: for chapters to open and to close, and for the next thing to come along and divert our attention. The difficulty in this is that there is very little to keep us watching, except for a nostalgic pang that compels us to follow the characters who are – honestly – slapsticked versions of themselves here.

Dinosaur wasn't even part of the canon. They just threw it in so Tangled would be number 50. Ugh!

Always hated Pocahontas myself. That movie feels like it takes 10 hours. Boring and far too serious. Disney's take on trying to make an adult animation movie, I guess. Ugh again.

There was a store at Disneyland that played the Colors of the Wind clip on repeat for, I think, ten years. Just the same three minute song on repeat all day every day for a decade. They must've either rotated workers out of the store regularly or hushed up the resulting suicides.

fuck the Robin Williams haters itt

crüt, did you see there's a happy feet two trailer?

not disney i know, but robin williams etc

I forgot the movie called Happy Feet even existed

Robin Williams' best role is in Aladdin!

that is not saying much!

xpost Happy Feet wasn't terrible!

Also, re: Remy and Pooh, have you seen the '70s Pooh? This was massively faithful to that style, and everything you complain about the new version pretty much exists in that one, too; at the very least, Pooh is not where you should turn for plot (and certainly Pooh as originated isn't much more complex than "Pooh wants hunny; Pooh tries to outsmart bees." The new Pooh is in every sense the antithesis of almost every recent kids cartoon, which all bend over backwards to mimic the rhythms, editing and effects of blockbusters that they may as well be those blockbusters themselves. Nu-Pooh was slow, not flashy, funny, subtle, classy, literate (often literally) and gentle.

So yeah, to some extent it's an exercise in nostalgia ... for when kids flicks where all the above rather than patronizing, relentless assaults on the senses.

^My post is apparently missing several important transition words, sorry, but the gist is easy to get.

BTW, the new Winnie the Pooh is so good, such a salve, that it's no wonder Disney had no idea how to market it.

agreed, the new Winnie the Pooh film is exceptional, the best thing Disney has done in many years. I liked Tangled well enough but this was better. I just finished reading (and re-reading, and re-reading) the two Milne books to my 5 year old and he was enthralled with them and that movie was a pretty big event; and they did a very good and faithful job adapting these stories, better, I think, than the earlier Disney pooh stuff. Is the first Pooh movie even on dvd?

Ichabod and Mr. Toad: apparently Disney wanted to make a full version of Wind in the Willows but couldn't because of some moral code; the story did not show sufficient punishment for Toad's crime and he got away from prison without ever getting caught, which could contribute to the moral deliquency of the children.

Peter Pan: for a great film this sure has a whole chunk of abominable racist shit in it, which I'd forgotten about. We actually ffwd'ed through it when my son watched it the first time (I am American Indian, at some point we'll have to have this whole discussion).

also, remy, the Backson thing is actually from the Pooh books. They kind of combined some of this a bit with the Heffalump story from the book, but that is an entire chapter in 'house at pooh corner'.

That "What Makes the Red Man Red" shit? The best we can do with that is use it as a teachable moment. Of course, that more or less marked the apotheosis of Hollywood stereotypical American Indian racism that'd been a mainstay for decades. I'm trying to think of anything comparable that followed it ...

Still waiting for "Song of the South" on DVD, btw, which I saw as a kid a bunch but never recognized as particularly racist. Though I'm sure it is! Just not ban-worthy racist, is it? Like, is there anything in it as racist as "Peter Pan?"

yeah I don't think so. the tar baby story I guess. I saw that a lot as a kid and never made the connection.

my son LOVES 'zip a dee dooh dah' and keeps asking me what movie it's from.

what about the "black crows" in Dumbo?

Yeah, the crows in Dumbo are bad, but another teachable moment I think.

...page-turning transitions, letters falling out of the book, an interactive narrator, a live-action framing device – so we give it a whole lotta of rope and say 'oh look, it's so innovative...

I didn't find ANY of these things in Pooh to be "look at me, I'm innovative," I just found them sweet and charming.

The new Pooh is in every sense the antithesis of almost every recent kids cartoon, which all bend over backwards to mimic the rhythms, editing and effects of blockbusters.

^^^Josh in Chicago piles of OTM here.

The crows are another good example of racism that is hard to quantify. Like, how racist is something from a time when literally everything was racist? By that standard, the crows are pretty mild!

