Lady and the Tramp (1955)

Almost all of the early Disney animated films were adaptations of fairytales or popular children’s literature. One odd exception is Lady and the Tramp, which is instead an original story conceived by  Disney legend Joe Grant who built the narrative up around the the observation that he and his wife stopped paying as much attention to their dog after their real baby was born. If this story would have been conceived of in today’s culture maybe the dog would have had a fair shot at familial supremacy but suffice it to say that, at the time, dog’s weren’t people....in fact, we can probably blame THIS movie, and all subsequent anthropomorphized dog movies for the fact that many are those among us who just can’t help but feel that their dogs ARE people. But let’s not worry about that right now.
 

Joe Grant played a major role in the creative development of some of Disney’s greatest movies, both old and less old.  He worked on Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Dumbo early in his career, mainly as a story-boarder. Then he retired from Disney after WW2 to start his own business but eventually came back in 1989! What did he work on then? Beauty and the Beast, among other things. The guy lived until 2005 and even then he died while drawing in his studio. That’s dedication. I think.

Anyway, so this film is a story built around an amalgam of the insights of dog lover’s like Joe Grant and others hanging around the studio, like Walt Disney. The cute scene where John Dear gives his wife the puppy in a hat box for Christmas? Disney did the very same thing for his wife Lilian in real life. You get the idea. But the narrative isn’t just about a dog who feels saddened by her ontological position in relation to her owner’s newborn child but there is also a Tramp in there too and that aspect of the story was borrowed from an old story in Cosmo magazine about a mischievous yet charming stray dog who went about doing fun dog-like things. Disney bought the rights to the uncredited story and brought the idea to Grant as a way to incorporate a canine love interest for his dog story and, voila, Lady had her tramp. So, yes, this movie exists because two guys at Disney really, really liked their dogs. So what did all this misdirected affection get us as an audience? Something pretty charming. 

 

Lady is a groomed, upper middle class house dog learning to cope with altered familial dynamics after her owners, who had previously been strictly attentive to her, find themselves with better things to do (as I’ve said). Indeed she does come to terms with the new baby and, in fact, the family is not negligent of her after all. But at some point the owners have to go away on a trip, leaving Lady and the baby (yes, the BABY!) at home with cantankerous Aunt Sarah and her two racist Siamese cats, who happen to be singers and, like real cats, full of the devil. There is a grave misunderstanding, Lady is falsely accused and mistreated by Aunt Sarah and runs away where she finds more trouble being alone on the streets until she is finally helped by the charming though unpolished Tramp who takes her on his escapades. The rest of the story is essentially a strangely dramatic doggy romance that climaxes in an appropriately intense, though somewhat disjointed, moment of heroic redemption.

When this came out in 1955 it was at a time when the film critics, fickle and pompous hipsters that they all are, had turned on Disney for being too darned popular. Thus the critical consensus was that this movie was somehow of little artistic merit. Eons later, in the 21st century, it is generally universally acclaimed as a classic and the assertion is fitting. It’s way better than it should be for being the animated equivalent of that stupid “dogs playing poker” painting. You know the one. It’s right next to your portrait of a crying clown. You do have a portrait a crying clown, don’t you? Tell me I’m not the only one!

The animation itself is about as good as anything done before Disney’s death. The dogs move and act almost photo-realistically and yet emote human facial expressions brilliantly when engaged in inter-canine dialogue. The score is sweet and memorable; I sometimes hum “Bella Notte” when I’m drinking (I’d sing it if I spoke Italian).The story, though obviously ad hoc, is charming enough and the happy ending (you know there is one) well deserved. The characters are cute and even the doggy romance can’t be denied for being as touching and well developed as a doggy romance can be. Who doesn’t love the iconic scene where Lady and Tramp accidentally kiss while slurping the same noodle of spaghetti? Only a soulless monster.

It’s not Disney’s greatest movie but it is Disney’s second greatest movie about Dogs. I give it 3.6 bella nottes.

Alice in Wonderland (1951)

Walt Disney had a long working interest in writer/mathematician Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, at least superficially. In the 1920’s he and his brother Roy had found their footing as film makers by making a series of shorts called the Alice Comedies that featured a little girl named Alice who would interact with animated characters and environments, like a primitive Who Framed Roger Rabbit. After the success of Mickey Mouse and the Silly Symphony cartoons, and apparently before the preliminary work on Snow White, he had even considered making a feature length film in accordance with this very same idea but probably abandoned the idea when Paramount Pictures produced a live action Alice in Wonderland in 1933 (a bomb).

