Disney animated features: The rappel à l'ordre (1989-1994)

Was just thinking that Lion King would represent the next cut-off. Everything was pseudo-downhill after that for them, no?

Aladdin is entertaining as hell.

I don't think Beauty and the Beast is my favorite of these movies but the Gaston song is great

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuJTqmpBnI0

I fucking LOVED Aladdin when it came out. Now? Robin Williams at his most annoying; barely-casual racism; and an intro sequence that never gets referred back to. It's a travesty, but it must have had something that 10y/o me enjoyed.

Aladdin is the only one of these I've re-watched as an adult and it's hard to view it now and not see it as a precursor to the obnoxious Shrek-style of animated films that came to dominate soon after. Would genuinely love to assign anyone who still claims to love that film a viewing of The Thief of Bagdad (1940) and have them report back to me.

And while I haven't seen it since it was in theatres, I actually have fond memories of the DuckTales movie--might throw my vote its way just so it gets one.

Like most people here, I don't think I really took much serious notice of Disney features after Lion King. But... It is a good movie. MAybe the last classic Disney ever.

It probably has to be Beast or Mermaid. I hate Lion King more than possibly any other Disney feature.

Here is the point where I confess that I've always avoided The Lion King out of disdain for those goddamned songs.

fuck all this crap. except for maybe Duck Tales (was unaware that actually got a theatrical release)

What is a fire? And why does it - what's the word? - BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURN?

We rewatched Beauty & the Beast a couple of years ago. It's pretty good, maybe a little bit slow to start? I have memories of my little brother being carried screaming out the cinema at the first sight of the Beast.

I actually liked The Rescuers Down Under but I would. (Was that actually based on a sequel to the original book or was that Disney trying to get some Crocodile Dundee money? As it were.) Also IIRC it had the first new theatrical Mickey Mouse cartoon in a long time run before it -- a riff on A Christmas Carol in keeping with the release date -- followed by an actual intermission! (Also I just realized I saw this before Beast by default; somehow I thought it was the latter which was my first in-theater Disney after Oliver.)

welp, this is the era in which i was actually a little kid so i will channel my inner 6-10 year old thoughts here, which are sadly immediately accessible:

the little mermaid - my older sister was all about the little mermaid, but i had little interest at the time. bizarre anecdote, maybe, but in my mind (then and now) there's a little a capella snippet where ariel is on a rock on the surface of the ocean, singing "ariel....ariel..." with the second triad of notes a little higher than the first. that little bit would get in my head and play on repeat. and looking back at on it, it probably doesn't even exist! why would she sing her own name twice like that, by herself?

ducktales the movie - never saw the movie, but the tv show was my very favorite. the tv theme song was so infectious that it made me run around the house in circles, living room to dining room to kitchen and back again. one time i was trying to beat my record for most internal house laps and hit my head on the microwave cabinet and passed out in a pool of blood. great fucking song!

the rescuers down under - i think i saw this but i always mixed this crew up with fievel goes west, chip n' dale's rescue rangers, etc. they all blended into the same universe and it wasn't one that i particularly cared about as a kid.

beauty and the beast - one of my faves as a kid. particuarly exciting as a kid was a certain scene where it sounded like the beast farted, and then belle makes this pained expression like she heard the fart, and then the beast looks really embarrassed. my sister and i would play that part over and over on the tape, laughing like crazy. hundreds of times. i used to have every word of this movie memorized.

aladdin - another total favorite as a kid. the graphics during the "3D" sequence in the escape from the cave blew my mind back then. guessing it prooobably doesn't hold up as well today! i used to have every word of this movie memorized.

the lion king - jtt's final hurrah. i was 11 at this point and old enough to start to view these films from a slightly meta perspective, like "how will jtt sound when he sings" and "will matthew broderick be believable as the adult simba" and stuff like that. i used to have every word of this movie memorized.

beauty and the beast, aladdin, lion king were unimpeachable all time classics for me growing up, just like a lot of other kids. i haven't seen any of them since the late 90s but i'd guess that beauty and the beast holds up better? throwing my vote to that one.

Didn't realize that Ducktales Season two was just the two animated specials, all broken up into smaller segments. had know idea that there was a movie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_DuckTales_episodes#Season_2_.281988.E2.80.931989.29

the lion king - jtt's final hurrah

You know this made me wonder a bit and I check Wikipedia and well hey:

In 2000, he graduated with honors from Chaminade College Preparatory School in West Hills, California. Upon graduation, he enrolled at Harvard University, where he studied philosophy and history and spent his third year abroad at St. Andrews University in Scotland. In 2010, he graduated from Columbia University.

This is also the era that I was a kid, but I don't like any of these at all. Maybe I was a little too old for most of them; the difference between seeing something at 5 and seeing it at 8 is probably quite large.

I've seen some of Beauty and the Beast with the niece at her house, that's all

The Lion King stampede sequence really is amazing, cliched Vertigo-zoom and all.

Disney animated features 1991-2000 poll
A Poll New World: Disney Animated Films of the 90s

don't remember ducktales anymore. would probably go for little mermaid for the music

This is also the era that I was a kid, but I don't like any of these at all. Maybe I was a little too old for most of them; the difference between seeing something at 5 and seeing it at 8 is probably quite large.

This is true. Little Mermaid was probably the only one I wasn't verging on "too old for this" age.

Would vote for any of the Disney afternoon block over any of these - Duck Tales, Chip & Dale's Rescue Rangers, Darkwing Duck, the one w/ Balloo.