BTW, always interesting to me that "Dumbo" is the only one of the original classic Disney cartoons a) that's original and b) that's written by Walt!

yeah I don't really get Remy's complaints. I haven't seen the new pooh thing yet but it sounds remarkably faithful to the style, tone and structure of the books

Always a good excuse to post this:
http://g-cdn.apartmenttherapy.com/2287814/Bambi_rect540.jpg

Every frame of "Bambi," squeezed together.

Still waiting for "Song of the South" on DVD, btw,

I am told this is coming .... on Criterion

Okay, so here's the problem with the new Pooh: it's not a movie. It 'gets around' the normal dramatic expectations of, say, plot and character, by slinging a lot of text features up onto the screen – page-turning transitions, letters falling out of the book, an interactive narrator, a live-action framing device – so we give it a whole lotta of rope and say 'oh look, it's so innovative and it interacts with the text, and it's just like the experience of reading a book' but that is basically all there is to say about it.

Josh in Chicago beat me to it but . . . this is exactly what was done in the original Pooh movies!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87QDcuMV0VQ#t=3m32s

Bah, deep linking didn't work, scroll ahead to 3:30.

e: Remy and Pooh, have you seen the '70s Pooh? This was massively faithful to that style,

sorry, i was posting while i made tomato jam, and my attention was kind of very divided. suffice to say that i /have/ seen the old pooh, and that i still thought the new pooh was stupid. the old pooh was charming in every way; the characters were bumbling and silly and inhabited a wonderful, safe, charming world much like milne described. (i haven't seen it in five or six years, admittedly). the new one suffered from nostalgic reverence, i think, and relied entirely on association with the earlier film and books for context and character. everything about it was a pale shade of ... rabbit was... i mean... what was his point in even being in the movie? the HONEY song was glorious, sure, and the backson bit could have been interesting but it felt devicey and contrived. maybe i'm being a stick in the mud, but i wanted the movie to get its little manipulative Disney paws right down to my 'aww' reflex, and squeeze for all it was worth, but all it did was take my $9.50 and leave me lonely.

Like, is there anything in it as racist as "Peter Pan?"

painting an overly rosy happy-go-lucky picture of slavery is pretty fucking racist, no?

I mean the whole framing device is an avuncular old slave entertaining his white master's kid with tales of thinly-veiled foolish black people

all told in dialect

Good thing Disney never did Huck Finn, huh?

Still waiting for "Song of the South" on DVD, btw,

I am told this is coming .... on Criterion

Was this not an April Fools joke?

http://data.whicdn.com/images/1866913/Brad-Renfro-brad-renfro-7133941-432-295_thumb.jpg?1270499811

Was this not an April Fools joke?

I don't think so, my local video store buddy was the source

song of the south is racist as hell and no denying, but compared to the warners shorts disney looks almost progressive.

Something happened between The Lion King and Tarzan. I know Hunchback was a sleeper hit but it never caught on with me, Pocahontas was just the start of the downfall and I never quite cared for Hercules either. I don't really think the "animated classic" franchise ever really recovered after Treasure Planet.

aladdin is pretty racist

oh for fuck's sake

RACIST RACIST RACIST RACIST RACIST RACIST RACIST RACIST RACISTRACIST RACIST RACISTRACIST RACIST RACISTRACIST RACIST RACISTRACIST RACIST RACISTRACIST RACIST RACISTRACIST RACIST RACIST

xpost I didn't mean that "Song" wasn't racist. I mean that it's not so particularly, especially, egregiously racist above and beyond hundreds of equally racist films, let alone the aforementioned "Dumbo" and "Peter Pan," that it alone among few deserves to be taken out of circulation.

Pointing out racist overtones and undertones in '40s and '50's cinema is the duddest of dud -- a total nonstarter.

alfred is pretty racist.

I think having a completely racist conceit as the central theme of the movie makes it leagues beyond whatever crap is in Dumbo and Peter Pan. the questionable sequence in Dumbo is like 8 minutes or something.

xp

but seriously i dont know if the racism of south of the south -- to say nothing of something like coal black! -- is really in the undertones category.

I think Dumbo makes light of alcoholism.

Shakey, when was the last time you saw "Song of the South?"

The crows are another good example of racism that is hard to quantify. Like, how racist is something from a time when literally everything was racist?

A: pretty fucking racist

very pretty!

well, disney movies still get shown to kids, unlike most '40s and '50s movies.

