Disney animated features: Mannerism (1995-1999)

For me this is definitely a "which of these should I watch?" batch - so all of the above is probably me talking completely out of my hat! I saw Hercules on a plane once and remember it being basically pleasant fluff with some nice designs; I'm probably most curious about Mulan and Hunchback. I get seriously icky vibes from Pocahontas and Tarzan, either of those would have to make #1 for me to even think about it.

I have seen Mulan, Pocahontas, Hunchback and Tarzan, and can't imagine wanting to watch any of them again.

I love Mulan

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

I said on the other thread that the priest's song and dance in Hunchback, admitting to being riven by lust, throws the whole damn movie out of whack.

This is the "killing time before the arrival of The Emperor's New Groove" installment for me.

Hunchback is awesome and underrated - mostly nothing but songs (a plus in my book, others may disagree), Menken on his most spectacular and dramatic, just knockout number after number.

Pocahontas is not a great movie but you can't deny those songs. Just Around the Riverbend, Colors of the Wind..
The 'pop' single Jon Secada & Shanice version of "If I Never Knew You" is adult contemporary music history's ultimate peak. The smoothest, greatest pop song http://youtu.be/1On3hxLVQAQ

But again, voting for the best film my vote goes to Hunchback with Mulan in 2nd.

this was also the point at which I was suddenly Too Old, I've saw Pocahontas, Hunchback and Hercules through my niece watching them but maybe only once or twice. I'm not sure if I've seen A Goofy Movie, if I have I can't distinguish between it and multiple episodes of Goof Troop. Hercules is fun but I recall a seriousness and darkness to Pocahontas and Hunchback that perhaps doesn't really work. They have their comic relief but my memory of it is as being quite detached from the main storyline. Mulan seems like it could be interesting.

This is the "killing time before the arrival of The Emperor's New Groove" installment for me

i had the same thought

Me too. Not to mention Lilo & Stitch.

a goofy movie is quietly transcendent in a way that i can't really explain, and was my favorite disney movie when it came out. i hope it still holds up, haven't actually watched it in 15 years. voting for it because nostalgia

also mulan is really good and quite possibly my favorite of all the musicals

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OABeWNqZph4

these threads have been really good, it's nice to see a conversation about disney that's not 'they r evil products of capital why would we even speak of them' or 'fu they may be evil but do not speak ill of my childhood i refuse to engage my faculties even in the slightest'

Gotta be Jercules

The only thing that has stuck with me from any of those is how hysterical James Woods was as Hades, so yeah, Hercules.

Hercules but mainly for the ancient Greek gospel numbers.

I wonder if the animators watched Mighty Aphrodite for inspiration.

Probably that plus services at a Baptist church.

I think Pocahontas was the first time I was dissapointed by popular entertainment. I'm too young to remember Little Mermaid, but loved Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and Lion King. I had no idea Disney made anything other than great movies, nor that people who'd made something good all of a sudden would make something that was the same, only less good. Disliked Hunchback as well, and by Hercules I didn't have any expectations. Was positively surprised by Mulan, though, but haven't seen it since then. After that, I was too old to watch Disney films in the cinema.

Is the 'Mulan was conceived from the bottom up because Disney wanted back in to Chinese markets' thing true?

ilx apparently not one of the many sectors of the internet where a goofy movie is a cult hit

i've seen two of these (mulan and hercules), though i caught ten minutes of pocahontas last night. so i'm voting mulan pretty easy though 'who can we get to emulate what robin williams did for us in aladdin? i know - JAMES WOODS' is pretty tempting (obv this same thought is at work w/ mulan, w/ more effective, logical results)(this is probably peak woods right, in the midst of casino and ghosts of mississippi, just a few years later he would sit back and fail to prevent 9/11). pocahontas had a slight air of disappointment over it coming after the lion king and garnered greater scrutiny as the first post-katzenberg one (though obv surely it was in production while he was there)(still curious what the last one w/ his fingerprints on it is, i'm guessing nothing past this batch). hunchback was the first one that drew any actual backlash, enough so that mulan got some talk of having righted the ship though boy did that turn out not to be the case (next batch should be interesting, would've thrown fantasia 2000 in here as the capper to the renaissance and have the next batch end w/ bolt i guess w/ disney doing the big rethink before princess and the frog). kiki's thrived on video and got a great deal of attention from critics, it set the stage for princess mononoke's success and wide distribution. the difference in approaches to victorian heroes w/ great mouse detective and tarzan is interesting, a pity they didn't save a princess of mars for their current cgi princesses and adventures era.

