Mulan

1998 cartoon

Rating: 16/20 (Buster: 20/20)

Plot: The titular feminist, with the help of the talking donkey from the Shrek movies, has to become a man in order to save her father's life and the future of China.

There are animation issues with this one, but it's hard to argue a movie's greatness when it features the voice work of Mr. Miyagi, the dude in the Chinese restaurant in that Seinfeld episode, and Sulu. Is Mulan a Disney princess? She's one of the better role models if she is. I mean, sure she runs away, steals, lies, and befriends a dragon, but she's a good smart and brave character who I wouldn't mind my son emulating. Her army friends--including a little fellow voiced by Harvey Fierstein who, if I made animated films, I'd have do all the voices in one of my movies just to do it--are good comic characters although her love interest is a little generic. The bad guy is menacing and brings some darkness, and I'm glad the Disney people didn't decide to unleash Gilbert Gottfried to give voice to his bird. I also like most of the songs, especially the exciting "I'll Make a Man out of You," a song which, when I first heard this in 1998, helped encourage me to urinate standing up. Some day, I will make an animated movie based on my personal urination history. Tentative title--I Pee: Stand Up for Yourself, Hotshot. Harvey Fierstein will provide the voice of young Shane and older Shane, Shane's father, Shane's mother, Shane's best friend Vernon, Shane's future wife Jennifer, "locker room bullies 1-17," and Rodolfo the Talking Toilet. And his character in Mulan if I can get the Disney people to let me borrow him.

Wreck-It Ralph

2012 cartoon

Rating: 13/20 (Jennifer: 16/20; Dylan: 12/20; Emma: 13/20; Abbey: 20/20; Buster: 19/20)

Plot: The titular video game baddie--a bulbous-fisted bully who destroys buildings--is tired of living the life of a villain and covets the popularity of his counterpart Fix-It Felix, a guy with a hammer who scrambles around fixing Ralph's messes. Ralph decides to bolt and find a game in which he can be the hero and win both a medal and the admiration of other video game characters. Things don't go well at all.

I really wanted to like this, but it was just too much. There's some humor, and it was good seeing Q-Bert again. There are more than a few nods to video games from my childhood as well as people younger than me, an obvious attempt by the Disney people to grab everybody. There's a bunch of action, and the whole thing is animated really well. The voice work--especially Alan Tudyk as the really unlikable King Candy, but also Reilly, Silverman, the almost too-recognizable McBrayer, and Jane Lynch, the latter who might have the funniest lines--is really good. Is Jack McBrayer going to be in every animated movie from now on? That seems like the kind of thing that could happen.

Studio Executives: Ok, and we need the voice for this little pipsqueak of a character. Who should we use?
Other Studio Executive: Duh! Jack McBrayer? Heard of him?
Studio Executive: Great choice! He's right next door finishing up work on another animated movie. Let's fetch him!

That's right. Jack McBrayer is the kind of actor who is fetched. I can only recall one other animated feature film with his voice (not that I've seen them all), but I have a feeling I'm about to get really sick of the guy. Sarah Silverman stretches things a bit. I didn't recognize her voice, but Jennifer did. Anyway, the voice work is fine. The characters, however, aren't all that likable. There's really nobody to latch onto here. Ralph's not a bad character, but he just doesn't work as the emotional center for this thing. For one, we're supposed to buy that he's forced into this bad guy life but is really a hero at heart, but he acts so selfishly in this movie that I had trouble seeing that heart. He's also not very bright. Secondly, about midway through the movie, the audience is jerked from his story into Vanellope's (am I missing a pun here?) world and the conflict in that game. Like the colors, camera swoops, and barrages of sound thrown from my television screen, the clashing stories was just a little too much to take. I didn't like Vanellope's character either, and the limited amount of feeling that I could spare for these characters was stretched really thin. I liked a lot of what I saw and I really thought it was a creative idea with loads of potential. I just wish the story wasn't driven by too many modern animated movie cliches and had better characters.

This got me thinking about modern animated films that are very visually busy compared with the older, much simpler animated treats such as, say, Bambi. How do you think somebody in the 40's would react to seeing something like this? Would they vomit? Froth? Convulse? Flee in terror? A combination of those? I wonder what effect modern entertainment--especially visually with a definite shift from very simple ideas to very complex ones and the sonic barrage we get nowadays--has on children and their minds?

Fantasia

1940 cartoon

Rating: 16/20 (Emma: 1/20; Abbey: 15/20; Buster: ?/20)

Plot: Classical music and colorful animation collide! Dinosaurs, sorcerers, demons, naked fairies, flowers, hippopotomi, and mushrooms dance around. Especially mushrooms!

This ranges from undeniably brilliant and impressive and unforgettable to dated and completely forgettable. I hadn't seen this in a while, and there was an entire segment that I had forgotten even existed. As a kid, I actually liked the stuff with the orchestra silhouetted against those different colors. The introductions and orchestral shenanigans get tiresome after a while though as this movie creeps into what seems like it's fourth or fifth hour. I really like the first abstract piece, and I think it's actually impossible for anybody not to enjoy the fish, flowers, bubbles, fairies, glistening webs, leaves, foliage, flakes, and mushrooms with movements that so perfectly compliment the Tchaikovsky. It drew a lot of "wows" from Buster which made me happy. Then, there's Mickey (he's the mouse on the poster up there) in another bit of whimsical storytelling and cartoon choreography. Then, it's kind of downhill. The big creation thing, after the tickling of the senses the other pieces offered, is just kind of blah, and the dinosaurs in there aren't animated very well. Well, maybe they are for a 1940's cartoon. The mythology thing has far too many fairy baby asses and plastic centaurs. The crocodile/ostrich/elephant/hippo ballet never really did it for me, an almost-fun and harmless little excursion more than anything else. And then there's the "Night on Bald Mountain" bit that ends this that is damn near a religious experience and one of the most daring things that Disney's ever thrown at us. As an adult, you just say, "Geez, this shit really isn't for kids." As a kid, I remember being terrified of all the creepy imagery with the flabby warted demons and skeletal figures floating into town. I also always wondered as a kid why there wasn't more Satan in movies. The winged demon on top of that mountain (the guy on the poster up there who isn't the mouse) really deserves to be in some "Best Disney Villain" list, doesn't he? And it all ends beautifully with Schubert and lightbulb-headed walkers, a scene that should make us all feel that the Star Wars franchise is in really good hands.