I can't stand classic Disney films by the way yet love the theme parks.

1980 something...? I had the LP+booklet that accompanied it as a child though.

I didn't even register the crows in Dumbo as a black stereotype until I was well into my 20s. whereas Song of the South's insane racism was obvious to me by middle school.

xp

well, disney movies still get shown to kids, unlike most '40s and '50s movies.

depends on the movies!

xpost, Yeah, I last saw it '80-something, too, but I was too young for the racism to register. But I do know that "Song" is by far not the only film to feature stereotypical black people talking in a stereotypical manner. Some films even feature - gasp! - blackface.

it's a good thing the history of pre-1980s animation isnt riddled with stereotypes though or we'd be here all day.

(I have very sentimental feelings towards Oliver and Company because I saw it when I was very young and it had cats in it, lol)

Uh, this came out in 1988, either I have your age wrong or you're thinking of a different movie

I still remember the Aunt Jemima maid in "Tom & Jerry," or how whenever a stick of dynamite blew up in a "Droopy" cartoon the victim had thick lips and curls.

the maid from tom and jerry is why they made sure to make nanny from the muppet babies a space alien with green legs.

aladdin is not from the 40s or 50s!

I still remember the Aunt Jemima maid in "Tom & Jerry," or how whenever a stick of dynamite blew up in a "Droopy" cartoon the victim had thick lips and curls.

ha yeah, this was still the case when I was a kid. I watched Tom & Jerry recently and thought the maid's voice sounded weird, and then I realized they had overdubbed what I had never realized until that moment was a racist caricature

the maid from tom and jerry is why they made sure to make nanny from the muppet babies a space alien with green legs Katherine Helmond.

itt white people complain when racist things get called racist

I'm Hispanic.

and thus a white person

otoh the UN says Jews are not white lol. oddly this is also the position of neo-Nazis.

I seen all that too
I seen a peanut stand
And heard a rubber band
I seen a needle that winked its eye

But I've been, done, seen about everything
When I see a elephant fly
What'd you say boy
I said when I see a elephant fly

When they started putting out Tom and Jerry on DVD "uncensored," the part of me that grew up watching that stuff all the time was all "huh?" It turns out it was the maid stuff, which warranted no less than a Leonard Maltin intro. Or perhaps it was Whoopi Goldberg? In any case, it taught me to no longer be racist against disembodied legs and voices in cartoons about cats and mice trying to kill each other.

you hadn't seen the Aunt Jemimia maid?

I wouldn't go near that fake syrup shit for other reasons.

i think we're also the last generation to get the "bugs slaps around tojo" cartoons in our syndicated looney tunes

We're also likely the last generation to even know who Tojo was, so two birds, one stone, etc.

three caballeros & great mouse detective are both awesome. three caballeros is sort of creepily fixated on ogling women but waht are you going to do.

if we can't discuss racism in a disney thread, where can we?

has anyone read the books that the Rescuers is based on? They were english and hence I didn't know they even existed until the other day.

u guys

alfred is cuban

(i couldn't help myself sry)

I hear if you flip through the pages of the original "Rescuers" book fast enough, you get a flash of a page with boobs on it.

three caballeros is awesome and belongs on a double bill with donald in mathmagic land

well i guess i'll be stopping at the library before work tomorrow

the aristocats is still great.

but the Disney Robin Hood was super boring when I saw it last year. Nothing like I remembered as a kid. Bah.

donald in mathmagic land is awesome!

aw i love it! prince john!

man if you call a white Cuban a Hispanic he'll pour a scalding mojito on your balls.

lol

say goobye to yor leetle fren

I was born in Columbus, MS! My parents are da Cuban guans.

seems like a kind of elaborate way to get back at someone, making and then heating up a mojito to pour it on his balls

Hot sugar is a corker.

cigars rolled on thighs of a virgin, mojitos decanted down balls of a soin-to-be eunuch, whadda country

that was actually one of the plans to kill castro

directors cut of jfk, you can hear pesci say it after the beard thing

"He'll look fuckin' ridiculous without his balls!"

http://www.jfk-online.com/100ferrieint.jpg

Man you waste a mojito by pouring it on my balls, there's going to be trouble. Also, that's racist.

alfred, today i saw an ad-recipe in gourmet magazine for 'norman van aken's columbian-influenced florida potatoes' and the misspelling made me irritable, but now i can pretend it's a recipe you brought from columbus, ms

that means it's got blow sprinkled atop, remy

The Aristocats is totally racist.

