Disney animated features: magic on a budget (1961-1973)

don't know yet what i'm voting and almost positive it's not gonna be 101 dalmatians but would like to register some early praise for the character design on cruella: that impossible angular stick body inside those huge curvaceous skins.

Jungle Book for the songs.

i remember when we got disney channel and i was so stoked to see sword and the stone cuz it was the only classic disney i hadn't seen. 101 is probably almost definitely the best but voting aristocats cuz it's added another layer of humor to the 'the aristocrats' joke for me and in this company that's all it takes to win.

like i like two from the next batch (the 'dark years') more than anything from this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQR2FvWbCfU

BTW, for the first time, a decent number of these are available for Netflix streaming: Sword in the Stone, Aristocats, and Robin Hood. Jungle Book and Dalmatians presumably move a lot more DVDs, and are not to be found.

Agreed re: Cruella's character design - wish there were more of that in these other films.

xpost lol, the soundtrack of course is the only thing that has me really interested in Robin Hood, I hum/sing "Whistle Stop" to myself at least twice a week

robin hood for all time, roger miller wins my heart

and it has lots of lines that have become a sub-language between me and my brother & sister. "oodelally" is an awesome exclamation :)

also unrelated to animated features but on a disney movie sidenote I was bored at home one night last week & I watched Bedknobs & Broomsticks
:(
talk about a disconnect between childhood & adulthood...I *loved* it so much as a kid but it totally sucks balls now that I'm a grownup! where's my refund dammit

oh man. i loved the ending of that so much. i remember absolutely nothing about it other than the ending being really awesome for a 7 year old

Inclined to agree with chap and vote Jungle Book for the songs, but I do really like 101 Dalmatians, if only a) because it inspired an all-time hilarious Simpsons episode and b)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_1u-ufBYEA

I wonder how much of my suspicion of Jungle Book has to do with finding Tale Spin really boring as a kid.

This is so 101 Dalmatians without even a moment's hesitation. Cruella De Vil is Disney's greatest post-Golden Era creation.

love the Searle-influenced backgrounds - the misty london streets and houses - in 101 Dalmations, as beautiful in their way as anything from the classic period

i'm probably voting Jungle Book but i know it so much better than the others that i'm not sure it's fair

robin hood for all time, roger miller wins my heart

and it has lots of lines that have become a sub-language between me and my brother & sister. "oodelally" is an awesome exclamation :)

― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, February 14, 2014 1:25 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was too old for Robin Hood and Aristocats the first time around, so discovering them at the same time as my kid has been great. And yeah, Roger Miller! But based on total number of plays it's totally Aristocats at our house, sub-language and all. I love Phil Harris' response in this:

Duchess: Why, mister O'Malley, you are amazing!
O'Malley: True. True.

FWIW, not that anybody besides me really wants to spend his evenings catching up on Disney movies from fifty years ago, but one reason I'm making these two weeks long is that it does maybe leave open the possibility of watching one or two during the duration of the poll. I skipped out on that with the last round since I really was so unfamiliar with them and was principally looking for a 'recommendation.' Here I'm sincerely curious about a couple of these, so I might actually do a double-feature this weekend where I watch Aristocats after poll-winner Alice.

See above re: Netflix - the more obscure the Disney movie, the greater the odds it's on there. (The exception is the late 90s, where for whatever reason a string of pretty high-profile pictures is available for streaming...)

working in the past with pre-teen kids has given me a healthy (?) familiarity with a lot of Disney's cartoons, tho some seem to have stuck more than others - maybe related to video releases

Robin Hood is probably the first Disney i saw on its initial release. love the songs, seem to recall the plot is a bit deficient and feel like Sir Hiss is too shitty a Kaa reboot to earn my respect

sorry, and Little John = Baloo and just general sub-par Jungle Book rehashery

Huh, this seems to be 'my era' of Disney for some reason, almost impossible for me to choose between Sword in the Stone, Robin Hood or The Aristocats, but I think the latter just pips it.

