Shameless self promotion!? THAT’S OUR SECRET WORD OF THE DAY!!!

So yeah, I wrote a play which is being staged as part of the 10 Days in Dublin Festival . If you like what I write here…I’ve got to be honest, it in no way resembles what I write here but I am really, really proud of it. It’s called Joanna and it’s about two teenage girls who hire a legendary vigilante named Joanna to abduct, torture and kill the man they blame for their best friend’s suicide. Cheery stuff, right? It’s running in the New Theatre in Temple Bar for three afternoons, tomorrow, the eighth and the ninth at one o’clock. Any local Unshaved Mouseketeers (can we make that a thing? No?), or anyone who just happens by pure, random chance to be in Dublin right now, pop on over and say “Hi.” Tickets are €10 or €8 with concession.

Oh, and because I want to get all my shameless plugging done for today, check out this interview with me and artist Stephen Byrne over at Mentalist Dave for the new issue of League of Volunteers.

Now, back to the Pocahontas review. Where’s my hatchet?

Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #32: The Lion King

(DISCLAIMER: This blog is not for profit. All images used below are property of their respective companies unless stated otherwise. I do not claim ownership of this material. New to the blog? Start at the start with Snow White.)

***

When The Lion King came out in 1994 I was eleven years old, and starting to develop an interest in movies that extended beyond just watching them. I remember reading a lot of the newspaper articles that came out before, during and after its theatrical run (and there were a lot them, I think we sometimes forget that this movie was an almost Jurassic Park level cultural event). One of the things I remember reading about this movie was that it was the first animated Disney movie not to be based on an existing story. That may strike you as surprising, considering that it’s pretty much cemented in everyone’s mind now as “Disney’s adaptation of Hamlet”, and even Disney themselves have pretty much owned that assessment. But the origins of this movie are a lot hazier than that. From what I can gather, Lion King began in the eighties from a conversation between Jeffrey Katzenberg, Roy Disney and Peter Schneider (president of Walt Disney Feature Animation) that boiled down to “We should do a movie set in Africa.” “You know what, we should do a movie set in Africa.” From that conversation the movie took a long and often deeply weird journey to the big screen (in some alternate universe, there’s a version of this movie where Scar is a baboon, Rafiki is a cheetah and ABBA provided the music.) So many different theories and suggestions and accusations have been flung at this movie that its true creative origins may never really be known.

Just who is Simba? Hamlet? Moses? Joseph son of Jacob? Is he the young Jeffrey Katzenberg, overcoming his own insecurities and self doubt to become the king of the animation jungle? Is he Roy Disney, the heir trying desperately to escape the titanic shadows of his uncle and father? Is he Jesus?

Keyser Soze? The Third Man? A tin of yams? Kobra Kommander? Barbara Streisand? A previously unknown species of racoon? Seventh US Vice President John C Calhoun? STOP ME IF I GET IT!!

Keyser Soze? The Third Man? A tin of yams? Kobra Kommander? Barbara Streisand? A previously unknown species of raccoon? Seventh US Vice President John C Calhoun? STOP ME IF I GET IT!!

But the “Lion King as Hamlet” story is the one that’s stuck, and for good reason. I don’t just mean the obvious similarities in plot. Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest play, and the one usually proclaimed as being his best. At well over five hours, you will almost never see the entire text performed fully, meaning that every production cuts and trims the play to create a new version that best reflects the artistic vision of the director and cast. In this way, every production of Hamlet is unique. Some will focus on the relationship between Hamlet and his father. Some focus on his love affair with Ophelia, turning the play into a romantic tragedy. Still others will excise almost every other character and focus on Hamlet’s inner turmoil, turning the play into a psychological study. There are as many potential Halmets as there are stars in the sky. This is because the play is about, well, everything.

Shakespeare took a relatively simply story, the Danish revenge tale Amlethus, and within this finite framework staged one man’s contemplation of the entirety of human existence boiled down to the one single, terrifying question embodied in the play’s most famous line. Those six little words that we’ve all heard so often that their true power is often overlooked.