Oh, wait, I'm thinking of Lady and the Tramp:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxpN2XrYDLM

Aristocats is merely aggressively swingin'. You dig?

While I'm here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esgg-4QLUu0&feature=related

man i get the siamese cat song stuck in my head way too often

Siouxsie Sioux singing "Trust in Me" was a totally racist move.

http://images.newstatesman.com/articles/2008/1026/026_p22.2.jpg

I leave this thread alone for a few hours...

i'm a fiend for racism

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

just saw Tangled last night. It was my daughter's first "Disney Princess"-type movie. She ate it up.

Going with Hunchback.

I will rep for Atlantis, not only because of Mike Mignola's art direction but also for its sort of otherworldly Hellboy-ish story.

loved The Fox And The Hound as a kid when it came out. pretty heartbreaking too when you're 6.

Ka-BLAM! Elimination. Lack of education.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

one vote for The Little Mermaid? Come on now

Lil Mermaid is pretty awesome. I've been known to jam Part of Your World in my spare time.

Under The Sea ffs

Little Mermaid had the scariest villain

I forgot to vote. Would of voted this:
http://www.wiinintendo.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/YOGI_WII_3D_Front-420x600.jpg

guys, hunchback is pretty good.

yeah, if you cut the stupid pandering gargoyle song out of the film, it's pretty great music-wise.

Kids love gargoyles, what can you do

Hunchback and Pocahontas both v harsh in a world where Oliver & Company live.

OK, who voted for Cinderella?

relieved to see no stupid contrarian votes for the classics, apart from 'cinderella' (which i always thought was a bit of a bore, tbh).

you are correct

I am confident that the reason Chicken Little only had three votes is because only three people on this board have seen Chicken Little.

i might have voted 4 lil mermz thinking this was for best lol

lil mermz lol

"Cinderella" gets a lot of play at our house because it's only 72 minutes, and a third of it is Tom & Jerry-like cat/mouse anarchy. But mostly because it's short. "Dumbo," future parents, is only 64 minutes, and it's got the awesome psych elephant sequence/song.

Hunchback and Pocahontas both v harsh in a world where Oliver & Company live.

― Merdeyeux, Monday, August 29, 2011 8:19 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

oliver and co had some good songs and also didn't happen to be extremely offensive to the native american community

i don't remember a thing about hunchback tho, just that gargoyles was an awesome tv show

I had no beef with Chicken Little when I saw it!

I am confident that the reason Chicken Little only had three votes is because only three people on this board have seen Chicken Little.

― ¯\(°_o)/¯ (Nicole), Monday, August 29, 2011 10:19 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

haha, same.

smh @ 2 lion king votes

I thought Hunchback had some good moments (especially Rollo's song by the fireplace, which is hella creepy and sexual for a supposed kids' movie), but the way the ending totally undermined the "appearance isn't important, it's what's inside that matters" moral was inexcusable. Yeah, appearance doesn't matter, except that the girl will end up with the handsome guy anyway, and not with the ugly hunchback who was in love with her.

that's p. bold and true for a disney movie tbh

The real moral of the story is 'hunchbacks gotta deal'

they did a direct-to-dvd sequel where he got a new girlfriend, she's not as hot as esmerelda but she's still probably too hot for the poor dude:

http://www.posters555.com/pictures/The-Hunchback-of-Notre-Dame-II-(2002)-picture-MOV_dbd2f844_b.jpg

settling for better than you deserve, worst of all worlds imo

"Cinderella" gets a lot of play at our house because it's only 72 minutes, and a third of it is Tom & Jerry-like cat/mouse anarchy. But mostly because it's short. "Dumbo," future parents, is only 64 minutes, and it's got the awesome psych elephant sequence/song.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 30 August 2011 03:45 (6 hours ago) Bookmark

Also contains the absolute tear-inducing Mother's lullaby.

The Black Cauldron was great, foolios!

2 votes for aladdin

Aladdin was okay. I could imagine the Williams presence being a million times more annoying than it was when I was 12.

Pinocchio is bloody disturbing.

lil mermz lol

― corey, Tuesday, 30 August 2011 03:27 (8 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

posts where you assume its hoos until you read the name

I haven't seen Pinocchio since I was a boy, but there's just so much about it I don't like.

even the pinocchio ride in eurodisney is scary/trippy

I do love When You Wish Upon a Star though.

