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

Was just thinking that Lion King would represent the next cut-off. Everything was pseudo-downhill after that for them, no?

Aladdin is entertaining as hell.

I don't think Beauty and the Beast is my favorite of these movies but the Gaston song is great

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuJTqmpBnI0

I fucking LOVED Aladdin when it came out. Now? Robin Williams at his most annoying; barely-casual racism; and an intro sequence that never gets referred back to. It's a travesty, but it must have had something that 10y/o me enjoyed.

Aladdin is the only one of these I've re-watched as an adult and it's hard to view it now and not see it as a precursor to the obnoxious Shrek-style of animated films that came to dominate soon after. Would genuinely love to assign anyone who still claims to love that film a viewing of The Thief of Bagdad (1940) and have them report back to me.

And while I haven't seen it since it was in theatres, I actually have fond memories of the DuckTales movie--might throw my vote its way just so it gets one.

Like most people here, I don't think I really took much serious notice of Disney features after Lion King. But... It is a good movie. MAybe the last classic Disney ever.

It probably has to be Beast or Mermaid. I hate Lion King more than possibly any other Disney feature.

Here is the point where I confess that I've always avoided The Lion King out of disdain for those goddamned songs.

fuck all this crap. except for maybe Duck Tales (was unaware that actually got a theatrical release)

What is a fire? And why does it - what's the word? - BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURN?

We rewatched Beauty & the Beast a couple of years ago. It's pretty good, maybe a little bit slow to start? I have memories of my little brother being carried screaming out the cinema at the first sight of the Beast.

I actually liked The Rescuers Down Under but I would. (Was that actually based on a sequel to the original book or was that Disney trying to get some Crocodile Dundee money? As it were.) Also IIRC it had the first new theatrical Mickey Mouse cartoon in a long time run before it -- a riff on A Christmas Carol in keeping with the release date -- followed by an actual intermission! (Also I just realized I saw this before Beast by default; somehow I thought it was the latter which was my first in-theater Disney after Oliver.)

welp, this is the era in which i was actually a little kid so i will channel my inner 6-10 year old thoughts here, which are sadly immediately accessible:

the little mermaid - my older sister was all about the little mermaid, but i had little interest at the time. bizarre anecdote, maybe, but in my mind (then and now) there's a little a capella snippet where ariel is on a rock on the surface of the ocean, singing "ariel....ariel..." with the second triad of notes a little higher than the first. that little bit would get in my head and play on repeat. and looking back at on it, it probably doesn't even exist! why would she sing her own name twice like that, by herself?

ducktales the movie - never saw the movie, but the tv show was my very favorite. the tv theme song was so infectious that it made me run around the house in circles, living room to dining room to kitchen and back again. one time i was trying to beat my record for most internal house laps and hit my head on the microwave cabinet and passed out in a pool of blood. great fucking song!

the rescuers down under - i think i saw this but i always mixed this crew up with fievel goes west, chip n' dale's rescue rangers, etc. they all blended into the same universe and it wasn't one that i particularly cared about as a kid.

beauty and the beast - one of my faves as a kid. particuarly exciting as a kid was a certain scene where it sounded like the beast farted, and then belle makes this pained expression like she heard the fart, and then the beast looks really embarrassed. my sister and i would play that part over and over on the tape, laughing like crazy. hundreds of times. i used to have every word of this movie memorized.

aladdin - another total favorite as a kid. the graphics during the "3D" sequence in the escape from the cave blew my mind back then. guessing it prooobably doesn't hold up as well today! i used to have every word of this movie memorized.

the lion king - jtt's final hurrah. i was 11 at this point and old enough to start to view these films from a slightly meta perspective, like "how will jtt sound when he sings" and "will matthew broderick be believable as the adult simba" and stuff like that. i used to have every word of this movie memorized.

beauty and the beast, aladdin, lion king were unimpeachable all time classics for me growing up, just like a lot of other kids. i haven't seen any of them since the late 90s but i'd guess that beauty and the beast holds up better? throwing my vote to that one.

