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Monday, December 12, 2011

Controversey: Disney

Last week, the revelation that it was Walt Disney's birthday sparked a bit of a debate in the office. By a bit of a debate, I mean me telling everyone how wrong they are about what Disney movies are their favorites.
To me, good Disney movies can be divided into three different categories: Classics, Blockbusters, and Underappreciated. If they don't fall under one of these, they're probably awful.
Classic is a loose term, but can easily include the older animated features: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1939), Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo, Bambi and so on.
But not every old Disney movie is a gem, and not every character is immortalized. For instance, can you tell me who this is?
Yeah, I had to look him up too. That's Jose "Joe" Carioca, one of the Three Caballeros. Yeah, you guys probably don't know what that is either because it rarely sees syndication. Believe it or not he was in more than one feature too, he co-starred in Saludos Amigos alongside Donald Duck, also a caballero, the year before Caballeros released. Ah, the days when white women were cast to play hispanic women and starred beside animated birds.
The Classics wrap up around the 1970, covering Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and up through The Sword in the Stone and The Aristocats. After that we slip into more familiar terriroty of blockbusters, like The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, and the underappreciated films between.
Underappreciated probably consist of different movies for different people. Some of them people may consider underappreicated, like Mulan or Lilo and Stitch, still see regular syndication on the Disney Channel or its affiliates. Truly underappreciated films are ones that did something different and pulled it off.
The animation in Hercules was different, in a good way, and coupled with the movie's amazing score made it one of my absolute favorites.
The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under took the usual Disney ingredient of animals helping people to a whole new level, where the animals, in this case mice, save children, and they were great. An oppressive ginger as the antagonist in the first film followed by a scary bushman with a pet iguana in the sequel.
It's not easy to pick out the truly bad movies, because to most people, some of them have some level of charm. But they're wrong.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame. When the stooge-esque trio of gargoyles are the best part of the movie, and slapstick hasn't been funny in decades, there's problems.
Brother Bear? More like smother bear. Please, reduce my oxygen supply instead of making me watch this movie.
Home on the Range. A movie I had never heard of until I looked at the list of Disney animated features. Then I saw that Roseanne Barr voiced the lead, a cow. The irony slayed me and I moved on.
*Note there is a difference between Disney movies and Disney Pixar movies. Don't come up in here telling me I forgot Toy Story or Finding Nemo. Cuz you'll sound dumb. And yes, I know The Lion King Exists.

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