Disney animated features: the kitchen-sink era (1999-2005)

Previously:

Disney animated features: the golden age (1937-42)
Disney animated features: the Mouseketeer years (1950-1959)
Disney animated features: magic on a budget (1961-1973)
Disney animated features: the Gothic period (1977-1988)
Disney animated features: The rappel à l'ordre (1989-1994)
Disney animated features: Mannerism (1995-1999)

groove easy

what the hell is teacher's pet?

Apparently based on a TV show from that era when TV cartoons all switched to having really hideous unappealing looking characters. Maybe it's good? The movie was a huge bomb - Wiki claims it has one of the lowest opening weekend box-offices in history.

Groove wins, but I retain much affection for their returning to the Fantasia well.

the first one of these where i haven't seen a single option in the poll, which i think continues until whenever the new orleans one came out

i've only seen the two that will get all the votes, lilo + stitch is better

Voting Lilo and Stitch without hesitation. Unforced sentiment, unforced silliness, respect for its characters and its audience. Plus just totally lovely to look at. The ending gets me weepy every time.

My runner-up is The Emperor's New Groove - recently rewatched this, too, and it's really fucking well-done. So great to see them trying to do a proper comedy with no messing around: the cast is small, the personalities are clear, and we watch how the respective desires of the characters crash into each other. Good slapstick, good heart, and at least one brilliant scene (the restaurant bit). The presence of David Spade made me nervous but he does fine.

Both of those are 'minor' films that seem to know they're minor and insist on doing a good job regardless. A year ago I watched Atlantis and Treasure Planet in short succession (notes here: WORST film of the the official Disney Animated Classics canon), and both of those suffer, to some extent, from an attempt at major-ness that the product can't quite live up to. Everything else on this list sets off warning bells just from reading the titles.

i'm guessing this is a battle between emperor's new groove and lilo and stitch. i haven't seen any of these, my reactions at the time generally ranged from 'eh' to disgust at disney's stupidity (the sequels) to amusement at disney's stupidity ('let's make a movie about cows!'). i remember having some hopes spurred by the first trailer for dinosaur, it looked like disney was gonna go all out and just make a beautiful amazing narrative free imax-like movie about dinosaurs and i was intrigued. pretty quickly it became apparent that i was insane and disney was just making another standard disney movie only this one had dinosaurs but briefly i was wowed so i'm voting that.

oh, i really like lilo & stitch -- forgot that was disney! vaguely remember some buzz over the fantasia reboot and groove but other than that all the rest of these completely passed me by. so weird to me that there were a bunch of disney movies that got basically no attention and no adult interest afaik, after living through this period in the early '90s when every new disney movie was greeted almost like a new beatles album or something.

ha, I had a similar reaction as balls to Dinosaur, but I wonder how many people stayed away because they thought it was just a graceful silent nature documentary about dinosaurs? Amazingly, it was the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2000, behind MI2, Gladiator, Cast Away, and, uh, What Women Want. Somehow, I don't think I've ever talked to anybody who's seen it.

Netflix streaming watch: Lilo, Emperor, Atlantis, Treasure Planet, Brother Bear, and Tigger are all online.

yeah i had completely forgotten it existed until i came across it on tv a few months back. good lord at mi2 being the highest grossing movie of 2000.

the first one of these where i haven't seen a single option in the poll, which i think continues until whenever the new orleans one came out

i take it that means i get to vote three or four times for tangled

I guess I'll vote for The Emperor's New Groove since I remember watching it and really enjoying it one night (I was on holiday, but sick as a dog so I stayed in), even though I barely remember a thing about it. Still haven't seen Lilo and Stitch.

This may not have been Disney's best period, but there were some good TV cartoons around this time. Personally I loved Kim Possible for its light, affectionate satire of spy/superhero cartoon and comic book cliches. The main character may have been a little bland, but her rotating Rogue's Gallery were hilarious. A much smarter show than some gave it credit for. If TV movies were included here, I'd vote for the KP movie A Sitch in Time.

Fillmore was great too - basically, a cop show transplanted into a middle school setting, complete with pseudo-"serious" tone. Definitely one of the stranger Disney properties. The opening sequence is basically a cop show theme, as played by a school band:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-Mh0YnbuR4

And finally, there was American Dragon: Jake Long. This wasn't really on the same level - one of those shows that tried too hard to keep you entertained. It also suffered a really jarring shift in art styles between its two seasons. But still, it had built up some pretty interesting characters and mythology by the end.