Talespin

milo otm

also yeah, Lion King's a good cut off, it gets pretty dire fast

I have a soft spot for Mermaid and Rescuers Down Under because they were the first Disney features I saw that were released after I had a kid of my own -- I tried to recalibrate my perceptions and see them as I thought a child might. Still, when Sarah finally saw Mermaid in the early 90s, she hated it because Ursula scared the shit out of her. Will probably vote Mermaid.

even though i really really want to vote for it tbh i don't remember the ducktales movie being all that good. if they'd just released all of the episodes of the show where scrooge is searching for the 'valley of the golden sun' as a movie it'd tower over all of this crap.

lion king just edging aladdin

the lion king felt like straight up focus group Disney. Skillful and all but there's something really off putting about it to me.

there's a tumblr post going around that laments the point in time when ariel's "i'm sixteen, i'm not a child anymore!" stops being something you agree with and starts being something you're appalled by. i loved little mermaid as a child, but i rewatched it last year and ariel was a real asshole. it was fucked up of king triton to destroy all her human artifacts like that, but he probably didn't have a mermaid military school to threaten her with and he had to do SOMETHING.

i've also rewatched lion king and b&tb fairly recently, and preferred b&tb despite its problematic elements. the lion king has an animal cast, which i've realized now that i'm prejudiced against, but also i found the transition between young simba and older simba jarring. i didn't realize until recently how quickly some of the plot points blow by in these films. simba and nala go from wisecracking childhood pals to sexytimes in basically 30 seconds. at least with beauty and the beast the montage showing them moving from antagonism to love is well-done.

i should try to rewatch aladdin before voting, i haven't seen it in forever and have no idea how it holds up.

As a big, often very defensive 'Hunchback' fan I don't think this is a quality cutoff.

Having only watched it as a kid I thought Aladdin was one of hte Disney classics but then rewatched it some years ago and found it really boring except for the parade scene.

Beauty & Beast is super-formulaic but in an effective, good way, the numbers are nailed, the opening song is so good at being an opening scene. Lion King also holds up in terms of craft although I never connected to it as emotionally as many friends. "Part of Your World" is the best musical song ever. Rescuers and Ducktails both enjoyable series, universes but these movies feel like products of tv / home media, not big filmmaking. Not sure what to vote for.

I watched (okay, occasionally peeked at from around my laptop) Hunchback for the first time a few weeks ago. It was pretty entertaining.

i rewatched it last year and ariel was a real asshole.

lol. Still voting for it though. I have the fondest memories of it and now that my daughter's watching these movies it's the least annoying/problematic of the bunch.

little mermaid is the disney movie i'm kinda most concerned about my daughters watching. essentially isn't it a flick about a girl who gets rid of her voice to get a guy?

Well, she makes a devil's bargain... It's pretty plain to the viewer that exchanging her voice for legs is gonna be a pretty bad idea for Ariel and she'll be in for trouble ahead.

For years I marveled at brazenly dirty lyrics to the B&B 'GAston,' song, only to finally read the lyrics and learn the questionable phrase read "no one's NECK's as incredibly thick as Gaston" and heave a sigh of relief/sorrow

honestly beauty and the beast's message is probably worse: a physically and verbally threatening man (well, "man") can be transformed by a woman's love.

I've always been disturbed by Chip and Mrs. Pot. Who is the father? Did he leave after hitting his kid? There's a whole abusive allegory in that cupboard.

cutoff makes perfect sense as lion king was last release while katzenberg was there (curious which was the last one he had any hand in developing). loved aladdin at the time though robin williams and gottfried there really setting some bad precedents. lion king peak of disney 2.0, crazy katz blowup coincided w/ it, the timing helped create dreamworks and seal disney 2.0's doom. voted beauty, which at the time got praise for being vaguely feminist (comparable to frozen now), interesting it plays sexist now apparently.

i like ariel when her motivation is curiosity and the obsessive desire to learn more about the surface world. then it all suddenly gets transferred to "eric" and it's duller, not to mention one big trip to the problemat. this movie gets points just for being underwater, tho; i love its physics.

beauty and the beast is probably the best here because even disney can't completely sanitize it; the source material has such dark and confusing psychosexual implications that even tho it's not cocteau it's still spooky and has unpleasant implications. nevertheless belle may be the most successfully Plucky of disney heroines.

aladdin is undignified.

the lion king was my favorite thing in the world when i was little. because it's not based on a fairy tale with old black-forest ghosts crawling around it, al leong is otm about its story: it's the button-pushing creation of a bunch of hacks drunk on campbell. locks all its primal-cliche beats neatly into place. (in high school i read this book and the parts that hadn't already appeared in campbell or in story were mostly about suggestions the author had made at lion king script meetings that would have improved the film had they not been ignored). i used to think it was problo that the hyenas were clearly a brutally oppressed class who deserved to rise up and take their share from the lion supremacists but on the other hand it's neat that scar hijacks their revolution and is then torn apart by his betrayed underlings. movie is still thoroughly racist towards hyenas tho.

implications implications

even the anomalies here are interesting - ducktales as representative of afternoon cartoon disney that probably doesn't get enough credit in disney's rebirth, rescuers down under as proto-straight to video sequel they would mine the hell out of in years to come

Darkwing became a favorite of my roommates and I in late undergrad years. That and Animaniacs.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/5af65785b3163ab26156e3ea6ca1840d/tumblr_msca2woFGH1sh28k6o1_400.gif

Ariel having to lose her voice to morph into a different form is cool. There's a vague psychoanalytic kind of logic about it.

i loved the disney afternoon as a kid, pre-teenage years. darkwing duck, talespin, BONKERS, gooftroop, the aladdin series.. all great imo. never got into the lion king tv series but liked the movie well enough.

Disney animated features 1991-2000 poll
A Poll New World: Disney Animated Films of the 90s

don't remember ducktales anymore. would probably go for little mermaid for the music

― k3vin k., Wednesday, March 12, 2014 11:31 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oops - didn't even think to look for other polls on this one, sorry guys. Still think it's worth doing since it kind of continues the rolling discussion from the other threads maybe? Also it's been fun to have these in such small chunks I think...more discussion on each movie.

re: the cutoff - not really 'quality' based for me, just familiarity really - although I do feel like, Hercules aside, the second half of the decade maybe goes for more "grown-up" or teen oriented, more human characters, slightly darker tones visually (and maybe thematically?). This one is a "which is my favorite" poll, and the next one will be "which of these should I finally watch"?

re: DuckTales and the Treasure of the Golden Suns TV special/opening arc: yes yes yes. El Capitan forever.