According to accounts gathered by Disney historian Neal Gabler, Walt Disney was actually reticent to make a movie based directly on Carroll’s novels but that after Snow White he had been so successful that there were those among the literati that were pressing him (at his polo matches) to make such a film. It was assumed that the literary weight of Carroll’s novels, popular among intellectuals at the time, coupled with Disney’s artistic prowess, also popular among intellectuals at the time, would yield a sure fire masterpiece of some importance. Whatever his personal view of the matter Disney had gone ahead and acquired the rights to the film by 1938, apparently convinced that so popular a “story” ought to be at least attempted. As with many intended Disney projects at the time, the onset of World War II would put the movie on hold for years.

Every exposure I’ve had to the Lewis Carroll’s novels indicates to me that they are essentially grotesque thought experiments about the philosophy of language and logic, an extraordinarily English (and characteristically boring) pastime if there ever was one. However, I’ve seen nothing to indicate to me that in them resides a good story that can be put on the screen. I think that Walt Disney must have agreed with this sentiment and perhaps this is why the final product infamously detracts so much from the spirit of Carroll’s original work, aiming more for artistic expression and good humor over and against intellectual puzzling. Indeed, Disney had often said that he never really wanted to make the movie in the first place and of all of the animated films Disney produced in his lifetime this was the one that he clearly hated the most. Perhaps this was because of how poorly it performed at the box office? Or perhaps he just never really felt much for the literary content he had to work with. I feel his pain. But was it really as bad as Disney claimed? 

If Alice in Wonderland is about anything at all then it is about a young girl, named Alice, who spontaneously follows a white rabbit down a hole which leads her away from a boring history lesson in the park, that she was ignoring, to a series of what I guess can be called close encounters with the bizarre. There isn’t really a story at all, which is part of the problem, but rather just a series of creative, colorful, and often strange vignettes set in a world of nonsense called “wonderland”. Or at least the title indicates that it is a wonderland, I can’t recall anyone in the film saying anything about “wonderland” at all now that I think about it.

Anyway, Alice spends the first half of the movie just trying to find and pin down, for some reason, the anthropomorphized white rabbit that sporadically appears throughout the film only to keep telling her that he is too tardy to talk before he runs away again. The encounters are actually pretty funny. She then chases after him, again without explanation, and proceeds to do a lot of things most people in her circumstance wouldn’t do: consuming strange things that make her a giant, eating things that make her small, confronting tweetle-dee and tweetle-dumb who tell her a pointless story about oysters meant to indicate that there is no point, sitting down for tea with crazy people, and so on. All the while she is strangely, and quite unnaturally undisturbed as she merrily presses on saying such banal commentary as, “most peculiar”. Only after so much frustration and ape-shit crazy does she finally become persuaded that what she actually wants to do is just find a way to get out of her drug induced nightmare as soon as possible....I’m not sure if it’s really drug induced but seriously this poor girl was eating a lot of mushrooms or something.

The main problem with this movie isn’t so much that there is no story, there’s kind of a story if you have a character that wants to do anything, but rather it’s that Alice is no character at all. Alice is simply, wholly, unappealing. She’s really, if anything, and I suspect this is true of Carroll’s books, just a prop to bridge one looney scenario to the next. A veritable pawn in a game of gee-whiz intellectual gratification. The consequence is that you just don’t care about her or her half-hearted commentary on “how strange it all is”. I didn’t feel a thing for her and why should I because she doesn’t seem to even realize she has a problem for like three quarters of the movie....until she breaks down crying and dagnabbit that doesn’t freaking count because it’s cheating!

While this is barely a movie at all, it is still very interesting in some places and the wonderland world really is spectacular to behold. I think it is visually one of the very best Disney movies insofar as it clearly gave Disney’s eccentric animators a neat playground to let loose and do some of the crazy stuff you know those weirdos had been itching to try but couldn’t. Just recall the bout of awesome that is the mad tea party scene and the incredibly memorable music that accompanies it to see what I mean. Indeed the music in this movie is also very good now that I mention it. Further, many of the non-Alice characters and situations are fun and just as wildly imaginative.

And then it just sort of all ends. Like that. It’s all just a dream and everyone can go on living their lives as if it never happened. I really like it.