Pinocchio is the GOAT. fuiud

Okay, who didn't like Abraham DeLacy Giuseppe Casey Thomas O'Malley the alley cat?

The Butler.

genuine lols reading the last forty posts

Watched Atlantis last night and was pleasantly surprised. It's not great but it's not bad and boy is it good-looking, except for a few bits where the computer-done stuff just leaps out too much. While it's pretty obviously cribbed together from a bunch of other movies (mainly Laputa) the story keeps moving and there are some solid action set-pieces. Main problem is that the cast is just too damned large, so nobody develops except for the protagonist, who does all his heroic growing all that once. I suspect somewhere at the core of this thing is a leaner, meaner movie intended to appeal to a teen audience (hence all the violence, high adventure, and sultriness), but Disney wasn't really ready to go with that and so it got larded up with comic relief characters and lots of Wonder.

Wondering whether I should give Treasure Planet a go, now.

Treasure Planet was allright.

was really surprised recently at how good the Frog Princess was. v underrated

Aladdin should get my vote for all but inventing the whole in-jokey Shrek style of animated features, but it's still more watchable than the absolutely lifeless The Sword in the Stone.

If you liked Atlantis, definitely watch Treasure Planet! Like Atlantis, it breaks away from the basic Disney mold; the plot is a bit more conventional (the basic story doesn't deviate too much from Treasure Island), but on the other hand its tighter, and cast is much smaller (I agree with you that that was the biggest problem in Atlantis), so characters are better fleshed out. The visual design is pretty awesome too, and the Long John Silver equivalent is one of the most memorable in characters recent Disney history; he has a cool look, the animation makes him feel unique in his mannerisms, and the voice actor nails the role perfectly too.

i think 'the sword in the stone' might play better for a younger audience, it's less a real movie and more a series of comic set pieces (oh no you turned me into a fish, oh no there is a witch here, oh no this sexually voracious squirrel wants to marry me). i remembered all the major elements of the movie vividly from childhood, but when i rewatched it a few years back it felt pretty limp.

Frog Princess got good reviews at the time iirc. i really enjoyed it.

watched Home on the Range last night and oh geez it is bad. i'm guessing they thought traditional animation was dead at the time and didn't bother the normal review process, because there are really obvious problems with it. examples: the main character is ugly. the cows have spiky hips that look painful. the plot isn't set up visually. roseanne's character is set up as a show cow but then that characterization gets dropped -- in fact she ends up without any character at all. they used CG for an ear of corn.

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/disney/disneys-crankiest-veteran-is-still-cranky-and-thinks-walt-disney-was-a-shit-79791.html

Never seen Hunchback, is it really that bad?

its not bad at all but it probably depends how offended you are by the idea of cutesy talking gargoyles in a victor hugo movie.

it has moment iirc
some real weird sex too

Walt Peregoy is my new hero.

i know right

If you liked Atlantis, definitely watch Treasure Planet! Like Atlantis, it breaks away from the basic Disney mold; the plot is a bit more conventional (the basic story doesn't deviate too much from Treasure Island), but on the other hand its tighter, and cast is much smaller (I agree with you that that was the biggest problem in Atlantis), so characters are better fleshed out. The visual design is pretty awesome too, and the Long John Silver equivalent is one of the most memorable in characters recent Disney history; he has a cool look, the animation makes him feel unique in his mannerisms, and the voice actor nails the role perfectly too.

― Tuomas, Friday, March 29, 2013 7:37 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Just watched and would agree with this - tighter, more convincing story, good emotional hook with the substitute father-figure stuff, and some cool design (though the Mignola weirdos in Atlantis were also pretty cool). I will say that some of the CG has not dated very well at all, and the big rock-song montage was super jarring and distracting. There was still something a little lacking in the proceedings - some of the merriment felt forced (especially the comic relief robot - trying too hard for the Robin Williams genie or something) and the climax gets real predictable. But overall, not nearly as stupid as I figured it'd be when it first came out. I mean, you hear It's Treasure Island... but they're in space! and you just go, yeeeeeesh. Wonder if that's why it did so terribly at the box office. I remember the bookstore I worked at being full of hopelessly optimistic spinoff stuff from this, nobody seemed to care at all.