The Love Bug

1968 car race comedy

Rating: 17/20 (Jen: 18/20 [slept through most of the movie], Dylan: 14/20; Emma: 18/20; Abbey: 16/20)

Plot: Down-on-his-luck race car driver Jim Douglas is tricked into purchasing an anthropomorphized Volkswagon Beetle. He paints a racing stripe and a number on it and starts winning races. Shipoopi! The car dealer attempts to first buy the car back and later sabotage the titular bug, and Jim finds himself in a climactic two-day road race to hold onto his little round friend. And no, I'm not calling Buddy Hackett little or round.

Disney's the main problem with this one. With the Disney folk behind the wheel (pun intended) of this production, there's no chance we'd get to see a naked Michele Lee or Buddy Hackett which is really unfortunate. This is the movie that made me fall in love with the incorrigible Hackett as a kid. I like all the performances though. In fact, there was a time in my young life that I wanted to be Dean Jones more than I wanted to be Harrison Ford. David Tomlinson, with perhaps a better agent, could have been one of the greats. He's a great comic villain here though.
Joe Flynn, another Disney regular, is his usually bumbling fun self, and Benson Fong early in my life that [censored because of racial insensitivity]. And Hackett's character is so cool here, this sort of Zen mechanic with a great name--Tennessee Steinmetz--talking about how kelp aerates the liver or how he befriends claw machines or how one can unscrew the inscrutable. I almost wanted to come here and type up how this is the greatest car racing movie of all time, but my heart wouldn't have been in it. I will say with complete sincerity that has one of my favorite scores of all time although I'm saying that while only remembering the theme music and its variations. Watch this movie and you just can't stop whistling that thing. It does sound as dated as the scene with hippies ("We're all prisoners, chicky baby. We all locked in.") seems though. I was amazed even as a kid with how much of a character they made Herbie, and that's without any cheesy special effects to make him frown or laugh like he's in Pixar's Cars or something. It's done with camera angles and lighting, director Stevenson and his cinematographer taking advantage of the Volkswagon's unique curves and features to humanize the vehicle. It's genius. Herbie's attempted suicide--a scene which almost seems too ridiculous now that I type that--was a real downer. But no, this isn't a depressing movie about a suicidal punch buggy. This is a lighthearted family comedy, and the gags are unpredictable and funny, especially a scene featuring a bear which my family really enjoyed. Not Jennifer, of course. She was asleep. It's too bad for her because when we watch Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, she won't even understand what's going on.

This was the last live action feature that Walt Disney authorized, by the way. Well, unless his frozen head is somehow still running things.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

1996 cartoon

Rating: 14/20 (Jen: 17/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: When I was in fourth grade, I was in desperate need of an identity. So I started wearing leather pants and gave myself a nickname--Quasimodo. Only I didn't know how to spell it. I insisted that all my friends call me Quasimodo--it was Quasi for short--and even my teachers in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade called me that. Imagine how embarrassed I became when I found out that Quasimodo was a lonely ugly hunchbacked character who spent all his time in a belfry masturbating to figurines he's made in the likeness of the townspeople!

This is a very hit 'n' miss affair from the Disney folk. They handle dark and mature very well here, but that butts heads with the comic relief, almost all of it provided by a triad of gargoyles and almost all of it falling completely flat. Timon and Pumbaa have become gargoyles, make a bunch of fart jokes, threaten to spit on mimes, and are--to me, a non-child--extraneous. And contrast those gargoyle gags with scenes where babies are being thrown into wells because they're demons who need to return to hell where they belong, and it just seems to silly. That's pretty freakin' dark for a child though, right? Add Esmeralda's pole dancing, a scene which seemed racy and inappropriate for young viewers but succeeded in making me really horny and a villain who's just a little too complex to be understood by most children and just as horny as I am and you've got a movie that doesn't seem kid-friendly. But then you've got the gargoyles who seem like they're thrown in to say, "Hey! Don't worry because this is a children's movie after all!" This leans more toward opera than it does musical at times, and it takes a while to get used to the style of song. A lot of them are depressingly boring songs, including a big number at the beginning that is probably called The Bells of Notre Dame," a song in which they embarrassingly mispronounce Notre. Notra? Tell that to South Bend, Goofy! The "You're So Ugly So You Have to Stay in the Belfry, Ugly Guy" song is another stinker, but "Out There" is good enough to be considered as a minor Disney classic and the song the villain sings about Hellfire and the number in the Court of Miracles are pretty great. The animation is so-so. The scenery, the streets of Paris and the innards of the church are really well done except they goofed and forgot to put an Eiffel Tower in there. Esmeralda's animated well enough to give a dead gypsy wood, but Quasimodo is kind of ugly. A Disney hero should be better looking than that. What kind of kid is going to want to play with a Quasimodo action figure? Chester McBlondy (I don't remember the name of the other tip of the love triangle) has a bad haircut, so nobody's going to want that action figure either. Add him to the pile of uninteresting, wooden Disney hero guys. I don't really like how the characters move in this either. There's an unnatural glitchiness that shouldn't have been there. This isn't an upper-echelon Disney feature, but it's not bad. Reboot sans gargoyles and they might have something.

Brave

2012 Pixar princess movie

Rating: 14/20 (Jen: 16/20; Dylan: 11/20; Emma: 13/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: Merida is a Scottish princess who, according to custom, has to be married off to a dude from one of the other three clans. She doesn't want that at all, probably because, like Entertainment Weekly has suggested, she's gay. She defies her parents and then runs into a witch who helps her in about the same way the monkey's paw helped the people in the short story "The Monkey's Paw". Oh, snap! See where free-thinking gets you, girls?

This isn't upper-echelon Pixar, but it does further prove their genius. I mean, who else is going to see Carrot Top and think, "Yep! There's the next Disney princess!"? I like Merida and she's voiced well by Kelly Macdonald who really pulls off a nice fake Scottish accent here. But with free-thinking gal Mulan and, to a lesser extent, Rapunzel, she doesn't feel all that fresh. The animation for Merida's hair is almost worth the price of admission alone. OK, I don't know why I typed that because it's not true. Movies are fucking expensive. The animation, with the exception of some of the humans who look a little rubbery compared to the settings, is top notch. They've taken the realism gauntlet thrown down by How to Train Your Dragon and nailed it. Their Scotland, kind of a storybook Scotland, is lovely, and the forest setting and castle interiors have an astonishing amount of detail and texture. I like how that horse looked, too. And I like that Pixar has created their own fairy tale here. That's not a bad direction for them to take. It really is a good movie, but it just never grabbed me, doesn't have that special bit of whatever that makes other Pixar features so magical. It feels on the surface like an original, but it's really made up of parts from the same store that other contemporary storytellers frequent. So it succeeds in being just like a whole bunch of other princess movies. There was a surprising lack of humor. The three red-haired demon twins thrown into the proceedings for little more than comic effect did very little for me. The witch was probably the funniest character, but she didn't exactly seem original--part Edna Mole/part Mama Odie maybe. The bulk of this has a too-serious tone, and the bears were too scary. And speaking of bears, isn't Disney having characters turn into bears a little too soon after Brother Bear? Plus, there's all this magic and floating blue fuzzy things which, for whatever reason, made me think of Disney's Atlantis even though there weren't any blue fuzzy things to be seen in that movie. Still, that's never a good thing. And all the magic is bound to irritate Christians. Of course, Christians are already going to be pissed when they take their little girls to see this only to have them see a gigantic lesbian on the screen which, of course, is going to turn them into little gay kids themselves. It was good hearing Craig Ferguson, one of my favorite people, and it's always nice to hear Billy Connolly, but their appearances were a little obvious. And I completely missed John Ratzenberger although he is in this apparently. I couldn't find the Pizza Planet truck anywhere in medieval Scotland either. Again, this is a very well done original fairy tale; it just didn't have enough personality. And without that, it's sadly the first Pixar movie I've seen in a theater that I'm not really in a hurry to see a second time.

For the record: As nutty as I am with my theories regarding Pixar movies (ahem, Up),I don't think Merida is gay. I am glad that I got to throw a few lesbians into this write-up though because that will surely attract some Googlers. It's safe for you to click on those links, by the way, because they're just articles written about how Merida might be gay. It won't take you to any not-safe-for-work hot lesbian action or anything.

The Secret of the Magic Gourd

2007 children's movie

Rating: 6/20 (Jen: 3/20; Emma: 8/20; Abbey: 10/20)

Plot: Some lazy Chinese kid finds the annoying titular fruit which promises to give him anything he wants. Predictably, it doesn't turn out to be a good thing.


Gooby vs. Gourd--which children's movie magical character is more irritating? I think their fuzzy and flesh respectively neck and neck. Gourd's got a really annoying voice (voiced by somebody named Corbin Bleu which is almost an Arby's sandwich), crosses his arms above his mouth, spews far too many bad puns (as if there's another kind of pun), says things like "What's the diff?", raps poorly, and for reasons that I will never understand no matter how much I try to understand them, was animated with an anus. I think this is my first "anus" on shane-movies.blogspot.com, and I didn't figure it would be a children's movie that was a collaboration between Disney and China that would be responsible for it. It's possible that I was just seeing things, but I'm willing to bet you my youngest child, who actually seemed to like some of this, that this thing had an anus.

Now one of the biggest issues with this is some bad dubbing. It might not be fair to make fun of a movie for bad dubbing, but it's not like some cheapo dvd production company is taking a cheesy kung-fu movie and throwing in a bunch of voices that sound like John Wayne. This is freakin' Disney! And poor voice decisions were made here, not limited to the Corbin Bleu. And the translation? "Whenever you work hard, better is your level of satisfaction" sounds like something Yoda would say.

The movie doesn't just sound bad. The special effects--very plasticky CGI gunkiness--do create some interesting individual visuals, however. The kid running beside his bike while a frog flees on two legs might be my chase scene of the year, and a scene with some flying fish looked kind of cool. But the gourd is rubbery and doesn't always mesh with the setting or other characters as well as he should. And there's this scene featuring a circle of junk food that nearly gave me a seizure. A lot of the effects here are just gross. Dinosaurs, a parade of toys, flying books, a space ship. This thing was just ugly.

This was a family movie night selection. The idea with family movie night was that we would take turns picking movies, but I forced this one on my family because I remember seeing a preview of it (those fish, I think) and thinking it looked pretty good. Whoops. Little did I know that it had a Corbin Bleu in it. Of course, there may be some cultural things that my family and I just don't understand. For example, the main character--some annoying and really unlikable kid--saying "Huh!" in an angry way to end about three conversations. To me, that seemed goofy, but maybe in China it's completely normal. Or the grandmother's obsession with toe nails which didn't work for me as a recurring joke and for some reason seemed to offend Jennifer. Jennifer, by the way, referred to this as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Gourd at one point which distracted us enough to stop paying attention to the movie to come up with more titles. The Maltese Gourd, Indiana Jones and the Gourd of Doom, How to Train Your Gourd, I Spit on Your Gourd. That was more fun than the movie. One more thing: This lost another point because of the song playing over the end credits. I imagined this conversation:

Chinese people: [playing song] Did you like it?
Disney people: God no! That was awful! We can't use that.
Chinese people: I'm sorry, but this is Asia. That is the way we end our movies.
Disney people: Ok, fine. But this is going to cost us a point or two on Shane's blog.

If I were you, I would not watch this movie with your family. I'd watch I Spit on Your Gourd instead. Of course, I am me and I did watch this with my family, so what do I know?

Seriously though. An anus.

Lady and the Tramp

1955 dog cartoon

Rating: 14/20 (Buster: 20/20)

Plot: A brown dog from a well-to-do neighborhood and a gray dog from the wrong side of the tracks meet and go on a date where they eat Italian food. Lucky for the streetwise gray dog, Lady's the type willing to put out on the first date. He spends the rest of the movie telling his pals, all representing a different racial stereotype, about how he "hit that."

How many perverts do you think walked into the theater to see this back in '55 because they thought it was going to be a movie about a couple lesbians?

This works as a love story. It doesn't work as a comedy. It is animated very well; I really like how all the animals--dogs, giraffes, the same beaver who's "not in the book" from the Winnie the Pooh movie, the other dogs--move around in this one. When this is focused just on the talking animals, this isn't too bad although it is a little boring. The humans get in the way a bit though. But this has to be Disney's most racist movie. Imagine the squirming that would take place if you watched this as part of a racial-diverse audience. It's also maybe Disney's most sexually-suggestive movie. It's all concealed from the kiddies, of course, but adults know exactly what's going down, from the scene where the other mutts are chasing down Lady because she's in heat to the pretty shot of the dogs silhouetted in front of a full moon where Tramp's about to get some. Doggy style. (Sorry, regular readers. I had to throw that in to lure more Googlers here.) This is a sweet enough little cartoon with far too many distractions. It's never been one I cared that much about.

The most famous scene in this movie, the one where the dogs eat spaghetti, reminds me of my date with Elizabeth in high school. There was a fat stereotypical Italian, and we both reached for the same spaghetti noodle with our mouths because this was a really cheap restaurant and they had run out of silverware. In the movie, the dogs [SPOILER ALERT] kiss. I just kept chewing and didn't realize my mistake until it was too late. Elizabeth had to have reconstructive surgery, and we never had a second date. I did not, if you're keeping score at home, hit that.

None of that is true, by the way. You know, in case you're keeping score at home. There was a girl named Elizabeth, but we never shared spaghetti. I also never even came close to chewing apart her face.

Disney movies, for whatever reason, bring out my raunchiness more than any other type of movie. (It's why The Little Mermaid is my most frequently visited blog post.) I wonder why that is. Should I talk to a psychologist about it?

The Emperor's New Groove

2000 movie where a David Spade character befriends a fat guy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: The titular emperor, a young and arrogant spoiled brat, has plans to build a waterpark on a hill belonging to a gregarious peasant named Pacha. A power-hungry associate named Yzma attempts to assassinate Emperor Kuzco but winds up turning him into a talking llama instead. He has to depend on Pacha to get back to his kingdom and un-llama himself. It's a hilarious adventure!

Sure there' a midget Tom Jones in this, but other than his opening song, this isn't a musical. And thank God for that! This offering seems a little adventurous for the Disney folk. This one's got an ornery rhythm, and although there isn't anything objectionable, I imagine its general attitude might be off-putting to some parents. It's playful and as colorful as Robin Williams' squelchiest brain farts, but unlike his unhinged Genie, the modern references in this--boy scouts, exotic bird bingo--are never obvious. This is stuffed with visual gags, and the jokes in the dialogue are rapidfire, the funny coming so quickly that you really need to see this more than once to catch it all. So much contributes to this unique liveliness this cartoon's got. You've got the good voice work from the likes of sarcastic Spade ("He's doing his own theme music!") who, for at least part of the movie, narrates unreliably; John Goodman; freakin' Eartha Kitt as one of Disney's most inept villains ("Should have thought about that before you became a peasant."); Patrick Warburton as her even more inept sidekick, the rare dumbass character who doesn't get annoying by the end, a character whose every bit of dialogue is funny; even John "Piglet" Fiedler with one of his final roles, an Old Man cameo surrounded by movie after movie after movie in which he has to voice fucking Piglet. The action sequences, those scenes of adventure that must have been the reason this had a "mild peril" warning stamped on it, have both a zip and a wang. The sound effects accompanying all the mild peril were also great, giving this almost a Looney Tunes flavor--wacky and lively. The settings, a variety of gnarled locales with no regard for buzzkills like continuity, just pop, and I like the cool transitions from place to place and scene to scene. The whole movie's got a look that I liked a lot--the characters with exaggerated angles of necks and limbs, the jazzy movement, explosions of color. It's all very refreshing. Buster watched this with me and instantly wanted to watch it again. She was, however, high.

Tangled

2010 Disney movie

Rating: 15/20 (Jennifer: 18/20; Emma: 20/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: Poor Rapunzel. Her fake mother keeps her trapped in a lonely tower in order to take care of the Fountain-of-Youth-like powers of her golden tresses. She watches floating lanterns on her birthday every year, not even aware that they're released by the king and queen for her. A handsome thief stumbles upon her tower while fleeing from a horse, and she sees him as her chance to see the world for the first time.

It's amazing how lively and fresh this one seems for something that borrows so heavily from all the other Disney princess movies. You've got very similar stock fairy tale characters, an anthropomorphized animal sidekick, a big romantic "Whole-New-World-Boat-Ride-Ballroom" scene, action scenes that seem like they could be identical to action scenes from other Disney movies. But this one puts all these pieces together in a way that really works and gives this one some vibrancy. I really like most of the characters. Rapunzel's now getting my vote for hottest Disney princess with those cute big eyes and beautiful hair that she can use to tie you to a chair with if she's feeling frisky. And a makeover at the end makes her even cuter! The guy's that typical bad-guy-only-on-the-outside type, but he's at least a hero you can root for from the beginning until the end of this one. The animated couple has good chemistry, and their developing romance feels more real here, probably because Disney gives it more of a modern spin to appeal more to contemporary kids, than in most of their princess movies. The "mother" bad guy is funny as that typical overly-judgemental and overly-protective mother, and I thought the anthropomorphized horse was fun. This story moves briskly, has action and humor, and has some lovely computer animation. My only complaint would be with the songs which I thought were just awful, the only exception being the big "Dream" number in the pub filled with ruffians. That was a fun scene and included voice work by Brad Garrett, Jeffrey Tambor, and Richard Kiel. That's right--another Richard Kiel spotting.

And now, here's how I'd rank the Disney princesses by how much I would, if I were a cartoon man, want to have sex with them:

1) Rapunzel
2) Mulan
3) Jasmine
4) Ariel with legs and no voice
5) Belle
6) Pocahontas (I've not seen her movie though)
7) Tiana
8) Cinderella pre-transformation
9) Ariel with no legs and a voice
10) Aurora
11) Cinderella after the transformation
12) Snow White

It should be noted that if the fairy godmother counted as a Disney Princess, she would be between Ariel and Jasmine.

How's my list compare to yours?

Winnie the Pooh

2011 cartoon

Rating: 15/20 (Jen: 13/20; Emma: 19/20; Abbey: 20/20; Sophie: too young to rate movies, especially ones this explicit)

Plot: Pooh wants honey, Eeyore's lost his tael, and Owl's got everybody convinced that a terrifying creature called a Backsoon has kidnapped Christopher Robin. It's just another afternoon in the bedroom of a terminally deranged young English boy. You just know that in a future sequel, Owl and Rabbit are going to convince him to start his classmates and/or parents. Actually, where are his parents in these movies? Somebody better check the freezer!

This is not your parents' Winnie the Pooh cartoon! No, in this one, Pooh Bear is disemboweled in what has to be the most horrifyingly grotesque scene this side of one of those Saw movies. Actually, this isn't a carbon copy of the older Disney Pooh material at all. It shares a love for childlike songs, endearingly simple and nostalgic animated backgrounds and characters, a wonderful playfulness, and sweet little stories. It actually does some things better than the original. It blends its stories, some from Milne's text and some created specially for this, really well, perfect for the no-attention-span of modern kiddos. The 2D animation doesn't look as flat as the characters weave in and out of their settings. And this is a whole lot funnier than the original with some genuine laugh-out-loud moments. This new Pooh's got a wackier tone that is different from its predecessor while not disrespecting the previous stories or its source material. (It should be noted that my wife, a Pooh aficionado, did seem offended by a lot of the goings-on here.) I also really liked the voicework despite having to initially get used to the slightly-different-sounding character voices. Some guy named Jim Cummings, an actor with a resume packed with versatile voice acting roles, does both Pooh and Tigger. We recognized Bud Luckey, the depressed clown in Toy Story 3, as (of course) Eeyore. Luckey's more of an animator than an actor, but he could make a career out of voicing depressed characters. Checking imdb.com, it looks like he's got a handful of roles on the animated horizon--suicidal monkey, despondent puppet, moody Amish guy, heartbroken octopus. One of my favorite people, Craig Ferguson, is perfect as Owl, and John Cleese should win some kind of award for not making me miss Sebastian Cabot. I didn't care much for the songs in this one although there were some clever lyrics. Pooh's a briskly-paced barely hour-long breezy flick that's great for young children and funny enough for older ones. And it might help Disney make a buttload of money with children's clothes and stuffed animals, so everybody wins!

Aladdin

1992 Disney cartoon

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A lengthy public service announcement in the French symbolist tradition about how teenagers should, instead of engaging in premarital sex, pleasure themselves. Aladdin grows tired of rubbing his lamp and getting his genie all over the place and decides to try to get in Jasmine's pants. After all, she seems willing with those little half shirt things and not even attempting to hide her pussycat. Eventually, Aladdin's "snake" gets loose and havoc is wreaked.

Seriously, Disney was so subconsciously dirty during this period (see Little Mermaid). Look at the symbols: soaring towers, water (female genitalia symbol according to most dream symbolism books), snakes, phallic genies with pubic beards, lamps being rubbed until they ejaculate, magic carpet rides (so that's what the kids are calling it these days?), a monkey transforming into an elephant (a boy's first erection?). Sick stuff, Mickey.