Didn't realize that Ducktales Season two was just the two animated specials, all broken up into smaller segments. had know idea that there was a movie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_DuckTales_episodes#Season_2_.281988.E2.80.931989.29

the lion king - jtt's final hurrah

You know this made me wonder a bit and I check Wikipedia and well hey:

In 2000, he graduated with honors from Chaminade College Preparatory School in West Hills, California. Upon graduation, he enrolled at Harvard University, where he studied philosophy and history and spent his third year abroad at St. Andrews University in Scotland. In 2010, he graduated from Columbia University.

This is also the era that I was a kid, but I don't like any of these at all. Maybe I was a little too old for most of them; the difference between seeing something at 5 and seeing it at 8 is probably quite large.

I've seen some of Beauty and the Beast with the niece at her house, that's all

The Lion King stampede sequence really is amazing, cliched Vertigo-zoom and all.

Disney animated features 1991-2000 poll
A Poll New World: Disney Animated Films of the 90s

don't remember ducktales anymore. would probably go for little mermaid for the music

This is also the era that I was a kid, but I don't like any of these at all. Maybe I was a little too old for most of them; the difference between seeing something at 5 and seeing it at 8 is probably quite large.

This is true. Little Mermaid was probably the only one I wasn't verging on "too old for this" age.

Would vote for any of the Disney afternoon block over any of these - Duck Tales, Chip & Dale's Rescue Rangers, Darkwing Duck, the one w/ Balloo.

Talespin

milo otm

also yeah, Lion King's a good cut off, it gets pretty dire fast

I have a soft spot for Mermaid and Rescuers Down Under because they were the first Disney features I saw that were released after I had a kid of my own -- I tried to recalibrate my perceptions and see them as I thought a child might. Still, when Sarah finally saw Mermaid in the early 90s, she hated it because Ursula scared the shit out of her. Will probably vote Mermaid.

even though i really really want to vote for it tbh i don't remember the ducktales movie being all that good. if they'd just released all of the episodes of the show where scrooge is searching for the 'valley of the golden sun' as a movie it'd tower over all of this crap.

lion king just edging aladdin

the lion king felt like straight up focus group Disney. Skillful and all but there's something really off putting about it to me.

there's a tumblr post going around that laments the point in time when ariel's "i'm sixteen, i'm not a child anymore!" stops being something you agree with and starts being something you're appalled by. i loved little mermaid as a child, but i rewatched it last year and ariel was a real asshole. it was fucked up of king triton to destroy all her human artifacts like that, but he probably didn't have a mermaid military school to threaten her with and he had to do SOMETHING.

i've also rewatched lion king and b&tb fairly recently, and preferred b&tb despite its problematic elements. the lion king has an animal cast, which i've realized now that i'm prejudiced against, but also i found the transition between young simba and older simba jarring. i didn't realize until recently how quickly some of the plot points blow by in these films. simba and nala go from wisecracking childhood pals to sexytimes in basically 30 seconds. at least with beauty and the beast the montage showing them moving from antagonism to love is well-done.

i should try to rewatch aladdin before voting, i haven't seen it in forever and have no idea how it holds up.

As a big, often very defensive 'Hunchback' fan I don't think this is a quality cutoff.

Having only watched it as a kid I thought Aladdin was one of hte Disney classics but then rewatched it some years ago and found it really boring except for the parade scene.

Beauty & Beast is super-formulaic but in an effective, good way, the numbers are nailed, the opening song is so good at being an opening scene. Lion King also holds up in terms of craft although I never connected to it as emotionally as many friends. "Part of Your World" is the best musical song ever. Rescuers and Ducktails both enjoyable series, universes but these movies feel like products of tv / home media, not big filmmaking. Not sure what to vote for.