Lion King as feline Hamlet, with JTT as the prince of Denmark, enemies beware.

"I've never seen a mighty king with quite so little hair" is a friggin gross line.

little mermaid i kinda sorta resent because it's so completely eclipsed andersen's (admittedly kind of fucked-up) story. i think most of the changes made in other, older disney movies are defensible (i doubt many ppl would argue that snow white should have ended with the queen being forced to dance herself to death in red-hot shoes), and i doubt anyone wanted to see poor ariel commit suicide, but the distance between the tone of the source material and the tone of the movie is really kind of incredible here.

TLM boasts the most enduring songs. My four-year-old niece has seen all these but will hum "Under the Sea" and AHHHH-AHHHH-AHHHH AHHH-AHHH-AHHH KEEP SINGING!!! all day.

I was going to say: not even Disney stamped out the sexual undertones in Hunchback, in which the priest by the fireplace sings a song celebrating/cursing his lust.

I don't think comparing it to source material is a fair argument no matter what angle you go for. They could make a tragedy into a romcom and it would be irrelevant to the quality of the movie, no exceptions.

in other words

http://25.media.tumblr.com/e6751ffda7821ae0d1e7e1c24f7ecf75/tumblr_mj8jrh39n61rfduvxo1_500.gif

you're right, i prob wouldn't care if i actually liked little mermaid (pinocchio isn't anything like the book, and iirc neither is bambi), but i kind of hate it. 'fake broadway musical' is my least favorite type of disney film.

fox and the hound is very different from the book

ha, speaking of broadway musicals, my sister is obsessed with howard ashman, so little mermaid is a clear favorite of hers. she made me watch a dvd featurette where howard ashman gives a presentation to the other disney guys about how musicals are structured and how the little mermaid's songs map onto that structure, and it was actually pretty interesting. he talks about how difficult ursula's song was to pull off because it's both expository and motivating a huge plot-turning change, and you risk the audience's suspension of disbelief when you're doing so much in such a short amount of time. like i mentioned earlier, i liked the montage in beauty and the beast where belle and the beast grew closer, and it turns out that was scored by an ashman song too ('something more').

always thought that despite the usurping uncle, timon + pumbaa make lion king functionally more henry iv than hamlet. wish he banished them at the end.

iirc disney only started claiming that lion king was based on hamlet after ppl started pointing out this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimba_the_White_Lion#The_Lion_King_controversy

haha i never read this part:

Matthew Broderick has said that when he was hired as the voice of Simba in The Lion King, he presumed the project was related to Kimba the White Lion. "I thought he meant Kimba, who was a white lion in a cartoon when I was a little kid," said Broderick. "So I kept telling everybody I was going to play Kimba. I didn't really know anything about it, but I didn't really care."

Not sure how I'm voting really. Beauty & the Beast is the one that I would for sure never allow a child to watch if I had any say in it - I mean it is explicit training in some of the most dangerous ideas loose in our society, papered over with the idea that it's somehow progressive because Beauty is clever, misunderstood and (initially) 'independent.' Really it should be pulled from the shelves like Song of the South, or at least retroactively re-rated R or something. Lion King almost as noxious but at least it lacks this fig leaf.

Little Mermaid may actually be the most defensible of the 'big' ones, insofar as the giving-up-of-legs is framed as a bad call, but difficult listening hour is sooooo OTM that it would be so much better if the plot weren't about a man, but just Ariel's curiosity about the wider world. It could even be something like Kiki's Delivery Service, where the conflicts and emotional drama grow directly out of the disappointments, misunderstandings and terrors of stepping out into this wider world. The relationships with the sisters could be prioritized - she misses them, they misinterpret her surface adventure as a signal that she doesn't need/love them, etc. etc. Maybe she makes a best friend on the surface and that friendship is pulled apart/jeopardized by the ~world that doesn't understand~ (see Fox & the Hound). Basically, what if it were a Miyazaki movie and not a Broadway/Disney number? Because the animation is there, the songwriting is there...oh well.

Kinda tempted to vote DuckTales, which I did see in the theater, packed into the neighbors' station wagon, but remember not even slightly. It'd be an honorary vote for the TV show, which was great and I think kind of universally agreed upon (at the first grade lunch table) as the best thing on TV or at least on par with Ninja Turtles. I haven't seen Rescuers Down Under, but when I finish the first one I could give it a spin - it's the only one of this batch available on Netflix, and I'd be interested to see how the Rescuers concept plays with, I believe, a bigger budget and updated technology - first film to use the "CAPS" system of computer-inking and coloring the hand-drawn cels.

it would be so much better if the plot weren't about a man, but just Ariel's curiosity about the wider world. ... Maybe she makes a best friend on the surface and that friendship is pulled apart/jeopardized by the ~world that doesn't understand~ (see Fox & the Hound). Basically, what if it were a Miyazaki movie and not a Broadway/Disney number?

haha doc casino you're basically describing ponyo!

haha, maybe i should skip the unheralded rescuers sequel and finally watch ponyo..

I voted Beauty because the ballroom scene made me feel like I was watching The Future Of Animation

Incidentally, if Wiki is to be trusted, both Rescuers Down Under and the DuckTales flick were experiments whose box-office disappointment confirmed the "all blockbusters" approach. But this again is where I think Katzenberg's fiat has to be thought of in the same terms as Walt's; some other person might have said, "ehh, pretty good returns for being a sequel to a movie no current kids have seen, up against Home Alone, and with an Australian theme that's already lost its shine." Granted, I'm not sure how different this world would be - more films about adventurous mice? - but still.

first entry in teal&orange.xls you were correct

I'd almost vote for B&TB because Angela Lansbury.

i voted beauty + the beast and i'm curious if detractors (particularly doc casino) feel the same way about the original source material as they do about the film? i ask bc fairy tales in general contain all kinds of dodgy stuff

the famous katzenberg letter, he begins to discuss rescuers down under some starting on pg 15

Uh, saw the 4 big ones. A friend had Beauty & The Beast on laserdisc, so we watched that a whole bunch of times until he got TERMINATOR 2 and omg bye-bye stupid foofy wannabeast. Gaston song is amazing though! Remember seeing a clip from The Little Mermaid at some sort of Apple conference thing where they were showing off this amazing new thing QUICKTIME and they had the Under the Sea scene shown at the size of a postage stamp. No idea why I was there. Same presentation showed off the amazing NEWTON!

