Disney animated features: The rappel à l'ordre (1989-1994)

http://i459.photobucket.com/albums/qq313/doctorcasino/rescuersdownunder_zpsaede2dae.jpg

is this what australia looks like y/n

i seem to remember from waking sleeping beauty that rescuers down under was the first disney movie to use digital coloring techniques?

also, maybe i should save this for the next thread, but a few years ago my sister took a college screenwriting class from one of the writers of a goofy movie, who was also one of the co-writers of the bill and ted movies. she said he was taken aback by how excited everyone in the class was about a goofy movie, he clearly didn't rate it as anything significant.

reddening, that's correct about the digital coloring - and it seems to have really paid off. This is such a pleasant movie to look at, it makes all but the best sequences in Little Mermaid look quite flat and shabby in comparison. Just got through a very cute sequence of the world's mice relaying the alarm to New York, complete with big 1940s war-coverage arrows streaming across the globe. I still think the story's off on the wrong foot - as in the first film, the villain's behavior and decision to kidnap the kid really doesn't make any sense, and the heroes are only involved because it's their job to rescue kids - not a really organic premise for drama. But I should shut up and let the movie do its thing.

haha but i did pause to follow youtube's suggestion that i view the Princess and the Frog trailer, and it's kind of amazing: under the preparatory heading "After 75 years of magic..." we get footage of... Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and the Lion King. Seventy-five years! Now I know why my childhood seemed to last forever.

further disconnected observations on The Rescuers Down Under:

* John Candy as the bird is a terrifying harbinger of Robin Williams as the genie, but at least some of his jokes are kind of funny and he does get introduced listening to "Black Slacks" by the Sparkletones so that's cool.

* the computer stuff isn't limited to the coloring technique - for the first time there's a lot of computer-generated geometry that's been painted over, a la the clock scene in Great Mouse Detective. Some of it looks pretty decent, some of it doesn't. Sydney Opera House looks like hell. Nice seeing both that and the UN building in one Disney movie, though.

* the love triangle story is just tedious. Katzenberg OTM about this movie going from nowhere to nowhere in this regard. In general the plot is lumpy - underdeveloping some threads, overdeveloping others. I don't regret having watched it though - the animation really did put it a cut above. I feel confident in saying it's a better viewing experience than the DuckTales movie, although I haven't seen that in twenty-four years; since I find so many of this batch of movies objectionable for other reasons than craft, I might end up voting for this. Little Mermaid, though...

A Goofy Movie is wonderful, v. 90s time capsule

Never got the love for A Goofy Movie, maybe bc I'm European... (?1??) Basically feels like a random story from one of the Donald Duck comic magazines.

It was past my cutoff point for childhood interest - I definitely watched a bit of the show, but was not invested in it, so by the time the movie came out it was kiddie stuff for me.

Reminds me re: direct-to-video sequels, another reason just has to be that they can be fast and cheap, coming out soon enough that kids who loved the main film would still be begging for the sequel. Versus Rescuers Down Under - not sure how long that was in development but it had to be a few good years, and really, if you were 7 in 1977 you were prooooobably not in the prime market for a followup by 1990.

voted for the movie i went to see on my first date

I remember the opening scenes of the Ducktales movie - Launchpad 'landing' the plane, trek through the desert, exploring the... pyramid? - being quite impressive, I'll have to rewatch and have my memory dashed.

one thing aladdin has over the rest (and over most other disney movies) is that it actually comes up with a really clever way to dispose of the villain. a surprising number of disney movies end with the villain falling off a cliff, which i always assumed was because they don't want to actually have the hero kill someone.

Ha, Down Under ends with lovable underdog mouse Bernhard straight dropping the bad guy into apool full of vicious crocodiles, which is ice cold considering the next scene is Bernhard proposing to Bianca. Of course, it's a waterfall that finall does in the baddie.

all the talk about a goofy movie has me wondering: do kids today grow up exposed to any of the old disney shorts, like the ones where goofy is demonstrating how to ski or fish or whatever or the ones where chip and dale are pissing off donald? those things were on the disney channel 24/7 when i was a kid so i have what feels like hundreds of them permanently implanted in my memory, but i get the sense they've sort of fallen off everyone's radar these days.

We never had Disney channel, so even for someone my age (born 81) I pretty much got to know all those characters from their much-altered syndicated action/adventure show versions. I mean, I knew what Donald Duck looked like but I'm not sure I really ever saw many Donald Duck cartoons until I was an adult, whereas the Looney Tunes were constantly on. I even saw more Woody Woodpecker and company than the Disney stable; Mickey Mouse was basically a cipher by this point.

Growing up in Norway in the 80s -- one Norwegian TV channel, two Swedish ones -- there wasn't any Disney on either as I recall, with one great exception that's become something of a sentimental touchstone for my generation: The christmas special. This was an hour long show shown on Christmas eve that consisted of a bunch of mostly winter or Christmas-themed old shorts (santa's workshop, the, uh, "problematic" version; various chip'n'dale hijinx,; Huey&c in a big snowball fight; uhh, "Ferdinand the bull" (my favorite. The Swedish narration was amazing)

Oh, the other big Norwegian TV Christmas tradition is Cinderella.
The East-German/Czechoslovakian co-production, that is! The entire movie dubbed to Norwegian by one guy!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C5%99i_o%C5%99%C3%AD%C5%A1ky_pro_Popelku

Fwiw, I see my wee nieces and nephews watching more of those old Disney shorts than I ever did, mostly thanks to youtube. Occasionally in some dubbed version or other, cuz they don't really notice whether Donald speaks English, Polish or Spanish.

did you guys have Dtv?

one thing aladdin has over the rest (and over most other disney movies) is that it actually comes up with a really clever way to dispose of the villain. a surprising number of disney movies end with the villain falling off a cliff, which i always assumed was because they don't want to actually have the hero kill someone.

