Disney animated features: Give a little pixel (2005-2013)

Previously:

Disney animated features: the golden age (1937-42)
Disney animated features: the Mouseketeer years (1950-1959)
Disney animated features: magic on a budget (1961-1973)
Disney animated features: the Gothic period (1977-1988)
Disney animated features: The rappel à l'ordre (1989-1994)
Disney animated features: Mannerism (1995-1999)
Disney animated features: the kitchen-sink era (1999-2005)

And, if you can't stand one more Disney thread, consider Animation Snob Thread (no Disney, no Pixar, no mainstream anime, mention Family Guy and you get kicked out a window), puppet films are allowed

Frozen is a great and important movie, the others aren't - easy one.

Bolt is pretty underrated

what makes frozen particularly impt?

Bolt is underrated, yes. It seemed to be completely forgotten almost immediately (perhaps because it was released at a time when every new CGI movie was still compared to Pixar's best) but it's fun and really affecting in places. "They leave her....wondering what she did wrong".

I remember very little about Princess and the Frog, except being disappointed by it. Maybe I just wasn't in the right mood at the time, I dunno. I did like that jazzy segment.

I'll be trying to decide between Tangled and Wreck-it Ralph. Too hugely enjoyable movies, and I probably liked them even more on a recent re-watch.

tangled over wreck it ralph, but both were essential and important (by virtue of being excellent in every way)

princess and the frog was only ok.

i can't remember what i thought of frozen

Even though it doesn't really count, due to being only partly animated, I think Enchanted (Disney both parodying and celebrating themselves) had some role in their comeback. It's funny and clever, and, as I recall, a pretty big success.

enchanted was a disaster waiting to happen but was fantastically executed (cast get huge kudos for this)

Wreck-It Ralph, the moment Disney proper showed they learned the lessons Pixar gave them, and could best the teacher.

Turbo (2013)

The amount of Dreamworks Face on the cover to this is off the charts.

Tangled and Frozen share the solid Disney craft and being traditional Disney musicals, but Tangled lacked anything else, it was just the Disney formula polished nicely, but with not much inside - Frozen had that and more, an idea of its own, its own hook.

Jennifer Lee of course, writing both 'Ralph' and Frozen, then engaged as a director for that film, now surely a first pilot for the new, more-successful-than-Pixar Disney Animation Studios.

Chicken Little - Underrated.
Meet the Robinsons - ?
Tinker Bell - I probably own this but have a hard time concentrating on all the little flying things.
Bolt - This wasn't too bad. Forever colored by the economic meltdown for me. The theater we saw it in didn't even turn on the heat for our showing. Then there's the melancholy Jenny Lewis road song.
The Princess and the Frog - Just rented this for my kids the other week, but I didn't pay much attention to it when it was on. My girl liked it. Felt a little of an era with the early eighties Disney, maybe?
Tangled - Have really wanted to watch Tangled again in light of Frozen. This was my little girl's first movie, but she doesn't remember it.
Winnie the Pooh July 15, 2011 -?
Wreck-It Ralph November 2, 2012 -?
Planes August 9, 2013 - Really?
Frozen November 27, 2013 - Draws tears basically every other time I watch it. Don't know what Josh in Chicago/Darraghmac don't get out of it.

frozen does not demonstrate "solid craft". the structure is the most ad hoc nonsense imaginable

some nice autocritique from the trolls at the beginning tho - "it's okay! we can take all the magic away and replace it with fun - and no one will notice!"

hows life have you rly not seen wreck it ralph

i really enjoyed Princess and the Frog at the time. haven't seen any of the big ones since so i shd probly not vote. looking forward to Frozen's importance defence.

i think you blinked and missed it

I totally agree, thomp. Even within the canon of recent Disney, Frozen is an egregious example of design by committee. I like Princess and Frog, and it's got a good villain.

also

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljdAYTH5QSY

vs

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

Wreck-It Ralph, although Frozen and Tangled and Meet The Robinsons and The Princess And The Frog were all good-not-amazing in their own right.