Actually, this is the era I've seen the most of, since the Norwegian TV channel didn't show Disney movies when I was a kid and the video stores didn't have 'em either. I do recall seeing Pinocchio at a birthday party, but that's about it for the earlier movies. Great big pop cultural gap, that.

Anyhoo, here's some important additional data to aid you in your selection:

Little Mermaid = “Homer, that’s your solution to everything, to move under the sea"

The Lion King = “The circle of KNIFE”

Beauty & The Beast = "Like my loafers / Former gophers / it was that, or skin my chauffeurs / But a greyhound fur tuxedo would be best"

The only thing I remember about the Rescuers sequel aside from John Candy was Ebert's outrage over the racial coding of the villain.

xpost

The Little Mermaid definitely inspired the best Simpsons joke, yes.

i voted beauty + the beast and i'm curious if detractors (particularly doc casino) feel the same way about the original source material as they do about the film? i ask bc fairy tales in general contain all kinds of dodgy stuff

― Mordy , Wednesday, March 12, 2014 6:46 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Haven't read the fairy tale in ages but the plot outline to me seems like basically the same idea and presumably it was very 'functional' in medieval German villages: something for mother (or dad) to tell kids to explain why daddy seems to fly into violent rages, smash things, make mommy cry - and how he really is a great man and father underneath, so don't worry if the fellow we set you up to marry seems to do those same things. So... why make a movie of this in 1991, for children, again?

Bookmarking the Katzenberg letter for later viewing...

aladdin takes this because it's great and the sega game was also great

i never played the games to the lion king, littlest mermaid or beauty and the beast but they're all pretty great too tbh

special notice to the lino king for being the only disney movie where the released songs were actually better performed than the ones in the movie itself

re: B&TB - Ha, wow, shows how much I know - it's a French fairy tale, not German! Hmm. Maybe I should read more of the plot. Forgot that it has more of a class narrative to it.

the lino king

I can't remember the specifics of the Disney movie but in the fairy tale the Beast isn't angry or violent. Quite the opposite

aladdin is so fucking shit

it's like I rubbed a lamp and a galaxy of shit came out stank of shit and didn't shut up

xpost: eh, the basic idea of 'beauty and the beast' is very old and has a lot of equivalents in greek, norse, arthurian et al mythology. basically all of the stuff that ppl are objecting to (the beast's abusiveness) was added for the film and wasn't really a point in any of the original stories.

did u see aladdin wins i think if you see the disney one it's actually great just check

not falling for that one again

dammit

i just need to hustle three more rentals and i get a free swatch with robin williams voiced alarm

Yeah, based on Wiki y'all are right, the fairy tale really is a different beast altogether. Not sure I'd care for that movie much either, mind you, but for different reasons.

the voyage through the flooded town in ponyo is one of my favorite kid-adventure things ever. boats tied to the houses floating above them like balloons. the dark journey into the canopy. your hometown made strange.

many xps.

I thought B&TB was about preparing young wives for dealing with their prospective husbands' bestial sexual urges

xxxxp

how very ilxy

Like "here's like "here's a guy who's a sweet gentleman, btw he has huge hairy balls and is into anal, learn to deal with it"

xp

the cartoon "JEM" did a version of B&TB from which Disney borrowed imo

http://www.veoh.com/watch/v170555943KNX7643

Everything was pseudo-downhill after that for them, no?

Hard to choose among these, but leaning towards Beauty and the Beast for reasons other people have already mentioned:
- The Gaston song. Sometimes when I make eggs the line 'and now that I'm grown I eat five dozen eggs so I'm roughly the size of a barge' plays in my head.
- It spawned one of the greatest Simpsons parodies ever.
- It has a sort of darkness that most modern Disney films don't.
- Belle is a top notch Disney woman (hesitating to use the phrase 'princess') (she's weird and bookish and ignores the advances of men who aren't good enough for her. A+)

I have fond memories of Aladdin and the Lion King too (and their respective Sega Genesis games, as someone else mentioned, even though the levels didn't really have anything to do with the movie storylines half the time); Little Mermaid is good fun.

Does anyone else remember in the mid-90s when there was a thing around how the priest in the Little Mermaid gets a boner and the leaves in the Lion King spelled out 'sex' and the Genie told Aladdin to take off his clothes (or something)?

the cartoon "JEM" did a version of B&TB from which Disney borrowed imo

truly outrageous!

http://www.animatedbuzz.com/WB/images/coverart01.jpg

Ned upthread, I'm pretty sure that Mickey Mouse short was paired with a rerelease of the original Rescuers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcuI6K9daIw

'rescuers down under' was actually paired with this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince_and_the_Pauper_(1990_film)

haven't seen either since, but fondly remember seeing both of these with my family over christmas that year.

http://www.lancaster.gov.uk/Images/LordAshton1.jpg

I re-watched Aladdin recently, and it was fine. I was sort of weirded out by just how opulent the palace is, though. I mean, princes and princesses, that's par for the course, but the palace is just dwarfing Agrabah, and the sultan must really really opress the people for that to work. Also, Jafar is apparantly authorised to execute people without telling the sultan - even though it's just for stealing bread. Real dictatorship going on, there.

the sultan is p much unfit for rule and jafar seems to be in control of the state; the only scheming he apparently has to do anymore is for control of the succession.

can't be long till we get a broadway musical where jafar is secretly the good guy trying to outwit the evil genie and his gullible patsy aladdin.