So the feeling of "I had suddenly, dramatically become Too Old" I don't know if I date exactly, but certainly the preceding films seemed like events or features of the landscape in ways that these don't. I thought it was weirdly childlike when a friend wanted to watch a pirate tape of Lion King but understandable on some level but, I mean, Pocahontas, who could have given a shit.

I was surprised that the term Disney Renaissance gets applied to all this stuff as well: seems sort of beside the point.

what's the Doug movie like?

I'm surprised to find I'm at least a bit familiar with these, even though I was def too old for these films by the time they were out. P sure my little brother and sis had Hunchback on video and it had its moments but perhaps lacked some of the magical elements of even the Lion King from before. Pocahontas, again, had good bits but the lead baddies of these two were of the same lechy vein as Gaston in B&B. I think I took my siblings to see Hercules and remember very little of it other than some nice pottery-based stylistics.

I've missed all these so far, so you are spared my gushing about the incredibly charming peculiar anglo-american Robin Hood which makes a virtue of its tiny budget

Hercules was lots of high energy fun & had all the extradiegetic stuff w/ the muses, which had v strong design & is also something I like about RH & roger miller. I recall gargoyles in hunchback but I think they were boring

I never reached an age when I was 'too old' to watch Disney films (although the years when I may have thought it a bit uncool to see them in the cinemas overlapped with when their popularity faded a bit so I have a few I never watched on the big screen) and have def talked more about Disney movies after I entered my 20s.

Man, I used to love Doug on Nickelodeon. I remember Disney getting it and thinking it was just kinda weird now, more preachy, not funny, just familiar but unfamiliar. Even then I knew "Doug's 1st Movie" was a rather ambitious title.

I guess what people don't dig about Hunchback is that it's a bit self-serious and goes easy on the humorous elements. But I'm a fan of Disney Animation Studios as a musical studio first and foremost, and there's a big dose of old-fashioned stage musical to its numbers - bombastic, sentimental, sexual, political.

Maybe it doesn't work as a kids movie- but I never did watch it as a kid. I think these are Alan Menken's best melodies, again reaching those ornate, delicate highs of 'Part of Your World' with their big, unbearably emotional payoffs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW86hxENnKE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEEpavnk7Uw

only one of these i've seen is hercules, though i've sort of wanted to check out hunchback ever since abbott made me watch a clip of that 'hellfire' song, can't even imagine what the rest of the movie is like. never saw the disney doug movie, but do remember the disneyfied show because of all the little changes they made -- different voices, everyone slightly older, different music. felt deeply and uncannily wrong.

Ha, I'm basically in with those who are most looking forward to the next batch (aka Lilo, Groove, and a bunch of other stuff - I stuck Fantasia 2000 there because it really emphasizes how miscellaneous and desperate the output seems). But this is interesting stuff too, I think!

I loved original Nicktoon Doug but never had the slightest interest in Disney's version. Wikipedia reveals that there was a significant chronological gap between them, which would have been plenty of time to move on/grow out of it, but also the change of voice from Billy West (!) to some other guy was very off-putting. Also, fuck all of this:

The show also changed theme songs, with the vocalise tune used on Nickelodeon replaced by a mostly whistled tune in the Disney version. (...) Disney made a number of aesthetic changes to the characters. Doug, for example, has a slightly different outfit, Judy's hair is no longer shaved on the sides, and Connie has lost a considerable amount of weight.

Apparently the movie was horribly reviewed and while it made money apparently didn't make enough that they wanted to do 2nd - serves them right!

xpost, agreed with "deeply and uncannily wrong"

I did not and will not f/w anything on this list nor, id say, anything thro til tangled (which might be my favourite)

yeah, i mean i'm not going to pretend the original doug was great art or anything, but it had a very satisfyingly comfortable aesthetic going on -- the pastel colors, every character's little musical leitmotif, stories that always resolved themselves in the nicest and least confrontational way possible. i saw a clip of billy west interviewed once where he was scathing about the guy who replaced him as doug.