If you want a great animated feature with Aladdin in it, try The Adventures of Prince Achmed. If you want something a lot louder and a lot more colorful, go for Disney's Aladdin. This really is an entertaining Disney feature with a lot of fun visual gags and some really good songs. It rips off Superman's flight through the city with a magic carpet ride only Aladdin doesn't try to guess the color of Jasmine's underpants. (Or just pants as the say in some parts of the world.) Robin Williams' manic voice work is fun the first time you watch this, but subsequent viewings show you that he's just stomping all over the production. Still, it adds a spunk to what otherwise might have been a same-old/same-old version of this story. I liked Jafar as a villain when he was talking to Gilbert Gottfried and messing up Prince Abooboo's name, but when he turns into a genie at the end and starts making a series of puns that would make C3PO groan, it became clear that this script needed some editing. OK, I'm going to ask you to pause so that you can fully appreciate what I did with the C3PO reference there. I want you to let that want sink in a bit. Part of Disney's appeal is that they're able to take stories that are thousands of years old, inject them with some life, and transform them into something new. Despite a lot of annoyances that get in the way of this being really great, they do a good job with that. One thing I do like about this one compared to most Disney princess/prince movies: the romance is between a pair of well-developed characters rather than one developed character and a prop. Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty have a princess and a guy who might as well be a life-sized cardboard cut-out of a prince. Beauty and the Beast and this at least make the prince characters real, probably because they're titular. But my question: Is Aladdin really all that likable? Jafar's considered the bad guy because he's evil and all, but Aladdin is the one whose deceit causes all the problems anyway. As I say with a lot of Disney protagonists, kids could learn a lot more life lessons if Aladdin would have been punished in the end.

Urine Couch AM Movie Club: Angels in the Outfield

1994 baseball movie for Christians

Rating: 7/20

Plot: A sad kid roots for his hopeless Angels while hoping his father will come back to spend time with him. God answers his prayers, probably because He knows this is a Disney movie that a lot of people could be seeing and he doesn't mind the free advertising.

The good news for this is that it's not nearly as bad or as offensive as Facing the Giants, the filthiest piece of religious propaganda that I hope to ever see. This doesn't have the heavy-handed religious message, probably since this was made by the Satanic Disney people instead of a Baptist church somewhere in the Bible Belt. It's still the type of movie that could make Jesus into an atheist since it's got writers who, like in the aforementioned Christian football movie, seem to believe that God cares about your sports team enough to answer prayers. Seriously, I've been trying that with my St. Louis Cardinals for years, and it just doesn't work. But again, this is more for entertainment and isn't nearly as dangerous as Facing the Giants or spending a half an hour with participants in an anti-abortion protest. It's got Tony Danza, too, so you know things can't all be bad. As a religious fanatic myself, I was only mildly offended. As a baseball fan, I was a little more offended. The baseball scenes were all pretty silly, and the special effects to make angels come to the aid of Angels looked pretty silly. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the white kid in this, not as much of a stretch as it would have been if he had played the black kid. The black kid is played by a real black kid named Milton Davis Jr. He's only been allowed to act in one other movie, 1997's Mad City, and I'm guessing that has something to do with him being one of the worst actors I've ever seen. There's creepy but otherwise banal conversation between the two children throughout this, the most sickening being when one asks if his dad and the other's mom are best friends in heaven. That nearly made the Urine Couch into a Vomit and Urine Couch! Lord have mercy!

I wonder what Alyssa Milano thinks of this movie and her dad's performance in it. If she likes it, I might have to reconsider my rating.

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

1977 mass murderer animated biopic

Rating: 16/20

Plot: All his neighbors said that he seemed so normal, but young Christopher Robin had more than his share of dark secrets. It all started with an unhealthy attachment to a stuffed bear which he called Pooh. Pooh was purchased with pants, but Christopher Robin, one afternoon when playtime got a little out of hand, removed and set them on fire along with his own. That should have served as the first warning for his parents. Classmates would laugh at Robin and his "silly old bear," and his elementary school teachers would say, "Christopher Robin, I've told you before to keep your Pooh out of here!" His peers would laugh and point, and eventually something inside of young Christopher snapped. He assembled a small army of deadly stuffed animals and embarked on a murderous rampage of revenge during which many of the classmates who ridiculed him would wind up eviscerated. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh chronicles his early life.

Disney does English kiddie lit really well, previously evidenced by their extremely erotic version of Mary Poppins. Now there's a movie that makes me horny just thinking about it. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh fails to make me horny (at least not anymore), but I still think it's an underrated Disney classic. It's obviously animated with a limited budget, but I think that adds to the charm. It's simple and extremely innocent, just like its source material. A.A. Milne's stories are great on their own, so Disney didn't really need to sprinkle too much of its magic all over this and overly complicate things (see the cgi Winnie the Pooh animated television series). The voice work is wonderful, especially Sterling Holloway as the titular bear and Paul Winchell as Tigger. After the feature, there was a little documentary where you get to see Winchell doing the Tigger voice. I'll admit that that footage DID make me a little horny. I really like how Tigger says rubber. "Their legs are made out of rubba!" Oh, and Ron Howard's brother Clint does the voice of Roo in this. I also like Sebastian Cabot's playful narration. The narrator and characters talk to one another which, even as a kid, I thought was kind of neat. This movie also frequently reminds the viewer that it's from a book, using turning animated pages and words cleverly. You get to see Pooh hopping on words or flying on a balloon from one page to the next. There's some music, simple childish music that kind of gets stuck in your head. I'm not sure how I feel about the Pink Huffalumps on Parade sequence that was straight out of drunk Dumbo's subconscious or the added gopher character who just seems extraneous. I asked Jen, "Why's that thing in this? He's not in the book." As if on cue, the character said, "I'm not in the book." I guess that's kind of funny.

Dang it. Why did I have to mention Mary Poppins? Now I won't be able to get anything done all day.

Lilo and Stitch

2002 Disney flick

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A destructive extraterrestrial escapes a death sentence and winds up in Hawaii. He hides at a dog pound where he's adopted by Lilo, a lonely girl living a troubled life with her older sister. As they try to prove to a social worker (an African American!) that their living conditions are acceptable, strange alien thugs try to figure out a way to capture Stitch.