haa, it would be cool if the movie ended with Aladdin releasing the genie and Jafar being like noooooo stoooooop and then Robin Williams destroys the world like the genie in Quest for Glory II:

http://home.comcast.net/~ervind/qg2iblis.png

rewatched mermaid + beast. reddening otm abt ariel being an asshole; it's hilarious. she's a real lil meangirl to flounder. a bad influence. "you can stay here and watch for sharks." in comparison honestly the viceless belle's kinda sterile; i prefer my disney princesses hellions. also tops: the bullshitting anthropologist seagull; ariel's expression of delight staring at her new toes; her always-in-motion hair; octopus divine. but the prince is worthless, as is his whole human entourage (boring dog, cypher valet) with the exceptions i guess of the demented chef and the priest with a boner.

beauty and the beast i'd never seen in full i now realize. i dunno, it was pretty stunning. the french peasant village and surrounding wolf-infested forest: the movie's set in platonic fairy tale country like nothing since sleeping beauty, and that country is so gorgeous and populated. i loved belle's horse--hugely expressive without a single cutesy reaction shot--and some of the beast's dumb-boy postures, like this one:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v87/Inuxx/vlcsnap-00002_zpsbec5e46f.png

and then there is gaston, hands down the best villain in this lot imo: a human-sized villain, a local asshole, instead of a scheming witch or sorcerer or regicide. (unlike ursula or jafar, he does not Turn Really Big for the boss fight.) and yet his motive is vanity--the motive of the o.g. wicked queen. he's a Funny Villain but his buffoonishness isn't separate from his menace; he's always expressing both. (i love when he invites belle on a date to the tavern "to look at my trophies"--then at the end wants the beast as a trophy.) in fact there is lots of unsettling laughter inthis movie: the scene where gaston's cackling lickspittle humiliates belle's father before the entire town is one of the rougher things in this poll. (this scene also featured the bony and sinister asylum director, a v polished lil bit part).

whole thing does indeed seem to be about how your job as a girl is to adopt and socialize violent men with anger issues in exchange for protection from wolves and bores. but at least this Problem is part of the story, part of the friction of the adaptation, instead of just a thoughtless ambience like aladdin's bland racism. really tho i am just making excuses because the rainy balcony climax got me all involved. as patriarchal bodice-rippers go a pretty good one.

the ballroom scene now has a fatal playstation vibe tho. like they've walked onto the holodeck.

you prefer your Disney princesses as tops.

Maybe I was a little too old for most of them; the difference between seeing something at 5 and seeing it at 8 is probably quite large

yeah, I hadn't really thought about it but it seems that B&TB is a kind of cut-off point for me, I enjoyed Aladdin and Lion King back then but I don't have the same attachment to them.

B&TB was my favourite but the unpleasantness of Belle and Beast's relationship does taint it, yeah. I'd maybe have preferred it if it was just Belle hanging around the village, humiliating Gaston every so often, then heading off to Paris for an exciting cosmopolitan life. The Rescuers Down Under is one that I have probably an inappropriate amount of affection for as I was just the right age to watch the video a million times, but now I don't even particularly remember the plot. Kid goes missing, scary hunter dude (voiced by George C. Scott!), giant golden eagle (nice flying scenes iirc), somethingsomethingsomething.

Ducktales movie is alright but I may throw it a vote anyway, pretend I'm voting for the TV series and that classic NES game.

There's no way I could put generic jock Gaston over Scar or even Jafar for that matter, who works a very similar languid but less gratuitous sarcasm but lacks the Jeremy Irons factor and degrees of menace. Gaston ain't really working the fear factor like the others either because the focus of our trepidation for most of the film is supposed to be the Beast. Not that a villain has to be scary to be effective but it does rob him of a dimension that has helped make some of the others iconic. As a kid I was legit terrified by some of em but Gaston didn't really register as much more than standard dickhead.

Plus some of Irons' delivery is simply peerless I mean shit like this?
http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6fu60awnR1rwcc6bo1_500.gif
http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view7/2947554/long-live-the-king-o.gif
Can't have seen the films in close to a decade but I know exactly what it sounds like.

In fact Scar wins just for, "I know that your powers of retention are as wet as a warthog's backside."

Speaking of the funnies, I'd go James Woods' Hades. Vaguely remember loving Prince John as a kid because he mirrored my earlobe tug-thumb suck, pacifier combo.

ok is this the worst piece of movie writing ever?

you prefer your Disney princesses as tops.

― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, March 15, 2014 4:29 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_li4g6obGup1qghkx5o1_r4_400.gif

the irons inflection i always think of is "but when it comes to brute strength... i'm afraid i'm at the shallow end of the gene pool."

You have nooooo idea

^^^

when gaston first realizes that belle has a thing for the beast there's a shot of him wearing an expression of such shocked disgust that when he began saying "sheeeeeeeee's as crazy as her old man!" i powerloled cuz it sounded for a moment like he was headed for "jeeeeeeeeeesus CHRIST!"

the other highlight from TLK is 'well stttthhlippery as your mind may be"

when he began saying "sheeeeeeeee's as crazy as her old man!"

http://www.wearysloth.com/Gallery/ActorsC/2615-9760.gif

"Goes to show it's in da genes!"

And go cock-a-doodle-doo.

As a kid I was legit terrified by some of em

ursula and her fuckin worm garden or whatever the hell that was scared the christ out of me when i was a kid... more than any other disney thing ever, easily

the lion king came out when i was 8 and me and my dad saw it together in the theater. i mean how could it not be my favorite... when (spoiler) mufasa freakin dies... thats some real shit man.

i havent seen any of these since i was a kid but i did watch the opening scene of TLK on youtube recently and i wont lie it still gave me chills. you can just coast after an opening that good. its become part of Disney Lore that it was actually made by the b-team and they didnt have high expectations for it, pocahontas was supposed to be their next huge hit

Y'all are making a good case for Scar in terms of Shakespearean menace and presence. Kind of feeling dlh on Gaston though, as with Cruella - something great about the ones that just feel like outsize versions of real-life assholes you've hated.