James and the Giant Peach was so good, I can't imagine any of these moving coming even close to that quality. Lion King was the last one I saw.

As someone who still carries around a bit of teenage anti-disney baggage, I'd like to offer a sincere thank you to everyone involved in these polls. They've all been hugely enjoyable/informative/entertaining.

kinda neat moment when you realize that Doug Funnie and Fry from Futurama are really the same voice, just pitched a little differently

Did they ever do any gags around that? Maybe kinda 'niche' but it would be funny (geddit) if any of the "Fry as a kid" flashbacks had played off that.

Like Hunchback a lot, like Mulan and Pocahontas fine.

the doug movie had a part where mr. dink, the neighbor always showing off his "very expensive" shit, shows doug a pair of VR goggles through which everything appears exactly the same as in the real world only more expensive

i think abt it all the time

i vaguely like mulan but am unfamiliar w most of these. gonna watch a goofy movie for the poll tho. maybe hunchback.

and yeah as a nick kid i was always scathing abt disney doug.

Pocahantas is godawful, a failure on every level. I've seen Mulan the most since it's my daughter's favorite and it isn't bad but Hercules feels more fun, more clever, and the songs aren't obnoxious as is the case with pretty much every post-70s Disney film (there's a lone exception I will vote for later).

which is the one with the Michael Bolton song

Anyone like Anastasia? I only really remember train sequences and over-the-top Rasputin. They were definitely trying damn hard to make a Disney movie.

BTW, Netflix streaming watch: perhaps reflecting this era's relatively subdued reputation, there's lots: Pocahontas, Hunchback, Hercules, and Mulan are all online. No go on Tarzan or Goofy, and they've never even heard of Doug.

Saw Anastasia (and Road to El Dorado) on VHS at a thrift store a few weeks ago, was mildly curious but not really more than I was at 16.

By this point I had seen "Princess Mononoke" and there was no going back.

to musicals? You know I think there's room for both.

http://static2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130815192855/studio-ghibli/images/5/59/Nago.jpg

"It means no worries / for the rest of your dayyyys!"

I guess what people don't dig about Hunchback is that it's a bit self-serious and goes easy on the humorous elements. But I'm a fan of Disney Animation Studios as a musical studio first and foremost, and there's a big dose of old-fashioned stage musical to its numbers - bombastic, sentimental, sexual, political.

ha, i pulled up the hunchback soundtrack on spotify, and so many memories have come flooding back! during this era my best friend and i were real disney nerds, and i realize now that hunchback was totally our gateway drug into musical theater/drama geekery later in high school. disneyland had a festival of fools stage show with live performances of the best songs, and since we were locals we must've gone to see it twenty times. as little proto-goths we LOVED the villainous judge frollo and the fact that a disney movie contained a whole song about damnation and sexual desire. i also remember disliking the comic relief gargoyles with a fiery passion and being angry they got their own (stupid, ahistorical) song.

oh man i have opinions about the other movies, but right now i'm so tempted to vote hunchback just on the strength of "out there" alone (and "the bells of notre dame") (and "hellfire"). i had forgotten that the melody of the lyrics "like fire / hellfire" is actually a leitmotif that pops up all over the soundtrack. so ominous!

1995: Genocide! The Musical
1996: the one with the gargoyle toys and a fuck-or-burn song

way to end a great era guys

now, if tumblr or 2010-era ohnotheydidnt were taking this poll, mulan would win in a landslide. anyone who innocently used the phrase "let's get down to business" on ONTD could look forward to the entire userbase lurching forward joyfully to reply:

TO DEFEAT

THE HUNS

a goofy movie was also popular but i still see people quoting mulan on tumblr on a regular basis.

haven't seen it in forever but really loved the goofy movie, i remember it resonating with me in more personal ways than other disney movies with grander scopes and more universal themes

p. sure that goofy would win if voters were forced to sit down and watch all these movies

Ehh. First saw it when I was 8, became determined to one day win the X-games. Pestered parents for a skateboard only to have my pride and hopes dashed on finding out from some unsympathetic Jamaican kids that black people don't skate.