I never loved this one despite appreciating Disney's efforts to work outside of the folklore canon and come up with an original story like with the dreadful Treasure Planet, The Emperor's New Groove (or is this based on a folk tale?), the dreadful Home on the Range, and the dreadfully dull Brother Bear. Oh, and the dreadful Atlantis. Maybe they should have just stuck to princess movies. Or finally adapt Baba Yaga to the big screen! The humor in this doesn't work for me, and the music, instead of going for their flashy theatrical musical thing they'd been unleashing with inconsistent results, seems to be written in to pander to tweens. I'm not sure I've ever actually seen a Hawaiian. If they look like these characters, I'd probably remember. I like the Stitch character fine, probably because he reminds me of my penis for reasons I won't get into here. I've got to keep this PG-13 after all. This hammers a message about acceptance and unconditional love and family into your noggin until you're ready to puke blood, but the story and characters are colorful and fun enough to keep it entertaining. It's not upper-echelon Disney, but the kids will probably like it. Unfortunately, it might have the undesired residual effect of causing youngsters to jump on the furniture, chew on banisters, and tear out the pages of library books.

If I start a "Do a version of Baba Yaga, Disney!" petition, will you sign it? If I can get everybody on this blog to sign, I can mail that son of a bitch off with five and a half names on it!

The Little Mermaid

1989 Disney cartoon

Rating: 14/20 (Jen: 18/20; Abbey: 19/20; Sophie: ?/20)

Plot: Spoiled, whiny, horny teenage mermaid Ariel has an obsession with the human world, especially after saving the life of a hunky but otherwise nondescript prince, a guy who could very well be the same prince who's in all the other Disney prince and princess movies. And frankly, that makes him a womanizer. Boy, don't try to front. I-I know just-just what you are-are-are. Lollipop, must mistake me--you're the sucker to think I would be a victim not another. But I digress. Ariel's mad at her dad, the king of the ocean, and against the wishes of her Jiminy Lobster, she gets some bippity-boppity-boo help from a maleficent but extremely hot sea witch. She's given temporary legs and has three days to get a smooch from the nondescript prince or the sea witch gets to turn her into a withered piece of poop with eyes. The catch? She doesn't get to use her voice! Oh, snap!

I believe this is regarded as a Disney modern classic, but it's really pretty. . .what's the word? Meeee-diiiii-ocre. It's the Disney people going through the motions. The animation is. . .what's the word? Reeeeeeally flaaaaaat. A possible exception might be the "Under the Sea" sequence, but that musical number really should have been a lot better than it was. I'm not sure there's a single lovable character in this. In fact, they're all kind of. . .how do you say it? Annoyyyyying stock cardboard cut-ooooooouuuuuuts. Ariel is just a cute little bundle of irresponsibility and a really dangerous role-model for little girls. Like most folk tales, the ending of this would have been more satisfying if Ariel was punished for her stupidity. A final scene with Ursula pointing and laughing and the lobster saying, "I tried to warn her, King Triton, but she just wouldn't listen to me, probably because I'm a lobster!" with Ariel turned into a really sorrowful piece of poop with eyes would have been perfect. Ariel was irritating, and I definitely liked the character more after they decided to shut her up for about a half hour. Also irritating: all the sex in this one. I believe this is the movie where Disney animators gave one of the human characters an erection. That's disturbing if you notice it, but the thinly-veiled references to sex are especially bothersome. This is really a movie about the sexual awakening of a young girl. Phallic sharks attack her, and it's hard to ignore the subtext there. Then she falls in love with Prince Handsome. Why? Well, she sees him, first from far off and then up close. It's all physical with Ariel. I can't remember if the line "I want to jump his bones, Scuttle" is actually in the movie or not, but it might as well have been. She loses her fins, gets herself a vagina (not sure if mermaids have those), and longs for sexy time with her man. There's some weird sexual tension going on with Ursula and Triton, too, and I'm not sure what that's all about. I'm sure if a Little Mermaid prequel was ever made (No, Disney people, I am not asking for this!), you'd find out that Triton and Ursula used to be an item back in fish college or something. Ursula is one of Disney's lamer baddies, by the way, but she does get the best song in the movie. Ariel's "What's the Word?" song makes me sick to my stomach. I've not thought about this from a feminist perspective, but it seems they'd have a problem with one of the movie's messages--women should just shut up and be there to look pretty. It's really a shame that the great Buddy Hackett ended his movie career voicing Scuttle, actually in the sequel to this, a movie that I can almost guarantee will never be on this blog.

Saucy!

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

1937 cartoon

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A lunatic flees from another lunatic, breaks into the home of some mentally-challenged little people, throws a party with a bunch of filthy animals, and finally attacks the owners of the home with soap. The other lunatic locates her and tricks her into eating a poisoned apple by cleverly saying, "Here, eat this apple." She dies. [Spoiler Alert!] Luckily, the antidote seems to be the saliva of the notorious philanderer Prince Charming, a cat known for his sloppy smooches and wandering hands.

I don't want to trash a classic, but I really don't like this movie very much at all. When you compare it with other early Disney animated features (Pinocchio, Fantasia, even Dumbo), it just doesn't seem as good. Yeah, I know this was the first, and I know when you compare Snow White to modern cheapo straight-to-video animated crappings, it's way ahead of its time and very impressive for 19-freakin'-37. But with about thirty-five years of Disney animated features under my belt, I think the animation in this is hard to watch. The characters in the foreground (and they're always in the foreground) don't mesh with the backgrounds. The backgrounds look completely flat and lifeless. Snow White has unnatural physical features and almost no chest. I want breasts on my Disney princesses. I do like how the dwarves are animated; they've got character and move in a lively way. The dwarf (Wait a second--do they actually like being called that? Is that as politically incorrect as using the dreaded M-word?) movements combined with their individual personalities are where the Disney creative spirit is most evident. I always like how Disney animates animals, but the good animal stuff in this is merely foreshadowing for better stuff that would come later. I also really don't like some of the voices, especially the titular princess. The witch is fine though. The songs? "Someday My Prince Will Come" is a classic although the randy double entendre is uncalled for. The "Heigh Ho" song (Ho? C'mon, Disney!) has always been one of my favorites. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, for me at least, will always be one of those classics that is more important than it is fun to watch. In my likely blasphemous opinion, I think the Disney people should animate a remake. Snow White could look almost identical (with boobs), the dwarves and witch(es) could look exactly the same, and modern technology and better voice work could help make the story live up to the classic status.