Just checked out some clips of the DuckTales movie, was disappointed to realize the animation wasn't that much better than the TV show. As a kid I remember it being a major step up. Of course, the TV show already looked damn good for a daily cartoon at the time.

i honestly had no idea there was a theatrical duck tails movie until this poll. and i watched a ton of ducktails as a kid

if you'd asked me to list the disney films from this era i would've forgotten it but when i saw it i remembered it existed, comparable to the goofy movie that'll be showing up in the next bunch

ahem, that's a goofy movie

haha you're right

looking at wikipedia alot of those direct to video sequels to disney classics were in fact not direct to video and got wide release in theaters. when nobody was looking disney actually released theatrical peter pan and jungle book sequels. somehow this seems more of a low than the black cauldron.

And four theatrical Pooh pictures since 2000, of which I remember at most two being released. We'll have the chance to admire (?) them later, but it really makes me wonder what the logic was for giving those a theatrical release, but not other things. I suspect that there was just a strong pushback against these things after Rescuers Down Under, and Katzenberg or somebody laid down the law: sequels on video only! Maintain the prestige of the brand! Or something. And then somebody sooner or later said, ehh, you know, we can wring a few extra bucks out of these, just stick them in theaters on a slow week. Bafflingly, Piglet's Big Movie was released scarcely a month after The Jungle Book 2.

yeah it's a curious decision, the legions of direct to video sequels made some sense, not hurting the brand anymore than an afternoon cartoon spinoff while being ridiculously more lucrative (and tbh they did eventually kinda hurt the brand)(though in a weird way this worked out for them since the specter of a crappy direct to video toy story sequel apparently played a role in pixar staying w/ disney), but that flood of sad theatrical releases just amplified the sense that disney had been left behind by pixar and dreamworks. anyhow this is probably best left for that thread when the time comes though i won't even be able to vote in that one - the last disney flick i've seen was mulan though i've been tempted by this current quasi-renaissance (big idina fan what can i say)(ha casino did i or my sister ever tell you about me dragging her to see the rent movie?) and i loved the poster for that last winnie the pooh movie -

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e2/Winnie_the_Pooh_Poster.jpg

- that's alot of urine!

earnestly looking forward to voting for a goofy movie, which has a small but ardent following among people my age and probably a little younger. i dont know if its within my power to explain why, though... its one of those fraught childhood memories that you cant really describe in all its complexities (maybe dlh can)

my understanding is when it comes to goofy movies a goofy movie is the goofy movie

haa, i don't remember the rent movie incident

It's funny, these poll chunks really do oscillate between ones I've seen a lot of and ones I've seen hardly any of, which is the fun of running the polls for me really. The late 90s is a mysterious wasteland, but then I've actually seen a good handful of the early 2000s ones. And then, basically nothing.

As for direct-to-video sequels, the amazing thing is that they kept some degree of quality control or at least self-restraint - some sense that each of them had to be packaged as filling an important place in the continuity, telling us the full story of a specific character (though Aladdin's really are just 'the further adventures of Aladdin'). Whereas there are, I shit you not, thirteen Land Before Time films - I mean at a certain point that is just shit to fill out a rack near the checkout counter for wee ones who may or may not have the slightest attachment to the original film.

Ten minutes into Rescuers Down Under, and wow, what a night-and-day difference to the first film, visually at least. This is bright, colorful, three-dimensional, and clearly presages some of the techniques of Lion King when it comes to the fauna. I'm not sure why this little kid who can talk to animals can just scramble up a hundred-food rock face without breaking a sweat - really thought the whole opening was going to be some kind of spirit guide dream sequence - and is then stymied by an eight-foot hole in the ground but I'm willing to give it a chance since George C. Scott just showed up.

http://i459.photobucket.com/albums/qq313/doctorcasino/rescuersdownunder_zpsaede2dae.jpg

is this what australia looks like y/n

i seem to remember from waking sleeping beauty that rescuers down under was the first disney movie to use digital coloring techniques?

also, maybe i should save this for the next thread, but a few years ago my sister took a college screenwriting class from one of the writers of a goofy movie, who was also one of the co-writers of the bill and ted movies. she said he was taken aback by how excited everyone in the class was about a goofy movie, he clearly didn't rate it as anything significant.

reddening, that's correct about the digital coloring - and it seems to have really paid off. This is such a pleasant movie to look at, it makes all but the best sequences in Little Mermaid look quite flat and shabby in comparison. Just got through a very cute sequence of the world's mice relaying the alarm to New York, complete with big 1940s war-coverage arrows streaming across the globe. I still think the story's off on the wrong foot - as in the first film, the villain's behavior and decision to kidnap the kid really doesn't make any sense, and the heroes are only involved because it's their job to rescue kids - not a really organic premise for drama. But I should shut up and let the movie do its thing.

haha but i did pause to follow youtube's suggestion that i view the Princess and the Frog trailer, and it's kind of amazing: under the preparatory heading "After 75 years of magic..." we get footage of... Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and the Lion King. Seventy-five years! Now I know why my childhood seemed to last forever.

further disconnected observations on The Rescuers Down Under:

* John Candy as the bird is a terrifying harbinger of Robin Williams as the genie, but at least some of his jokes are kind of funny and he does get introduced listening to "Black Slacks" by the Sparkletones so that's cool.

* the computer stuff isn't limited to the coloring technique - for the first time there's a lot of computer-generated geometry that's been painted over, a la the clock scene in Great Mouse Detective. Some of it looks pretty decent, some of it doesn't. Sydney Opera House looks like hell. Nice seeing both that and the UN building in one Disney movie, though.

* the love triangle story is just tedious. Katzenberg OTM about this movie going from nowhere to nowhere in this regard. In general the plot is lumpy - underdeveloping some threads, overdeveloping others. I don't regret having watched it though - the animation really did put it a cut above. I feel confident in saying it's a better viewing experience than the DuckTales movie, although I haven't seen that in twenty-four years; since I find so many of this batch of movies objectionable for other reasons than craft, I might end up voting for this. Little Mermaid, though...

A Goofy Movie is wonderful, v. 90s time capsule

Never got the love for A Goofy Movie, maybe bc I'm European... (?1??) Basically feels like a random story from one of the Donald Duck comic magazines.