Jungle Book's got better songs and Louis Prima, but Robin Hood works better as a movie and is def my favorite/the one I've seen the most. Aristocats and Sword in the Stone barely feel like films at all, they're so formless and sloppy.

Perhaps tellingly, the first "film" in the next batch is the Winnie-the-Pooh feature, the majority of which had already been released in featurette form. A strange return to the "package" format, not since repeated. The emergence of direct-to-video, and Disney's embrace of stand-alone TV shows like DuckTales, presumably offered better outlets for "not quite a feature film here" material.

And by that I mean that the episodic quality of Sword and the Stone - stemming, I guess, from adapting White's book without a strong vision for what they'd get out of it - might not jump out if it were instead a TV show called Young King Arthur's Once And Future Adventures!.

having things like Merlin time-travelling to his vacations in Bermuda is such a weird, almost WB-style tonal shift. really didn't like that film.

almost WB-style tonal shift

Maybe this is why I liked it? I kind of hate Disney.

I wonder if animators/designers/writers at Disney at this point (or earlier even, with UPA and WB on the scene) felt like they were in a bind between wanting to do funky interesting stuff, and having to keep with a house style. I don't want any of my gripes to amount to a conservative demand that they toe the party line, either - I really love some of the (much later) excursions into distinctive styles both visually and story-wise. I guess on that principle Dalmatians is the winner here, too.

point in the jungle book's favor: sterling holloway as kaa. evil pooh!

very hard to choose here -- this is easily my favorite era, i love the dryness and lack of pretention in these movies. i remember 'dalmatians' most fondly, it feels more like a convincing 'grown-up' movie than any live-action disney movies i can think of.

'robin hood' consists almost entirely of rehashed characters from other movies, but it's still so good. blew my mind as an adult to realize that prince john is the guy who signed the magna carta!

thread needs this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAwR6w2TgxY

oops! other thread needed this.

oh well, same crowd.

it feels more like a convincing 'grown-up' movie than any live-action disney movies i can think of.

i love that cruella is whatshername's friend from school; poss the realest disney villain in that sense. her nightmare roommate returned and pouring on the fake bestie stuff.

plus the most traumatizing objective.

voted sword in the stone bc Archimedes
I love Robin Hood, though

I know we saw Robin Hood at Radio City Music Hall. I can't imagine it was all that good, but who knows.

As a Phil Harris/Louis Prima fan I would lean twd Jungle Book too.

prima and harris singing 'i wanna be like you' is def. the all-time high point of disney soundtracks.

god I love that song. I even love the Los Lobos version

I haven't seen any of these but the storybooks were popular in the seventies, i.e. my childhood.

Before the availability of home video, I saw many of these in this format:

http://images.worthpoint.com/files/pb/1549/5901/y40013.jpg

yes!

I watched "Pete the Dragon" in this format.

This would be like, my second period of Disney, after the early-to-mid nineties stuff, when I was the prime age. I suspect it's because it's from when my parents were young, and they passed it on. Also: Lots of ads for these films in the old Donald Duck comics I was reading at my grand-parents.

prima and harris singing 'i wanna be like you' is def. the all-time high point of disney soundtracks.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, February 14, 2014 7:38 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark

especially great that Baloo comes in ready to kill Louie but just can't resist the music

"I'm gone...man. Solid gone"

Only learned a few months ago that the Beatles were supposed to voice the vultures!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Really curious how this one plays out. Don't have the sense of a real 'favorite' although Sword and Robin Hood maybe have gotten the least love in-thread?

101 is easily the most popular right? i could see jungle book taking it thx to tailspin

animation in 101 damnations is head and shoulders above

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lf74skzmpP1qa70eyo1_500.jpg

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lj4eynpRer1qzx1huo1_500.png

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b2/7d/d9/b27dd9ca3e1cf7e40a0bf5bb124234e2.jpg

yeah that looks great. i looked at a few minutes of the fox and the hound and you could totally tell it was made by ppl who had one foot in the grave.