Frozen was the Disney flick that made me flash back to a buddy's dad exclaiming how modern Little Mermaid was when we all watched that.

Frozen was great for both lampshading and subverting its tropes

just saw wreck-it ralph a couple weeks ago, totally loved it.

I basically had to flip an imaginary coin between Bolt and Ralph. Ralph won.

My imaginary flipped coins always miraculously land standing up.

Frozen is important whether you like the movie or not for having two female leads who motivate all actions in the movie and its climax + happy ending - and beating all box office records with that story. NO idea how it's "design by committee" seeing as other than its castle and princess setting it does not behave like other Disney movies with regards to hero, villain, love interest, etc.

frozen went through a LOT of changes from initial conception to finished product. according to this article, elsa was supposed to be a true villain voiced by megan mullally!

i like frozen and i like that a disney pic with two female leads is so immensely popular, but i had a problem with how they portrayed their relationship. i didn't like that the film started with two sisters being very close, and then essentially isolated them from one another for like twelve years. elsa is staying away out of her love for anna and fear of hurting her, but of course in doing so...they cease to have any real relationship. the climactic moment between anna and elsa at the end felt weirdly abrupt and empty of real emotion, imo. it doesn't hold a candle to the relationship between lilo and her sister nani.

I just wanted to say I've been enjoying these Disney threads and my animation snob thread is NOT meant to be a reaction against these ones. I made the title/first post too oppositional and I've backpedalled a bit more.

Didn't take it that way, no worries!

you can argue that it's important as easily and as partisanly as you can argue that it's good or bad, of course, but i'm not sure that half-disguised puberty metaphors with a half hour of ear scratching tunes thrown on top represents any kind of actual achievement, short of yr only criteria being a bechdel test- that first hour doesn't give us any motivation for the characters, regardless of their gender. they just do stuff until one of them is on her way to being an ice witch.

And reddening all otm too.

princess and frog arguably the most important of the bunch, and its failures all illustrative of the fact that ppl still have a hard time with a black protag of a kids movie even now

Didn't get on with Frozen; gorgeous to look at of course, but I really couldn't handle all the singing.

Wreck It Ralph probably, remember enjoying Bolt but nothing else about it.

There's a reason the 'snowman' bit is a crowd favorite, mostly everyone can identify the character's motivation after those three minutes. Sisters were BFF, one's specialness and bad parenting isolated her, other sister wants to understand why and get her back. Plenty of motivation and emotion and not really of the typical Disney kind.

That and the troll song were p much the musical highlights so idk if the sketching of a p weird sister-in-basement plot is the first explanation id reach for there myself

Princess and the Frog is genuinely great the rest of these are garbage

^ man knows

There's a reason the 'snowman' bit is a crowd favorite, mostly everyone can identify the character's motivation after those three minutes. Sisters were BFF, one's specialness and bad parenting isolated her, other sister wants to understand why and get her back. Plenty of motivation and emotion and not really of the typical Disney kind.

― abcfsk, Monday, April 28, 2014 5:13 PM (36 minutes ago)

confused – what made the sister's motivation not really 'the typical disney kind'?

tangled is ok I guess

tangled was, at least, pretty funny

i'm still bitter that ONTD turned up their collective nose at the randy newman songs in princess and the frog, i think they're great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljdAYTH5QSY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZAY-78zhmw

the social politics of the film are a bit mushy, since disney made a lot of reactive changes to tiana's character--she was initially conceived as a chambermaid named "maddy" until the internet heard about it and said "uhhhhhhhh no." the final result, where tiana is working two jobs because she's saving to buy her own restaurant, but she's ALSO close friends with the wealthiest (white) girl in town, ends up feeling disjointed. charlotte gives up her dream of marrying a prince for tiana, but what, she can't give her a loan?

Tangled ahead of Bolt, Ralph and Frozen.

confused – what made the sister's motivation not really 'the typical disney kind'?

I mean the central motivation for our main character Anna is not about finding herself or the discovery of a villain or getting a man but to help her sister and get their relationship back on track.

This Onion bit seems relevant:

Disney CEO Figures They’ve Built Up Enough Goodwill To Do A Real Sexist One

...“We’ve had a pretty solid run of strong, independent heroines, so I think we’ve racked up enough cred to get back to what we do best and make a regular old damsel-in-distress picture with some real heavy themes about purity,” said Iger, surmising that after the studio’s recent streak of well-rounded female protagonists, audiences would surely let a “real dumb one” slide. “At this point, I think we’ll be fine if we slip in a movie with some blond girl who always combs her hair, sings sad songs about the man she’s longing for, and otherwise doesn’t say much. Or maybe she’s a foolish, overly emotional robin who is constantly patted on the head and kept in line by her knowing father.”

“Either way, she’ll only be able to titter coyly, weep, or fret,” Iger continued. “And she’ll definitely completely alter who she is to win the heart of her love interest. I’d say we can probably get away with that.”

My pick is The Princess and the Frog - great songs, great animation. Worst out of the seven I've seen is Chicken Little - it's ugly and and the story is a mess.

Frozen is important whether you like the movie or not for having two female leads who motivate all actions in the movie and its climax + happy ending - and beating all box office records with that story. NO idea how it's "design by committee" seeing as other than its castle and princess setting it does not behave like other Disney movies with regards to hero, villain, love interest, etc.

― abcfsk, Monday, April 28, 2014 4:21 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I kinda feel like ALL it did was "having two female leads who motivate all actions in the movie" -- like there wasn't much else particularly commendable about the two leads.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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

Ladies and gentlemen, the Disney poll series! This is it, unless I do decide to go back and do the package films. Thanks once again for playing along, it's been a lot of fun (and quite educational) for me.

thanks for doing these!

Who in the shit loves tinker bell over bolt??

One of the few in this series I can say unambiguously the right one won.

thanks dc i loved these

Voted for Ralph, but maybe should have chosen Tangled (cos it's better than Frozen)

I always DREAD the smashing of Vanellope's car when I know that scene is approaching

Good polls

Needed more on why frozen sucked but otherwise good polls

Just gave Meet The Robinsons a shot on Netflix. Nnnnnnnnope. Hideous character design and animation, unfunny gags, jumpy character introductions and a truly tone-deaf premise about an orphaned kid that just can't get adopted. Comedy gold!

And man, I wish I'd waited a minute on this particular poll. In hindsight, Chicken Little through Princess and the Frog makes much more sense, followed by the "finally getting the hang of this CG thing" period: Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen, Big Hero 6, Zootopia, and Moana, with Winnie-the-Pooh and other DisneyToon things sprinkled in. Oh well.

finally got around to Princess and the Frog and boy i wanted to like it more... the animation's just beautiful all throughout and there are a lot of cute, WB-style gags that suggest there was some force pushing for another laugh-a-minute romp like Emperor's New Groove... but something just didn't click for me, it felt oddly plodding and uninspired most of the time. agreed with reddening's complaint above that the best-friend relationship with the rich girl simply makes no sense. a couple of the songs were nice. god i hated that fucking firefly tho.

I always DREAD the smashing of Vanellope's car when I know that scene is approaching

― Duane Barry, Sunday, 11 May 2014 16:26 (five years ago) link

Princess and the Frog is cute, my daughter watches it a lot. I’ve never hung with Tangled all the way thru, though the bits & pieces I’ve seen are OK (and I’m obsessed with the end-credits song). I’m a big Frozen fan, but I guess separate CG from non-CG in my head. Wreck-It Ralph isn’t my kind of jam – it was fine to see once, but too noisy and hyper.

I enjoyed both Ralph films a lot but agree, whenever I've thought about watching them again, I imagine it'll be slightly more tiring than delightful, and that's it.