It was past my cutoff point for childhood interest - I definitely watched a bit of the show, but was not invested in it, so by the time the movie came out it was kiddie stuff for me.

Reminds me re: direct-to-video sequels, another reason just has to be that they can be fast and cheap, coming out soon enough that kids who loved the main film would still be begging for the sequel. Versus Rescuers Down Under - not sure how long that was in development but it had to be a few good years, and really, if you were 7 in 1977 you were prooooobably not in the prime market for a followup by 1990.

voted for the movie i went to see on my first date

I remember the opening scenes of the Ducktales movie - Launchpad 'landing' the plane, trek through the desert, exploring the... pyramid? - being quite impressive, I'll have to rewatch and have my memory dashed.

one thing aladdin has over the rest (and over most other disney movies) is that it actually comes up with a really clever way to dispose of the villain. a surprising number of disney movies end with the villain falling off a cliff, which i always assumed was because they don't want to actually have the hero kill someone.

Ha, Down Under ends with lovable underdog mouse Bernhard straight dropping the bad guy into apool full of vicious crocodiles, which is ice cold considering the next scene is Bernhard proposing to Bianca. Of course, it's a waterfall that finall does in the baddie.

all the talk about a goofy movie has me wondering: do kids today grow up exposed to any of the old disney shorts, like the ones where goofy is demonstrating how to ski or fish or whatever or the ones where chip and dale are pissing off donald? those things were on the disney channel 24/7 when i was a kid so i have what feels like hundreds of them permanently implanted in my memory, but i get the sense they've sort of fallen off everyone's radar these days.

We never had Disney channel, so even for someone my age (born 81) I pretty much got to know all those characters from their much-altered syndicated action/adventure show versions. I mean, I knew what Donald Duck looked like but I'm not sure I really ever saw many Donald Duck cartoons until I was an adult, whereas the Looney Tunes were constantly on. I even saw more Woody Woodpecker and company than the Disney stable; Mickey Mouse was basically a cipher by this point.

Growing up in Norway in the 80s -- one Norwegian TV channel, two Swedish ones -- there wasn't any Disney on either as I recall, with one great exception that's become something of a sentimental touchstone for my generation: The christmas special. This was an hour long show shown on Christmas eve that consisted of a bunch of mostly winter or Christmas-themed old shorts (santa's workshop, the, uh, "problematic" version; various chip'n'dale hijinx,; Huey&c in a big snowball fight; uhh, "Ferdinand the bull" (my favorite. The Swedish narration was amazing)

Oh, the other big Norwegian TV Christmas tradition is Cinderella.
The East-German/Czechoslovakian co-production, that is! The entire movie dubbed to Norwegian by one guy!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C5%99i_o%C5%99%C3%AD%C5%A1ky_pro_Popelku

Fwiw, I see my wee nieces and nephews watching more of those old Disney shorts than I ever did, mostly thanks to youtube. Occasionally in some dubbed version or other, cuz they don't really notice whether Donald speaks English, Polish or Spanish.

did you guys have Dtv?

one thing aladdin has over the rest (and over most other disney movies) is that it actually comes up with a really clever way to dispose of the villain. a surprising number of disney movies end with the villain falling off a cliff, which i always assumed was because they don't want to actually have the hero kill someone.

ha true. gaston is a plummeter. i don't even remember what happens to ursula and i just watched it. she explodes or something. was hoping she'd become a creepy piece of kelp. scar is torn to pieces by his own minions, tho, that's pretty cool.

as a sherlock holmes fan i love a cliff.

i never saw the goofy movie :( but i read a lot of hype about it because my bff (disneyer than me) had a million issues of DISNEY ADVENTURES magazine and i read all of them at sleepovers. it had comic-book adaptations of all those shows: talespin, ducktales, bonkers, etc.. those are what i remember because i don't think i saw much tv until, idk, 1997, and when i did i was mostly a nick kid. i did watch a lotta Disney Channel Original Movies later in the decade (and into the next). that's a poll.

a goofy movie, excuse me

i remember when they had the stuff at burger king

get outta here you never went to Burger King

i had so many burger king pogs alfred

i kept them in a tin with the batman logo on it

i liked "wheels" the token handicapped member of the burger king kids club; i thought he was cool

once i got food poisoning from burger king one of the nights i was appearing in the role of tootles in a community theater peter pan and i had to dance with indians, go offstage, puke in a bag, go onstage, dance with wendy, etc.

ha, i have a similar story, only it was dennys and it took out a good chunk of the cast of bye-bye birdie. i was the luckiest because my character wore a huge, ankle-length fur coat, so i could lie down in the wings with it pulled over me like a duvet whenever i wasn't on-stage.

more on-topic: ursula died after eric impaled her with the broken mast of a ship.

shocked that w/ all the discussion of a goofy movie no one has posted this, which i think fully accounts for its honored status among millenials
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-adaowehIk

Were the television shows Quack Pack and Goof Troop popular in the US? I remember watching them for years on tv over here and thinking of A Goofy Movie as just an extended episode.

i think fully accounts for

no, only partially

I just remembered that my school bus driver in 6th/7th grade was known for being a little "wacky," with one of his crowd-pleasing stunts being a spot-on Donald Duck impression. So we must have basically known what Donald sounded like, maybe from his educational films or rare DuckTales cameos.

i havent seen any of these since i was a kid but i did watch the opening scene of TLK on youtube recently and i wont lie it still gave me chills. you can just coast after an opening that good. its become part of Disney Lore that it was actually made by the b-team and they didnt have high expectations for it, pocahontas was supposed to be their next huge hit

― Hungry4Ass, Saturday, March 15, 2014 9:53 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is so interesting, and strange - it makes a kind of sense but it's not like it's such a cheap-looking movie. I wonder at what stage, for example, did they bring in Elton John? I'm imagining some early draft version of the film with "SONGS GO HERE" and "WILL RENDER STAMPEDE IF YOU LET US USE THE NEW COMPUTERS" title cards, and at some point the producers being won over or something. But I mean, I remember a maaaaaassive marketing buildup to this, a bunch of 'making of' TV bits and pieces, here's Elton in the recording booth, here's someone at a computer, etc. etc.

yeah i've heard that before and it kinda blows my mind, just seems so much more ambitious and grand (i mean it's got the CIRCLE OF LIFE), like what they had been building toward, a real fuckit balls out feel to it. it'd be like finding out use yr illusion was originally supposed to be just a tossed off quickie project, axl's real focus was on the spaghetti incident?.

did you guys have Dtv?
No idea what that is. I know there existed people who had satellite, but no one I knew had it.

Dtv was this thing disney did where they jerry rigged music videos w/ pop songs and vaguely fitting video from their cartoons, i never miss an opportunity to bring it up

this should give you an idea -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-XsehbuxUw

okay, that's pretty great, Eurythmics one in particular is better than the real video

Ha, well, that is something. Jeffrey Jones will always be the terrifying dude in Howard The Duck to me.

DTV was fucking great!!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Still waffling. My plan was to vote Rescuers Down Under in protest to the stultifying Republican musical parade, but the thing is that (lovely animation aside), it wasn't THAT good of a movie. Might still do, might still honor the DuckTales show through the movie, or might gamble that Little Mermaid doesn't have too much objectionable shit I don't remember, because what I can remember of it seems pretty good. Also 'Under the Sea' ffs.

just occurred to me the other day that 'under the sea' is totally based on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcQ3vNOAk8k

Beauty and the Beast.

Remembered the dumb ending to TLM, flipped coin, voted Rescuers.

aladdin was my favorite of these as a kid but i don't really remember why, maybe i just identified more with the male lead? have no idea which i would like most now. i think i've actually seen beauty and the beast the fewest times of the big musical disneys, my sister had most of the others on vhs but not that one, but i can definitely imagine it aging the best and aladdin aging the worst.

i'll have an actual opinion on the next batch since there's one in there that i always liked

also am i just making this up or did all of the musicals have exactly 5 musical numbers?

Little Mermaid definitely has more, but I think they got the formula down more after that. I'm sure someone's made charts or something - gotta have an early-movie song establishing the big themes/setting, another one for the protagonist's state of mind or personality at the beginning, a villain-introducing number, a lighter or comic-relief number for the supporting cast, and a love theme. They don't sing through the climax and denouement, so that about does it except for reprising one of the above at the end, bada-bing bada-boom.

does tlm have more? i count: part of your world, under the sea, poor unfortunate souls, the chef's song, and kiss the girl. (un

I think I was counting "Fathoms Below," which tbf I don't really remember much, but it seems like it serves the same role as "Arabian Nights" and is thus redundant to "Under the Sea" as a scene-setting curtain-raiser. Maybe not a 'full' song though. Definitely not counting the gag song that Ariel's sisters don't finish.

aladdin doesn't have a villain song, another strike against it i guess

Woah, that's true! Never realized that. Wonder if they had one planned and cut it in favor of Robin Williams getting two big numbers? I could also see some really different version of Arabian Nights being given to him (he could be welcoming a suitor or something), in which case the "it's barbaric, but hey - it's home" might actually help set up something in the movie rather than just being discomfiting.

But really what's clearly missing is a showstopper for the Cave of Wonders, huge missed opportunity.

For years I marveled at brazenly dirty lyrics to the B&B 'GAston,' song, only to finally read the lyrics and learn the questionable phrase read "no one's NECK's as incredibly thick as Gaston" and heave a sigh of relief/sorrow

― r. bean (soda), Wednesday, March 12, 2014 1:42 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hahahahahahahahaha

gaston is an awesome villain. so is ursula, though. actually, even though his characterization is super-racist, so is jafar.

i loved beauty and the beast so much as a kid.

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

bottom two are right and the top 4 are all great so ya cool whatever

Awesome turnout. Wow. Kinda surprised Aladdin beat The Little Mermaid, but I shouldn't be - it outright won one of the other polls covering similar territory. Just on technique and entertainment skill and so on, I'd probably rank the big musicals the same way the voters here did - Little Mermaid does not have Robin Williams, thank god, but it is still a bit rougher and rustier.

Next one coming tomorrow!

Disney animated features: Mannerism (1995-1999)

I thought the live action Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast and Jungle Book were better than they had to be, but holy shit the live action "Aladdin" trailer looks like some straight-up mid-90s garbage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foyufD52aog

whooooooof

These movies are literally the most pointless thing ever.

This is from a few years ago. I knew about the Lion King ripping off Kimba The White Lion but didn't know about the extent and assholery of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfJvKIDS9n8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1YHXnlJWI4

just tried to give the DuckTales movie a whirl since we've got a free trial of D+ to goof around with and OOF, had to bail like two minutes in as the middle eastern stereotypes piled up. maybe it gets better later but i regret throwing it a token vote here if indeed i did so.

Racial stereotypes in a Disney movie???! Oh my stars and garters

i mean this is a major beef of mine with plenty of their stuff, cf. Aladdin. just didn't know to expect it in this one, jeez.

designed lights for a junior prod of TLK opening tonight, tried to brecht it up as much as i could lol. the lionesses have a "hunting song" that ends w them bringing down an an antelope and feeding on it in a circle upstage (tossing plastic bones away etc); i hit them with a blood-red strobe and black out everything else for a few seconds before simba runs in like "hi mom!!" and lights return to normal daylight for mom turning around wiping her mouth; later when simba witnesses his father's murder it happens in the same blackout and the same strobe. more like the circle of death

and yet nothing i could think of or do could ever stand against the power of my own pale 1/1000th onstage imitation of

i did watch the opening scene of TLK on youtube recently and i wont lie it still gave me chills. you can just coast after an opening that good.

pure hi-tech propaganda. i argued for gaston upthread as most effective villain of this era (stand by this) but a huge point in scar's favor is the cut from the climactic timpani hit sealing off the monarchist ecstasy of this opening directly to scar relishing the first spoken line of both movie and show: "life's not fair, is it?"