ha true. gaston is a plummeter. i don't even remember what happens to ursula and i just watched it. she explodes or something. was hoping she'd become a creepy piece of kelp. scar is torn to pieces by his own minions, tho, that's pretty cool.

as a sherlock holmes fan i love a cliff.

i never saw the goofy movie :( but i read a lot of hype about it because my bff (disneyer than me) had a million issues of DISNEY ADVENTURES magazine and i read all of them at sleepovers. it had comic-book adaptations of all those shows: talespin, ducktales, bonkers, etc.. those are what i remember because i don't think i saw much tv until, idk, 1997, and when i did i was mostly a nick kid. i did watch a lotta Disney Channel Original Movies later in the decade (and into the next). that's a poll.

a goofy movie, excuse me

i remember when they had the stuff at burger king

get outta here you never went to Burger King

i had so many burger king pogs alfred

i kept them in a tin with the batman logo on it

i liked "wheels" the token handicapped member of the burger king kids club; i thought he was cool

once i got food poisoning from burger king one of the nights i was appearing in the role of tootles in a community theater peter pan and i had to dance with indians, go offstage, puke in a bag, go onstage, dance with wendy, etc.

ha, i have a similar story, only it was dennys and it took out a good chunk of the cast of bye-bye birdie. i was the luckiest because my character wore a huge, ankle-length fur coat, so i could lie down in the wings with it pulled over me like a duvet whenever i wasn't on-stage.

more on-topic: ursula died after eric impaled her with the broken mast of a ship.

shocked that w/ all the discussion of a goofy movie no one has posted this, which i think fully accounts for its honored status among millenials
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-adaowehIk

Were the television shows Quack Pack and Goof Troop popular in the US? I remember watching them for years on tv over here and thinking of A Goofy Movie as just an extended episode.

i think fully accounts for

no, only partially

I just remembered that my school bus driver in 6th/7th grade was known for being a little "wacky," with one of his crowd-pleasing stunts being a spot-on Donald Duck impression. So we must have basically known what Donald sounded like, maybe from his educational films or rare DuckTales cameos.

i havent seen any of these since i was a kid but i did watch the opening scene of TLK on youtube recently and i wont lie it still gave me chills. you can just coast after an opening that good. its become part of Disney Lore that it was actually made by the b-team and they didnt have high expectations for it, pocahontas was supposed to be their next huge hit

― Hungry4Ass, Saturday, March 15, 2014 9:53 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is so interesting, and strange - it makes a kind of sense but it's not like it's such a cheap-looking movie. I wonder at what stage, for example, did they bring in Elton John? I'm imagining some early draft version of the film with "SONGS GO HERE" and "WILL RENDER STAMPEDE IF YOU LET US USE THE NEW COMPUTERS" title cards, and at some point the producers being won over or something. But I mean, I remember a maaaaaassive marketing buildup to this, a bunch of 'making of' TV bits and pieces, here's Elton in the recording booth, here's someone at a computer, etc. etc.

yeah i've heard that before and it kinda blows my mind, just seems so much more ambitious and grand (i mean it's got the CIRCLE OF LIFE), like what they had been building toward, a real fuckit balls out feel to it. it'd be like finding out use yr illusion was originally supposed to be just a tossed off quickie project, axl's real focus was on the spaghetti incident?.

did you guys have Dtv?
No idea what that is. I know there existed people who had satellite, but no one I knew had it.

Dtv was this thing disney did where they jerry rigged music videos w/ pop songs and vaguely fitting video from their cartoons, i never miss an opportunity to bring it up

this should give you an idea -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-XsehbuxUw

okay, that's pretty great, Eurythmics one in particular is better than the real video

Ha, well, that is something. Jeffrey Jones will always be the terrifying dude in Howard The Duck to me.

DTV was fucking great!!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Still waffling. My plan was to vote Rescuers Down Under in protest to the stultifying Republican musical parade, but the thing is that (lovely animation aside), it wasn't THAT good of a movie. Might still do, might still honor the DuckTales show through the movie, or might gamble that Little Mermaid doesn't have too much objectionable shit I don't remember, because what I can remember of it seems pretty good. Also 'Under the Sea' ffs.

just occurred to me the other day that 'under the sea' is totally based on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcQ3vNOAk8k

Beauty and the Beast.

Remembered the dumb ending to TLM, flipped coin, voted Rescuers.

aladdin was my favorite of these as a kid but i don't really remember why, maybe i just identified more with the male lead? have no idea which i would like most now. i think i've actually seen beauty and the beast the fewest times of the big musical disneys, my sister had most of the others on vhs but not that one, but i can definitely imagine it aging the best and aladdin aging the worst.

i'll have an actual opinion on the next batch since there's one in there that i always liked

also am i just making this up or did all of the musicals have exactly 5 musical numbers?

Little Mermaid definitely has more, but I think they got the formula down more after that. I'm sure someone's made charts or something - gotta have an early-movie song establishing the big themes/setting, another one for the protagonist's state of mind or personality at the beginning, a villain-introducing number, a lighter or comic-relief number for the supporting cast, and a love theme. They don't sing through the climax and denouement, so that about does it except for reprising one of the above at the end, bada-bing bada-boom.

does tlm have more? i count: part of your world, under the sea, poor unfortunate souls, the chef's song, and kiss the girl. (un

I think I was counting "Fathoms Below," which tbf I don't really remember much, but it seems like it serves the same role as "Arabian Nights" and is thus redundant to "Under the Sea" as a scene-setting curtain-raiser. Maybe not a 'full' song though. Definitely not counting the gag song that Ariel's sisters don't finish.

aladdin doesn't have a villain song, another strike against it i guess