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| source// Disney |
Disney is a constant through life for many of us. Producing some of the finest animated movies ever for over seventy-five years, there have been multiple generations raised on a mixture of bona fide classics and the latest releases, only to return as adults to embrace their brilliance. At their best, their films are universal, appealing to children and adults alike with bright images and a ruthless treatment of parental figures.
Now is a great time to be a fan of the original animation greats: after a decade of mediocre attempts to be ‘hip’ things are finally on the up, with the recent double-whammy of Wreck-It-Ralph and Frozen raising hopes for a run of form akin to that of the Renaissance in the early-nineties.
And if the future isn't as bright as we expect, at least there’s that massive back catalogue to explore. So far there's been a total of fifty-three official Walt Disney Animation Studios films (although the official number depends on the country you live in), all of which are available with varying levels of ease. With so many out there, there must a hidden, underrated gem, right? You bet your Platinum Edition of The Beauty And The Beast there is.
We’ve already looked at Disney films that are incredibly overrated, so now let’s turn things the other way round and look at the eight Disney films whose brilliance has just been ignored.
8. The Black Cauldron
It's easy to forget that Simba's epic journey, viewed by many as the height of Disney's early-nineties resurgence, was only a decade on from a time time when Disney releases were treated with extreme trepidation. Following Walt's death in 1967, the films took a quality dive, turning the seventies and eighties into an animation wasteland.
The Black Cauldron is often quoted as the nadir of this period. Scraping back only half of its frankly ridiculous $40 million budget, its reputation is dominated by being the film that almost snubbed out Disney animation. But does that make it a bad film? Brazil was also a 1985 box office flop (albeit due to studio mishandling), but it has subsequently become regarded as a sci-fi classic.
The Black Cauldron’s reputation hasn’t really improved with time, but it should be given a second chance. One of Disney’s darkest outings, it was an unconventional turn away from heartwarming laughs (the film adapts fantasy series The Chronicles Of Prydain), but justifies that with some disturbing imagery and stern commitment to its high fantasy story.
Too risky at the time (it was the first Disney movie with no songs), the VHS release took over a decade to materialise, only reaffirming the misguided view it was utterly terrible.
7. Fantasia 2000
Let’s get the bad out of the way first: Fantasia 2000 goes out of its way to date itself. The title, a millenium-hype-fueled decision to make the film feel cutting edge upon its 1999 release, is bad enough, but that’s nothing compared to the cameos. Mistaking itself for Anchorman, we get a run-down of semi-relevant celebs - Steve Martin, Bette Midler, James Earl Jones - who introduce the classical music-scored animation showcases. It’s annoying and only gets worse as time passes.
But when Fantasia 2000 does get to the main sequences, things get a lot better. The approach is much more varied than the original, with the majestic sky whales (scored to Pines Of Rome) juxtaposed with a yo-yo obsessed flamingo (scored to The Carnival Of The Animals), but for the most part there’s more hits than misses. Taking over twenty-five years to make it to the screen after Walt’s nephew Roy E. Disney first had the idea to sequelize the studio's most distinct classic, the film ultimately does everything it set out to do (show some then-groundbreaking animation scored to classic music), yet failed to match the high expectations of generations reared on the original.
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Fantasia 1940’s most famous segment, also gets a full retread. Purely there to push the run time up to make this a full feature, its inclusion is justified when you consider it previously had only been seen to modern audiences on a limited VHS release.
In short, there's little to hate and a lot to love.
6. 101 Dalmatians
Coming when Disney Animation was at its absolute height, 101 Dalmatians is consistently fondly remembered, but quiz people on what’s memorable about it beyond Cruella De Ville and the cute puppies and they have very little to say (which is not helped by the Glenn Close fronted live-action remake). It’s a film where its existence has just been accepted then brushed over when it actually stands as one of Disney’s best.
As the first Disney to use the much cheaper Xerox process (on the audience's end leading to sketchier drawings), there’s the early stages of a development towards to cheaper production values that would later hurt the company's reputation, but here it doesn’t hamper the film. There’s a distinct, slightly rough-around the-edges design that lends a realistic sheen to the representation of both London and the English countryside.
In fact, it's clear right from the start, with an opening sequence that walks the audience through the filmmaking process, that the studio (which was almost bankrupted by Sleeping Beauty two years earlier) is going all in on authenticity.
There’s an explanation for real-world occurrences within the story - dogs barking at night is actually a mass-communication network - an approach that has been subsequently mastered by Pixar, while the simplistic plot is bolstered by the film’s readiness to not shy away from the ever-looming threat of death. And, of course, Cruella’s a menacing, almost inhuman villain and the puppies are really cute.
5. Hercules
After the heights of the Disney renaissance came a run of films that, while not as eye-rolling as The Emperor's New Groove or Home On The Range, didn't quite live up to what the Mouse House had done in the early-nineties. There's things to like - The Hunchback Of Notre Dame has a villain who raises strikingly adult themes and Tarzan's tree-swinging makes Johnny Weissmuller look like a slouch - but among all these, Hercules often gets a ignored.
A very strange film, adapting Greek myths by way of Vegas with some very stylised animation, Hercules was seemingly attempting to repeat Aladdin's success; pop culture-referencing, ancient locations with a modern twist, celebrity voice casting. Audiences were engaged, but not bowled over, and the film sits in many eyes as lower-draw Disney, which is totally unfair.