Dali and Disney: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GFkN4deuZU

it's going to be hard to pick between lilo and stitch and emperor's new groove. the latter is hilarious, quotable, clever; the former manages to tell one of the most emotionally resonant stories disney's done (all in the midst of an OTT alien framework). the scene in the hammock, when lilo's sister nani has been told she'll have to surrender lilo to child protective services the next day, after she's tried and tried and tried to adequately provide for her, and now there's literally nothing she can do to stop it...i don't know if there's another moment in the disney canon that matches it for heartbreak.

brother bear had rick moranis and dave thomas basically doing bob & doug mckenzie as moose, so it gets points for being the reason my dad had me watch strange brew.

Groove is really fun/funny. Lilo is fun, too, and smart and strange.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MNllfr6wVY

I had totally forgotten about Fillmore, but that Youtube thumb rings the vaguest of bells, so whenever I caught some random episode, it must have made an impression.

Another great thing about Lilo & Stitch is how relatable Lilo herself is. We've seen so many plucky, misunderstood orphans that it's a revelation to see one where a) the loss of the parents feels real, and damaging, and b) the 'misundertanding' feels the way it would with an actual kid - Lilo *is* actually out of control, flying off the handle and socking the mean kids. Daveigh Chase is fantastic, too. ''That's from my Blue Period!''

It's also cool how most of these movies both look and move differently from each other, something Hercules brought back in after a really long period of varying content and budget but relatively consistent style. Chris Sanders's exaggerated character designs and watercolor backgrounds on Lilo, Mike Mignola's super-un-Disneyfied designs for the Atlantis supporting cast, the hyperkinetic bouncing action of Groove... it's neat.

Groove and Lilo are so great. I think probably the former by just a hair.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbno75Yl9x1ry10fwo1_500.gif

L&S over Groove by a hair. Although L&S is also notable in being the rare Disney movie where the hero blatantly murders the villain.

Groove fans might want to search out the documentary "The Sweatbox" available on various bittorrent sites, but be warned that it was made by Sting's wife and features lots of Sting being Sting.

Haha I was just reading up on that on Wiki in re: the rambling origins of Groove out of a heavy epic 'Prince and the Pauper' treatment. And supposedly it was Sting who insisted on the current ending of the film!

lilo+stitch cuz hawaii

Watching frzon its fuckin shockingly shit wtf

It's not good! It's success is so baffling that Disney ran out of toys.

http://jezebel.com/frozen-merch-is-sold-out-everywhere-and-parents-are-los-1561331628?utm_campaign=socialflow_jezebel_facebook&utm_source=jezebel_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

What the fuck are you guys talking about? It's so good.

Its picked up since the snowman but its really lazy and poor and eh the singing is poor, im p sure i heard autotune at one point

It got worse again, awful.

Anyone want to rep for any of the Pooh spinoffs? Is there a standout among them? There has to be ONE ilxor-parent who's gotten dragged to all of 'em.

I have a niece enthuses re piglet movie fwiw

The Pooh movie from a few years ago was pretty solid. Maybe it was Heffalump?

Maybe 2011's Winnie the Pooh...?

Yeah that one was good for a movie that was only about 63 minutes long that I still wanted to be over from the very first minute.

Eric's sn reminds me: has anyone seen kronk's new groove? Feel like emperor's is better suited to the rushed-out stdvd sequel than most - is it worth checking out?

kronk's new groove isn't anywhere near as good, it's got a couple laughs but I was disappointed.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

OHANA MOTHERFUCKERS

Wow! Expected it to be much closer. And would you look at all those zeros....

Should we finish this, then? Or are the remaining ones "too new"?

dr casino the blurbs for these polls are really excellent btw

aww, thank you!

i would argue you could poll from 05 up thru but not including princess and the frog cuz they did at least start having hits again (chicken little was the first disney animated feature to debut at #1 since dinosaur) but they weren't really 'back' like they clearly have been since they went 'o, right - PRINCESSES'. that might not be enough movies though. otherwise yeah too soon i think, frozen might be the peak (i mean almost certainly right? it's the highest grossing animated movie ever) but there's more to come.

Absolutely poll the rest i didnt come this far not to vote for tangled

start on live action

ha, balls the list you describe would be Chicken Little, Bambi 2, Meet The Robinsons, Tinker Bell (!?) and Bolt - not sure we would see voting in droves there

bolt was good

yeah do the rest up until frozen! that would include wreck-it ralph, right?

i remember enjoying Meet the Robinsons quite a bit but can't really remember a lot about it now

Will launch the next poll later today I think. As for live-action, if someone wants to do those they should go for it, I don't have NEARLY enough of a handle on that to even attempt the periodization... that's a lot of movies!

bedknobs n broomsticks A+

It's not good! It's success is so baffling that Disney ran out of toys.

http://jezebel.com/frozen-merch-is-sold-out-everywhere-and-parents-are-los-1561331628?utm_campaign=socialflow_jezebel_facebook&utm_source=jezebel_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, April 14, 2014 3:20 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

When I went to Disney last weekend, the line to meet the Frozen princesses was, I was told, six hours long

that's a useful way to free up an entire disney park for kids with taste imo

Is Frozen so good that a cynical 25 year old man would enjoy it, drunk, by himself?