To be. Or not to be.

Is it better to be alive, or dead? To exist or to not. To be something, or to be nothing. It’s the single most important question. It is, in fact, the question that must be answered before any of the others can even be considered.

If Hamlet seeks to ask the first question, Lion King can be said to ask the second. Obviously this is a Disney movie, so the answer to the first question will always be “To Be.” Disney is all about optimism. Hope. Good triumphing over evil, no matter how powerful or malevolent it is and notwithstanding its ability to turn into a gigantic monster at the end of the third act. So once you’ve answered “To be”, what’s the second question? Well it’s the question we all deal with every day; “How do I live my life?” The Lion King is about finding your place in the world, represented in the movie as The Circle of Life, a natural and harmonious order that is only kept in balance when everyone meets their responsibilities to themselves, to the world and to their fellow creatures.

Oh, are you reviewing Kimba the White Lion? Oh wait…

Taran…

TAAAAAARAAAAAAANNN!
TAAAAAARAAAAAAANN!

Oh God, are we actually doing this?

Fine.

Yes, this movie has long been accused of being a ripoff of Tezuka Ozamu’s manga and animé Kimba the White Lion. And frankly, I find the entire idea preposterous. Why would Disney, the greatest animation studio in the world, need to steal from a relatively obscure children’s cartoon from the sixties? But fine, let’s see the so called “evidence” for this supposed theft which I am sure is not at all compelling in any way.

Okay, so it’s pretty obvious that someone in Disney who was working on the Lion King was familiar with Kimba the White Lion and snuck that in as a visual reference. And you know what? That’s fine. It’s called “an homage” if you’re feeling arty, or “a shout out” if you’re keeping it real, man. You may call it theft, but film makers do it all the time. The Untouchables recreates the “pram on the steps” scene from Battleship Potemkin but no one’s suggesting that Brian De Palma should write Eisenstein a cheque. Which is good, because Eisenstein is dead and De Palma has been having a pretty bad run lately and probably doesn’t have a lot of cash to spare.

Ozamu totally stole that scene from Warner Bros anyway.

What else ya got? Well, the name surely? Kimba. Simba. I mean, what do they think we’re stupid or something? Disney obviously changed that one letter of the name so we wouldn’t realise that this is a remake of Kimba the White Lion!

BEEP! Wrong answer.

As I’m sure quite a few Disney fans and Swahilis are screaming at the screen right now, “Simba” is Swahili for “lion”. The Disney animators learned quite a few Swahili phrases when they went on a field trip to Africa to research the film, and they ended up working these phrases into the movie. Well…then where the hell did Ozamu get “Kimba” from? Not a clue. TV Tropes offers the theory that Ozamu was going to name the main character Simba but changed it because there was a popular soft drink of the same name, and then goes on to say that that theory has been disproved and that the real reason is “complicated and doesn’t make much sense” and leaves it at that.

Don’t you play coy with me, you little tease.

The ripoff story actually began (as so many problems in this life do) with Matthew Broderick. When originally offered the part, he misheard and thought that they’d said “Kimba”. Being familiar with the old cartoon he then proceeded to run his mouth off saying that he was doing a remake of Kimba the White Lion . He later said: “I kept telling everybody I was going to play Kimba. I didn’t really know anything about it, but I didn’t really care. I’m kind of an asshole like that. Also, I have the genitalia of a mosquito. I don’t mean that they’re small (although they are). I mean that I actually literally have the reproductive organs of an insect.”

It must be true. You read it on the internet.

The case for ripoff gets steadily weaker after that, ranging from the somewhat plausible (okay, both father lions have a wise baboon friend) to the pretty lame (of course the hyenas are comedy relief villains in both, THEY’RE FUCKING HYENAS) to the just kind of pathetic (Here’s Kimba running! Here is Simba also running!). The only other compelling piece of evidence is a very early piece of concept art depicting a white lion cub playing with a butterfly.

Okay. I am willing to entertain the theory that at some point, very early on in its production they considered making this movie a Kimba remake. But here’s the thing. That’s not the movie they made. If Disney released this movie in its current form as Kimba the White Lion they would have been in contravention of the Trade Descriptions Act. Because, a few similarities here and there notwithstanding they are nothing alike. In the areas where it really matters, characters, plot, dialogue, animation The Lion King is completely its own movie. Its art style is totally different from Kimba (I’d get into Ozamu’s shameless aping of Bambi but he’s not on trial here). And as I said in my Aladdin review, what’s in it for Disney? Why would they hide the fact that the movie they made was a Kimba remake if that was actually what they intended? To stiff Ozamu out of the money for the rights? Please. After Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin Disney had more money than your average sultanate. Jeffrey Katzenberg could have gathered up a few million from the back of the couch and paid for the rights. He certainly would have if there was any reasonable chance that Ozamu could have taken Disney to court for IP theft. No. What we have here is one possible visual homage, the coincidences that will inevitably arise between two pieces in the same genre using the same setting and Matthew Broderick running his big stupid mouth off. I find the accused…

Now let’s take a look at the film.

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Presenting: THE LEAGUE OF VOLUNTEERS! (Mouse wrote a comic!)

League of Volunteers is an award-winning comic chronicling the adventures of a team of superheroes operating in Ireland during World War 2, known in Ireland as “The Emergency” (because we Irish like three things; alcohol, not being English and understatement.) The team, which includes veterans of the Spanish civil war (from both sides), a half-demon vampire huntress, an ancient and powerful druid and the mythical Irish hero Fionn Mac Cumhail battle to save Ireland from both Nazi agents and the most powerful and dangerous creatures of Irish legend.

It is freakin’ awesome.

Creator Rob Curley has very kindly given me the oppurtunity to write a three issue arc for the series and the first issue just hit the stands last week. If you’re based in Dublin you can pick up a copy in Sub City comics just off Exchequer Street for just under five euro (and if you would, that would be the final, clinching proof I need that you are as awesome as I’ve always suspected.)

Of course, I know most of you are not in Dublin so the above information is of little to no use to you.

You want me to go to Dublin to buy your comic? Sure Mouse, I’ll get right on that.

But worry not, the comic is also available to buy online at the Atomic Diner Comics website.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this absolutely phenomenal artwork by Stephen Byrne featuring Blood Rose and Glimmerman asking some vampires if they’ve been to Bahia.

Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #31: Aladdin

***

In her video on the rivalry between Dreamworks and Disney, the Nostalgia Chick called Aladdin “The first Dreamworks movie” and I think that’s pretty much spot on. Of all the movies of the Disney renaissance this is the one that most strongly bears the stamp of one Jeffrey Katzenberg. Celebrity voices? We got celebrity voices. Broad comedy for the kids with slightly more adult humour for the grown ups? Come in, my friend. Trendy pop culture references and catchphrases that seem refreshingly modern at the time of release but as the years go by seem more and more…um…

NOT!

Yeah. This movie was really where that whole Dreamworks style was born. And that’s actually not a diss. I knock Dreamworks a lot on this blog (as is my God-given right as a Disney fan), but I’ll be the first to admit that when their formula works it works damn well. One of the reasons I think Aladdin is so good is because it combines the best of both Disney and what would later become Dreamworks. It’s funny and snarky but it’s got also got a heart as big as all outdoors. And yes, it’s by far the most glitzy and “Hollywood” of the Renaissance Movies. That’s Katzenberg’s influence as well. When directors Ron Clements and Jon Musker showed Katzenberg the original test reel he hated it so much that he told them to start again from scratch. Now, you’ll remember, the exact same thing happened to Beauty and the Beast as well but this was different. With Beauty and the Beast, the original concept was reworked into an Ashman/Menken musical. Aladdin was ALREADY an Ashman/Menken musical. The new creative imprint that reshaped the movie after the disaster of the showreel screening (“Black Friday” as it was called) was Katzenberg and new script writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio. Even Katzenberg’s choices of phrasing were pure Hollywood; when telling the animators that Aladdin needed to be more heroic and someone worthy of Jasmine he said “He’s Michael J. Fox, he needs to be Tom Cruise.”

He needs the grin of a mako shark and the cold dead eyes of a killer?

The fact that Aladdin is such a showy, glitzy, thrill ride I think leads some to dismiss it as the airheaded “pretty one” . “Sure” tut the snobs “It’s entertainment enough for the proles. But is it art?”

Balderdash!

Well, I would actually say that there’s more artistry on display here than in Beauty and the Beast. And lest you think I’m just engaging in more unwarranted BatB bashing I’ll throw my beloved Little Mermaid in and say it’s more artistically accomplished than that film too.

Mouse! How could you!?

Let’s start with the artwork. The backgrounds in Mermaid and Beast are generic and pretty bland. Now look at Agrabah.

Like the characters (with the deliberate exception of Jafar) everything about the city is curved, unique and inviting. The artists based the architecture of the city on Arabian calligraphy and it actually compliments the characters rather than simply being a static stage for them to perform. And the character animation is another giant leap. Think of how much character and emotion they manage to invest in the magic carpet, a goddamn rectangle. And that’s not even getting started on the feat of animation that is the Genie. So yeah, I don’t buy the argument that just because this movie is more fun than Beauty and the Beast it’s somehow less of an artistic achievement. If anything, the fact that it’s so entertaining while breaking serious new ground in the field of animation makes it an even better film in my eyes. Look at it this way:

Chocolate is great.

Broccoli is good for you.

But broccoli that tastes like chocolate CHANGES THE WORLD.

Let’s take a look at the film.

(more…)

How the Irish media is reporting the nice weather

Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #30: Beauty and the Beast

***

“A long time ago, in the faraway land of Ireland, there lived a little boy. This little boy loved the films of Walt Disney, more perhaps than anything else in the world. One dark and stormy night, an old beggar came to the door, seeking shelter from the never-ending Irish rain and the gentle whimsy of the locals. In payment for shelter, he offered the little boy a most precious gift; a VHS of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. And the little boy said “Screw off. I hate that movie.”

The beggar stared at the little boy for a good two minutes. Finally, he said:

“I’m sorry, I must have misheard you. I thought you said you hated Beauty and the Beast.”

“I do.”

“That’s crazy talk.”

“It sucks.”

“It does not suck. It’s the greatest achievement in the history of animation. It’s hot stuff, you little shit.”

“It’s boring. It’s a boring, overhyped, whiter than white bread slice of pandering Oscar bait.”

Suddenly, the beggar transformed into a powerful magician with the most pimpin’ moustache the little boy had ever seen.

He cast a spell on the little boy, transforming him into an unshaved mouse. The mouse begged for mercy, and the Magician told him that there was one way that he could become a human again. He must review every one of the Disney animated canon one after the other, so that he might learn to love Beauty and the Beast. If he could not find it in his heart to love that movie, and be loved by it in return, he would remain a mouse forever. As the years passed, he fell into despair.

For who could ever learn to love…a boring, overhyped, whiter than white bread slice of pandering Oscar bait?”

Sigh. Let’s just get this over with.

Ohhhh…I’m gonna catch hell for this one.

Okay.

So.

Ahem.

Yeah.

I don’t really like Beauty and the Beast.

“Zeke! Run to the next town over, we need more men!”
“How many men?”
“ALL OF ‘EM!”

EVERYBODY CHILL!

Please, just step away from the comments! Let me explain!

It’s me. Okay? It’s me. It’s not the movie, it’s me. I know it’s not a bad movie. Hell, I know it’s a superb movie. And if you’re worried that I’m going to trash this movie that you love, and show you a whole bunch of flaws in it that you never noticed and ruin it for you forever, no. That’s not going to happen. I play fair on this blog, and this movie will be walking out with a very high score. Probably.

My dislike of this movie is, I freely admit, largely irrational. It’s kind of hard to put into words but…

Okay, the animation is top flight, the music and songs are some of Howard Ashman’s and Alan Menken’s best work, it has one of the best leads in the Disney canon…

But it’s just. So. WHITE.

It’s so white. It’s whiter than white. It’s “Gandalf after he comes back from the dead” white. It’s whiter than a Mitt Romney rally.

ARGH! MY EYES, I’M BLIND!

So there’s that. Plus, I don’t know if it’s just me, but there’s nothing more likely to push me into disliking something than being constantly told by everyone that I’m wrong, and I just don’t get it and that I should change my opinion because it’s clearly stupid and…oooooookay. I’m starting to realise why my wife hates Ariel now.

Yeah. Not so fun, is it?

Sorry. It’s just a movie I’ve never been able to fall in love with. But hey, maybe this review will finally give me the chance to see this film in a new light and break the curse once and for all. We can hope.

Production began on Beauty and the Beast back in 1989 and it was originally intended to be a very different film from the one we have now. But around six months into production, director Richard Purdum and producer Don Hahn were ordered to scrap everything and start again from square one, retooling the film as a Broadway-style musical with songs by Ashman and Menken.

Now why ever would they have done that? I declare the mystery unsolveable!

Ashman was eventually promoted from lyricist to goddamn executive producer, and probably had a bigger influence on the film than any other single person. Ashman worked tirelessly on this film, and with good reason. Ashman, like many thousands of other gay American men, was a victim of the AIDS epidemic of the eighties. He would live to finish all of the songs for this movie, and to learn of the movie’s rapturous reception at the New York film festival in an unfinished form. But he would not live to see the final film.

In my review of The Little Mermaid I called it “A Broadway musical in ink and paint” and I really, really should have held off on using that description because it fits Beauty and the Beast so much better. Ashman actually held auditions on Broadway itself and the resulting cast is pretty much wall to wall Broadway veterans. Also, the song-to-dialogue ratio in this movie is even more heavily skewed towards the songs which take up around twenty five minutes of the running time.

Richard Purdum, the original director, left once Ashman and Menken were brought on board as it was clear that Disney were going to make a very different movie from what he had originally intended.

Princesses and songs! Those cavemen do NOT fuck around!

Princesses and songs! NOW! Those cavemen are NOT fucking around!

Replacing him were two young newcomers named Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale, whose previous experience prior to helming this multi-million dollar animated feature was…an animated short for the Disney Land attraction Cranium Command. I’m not joking. Well, actually, their lack of experience was part of the reason they were hired. Eisner and Katzenberg simply wanted someone to ride herd on the animators who in turn could be easily ridden by Eisner and Katzenberg.

Huh huh huh huh.

After Purdum’s departure, they were looking for directors who would be under no illusions as to who was in charge. In fact, at the beginning Wise and Trousdale were referred to as “Acting Directors”, which Trousdale would later describe as “acting like a director in the hope that direction would happen.” But as it turned out, Kirk and Trousdale rose to the challenge and proved themselves to be very competent, prompting Katzenberg to promote them to “directors”.

The generation of young animators that had come on board around the time of The Fox and the Hound had now fully matured into probably the most accomplished animation team in the world. This would be the last film that they would all work together on, as from then on the studio would work on two movies simultaneously with the animation team being split in two. Many of the people who worked on this film consider it to be the crowning achievement of the renaissance, the true pinnacle. Are they right?

Well, let’s see if this thing can win me over.

(more…)

Check these ladies out!

So, while writing the Rescuers Down Under review, I found myself in need of a picture of a mouse in a gimp suit. I thought there was no way that such a thing could exist, but then the internet smacked me in the face for doubting it and duly provided the image above from a website called The House of Mouse.

My first instinct was of course just to swipe the image, leaving nothing but a broken window, a single black rose and a calling card to let the bumbling fools in the local constabulary know that the Phantom Mouse had struck again, but instead Anna and Naomi who run House of Mouse very kindly agreed to let me use their gimp mouse. But did you know he could be YOUR Gimp Mouse? House of Mouse specialise in handmade felt mice based on movie characters (that saucy fellow up there is their take on the gimp from Pulp Fiction). They do Doctor Who mice, Star Trek mice, Harry Potter mice, you name it and they are all quite adorably awesome.

Look, let’s be honest. You’re here because you have an unhealthy obsession with mice. I’ve seen the stats. Everytime I do a review featuring mice my page views go through the roof. So why not indulge your obsession? You can see the full collection at House of Mouse.

Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #29: The Rescuers Down Under

***

“We knew that Bernard and Bianca would come back in this movie. Because it’s a film about them.”

Thomas Schumacher, producer of The Rescuers Down Under, 1990

“Wow. Thanks for that stunning revelation into the creative process.”

Unshaved Mouse, Watching the Making Of, 2013

***

Question. Have you ever shown up to the office Christmas party in your gimp suit only to be told that, no, we decided fancy dress was just too much hassle and yes I did send you an email, I did, I’m sorry but I distinctly remember, well check your inbox, wait, do you have a period in your email address? You do? Oh, well, okay, that explains it. Hah. I can totally see your package through the latex by the way?

Hey, I’ve seen the search terms that bring people to my blog, don’t you DARE judge me.

That’s kind of Rescuers Down Under. It was just a little late to the party and now everyone can see its balls and is pretending to ignore it. If this movie had come out a few years earlier, preferably when the Crocodile Dundee craze was still in full force, it could have killed. This movie could have been HUGE. But instead it arrived in the wake of The Little Mermaid. The Little Mermaid, in case I need remind you, was just a little bit of a game changer.

So the movie going public now had certain expectations about Disney.

Hey guys, I gotta new movie I think you’re going to really love!

Is it a wonderland of fairytale enchantment with fantastic songs and a princess who discovers that the strength was in her heart the whole time?

Noooo...it's a sequel to a Mourning Era movie with lots of action and adventure and no songs.

Noooo…it’s a sequel to a thirteen year old Mourning Era movie with lots of action and adventure and no songs.

EAT HIM!

AAAAAH!

Yeah, this movie is not what people were looking for. And if you’re looking for a culprit as to why the Disney movies of the Renaissance Era are ~~utterly totally bound with steel hoops and unbreakable adamantium chains to~~ slightly reliant on formula, this is your reason. On its release, The Rescuers Down Under was a flop, although it may have been a self-inflicted one. Jeffrey Katzenberg famously pulled all the advertising after it had a less successful than expected opening weekend. Might it have become a hit if they’d waited and let word of mouth spread? I dunno. Maybe? It got decent enough reviews, and I think it’s probably safe to say that it’s more well-regarded now than its prequel, which was one of the most successful animated movies of all time. But Disney have always seemed to smell red-headed stepchild on this one. It’s certainly not like they disavow its existence like The Black Cauldron or Song of the South. But you get the feeling that if you mentioned this movie to someone in Disney they’d be like “Oh yeah. That one.” and ask you coldly not to raise the matter again. But make no mistake, this is an influential movie. Firstly, there’s the fact that its failure pretty much ended the talking animal-centric Disney movie until Dinosaur a decade later, and paved the way for the total dominance of the Disney princess movies. People often forget this, but the princess movies are very much a minority in the canon. In the sixty odd years prior to Little Mermaid, there were a grand total of three princess movies, compared to fifteen that focused on talking animals. But in the twenty-five years since Little Mermaid there have been seven princess movies. The success of Little Mermaid caused that, sure, but so did the failure of Rescuers Down Under.

Secondly, this was the first narrative sequel in the Disney canon, and the last until Winnie the Pooh in 2011. Because of this, the business of making sequels was then farmed out to other animation studios. These studios, despite not having the resources and experience of the original creators, nevertheless managed to create new and wonderful expansions of the existing works, creating sequels that could stand up and sometimes even surpaaaaahaaahahahahahahaha!

Sorry, couldn’t say that with a straight face. These were pretty much all feculent garbage.

So we can thank Rescuers Down Under for that too.

Jesus, this thing has a darker legacy than the book of Leviticus.

And it’s really not fair for this movie to be lumped in with the rest of the sequels. For starters, it’s not a naked and unwanted cash grab with no narrative justification. This is genuinely a story that had a few chapters left to be told. Unlike the rest of the canon, Rescuers was pretty much made for a sequel. The reason Cinderella 2 is such a non-starter is that at the end of Cinderella, all the loose ends are tied up. To continue the story, you have to unpick a perfectly good happy ending only to restore it at the end in a way that’s never going to be as satisfying as it was the first time. But the Rescuers, although it did have a happy ending for Penny, ended with the promise that the adventures of Bernard and Bianca were just beginning. The team had just been assembled. We had gotten all the tedious getting-to-know-you business out-of-the-way and now it’s full steam ahead. This, I think, is another reason why so many of you in the comments pine for that Basil the Great Mouse Detective sequel that never was. It was a concept that still had plenty of places to go, unlike Cinderella, who, once she gets the glass slipper, that really should be the last we hear of her.

No. Seriously.
Fuck off.

But Rescuers Down Under does have one other, very important legacy. Like most YouTube comments, Rescuers Down Under was done all in CAPS, a new process that allowed ink and paint drawings to be digitized so that scenes could be arranged by computer. CAPS would continue to be used pretty much until the end of the traditional animation era and was as big a revolution in animation as the use of xerography was in the sixties.

Oh, and it’s also why the movie is FUCKING GORGEOUS.

Of course, the Disney animators knew next to nothing about computers, so they enlisted the help of a small computer hardware company. This company, when not selling computers to government and medical agencies, moonlit as an animation studio doing little animated CGI commercials for Listerine.

They were called Pixar.

Talk about humble beginnings.
This Listerine ad only won five Oscars.

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Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #28: The Little Mermaid

***

Wow. We’re finally here. Have you been looking forward to this? I know I have. After all, we’re finally going to review the movie that unquestionably, I repeat unquestionably, ushered in the Disney renaissance…

I’m sorry, a mob of angry Disney contrarians has amassed below in the comments. One moment please.

Alright, let’s hear it.

“Who framed Roger Rabbit? was the real start of the renaissance!”

“No! Basil the Great Mouse Detective!”

“Oliver & Company revived the Disney musical!”

“The Renaissance didn’t start until Beauty and the Beast was nominated for Best Picture!”

“THE DISNEY RENAISSANCE IS A MYTH! IT NEVER HAPPENED!”

“GIVE US BARRABAS!”

Okay, okay. I hear all your points so let me just give my response now that I’ve lured you all into one place.

No. I’m sorry, I’ve taken some controversial positions in my time but on this one the conventional wisdom is right. The Little Mermaid marks the beginning of the massive leap in quality in Disney animation that is known as the Disney Renaissance of the late eighties/early nineties. How did this come about? Well it was a perfect storm of a million different things and people coming together but I’ve got a lot to say on this movie so I’ll try and boil it down to the main causes.

1) Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Now, I don’t consider Who Framed Roger Rabbit? the start of the Renaissance because it wasn’t wholly a Disney movie. It was a Disney/Amblin co-production featuring not just Disney characters but Warner characters and those of many other studies and also it isn’t considered part of the canon. But it did lead directly to the Disney Renaissance in a very important way. Remember last review I mentioned how the makers of that movie brought in their own animators because they didn’t think the regular Disney animators were up to the task? Well after Roger was wrapped many of those animators were brought in to work on Mermaid which meant a huge transfusion of energy and talent. This is why Mermaid looks so much better than the films that came immediately before it.

2) Kaaaaaaaaaaaatzenberg!

Jeffrey Katzenberg is a controversial figure in animation and with good reason. He is in many ways the quintessential Hollywood executive, brash, abrasive and confrontational. His artistic instincts could also leave a lot to be desired (he wanted to cut Part of Your World, a choice that would have absolutely gutted the movie and which saner heads were thankfully able to talk him out of). But credit where credit is due, Katzenberg knows how to create entertainment if not always art. His track record before and after Disney is one of a man who knows how to make real crowd pleasers. Also, Katzenberg brought an energy and a drive to a studio culture that had perhaps been a little indolent. If you worked for Katzenberg you fucking WORKED for Katzenberg. I think of Katzenberg as a Blue Lantern.

What do I mean? Okay, well in Green Lantern comics you have these alien beings that wear power rings that are fueled by different emotions. The Green Lanterns have green rings fuelled by willpower that allows them to create incredible energy constructs. The Blue Lanterns have blue rings fuelled by hope that do jack shit on their own but when they’re near the Green Lanterns gives them an incredible energy boost because hope fuels willpower. Wow, this is probably the longest and nerdiest explanation I’ve ever given to anything. What I’m trying to say is, Katzenberg is not much of an artist on his own. But if you have him working with talented people he provides the energy and drive to push them to dazzling creative heights. Also, he’s extremely vulnerable to yellow fear energy (citation needed)

Jeff! Behind you!

3) Howard Ashman and Alan Menken

Lyricist Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken created the sound of the Disney renaissance, which was important because with one notable exception, all the Disney films of the Renaissance era were musicals. There had been Disney musicals before, of course, but Ashman and Menken created something very new; Broadway Disney. The movies of this period are Broadway musicals in ink and paint. Everything about them, the big emotions, belting musical numbers, the dance numbers, the spectacle…it’s pure Broadway. Ashman and Menken, probably more than any other individual person, defined the feel of Disney movies of this period. And it all started with The Little Mermaid, whose success basically ensured that it was the template for every Disney movie that came after, triumph after triumph after triumph… until the whole formula was basically squeezed to a desiccated husk and everything came crashing down like a house of wet cards. But we’ll get to that eventually. For now, let’s take a look at The Little Mermaid.

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Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #27: Oliver and Company

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Guys, I gotta confess.

I’ve been sitting here for like two hours trying write something about this movie and I got nothin’. I really, really don’t like Oliver and Company (sorry, spoilers) but my God if I’m having difficulty putting it into words why. I mean, it’s not like it’s the worst Disney movie I’ve had to review. But, Jesus, this one just rubs me the wrong way. Alright, well, no use beating around the bush. Let’s take a look at this thing.

By 1988 the Disney Animation Studios had survived their closest brush with death to date, the failure of the Black Cauldron. They had scraped out a modest win with Basil the Great Mouse Detective, a film that was quickly and cheaply produced and made a decent profit. But no one was kidding themselves that Disney was back to its former glory. It clearly wasn’t. This point was driven home very painfully when production began on Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and hey! I could do a review on Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Wouldn’t that be fun? Yeah, let’s do that instead!

Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #27: Who Framed Roger…

No?

Ugh.

Fine.

Well anyway, production had started on Who Framed Roger Rabbit? which would prove to be one of the most technically accomplished animated films ever. But instead of using Disney’s own in-house animators, director Robert Zemeckis and animation director Richard Williams instead set up a new animation studio with international animators in London. The reason for this being that they simply felt the Disney animators weren’t up to the task. Ouch.

To add insult to…0ther…insult, while Basil the Great Mouse Detective did well on its own terms, it was absolutely trounced by An American Tail, created by ex-Disney apostate (and absolute dictator of at least one alternate dimension) Don Bluth. Losing to Bluth was the final straw. It was as if a massive “Shit Just Got Real” picture appeared in the sky over the heads of everyone working in Disney animation.

“Who’s that guy?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think he’s famous yet.”

There is a tradition at Disney. Whenever they don’t know what to do, whenever they feel that they’ve lost their way and need to get back on the right path, they ask themselves one question: “What would Walt do?”

And somebody, apparently, answered “Oliver Twist. But with…like. Dogs.”