As I'm making it a point to revisit all of the Disney animated canon, I've noticed there's a interesting slew of these films all in one or two places about which I don't have a whole lot to say. And curiously, all of them share the common absence of the element that really defines a film as Disney. In this blog, I'm going to tackle the first of these periods that I colloquially refer to as the Don Bluth years.
I'm not trying to dog on Don Bluth, but I know he was active with Disney on and off for much of this period, and certain signature bad habits infiltrate the Disney films that also appear in much of his own work. Characters tend to make faces with more frequency, like they're trying to get a newborn to shut up. Authority figures take a few seconds to be needlessly pompous by closing their eyes and waggling their head around. And child actors- my God- they really started cutting corners on their audition process. The dialogue was bland already, but the child performances they get range from obnoxious to shrill. I take a drink every time Fievel says the word 'family', not because I'm playing a drinking game but because I want to avoid throwing the remote at the TV screen.
But moving back on topic, there was much change happening at the Disney company. Disneyland was up and running. The Florida project was underway. Walt was focusing his attention on EPCOT. And, oh yeah, there was the little matter of his death in 1966. Suffice to say, the heart and soul of the company was shifting away from the animated features, and it shows. It's not to say there aren't some gems in there, but until 1989's The Little Mermaid all signs were pointing to the conclusion that the party was over.
So let's scroll through this period. I've already covered The Jungle Book, The Rescuers really needs to be dealt with alongside its follow up, and Winnie the Pooh and company are their own entity, but here's a checklist of everything else in this age that I tend to avoid watching on my own.
A Tundra and Dominations (1961)
Let me say this up front, One Hundred and One Dalmatians isn't a bad film. Cruella makes her mark on Disney's rich history of villains with no cauldron or powers of Hell but through sheer personality. Horace and Jasper are the right kind of one cup of humor to two cups of threat. And the action scenes are surprisingly intense.
The problem is, this film is much more plot driven than character driven. Pongo and Perdita only have the minimal amount of personality needed to drive the film, when there was so much potential for character conflict. What is their responsibility to the 84 puppies that aren't theirs? Is there no thought given to how much more danger their own children will be in by the added lot? Also, while the animation would look fantastic from any other studio, when you set it next to 1955's Lady and the Tramp, it feels noticeably cheaper.
Overall, One Hundred and One Dalmatians is a really solid B-side single from Disney, like Abbey Road's "Here Comes the Sun". If the film had a little more support from its colleagues, those cracks in the quality might not be so evident.
The Bore on the Throne (1963)
Two things about The Sword in the Stone that you can't un-notice. One of the three actors that voiced Arthur recorded the line "Whoa. What? Whoa!" one time, and it repeats through the entire film. And Merlin recycles his own hopping-back-and-forth-on-each-foot-while-waving-his-wand animation every chance he gets. There.
Individual sequences work for this movie, but they don't really fit together as a whole. Half the time Merlin seems to think he's in a Disney educational short or he's the preshow for a Disneyland ride. There are about as many songs as were in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, so we're not really sure if this qualifies as a musical. And the titular Sword in the Stone only serves as bookends, like writer Bill Peet nearly forgot to work it in.
In fact there are only two scenes that really stand out as special. The first is the squirrel sequence, which plays as an emotionally tragic Silly Symphony; life sucks kids, ain't no fairy godmother to heal a broken heart. The other is the wizard's duel with Madame Mim, which the movie never bounces back from. Both scenes can be taken out of context and practically produce more enjoyment without the weight of the rest of the film's mundaneness. It's like Disney's The Phantom Menace.
The Rustic Acts (1970)
You know what would be fun? Let's do One Hundred and One Dalmatians again, but with cats instead of dogs, and instead of Cruella we'll use her driver as the villain! What could go wrong? Well, nothing, as it turns out. Mainly because nothing in The Aristocats really goes- period, much less right. There's some annoying kids, a couple of geese, some jazz music, and Sterling Holloway yells "Quiet!". That's pretty much what happens in the movie.
The only scene that works on any level is the one with the two dogs, who inadvertently foil the crime just by being in the right place. How much better would this movie have been if it had been about those two? Imagine we don't know anything about the will, or Edgar's 'motives'. We just see the story told through Napoleon and Lafayette's point of view. They sense that Edgar is up to no good and they make it a point to foil him. Then imagine they can't even communicate with the cats, but they take it upon themselves to return them to their home purely on the grounds that it's the right thing to do. And then they encounter Edgar again and it's round two. And it's that kind of back and forth, and they wind up being the heroes of the film without ever knowing what it was all about. That would actually be fun.
Throbbin' Head (1973)
It's interesting how, out of all the films of this period, Robin Hood had found new life in modern snippets. The sped up version of "Whistle-Stop" became Hamster Dance, "Oo De Lally" supplied the soundtrack to the 2015 Android commercials about different animal species getting along, and the film became the most frequently used subject for Youtube videos devoted to proving that Disney recycles their animation.
But the movie on its own terms is mediocre. In fact, it may be the single most mediocre film in Disney's animated library. To illustrate this point, when I jump out from behind a stack of crates and shout "Cinderella!" at you, your brain will recall images of the Disney version before your hand makes the slightest move towards your spray mace. But if I do the same with "Robin Hood!" Disney's fox takes a backseat to Errol Flynn, Kevin Costner, and the roundhouse kick you didn't know you were capable of.
I haven't found that anything about this movie stands out, good or bad. It just, kind of, exists. I've known many people who absolutely love Robin Hood, and while I can't argue against their feelings about the movie, I am confused as to why they love it. I personally find that the animated sequence in Bedknobs and Broomsticks mops the floor with this movie; you'd never catch King Leonidas undermining his own authority with crap like sucking his thumb.
Disney's Watership Down (1981)
Um...okay. The Fox and the Hound is historically significant in the sense that it contained the combined stamps of Disney's classic era (Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston), renaissance period(Glenn Keane, Ron Clements), Pixar directors (John Lasseter, Brad Bird), frequent moonlighter Don Bluth, and whatever Tim Burton was. But despite that power lineage, the end result is a film in conflict with itself.
It's with this film that you begin to see exactly where Disney has limitations. The innocence that Walt worked so hard to preserve is presented here as a losing battle, but somehow not losing enough (I'm not a fan of animal death, but old dog Chief needed to die from the train to make the plot work). Tod and Copper become friends when they're too young to realize that they're natural enemies, which leads to a dark and unresolved message for kids. Not necessarily a bad thing, but under the Disney label it leaves the target audience confused and possibly horrified.
It's a pity then CEO Ron Miller couldn't have created Touchstone a few years earlier, because releasing The Fox and the Hound under a decidedly more adult label could have smoothed over many of the issues. Likewise, literally any other studio could have released the film exactly as it is to resounding acclaim. But as a Disney film, it's the equivalent of Nestlé Water, it implicitly makes promises by name that it straight up defies by taste.
The Blackballed Drone (1985)
And we've arrived. The Black Cauldron is painful. It feels like Disney is doing a Rankin/Bass impression, which is the first problem; Disney should be leading, not following. The second problem is, they crammed two books worth of source material into one film. Characters pop in with no explanation and no substance, leaving you not knowing or caring what's going on. And the third problem is that it's boring. It's really, really, migraine inducingly boring.
It's a pity because the Horned King has the presence of a great Disney villain, regardless of how little he actually does. He manages to make an impact by sheer menace (a well-choreographed lightsaber duel could have cemented him in the cosplay circuits). Sadly, the rest of the cast is absolutely useless. Protagonist Taran is just a casserole of generic exposition and dialogue, and Princess (of something) Eilonwy exists just to give Taran the other half of his conversation. And Nigel Hawthorne is wasted as the NPC bard. Then there's Gurgi. Disney could have absolved all of the issues with The Fox and the Hound if the train that didn't kill Chief had managed to run over Gurgi.
In the end, the movie straight up doesn't work, and I don't believe there was any point in its development where it did. This must have been a scary time for Disney as they only seemed to be getting a product out every four years and the results were rather unpromising. The Disney brothers were gone, and all remnants of the company's former glory had burned out. It's odd thinking how close in proximity The Black Cauldron was to 1989's The Little Mermaid (the definitive start of the Renaissance period), but historically, this was the darkest point of the Dark Ages.
The Playhouse Defective (1986)
We're not out of the dark yet. The Great Mouse Detective is remembered quite fondly by a lot of Disney aficionados, probably more so than it deserves to be. It's not hard to see why. First off, there's Vincent Price as Ratigan, the only animated villain who could out-smile the Joker. Price LOVES his character, and every scene Ratigan is in is a shot of espresso. Second, there's a lot of fun to be had in the movie, from Melissa Manchester's number to the satisfyingly gruesome demise of Felicia the cat; and the Rube-Goldberg events leading up to the line "Smile everyone!" tickle my inner child every time.
But for all of the beats where the movie works there is an underlying issue that people seem to give The Black Cauldron's follow-up a pass on. The Holmes/Watson dynamic fails. The core of a Sherlock Holmes story is to give the reader the same information Holmes is getting and then marvel at how much better he is at putting it together. And while The Great Mouse Detective isn't meant to be a legitimate Holmes story but more of a kid's introduction to the concept, it misses out on that fundamental element. Not a problem by itself, but instead of making Basil a relatable hero for the audience they flanderize him into an intellectual lunatic, and nothing more. We can see that he does trigonometry in his head but we're never allowed to experience the story from inside it.
This of course is the same stumbling block every portrayal of Sherlock Holmes has to work around, and the success depends on Dr. Watson, who serves as our liaison. This version's Watson (David Q. Dawson) is also flanderized into the bumbling sidekick with a British accent. Apart from that he has no other definable traits.
For me though, the most glaring flaw is the climax in the clock tower. It's one of the earliest uses of CGI animation, and the build up to is brilliant. But just when you think it's about to get going, it's over; I think even Yoda's fight with Count Dooku lasted longer. I think that one scene sums up my reaction to the film as a whole. It's disappointing, because it could have been awesome. It's so hard not to root for Ratigan on principle.
All Over & Complacency (1988)
(Do you want to try writing spoof titles for all these films?) Oliver & Company is the reimagining of Oliver Twist, although you'd be forgiven if you made it through the whole movie and never picked up on that. I'm actually racking my brain to remember anything about this movie, and I keep coming back to the realization that the character of Oliver could easily have been adapted out altogether.
More than anybody else, I remember Dodger. Not because he was all that great of a character, but the plot they developed seemed to favor him for whatever reason. I still don't see Billy Joel as a cartoon character, much less a terrier mix. I imagine his casting had to with the production team's assumption that music hadn't changed in five or six years, but as soon as that opening number starts you know the movie is already outdated. And Disney has the distinction of getting three strikes with a single swing: one for green lighting the line "Absoltively posilutely", one for using the line to promote the movie like it was going to catch on, and then one posthumous strike for having been in a dog-centric world and squandering the best chance of making "fetch" happen. Go to the showers.
Even though Oliver & Company was released a few months after Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and The Little Mermaid was well into its final production stage, you can kind of sense an impact Roger Rabbit had on Ariel that Oliver missed out on. Oliver didn't feel like Disney, and by this point & Company didn't seem to even know what they were anymore. But then Steven Spielberg got the Looney Tunes over to the mouse-house for a couple of months and gave them a nice pie-in-the-face reminder of what they weren't. And from there, a mermaid grew tired of the dark place she was brought up in and traded it for a chance to walk in the sun. And thus, the Dark Age came to an end.
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