Do you cry at movies? I do, and I did. If I was drunk by myself I think I probably would have bawled.

Disney animated features: Give a little pixel (2005-2013)

Well I'd be lying if I said I didn't get the feels at the beginning of Up, so yeah.

i feel like i've kinda said this maybe too much this past fortnight over the polls and threads but frozen was badly paced, lazily characterized and had a completely unintelligible story that seemed to have missed out on several hours of exposition somewhere in the first ten minutes. and there's no middle, just a snowman.

it sucked.

and the singing was straight up bad

New poll, y'all! Official unofficial Frozen love/hate thread there (in case the original ILX Frozen thread didn't cut it).

Oh man, so mad at myself for not pulling out Treasure Planet by date at trivia tonight (tho the training from threads has come in handy many another time).

man these threads were great. I spent about forty hours of depressed evenings last late winter early sprig being lulled by disney in an empty house

aww

I'm glad I did 'em, for somewhat related reasons. Emperor's New Groove in particular really hit the spot this one crummy day at this one lousy apartment I was staying at. There's still quite a few of these flicks I want to go back and finally watched, though I covered a bunch during the poll era.

Just finished up with Fantasia 2000. What an oddity. It barely broke even, but that can't have been a surprise - this is the kind of thing you green-light to try and cut everybody's teeth on new technology, and release mainly to maintain the prestige of the brand. Wiki: Because Katzenberg continued to express some hostility towards the film, Disney held development meetings without him and instead reported directly to Eisner(.) Apparently real story and details were getting worked out as early as 1992, so that may also explain why it doesn't look like technically cutting-edge animation in the year 2000, and actually the parts that do (those hideous whales) have aged pretty badly. The host segments, with lame and stagey jokes delivered by Bette Midler, James Earl Jones, Steve Martin (etc.) are really painful, and make it feel more like a Disney Channel special than an IMAX spectacular; they also join with the reissued "Sorceror's Apprentice" to pad the running time out.

"Sorceror's Apprentice" of course is still great, but yeah... seen it. They justify it by leaning on the idea that Disney intended Fantasia to be more of a perpetually updated road show than a movie... but that didn't actually happen, so to keep just the one bit after so long just seems a little cheap. Some of the new segments are pleasantly diverting, particularly Eric Goldberg's two comic contributions (the yo-yo flamingo short subject, to The Carnival of the Animals, and the Al Hirschfeld/UPA treatment of Rhapsody in Blue). It's not the worst way to pass 72 minutes, but I can't imagine ever popping it in again; if I'm in the mood for an animation anthology set to classical music, the original is just obviously better across the board.

It is.

But other than The Emperor's New Groove, it's the only one out of this grouping I'd watch again ... mostly for the music, admittedly.

But what about Lilo???

I can almost imagine watching Treasure Planet again, but it's possible I would give up and turn it off when the comedy robot shows up. Atlantis is a failure but has some neat visuals IIRC.

I do not sign on to the cult of Lilo.

Stitch by himself still massively popular in Japan (or was 3 years ago) - I understand there's an anime with Stitch and without Lilo o_O

he Al Hirschfeld/UPA treatment of Rhapsody in Blue

my memory is this is the only really good sequence

the Noah's Arc thing is appalling

Again, I find it difficult to separate my affinity for certain pieces of music from the quality of their accompanying segments, but I rate Pines of Rome, Firebird, the Shostakovich piano concerto and Rhapsody in Blue. The flamingos are fine too. But yeah, Pomp and Circumstance is truly dud.

Also really sad, since "Noah appoints Donald Duck as head animal-assembler for the Ark" sounds like a solid-gold premise for a 1930s short, but here it becomes leaden and sappy, with even the slapstick stuff undone by the weightiness of the animation and music.

Tons of solid choices music-wise and then they throw in ... that.

Let's not forget the greatest-hits version of Beethoven's Fifth, over a hand-animated screen saver of lights in the sky. Followed IIRC immediately by "Hi, I'm Steve Martin! What you just saw..."

Home on the Range: exactly as pointless and disposable as you'd imagine. I'll allow that it's at least colorful and enthusiastic, and Randy Quaid's yodeling song is pretty good. But the arcs are really flat and tired, there are no real emotional hooks, and basically it seems like an attempt to replicate New Groove's Looney-Tunes-ism without any real sense of how that movie worked. Beats them trying to keep up with Shrek mind you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdZcsrtiUac