Bingeing Disney Animation 4

These five films encompass the end of the classic Disney era. 

        

   

Peter Pan (1953) - I've never been a fan of the Peter Pan universe, as I find it small, depressing and lonely. But I read the book a few months ago and was surprised that J.M. Barrie understood that never growing up would be a curse, not a blessing. The movie doesn't embrace that dark conclusion, but I enjoyed this way more than I expected. It's colorful, lovely and fun. But the ride at Disney World is still overrated.

Lady and the Tramp (1955) - This is an odd, pedestrian story released between two high fantasies. I'm not really sure why Disney chose to tell this tale, which is the story of several dogs in turn of the century America. It's beautiful, which shouldn't be surprising, but the plot has pretty low stakes, including a villain who's just a babysitter who doesn't like dogs. I do kind of admire that Disney knew not every movie had to involve world-altering plots. This was the favorite of my wonderful, Disney-loving Aunt who lived in Florida.

Sleeping Beauty (1959) - The first time Carol and I saw Princess Aurora at Disney World, we didn't know who she was, as neither of us had seen this movie. I loved the clean, bright, expansive style of animation;  almost a Googie-fied fantasy world. The story is a combination of Cinderella and Snow White, with some characters making some real head-scratcher decisions. Maleficent, pissed off because she didn't get invited to a party, condemns the infant Aurora to die on her 16th birthday by pricking her finger on a spinning wheel. Aurora's moron parents, the King and Queen, send Aurora away to live her entire childhood with three fairies. Couldn't she just have moved in with the fairies when she turned 15? Nonetheless, this was beautiful and enjoyable, although a flop for Disney until it was re-released.

One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) - This is the movie where things start to change for Disney Studios. Rather than hand-drawing every cell, Disney switched to a Xerox process for the backgrounds to reduce animation costs. In Dalmatians, the style looks rather sophisticated. Unfortunately, the Xerox style became the Disney standard for the next twenty years and had a significant negative impact on the perception of quality. The story of a whole bunch of Dalmatian puppies is cute, and introduces one of the great Disney villains, Cruella De Vil (De Vil, get it?). But I don't feel like enough of the puppies had a distinct personality to elevate this to greatness.

The Sword in the Stone (1963) - I knew nothing about this movie going in, except that it's a retelling of King Arthur stories. In fact, it's about young Arthur, how he was trained by Merlin, and eventually became King of England by pulling a sword from a stone. What most intrigued me is that the sound mixing sounds almost identical to the sound mixing in Ralph Bakshi's 1977 animated fantasy, Wizards, which I saw recently. Very odd indeed. Otherwise, there's not much of a plot here and no villain to speak of. Another interesting Disney experiment in low stakes storytelling.