I watched (okay, occasionally peeked at from around my laptop) Hunchback for the first time a few weeks ago. It was pretty entertaining.

i rewatched it last year and ariel was a real asshole.

lol. Still voting for it though. I have the fondest memories of it and now that my daughter's watching these movies it's the least annoying/problematic of the bunch.

little mermaid is the disney movie i'm kinda most concerned about my daughters watching. essentially isn't it a flick about a girl who gets rid of her voice to get a guy?

Well, she makes a devil's bargain... It's pretty plain to the viewer that exchanging her voice for legs is gonna be a pretty bad idea for Ariel and she'll be in for trouble ahead.

For years I marveled at brazenly dirty lyrics to the B&B 'GAston,' song, only to finally read the lyrics and learn the questionable phrase read "no one's NECK's as incredibly thick as Gaston" and heave a sigh of relief/sorrow

honestly beauty and the beast's message is probably worse: a physically and verbally threatening man (well, "man") can be transformed by a woman's love.

I've always been disturbed by Chip and Mrs. Pot. Who is the father? Did he leave after hitting his kid? There's a whole abusive allegory in that cupboard.

cutoff makes perfect sense as lion king was last release while katzenberg was there (curious which was the last one he had any hand in developing). loved aladdin at the time though robin williams and gottfried there really setting some bad precedents. lion king peak of disney 2.0, crazy katz blowup coincided w/ it, the timing helped create dreamworks and seal disney 2.0's doom. voted beauty, which at the time got praise for being vaguely feminist (comparable to frozen now), interesting it plays sexist now apparently.

i like ariel when her motivation is curiosity and the obsessive desire to learn more about the surface world. then it all suddenly gets transferred to "eric" and it's duller, not to mention one big trip to the problemat. this movie gets points just for being underwater, tho; i love its physics.

beauty and the beast is probably the best here because even disney can't completely sanitize it; the source material has such dark and confusing psychosexual implications that even tho it's not cocteau it's still spooky and has unpleasant implications. nevertheless belle may be the most successfully Plucky of disney heroines.

aladdin is undignified.

the lion king was my favorite thing in the world when i was little. because it's not based on a fairy tale with old black-forest ghosts crawling around it, al leong is otm about its story: it's the button-pushing creation of a bunch of hacks drunk on campbell. locks all its primal-cliche beats neatly into place. (in high school i read this book and the parts that hadn't already appeared in campbell or in story were mostly about suggestions the author had made at lion king script meetings that would have improved the film had they not been ignored). i used to think it was problo that the hyenas were clearly a brutally oppressed class who deserved to rise up and take their share from the lion supremacists but on the other hand it's neat that scar hijacks their revolution and is then torn apart by his betrayed underlings. movie is still thoroughly racist towards hyenas tho.

implications implications

even the anomalies here are interesting - ducktales as representative of afternoon cartoon disney that probably doesn't get enough credit in disney's rebirth, rescuers down under as proto-straight to video sequel they would mine the hell out of in years to come

Darkwing became a favorite of my roommates and I in late undergrad years. That and Animaniacs.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/5af65785b3163ab26156e3ea6ca1840d/tumblr_msca2woFGH1sh28k6o1_400.gif

Ariel having to lose her voice to morph into a different form is cool. There's a vague psychoanalytic kind of logic about it.

i loved the disney afternoon as a kid, pre-teenage years. darkwing duck, talespin, BONKERS, gooftroop, the aladdin series.. all great imo. never got into the lion king tv series but liked the movie well enough.

Disney animated features 1991-2000 poll
A Poll New World: Disney Animated Films of the 90s

don't remember ducktales anymore. would probably go for little mermaid for the music

― k3vin k., Wednesday, March 12, 2014 11:31 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oops - didn't even think to look for other polls on this one, sorry guys. Still think it's worth doing since it kind of continues the rolling discussion from the other threads maybe? Also it's been fun to have these in such small chunks I think...more discussion on each movie.

re: the cutoff - not really 'quality' based for me, just familiarity really - although I do feel like, Hercules aside, the second half of the decade maybe goes for more "grown-up" or teen oriented, more human characters, slightly darker tones visually (and maybe thematically?). This one is a "which is my favorite" poll, and the next one will be "which of these should I finally watch"?

re: DuckTales and the Treasure of the Golden Suns TV special/opening arc: yes yes yes. El Capitan forever.

Lion King as feline Hamlet, with JTT as the prince of Denmark, enemies beware.

"I've never seen a mighty king with quite so little hair" is a friggin gross line.

little mermaid i kinda sorta resent because it's so completely eclipsed andersen's (admittedly kind of fucked-up) story. i think most of the changes made in other, older disney movies are defensible (i doubt many ppl would argue that snow white should have ended with the queen being forced to dance herself to death in red-hot shoes), and i doubt anyone wanted to see poor ariel commit suicide, but the distance between the tone of the source material and the tone of the movie is really kind of incredible here.

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

Woah, that's true! Never realized that. Wonder if they had one planned and cut it in favor of Robin Williams getting two big numbers? I could also see some really different version of Arabian Nights being given to him (he could be welcoming a suitor or something), in which case the "it's barbaric, but hey - it's home" might actually help set up something in the movie rather than just being discomfiting.

But really what's clearly missing is a showstopper for the Cave of Wonders, huge missed opportunity.

For years I marveled at brazenly dirty lyrics to the B&B 'GAston,' song, only to finally read the lyrics and learn the questionable phrase read "no one's NECK's as incredibly thick as Gaston" and heave a sigh of relief/sorrow

― r. bean (soda), Wednesday, March 12, 2014 1:42 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hahahahahahahahaha

gaston is an awesome villain. so is ursula, though. actually, even though his characterization is super-racist, so is jafar.

i loved beauty and the beast so much as a kid.

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

bottom two are right and the top 4 are all great so ya cool whatever

Awesome turnout. Wow. Kinda surprised Aladdin beat The Little Mermaid, but I shouldn't be - it outright won one of the other polls covering similar territory. Just on technique and entertainment skill and so on, I'd probably rank the big musicals the same way the voters here did - Little Mermaid does not have Robin Williams, thank god, but it is still a bit rougher and rustier.

Next one coming tomorrow!

Disney animated features: Mannerism (1995-1999)

I thought the live action Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast and Jungle Book were better than they had to be, but holy shit the live action "Aladdin" trailer looks like some straight-up mid-90s garbage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foyufD52aog

whooooooof

These movies are literally the most pointless thing ever.

This is from a few years ago. I knew about the Lion King ripping off Kimba The White Lion but didn't know about the extent and assholery of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfJvKIDS9n8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1YHXnlJWI4

just tried to give the DuckTales movie a whirl since we've got a free trial of D+ to goof around with and OOF, had to bail like two minutes in as the middle eastern stereotypes piled up. maybe it gets better later but i regret throwing it a token vote here if indeed i did so.

Racial stereotypes in a Disney movie???! Oh my stars and garters

i mean this is a major beef of mine with plenty of their stuff, cf. Aladdin. just didn't know to expect it in this one, jeez.

designed lights for a junior prod of TLK opening tonight, tried to brecht it up as much as i could lol. the lionesses have a "hunting song" that ends w them bringing down an an antelope and feeding on it in a circle upstage (tossing plastic bones away etc); i hit them with a blood-red strobe and black out everything else for a few seconds before simba runs in like "hi mom!!" and lights return to normal daylight for mom turning around wiping her mouth; later when simba witnesses his father's murder it happens in the same blackout and the same strobe. more like the circle of death

and yet nothing i could think of or do could ever stand against the power of my own pale 1/1000th onstage imitation of

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.

pure hi-tech propaganda. i argued for gaston upthread as most effective villain of this era (stand by this) but a huge point in scar's favor is the cut from the climactic timpani hit sealing off the monarchist ecstasy of this opening directly to scar relishing the first spoken line of both movie and show: "life's not fair, is it?"