101 feels a lot more A-list "classic" than the others, like it doesn't really belong here.

You could kind of slice the Disney canon in all kinds of ways tbh - I waffled repeatedly about including Robin Hood here, since it's a much cheaper film ($1.5 million versus $4 million for all the rest here, Wiki says): A dance sequence in the film was traced from sequences originally produced for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Jungle Book, and The Aristocats.[4] ... and it also has next to no Walt connection, so it would kind of separate there too. But it just kinda felt like it "went" here. Dalmatians on the other hand may possess more "style" and coherence than the rest (loving those stills above, I guess I should watch this film again), but it's so clearly from a different planet than Sleeping Beauty.

i see it as totally the same planet as LatT, peter pan, alice in wonderland tho

Ehh, you know, I was gonna dispute that on the grounds that the 'scratchy' quality of Dalmatians's technique really does put it on a lower plane (just looking at clips from each side by side), but in combination with those wonderfully scraggly (but super rich) backgrounds, it hangs together as a deliberate choice, and doesn't 'feel' as reduced as some of these others, where I can just sense someone cracking the whip and forbidding anything kind of complicated, like characters moving towards and away from the camera, or having more than a couple of 'em onscreen at once. Some of these films look like a Colorforms set to me, just glossy stickers on really obviously flat backgrounds. Maybe I'm just looking for things to object to, though.

(The good news is that, "dark years" or not, several of the next batch actually are pretty interesting visually in one way or another, but we can cross that bridge in a minute...)

Naturellement, The Aristocats

i looked at a few minutes of the fox and the hound and you could totally tell it was made by ppl who had one foot in the grave.

one of whom was tim burton!

That Alice/Pogo thing is v nice

prima and harris singing 'i wanna be like you' is def. the all-time high point of disney soundtracks.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, February 14, 2014 7:38 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark

especially great that Baloo comes in ready to kill Louie but just can't resist the music

"I'm gone...man. Solid gone"

― Number None,

"Will you stop this silly beat business and listen?"

Oh god, I had to vote for Jungle Book but the others are great too. Robin Hood's got this really hilarious early-70s vibe about it that's all hippie dippy and new age. Sword in the Stone is slight but constantly entertaining.

i loved the sword in the stone as a kid, but i rewatched it recently and it didn't quite hold up. i had forgotten how episodic it was and how anti-climactic the ending was. however, all the big set pieces (becoming a fish, becoming a squirrel, mad madame mim) remained indelibly burned in my brain for so many years that i went ahead and voted for it. 101 dalmatians is probably superior but i haven't seen it in forever.

I lived through these years, and am surprised 101 Dal and (particularly) Sword/stone are that early, would have put them as 1969 or suchlike.

I guess they got re-released,

Yup, apparently Dalmatians saw a '69 rerelease (then again in '79, '85, and '91, before finally hitting home video in '92).

(And yes, Sword in '72. Between rereleases, home video bombardment, generally non-contemporary settings (notwithstanding Dalmatians and Lilo) and the fact that most people encounter these as kids have to make Disney movies among the most time-unstuck pieces of the culture. Most people I've talked to about this really have no idea at all when which ones came out, but all the ones they saw as kids tend to be assumed as having been new at that time...)

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

why does anyone like the Aristocats idgi

I tried to crack it open last night and got maybe ten minutes before all the pencil lines jumping all over the characters just got too distracting. Could conceivably give it another shake I guess, I mean I definitely didn't give it time for the plot to draw me in.

Awesome turnout here, in any case! Wow.

Next chapter coming tonight or tomorrow...

Because everybody wants to be a cat.

Started Jungle Book last night with my girlfriend, whose childhood enthusiasm for it helps suppress my suspicion of its lumpy plot and flimsy characterization. And man, did they miss an opportunity not showing Mowgli growing up with these wolf cubs, trying to imitate their ways, playing wolf-cub games with them - think how cute that could be! Songs are good though. Will definitely see it through.

Meanwhile: Disney animated features: the Gothic period (1977-1988)

Not happy with this result.

i had hoped there'd be more Roger Miller fans ;_;

You'd think so, right? See also, King of the POLLed: Roger Miller Singles

Just rewatched Dalmatians, everybody OTM about Cruella - what a creation. But the rest of it is similarly smart and on-point design-wise, lots of satisfaction from, e.g. the different dog breeds having just the right voice. The story isn't much but it's enough for 79 minutes, and as noted above there's a real unity to the visual 'feel' that does so much to make it a work in its own right and not just dressing up material in the tools available, which is how Sword & the Stone and Robin Hood feel to me.

One thing that bugs me is that I wish they had a little more faith in the strength of the character animation to convey humor and emotion. In particular, the long introduction with Pongo's narration - I swear almost all of it would work just fine without the voice-over, and be funnier. Girlfriend argued that since the dogs do talk for the rest of the movie, it's important to establish his voice and personality in detail, which I do get.

Also was surprised at Cruella's lame comeuppance - okay, there's a car crash, but won't she show up to try and steal the dalmatians again? Was really expecting her to get taken away in handcuffs, raving and seething, with the humans congratulating the cops while the animals roll their eyes, knowing who the real heroes are. A bit stock, I know, but it was just kinda odd. Also figured maybe they'd end up with some great treasure of Cruella's, or the last lyrical inspiration needed to finish a hit song, just to establish how they can afford to buy a country house and take on a short nine dozen dalmatians. But these are a grown-up's quibbles.

Because everybody wants to be a cat.

Thanking you, Mark G. Ohhhhhh.....YEAHHHHHHH........

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7y2butuGc1ryhxxmo1_500.gif

Late vote for 101 Dalmatians

robin hood was playing in the lobby at work today

i need to watch it this weekend

good lord, sword in the stone is worse than I remembered. no purpose, no stakes, just a series of too-long episodes. forgettable songs, unfunny flailing... couple of really pretty shots but idk it might be the worst of all the hand-drawn films.

i also rewatched robin hood recently and it's painfully cheap and not great, but the forced fun does become actual fun from time to time, there's a plot (even if it's lumpy), and then there's roger miller.

Doctor Casino stomps on lil Veg’s heart:

http://78.media.tumblr.com/600549a8c96e164bd950d9f9c67c146b/tumblr_mplwkbksjl1r29bygo1_400.gif

hahahaha

call em like i see 'em :(

also, better animation than almost anything in the film

Sorry, but I gotta agree with the Doc: The Sword in the Stone blows.

why does anyone like the Aristocats idgi

― How dare you tarnish the reputation of Turturro's yodel (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, February 26, 2014 7:03 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I still stan for Robin Hood

aristocats just felt like the epitome of the budget-cut era and of all inspiration/joy/creativity leaving the studio.... people clocking in for weeks and weeks to lazily animate unfunny comic relief that grinds the barely-existent plot to a halt, in dull colors. it's hard to imagine there was more than one actual meeting to discuss the story or what the movie should feel like or what personalities the characters should have. it felt like a made-for-tv special that's just there to keep kids semi-occupied for a couple hours (after factoring in commercials). probably fine enough for that, the 70s were not defined by riveting whiz-bang high-stakes children's entertainment but you compare this even to 101 dalmatians a decade earlier and it's clear something has gone horribly wrong. also one of the kittens at one point when phil harris gets sent away declares, "well --- we almost had a father!" wtf.

oh and racism.

I refer you to my earlier answer..

it's like not even that good of a cat movie tho!there should be boundless opportunities for cute animations of cat behavior and movement, but it's all pretty basic here. the three kittens are pretty much the same model in different colors even.