A film this daring isn't always going to get everything right, but there's enough good stuff here; James Woods' Hades matches the character's design in all the right ways, making Ralph Fiennes by-the-numbers version in Clash/Wrath Of The Titans feel insipid, while the visual jokes come by so fast that fatigue never sets in. What's most remarkable is that it has everything necessary to succeed today with families; despite its modernisation of B.C. times, fifteen years passing hasn't dated it (much).
4. The Adventures Of Ichabod And Mr. Toad
Between the studio-building releases of Snow White, Dumbo et al and the revered princess films of the fifties (Cinderella, Alice In Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty) Disney released a string of movies with a totally different approach. Producing a full-length feature was incredibly time-consuming and with World War II conscription providing strains on staff, the studio turned its focus to a more anthology type of storytelling, adapting half-finished, full-length ideas into shorter films.
As with any compendium, there was varied quality, although generally the creativity shines through, even if it didn't have the opportunity to be fully developed. The best of the lot is The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, the final multi-story piece before Cinderella changed everything.
Adapting The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow and The Wind In The Willows respectively (although in the film they run the other way round), they both dealt with the stories with the typical Disney-level faithfulness (i.e. when it suits). There’s just enough time given to flesh out the titular characters, with the Sleepy Hollow section being particularly strong; the climax, with its fluid animation, is funny and disturbing in equal measure.
Lacking the innate marketability of the single-storied films, all of these anthologies have fallen into obscurity over the years. Although they are available on DVD for those curious to see how the young company shaped itself.
3. The Rescuers Down Under
Disney films are notoriously hard to make sequels to that aren't unashamed cash-ins. Most of the classics are completely stand-alone stories, what with them being based on stand-alone fairytales and all, so any extension is going to be innately contrived.
But before Jaafar returned and the spew of straight-to-video follow-ups to any well known Disney animation produced by subsidiary DisneyToon Studios ruined the childhoods of anyone born after 1937, the main studio produced an official, feature sequel that showed how it can be done right.
Already based on a book series, The Rescuers were ripe for sequelization; the first was a fine film, if a little more broad than Disney at its best, and the second is more of the same (and maybe a little bit better).
Bernard and Bianca, the titular mice from the original, return to save a young boy from a hunter in the Australian outback. The plot is actually well plotted and thanks to less time required for set up is more engaging than the before. A love triangle is added, although made far from superfluous thanks to the likability of Aussie rodent Jake. But what really makes this worth seeing is the animation; one sequence in particular, with Cody and eagle Marahute taking a fly over the outback, stands up against the likes of The Lion King’s stampede.
However, coming slap-bang between The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, it got rather lost in all the commotion. The Rescuers Down Under doesn’t need to be regarded as a classic. It just needs to be remembered to some degree.
2. Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Even though they failed so spectacularly at doing something different with The Black Cauldron, twenty years later Disney felt it should try again. The result was Atlantis: The Lost Empire, a visually resplendent film that came out just a little too late to be loved, as by its 2001 release the studio’s reputation was in decline. If it had surfaced a few years earlier when audiences were a lot more susceptible Disney’s charms, reactions may have been a lot more positive (although some of the computer-enhanced designs wouldn't have been as impressive).
Reflecting the shift in mainstream cinema by becoming Disney’s first sci-fi, Atlantis was half mythology-constructing epic, half period-adventure team-up. So it’s Stargate meets Indiana Jones? That's probably not a bad way of putting it, although that makes it sounds more derivative than it is.
Much of the praise has to go to the design: 1914 is authentically recreated with a steampunk-ish twist, while the world of Atlantis is a novel mash of different ancient civilisations shot through with a blue-luminescence. The design was worked on by Mike Mignola, the creator of Hellboy, so really that it excelled shouldn't be much of surprise.
The plot is a weaker element, with the silliness of the team who set out to discover the lost city (in both their varied designs and general interplay) clashing with the grand designs, but once the film actually gets to Atlantis and the films narrative ace is played (the people of the city have forgotten their own culture) things pick up. As a Disney film where laughs take a back seat for action, Atlantis is a strange concept, but if treated with an open-mind becomes a real treat.
1. Bambi
This one always seems to get a short shrift compared to the simplistic joys of Pinocchio and the grandiose heights of The Beauty And The Beast. No one runs around saying it's bad necessarily, but there's not the comparable level of love for what is possibly Disney's best film, full stop.
A coming of age story, chronicling the life of a deer from birth to full-antlered adulthood, Bambi is one of their more narratively-light films, which is probably a big part of its lack of attention.
Following on from Fantasia’s ethos that music and animation can be tied together, the film’s songs all comes directly from the life of the forest. In fact a lot of the film's creativity lies in its showcasing the beauty of nature. This obsessive recreation makes Bambi's growth not a product of events, like many other childhood stories, but a simple development brought on by time. The backdrops are sumptuous paintings that create an enveloping vastness, while Bambi’s development is presented with a childlike naivety that allows it to work for both wide-eyed kids and their nostalgic parents alike.
And yet all everybody seems to remember is the death of Bambi’s mother. A touchstone of Disney’s ability to make kids cry (although in that department you feel there’s a lot of bandwagon jumping), the revered scene where the unseen hunter fells the female deer is only a small part of a film that has so much beauty. Besides, the real strength of that scenes emotion isn’t in the shot at all. Bambi is so tragic because after killing the hero's mother, it moves on; the very next thing it shows is a bunch of birds chirping in celebration of spring. How about that for the depressing.
What's your most underrated Disney movie? Have your say down below.
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