We give it 3.6 white rabbits out of 5

Mulan (1998)

The so-called “Disney Renaissance” (1989-1994) essentially ended when Jeffrey Katzenberg left Disney in 1994. Michael Eisner refused to fulfill a promise, which he allegedly made to Katzenberg, to promote him to “president” of the company after the former holder of the position, Frank Wells, died in a helicopter crash. Katzenberg then went on to start Dreamworks, robbing Disney animation  of clear, strong leadership for years to come.

Under his leadership, which is popularly reviled, Disney busted out some of their biggest hits and best films of all time: the Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and what has been characterized as a kind of pet project of Katzenberg's, the Lion King.

However, after Katzenberg left a string of disappoints were produced and people began to lose their confidence in Disney's ability to consistently make quality films. Indeed the dark age that was established after Walt Disney’s death in 1966 may have reemerged completely if not for the existence of the hit machine known as Pixar. Thank you Pixar.

There was, however, some inkling of light that managed to burst through the cluster of mid-late nineties filth that was oozing out of Burbank. A traditional fairy tale princess story in the vein of Snow White? Not even close, how about something totally badass....an ancient Chinese legend about a woman named Mulan who sneaks into the army disguised in her elderly father’s armor to fight the Huns in order to protect her family and country? If it sounds incredible, well it isn’t, but it is pretty good nonetheless.

The story itself is straightforward if not mildly predictable. Who didn’t know that Mulan was going to fall in love with her hunky commanding officer? At the same time many of the characters, including Mulan herself, are rather bland, with notable exceptions being mainly comic relief characters like Mushu the dragon (played very well by Eddie "we're having waffles" Murphy). Indeed, probably the strongest point about this movie for me was that it’s often really funny. I especially like the ironic situations surrounding Mulan’s constant attempt to keep her female identity a secret from the Chinese army.

Overall the action is good, the animation is more than adequate, and the soundtrack is actually pretty great except for the fact that it essentially launched Christina Aguilera’s career. Still, you have to love the military training sequence that is set to the song “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” because, get it, she’s actually a woman!? It’s a lot of fun. At the same time the Chinese setting, which sounds so cool, is frustrated by the cliche, hokey approach chosen by Disney. Does Mulan really need a “lucky cricket”? Or do we really need to dwell on “ancestor worship”? Why must the Emperor of China speak like a fortune cookie? It’s basically a western, chinese-takeout view of China. 

While it’s no masterpiece Mulan is still a respectable and, actually, a rather popular film. If you haven’t seen it because you were afraid to or because you’re a Hun then I suggest taking a peek or bolstering your troops near the Great Wall and trying one more time.

I give it 3.5 androgynous terra cotta soldiers

Enchanted (2007)

Amy Adams shines in this deeply cynical and surprisingly popular take on both Disney’s animated films and male/female relationships in general. While I will readily acknowledge that this is technically a very well made movie, with a great premise, I have to admit that I pretty much hate this movie.

Amy Adams plays a caricature of a Disney princess, which mixes and amplifies elements from Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty resulting in a grotesquely naive damsel in distress who, thanks to her stereotypical wicked step mother (who’s also a witch), winds up roaming the streets of contemporary, “real-life” New York City where there are no happy endings and everyone is a cruel and hateful prick. Indeed, the underlying message we’re supposed to embrace is that secretly, at root, all people are vicious, bitter, and irreparably self-interested....even the sweetest of Disney princesses. This, I think, is supposed to liberate us, as it does Amy Adam’s princess character, but it should also leave us feeling empty to think that all human relations are doomed to die at the hands of self-interested passion.

The first half is a hilarious fish-out-of-water story wherein we get to see a Disney princess struggle with the “real-world” and how the “real-world” struggles to make sense of a person who would ACT so kind, so gentle, so servile, or so sickeningly pure. The musical Disney parodies by Menken are probably his best work going solo for Disney (he’s only been good when he was making fun of the genre, which is telling). In the end, however, when the joke is finally over and the songs have all been sung, we’re left with a cliche, drawn out, and predictable confrontation with a CGI dragon and the dark, poorly defended, wholly unreal, and deeply bitter message about the nature of humanity and the power of love in the world.

In short, it’s a funny movie if you hate Disney movies, or people, or life in general. It’s complete bullshit as far as I am concerned.

I give it 2.8 out of 5 bitter, Manhattan dwelling princesses.