Well, I I just watched the first musical number from Hunchback. I don't think I've ever seen it. The animation is durned impressive in scope, as is the score, but the effect is ... conspicuously lavish. And that's weird, especially because, otherwise, the emotional thrust of the opening has a sort of Calvinist austerity.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Ha, almost forgot about this one. Definitely seems to have a little less 'oomph' behind it than the last one (though that was the best turnout of all of them so far, so hey). I watched the first couple of minutes of Mulan the other night but realized I just wasn't in the mood, not ruling it out though.

i've had the hunchback soundtrack in my head all week thanks to this thread. i'm suppressing my initial inclination to vote for it on music alone, because i definitely love the music more than the movie itself. i can't decide if the movie's conclusion is interestingly unconventional for disney or just reaffirming a bigoted status quo: the movie teaches us that quasimodo's "monstrous" shape doesn't define who he is, but esmerelda totally friendzones him in favor of the conventionally handsome blond soldier, voiced smarmily by kevin kline. quasimodo emerges from the bell tower as a hero, but he doesn't get the girl, at least not until the direct-to-video sequel when he gets paired up with this chick:

http://www.iceposter.com/thumbs/MOV_dbd2f844_b.jpg

i'm probably going to vote hercules out of this batch. i rewatched mulan recently and enjoyed it, and i really like that it's become part of the young-tumblr-feminist canon, but i have more fondness for hercules overall. it and hunchback were both scored by alan menken, and where hunchback had that uneasy balance between, like, latin chanting and comic gargoyles, hercules is much more tonally consistent. i love the muses as gospel singers, i like susan egan as meg and james woods as hades, and i can stand danny devito's comic song more than i can stand jason alexander's.

i watched Tarzan with my son a while back and it was ok, vaguely better than i expected, so that i guess.

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

Haha! Awesome. I feel really justified in deciding to include the DisneyToon films now. Pocahontas joins Oliver in the zero-vote club, aka "Films Less Popular than The Reluctant Dragon."

Next installment coming tomorrow or the next day.

looks about right. voted goofy movie but mulan is solid too

Disney animated features: the kitchen-sink era (1999-2005)

Just got done with Hunchback. Thought it was fantastic - so fuckin' heavy! I mean the first scene is Frollo straight killing Quasimodo's mother, and the next we're seeing him carrying out a twenty-year charade of being a firm-but-it's-for-your-own-good steward. Disagree totally that the lust song throws it out of whack - the seriously fucking creepy intense vibe around Frollo is basically the driver of the whole movie. One of the best villains they've ever had.

Rather, it's the comic relief gargoyles that are out of place: I get that Quasimodo needs someone to talk to, but a trio of wacky wisecracking songsters was just a little too much, in a movie already overstuffed with songs, and in which several of the subplots and the plausibility of the world at large do sadly get shortchanged. As it stands, I think it's one of the most gripping films in their canon, with the animation to back it up. If not for some critical failure of nerve that didn't let them go all-in on the 13-year-old emo spectacular they had on their hands, it might have been their best film since the 1977 Pooh medley. Not saying they had to kill Esmerelda, just, y'know, less gargoyle. The jester/puppet-show guy was okay though, or maybe I just liked his songs better.

I gather that I'm in the minority here, so I dunno... maybe Quasimodo just got to me. I always like it when movies are willing to go with the idea that kids can handle kind of heavy awful emotions like shame and shattered hope and all that. And, while I know that Hugo and Charles Laughton deserve some credit, the "SANCTUARY!" moment totally gave me chills.

Oh - - - and I watched Mulan a while back. Thought that was intermittently great. Some fantastic animation and songs, good overall arc, good action scenes, and Eddie Murphy annoyed me way less than I'd expect. Certainly feels more tonally of a piece than Hunchback, even while moving from wacky antics to Mulan killing hundreds or more likely thousands of enemy soldiers with that arrow/avalanche trick. Thought it was lame that there has to be a romance in the end, since the important thing between Mulan and Shang should be that he respects her, not that he loves her. Sigh.

As in Aladdin, there's some really worrisome good Asian/bad Asian racist stuff. The Mongolian or Turkic bad guys are drawn as subhuman beasts, with Miguel Ferrer's (!) big baddie actually having yellow-on-charcoal eyeballs. On the other hand, I guess it's nice to see a really big-budget A-list Hollywood picture with a nearly all-Asian cast (setting aside Murphy, Ferrer, Harvey Fierstein and the immortal June Foray).

garbage poll of horseshit