Another idea--Disney should hire me as a creative consultant. I wouldn't even demand an outrageous salary or anything. Walt's head--if you're reading this, give me a call.

Alice in Wonderland

2010 movie

Rating: 13/20 (Jen: 16/20; Abbey: 15/20)

Plot: Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe. Alice, now a young woman who isn't too happy about the pressures she's feeling to marry a goofy redheaded guy, returns to Wonderland and is told that she's the chosen one and will have to slay something called a Jabberwocky with a vorpal blade that goes snicker-snack. She gets help from an assortment of odd characters (a disappearing kitty, a mad hatter, a dormouse, tubby twins, a stoned caterpillar) who she should remember but doesn't. Meanwhile, Wonderland's completely gone to hell with the Red Queen making everybody's life miserable. As the frabjous day approaches, Alice is needed more and more, but she first needs to be convinced that she's the right Alice and get back to her normal size.

Maybe I should have seen this in 3-D. Maybe I should just see everything in 3-D actually. I did really like the look of Tim Burton's Wonderland, as artificial and computer-generated as it was. Even without 3-D, there was a depth to the setting with endless swirling grays in the sky, gnarled trees, cartoonish mushrooms. The computer-animated creatures--the White Rabbit, the Caterpillar, the Cheshire Cat, et. al--were very well done, even when being ridden on. In fact, the special effects were great all around, working to keep things visually interesting even if they weren't anywhere near realistic. Unfortunately, I don't think Tim Burton adds anything of real value to the Wonderland canon. The dialogue, the characters, and the goings-on seem a bit rehashed, and the story never feels fully realized to me, just an excuse to throw some trippy visuals and nifty special effects on the screen. I really wish there would have been more playfulness in the dialogue. A lot of the whimsy and fun of the Disney cartoon and Lewis Carroll's novels is from the wordplay, and that's pushed aside to focus on a bunch of jerky action sequences and the aforementioned imagery. From the halfway point on, I lost interest more and more. I didn't like Alice very much, not even enough to look up the name of the gal who played her, but Johnny Depp does his usual fine job and Crispin Glover's also got a major part. There's a lot to like in Burton's Wonderland, but it suffers from the same problems as most of his movies, especially the remakes--it's just too much and almost disrespects the originals.

I can't believe I missed the opportunity to see Crispin Glover in 3-D, by the way.

The Strongest Man in the World

1975 family fun

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Some dopey college doofuses throw some chemicals together in an attempt to do something to a cow. It gets mixed in with some cereal that one of them eats, and they discover that their concoction gives the user super strength for a limited period of time. This comes along at just the right time since the school is experiencing some financial difficulties. Some bad guys come along.

There aren't too many non-animated Disney features that I love or even like, and there are quite a few I wish would be wiped out of existence. That's right, Cat from Outer Space. I'm looking at you. This is somewhere in between. It's typical Disney family science fiction goofballery with some special effects being used for humorous purposes. As expected, there's nothing hysterically funny or memorable here. It's harmless (unlike The Cat from Outer Space) but incredibly boring. This is the type of family film that you watch and can't imagine a single member of the family actually enjoying it. There's too much story for children. There's no nudity or violence, so Dad's not going to like it. Mom doesn't really like movies that much anyway. Grandpa's dead. We don't allow Uncle Pete in the room when we watch movies because he can't keep his prosthetic hand out of his pants. And Aunt Bertha is confused by Kurt Russell. Speaking of Kurt Russell, he falls out of the movie halfway through and doesn't come back until the end. I'm not sure where he went because I yawned and lost track of the characters. I don't want to write anything else about this movie.

Tron

1982 computer movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: This prequel to The Big Lebowski has The Dude, here a video gamer rather than a bowler, slurped into a computer, given a skin-tight glowing outfit and a Frisbee, and forced to battle a guy in a different colored skin-tight suit. Oh, snap!

I have mixed feelings about this one. Tron's got a unique look, but it kind of looks a little dorky. I think it even looked dorky back in '82, but in a way, it really doesn't seem dated. The computer world has to look minimalistic and cartoony, and ultimately, I always like how this movie looks. The action scenes (the motorcycle scene, that giant thing Jeff Bridges reassembles telepathically [?] and drives around, the climactic Frisbee toss) increase in lameness with each passing year, and the story is really confusing, especially for a Disney movie. Like all Disney science fiction movies, I wish this had a little more of an edge. It's vanilla sci-fi which is too bad since this could have had some interesting things to say then that would have still had relevancy today. Instead, it doesn't say much of anything. It's thematically lost. Is it a religious allegory? A fable? A warning? A muddled metaphor? Something else? The music is about perfect for the imagery. That's Wendy Carlos, formerly Walter Carlos, who did music for A Clockwork Orange and The Shining. Which reminds me of a question I have about this movie: Why would the programs in this have genders? Don't get me wrong. I'm glad Cindy Morgan is in this movie, probably just because I was tired of seeing only men in the skin-tight outfits. But wouldn't these programs lack genitalia? And would Jeff Bridges lose his genitals once he enters the virtual world? Or would he, since he's a programmer instead of a program, have conspicuous genitalia and become some sort of god in the computer world? It's something to think about. See, if somebody other than Disney made this movie, I'm sure genitals would have played a more prominent role.

Here's a guy who likes Tron a little more than I do: