Current Events > Watching a Disney/Pixar movie every day until I go insane, the topic

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This isnt part of the Disney canon but we watched the Winnie the Pooh Christmas special with my 3-yo which led to us watching the 80s cartoon, New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and omg this show is so funny (for adults). Did not remember it being as good as it is

The Nightmare Before Christmas
Originally released October 29, 1993

To many people, The Nightmare Before Christmas is a treasured holiday classic, and one of the best movies ever made. I know so many people who practically worship this movie. But to me, it's just... okay, I guess. I never got that into the vibe or the hype of it.

The residents of Halloween Town are having their annual celebration, which consists of singing a song about themselves. But the Pumpkin King, Jack Skellington (who isn't a pumpkin) is depressed, feeling like he's in a rut and needs something new to do. So he sings himself into the forest as Sally, a Frankenstein's monster stuffed with leaves, watches him go while gathering poison to try and incapacitate/kill the scientist who created her.

Jack eventually makes his way to a circle of trees with holiday-themed doors on them, and is especially drawn to the Christmas door. He goes through it and ends up in Christmas Town, where he's absolutely fascinated and becomes immediately obsessed. While the residents of Halloween Town wonder where their king got lost, he rides in on a snowmobile and holds a town meeting to try and explain Christmas to them, but they're too dumb to get it.

So Jack borrows some equipment from Dr. Finkelstein and uses it poorly, basically confusing himself further in his attempt to science Christmas. He decides that the best way to explain Christmas is to force the town into celebrating it, and assigns everybody a job. One of these jobs is for a trio of trick-or-treaters named Lock, Shock, and Barrel to kidnap Santa Claus so Jack can take his place. After a false start, they get him, and take him to Oogie Boogie despite Jack's orders. Sally also has a premonition of disaster and tries to warn Jack off his plan, but he ignores her.

Christmas arrives, and Jack is ready to go. Sally tries to sabotage it with fog so he can't fly but this plan fails exactly three seconds later when the ghost dog Zero pulls a Rudolph. Jack flies off to Christmas Town and delivers the Halloween-themed presents, which try to kill the residents. Sally somehow knows that the real Santa is being held at Oogie Boogie's lair and tries to rescue him, but fails, because that's kind of all she does in this movie.

The military shoots Jack down and he has a graveyard epiphany that he's not good at this Christmas thing and should go back to Halloween. So he heads off to bring Santa back, also immediately knowing that he's at Oogie Boogie's lair, and both he and Santa kill Oogie after a brief fight. Santa calls Jack an asshole, tells him to go fuck himself, and then blasts off to save Christmas. After that job is done, he makes it snow on Halloween Town and Jack decides he loves Sally. The End.

I will say, I kind of love the look of this movie. I'm not sure if it's aged particularly well but the stop-motion nature of it gives a fittingly creepy vibe. There are a lot of songs here, ranging from great to meh, but it almost feels like there are too many songs. Sometimes it seems like only two minutes have passed before the next musical number starts up, which kind of hurts the pacing of the story since it has to be written around music and not things like dialogue or action.

It also feels like the message at the end of the movie essentially boils down to "stay in your lane". Jack tries to do something new, fails, and goes back to what he was doing before. He doesn't learn anything except to not try and learn new things, although there is the angle that trying to do Christmas did inspire him... to do Halloween again. It's like anti-growth.

Finally, I want to address the character of Sally. While the majority of the Halloween Town residents are deliberately undeveloped supporting characters, she's presented as a main force of the story, but I'm going to be bold and say that if you remove her from the narrative altogether, literally nothing changes. None of her attempts to inject herself into the plot are successful. Jack doesn't acknowledge that she likes him until the end of the movie, so their relationship at the end doesn't feel satisfying or deserved. Every time she tries to do something like talk Jack out of Christmas, sabotage it with the fog, or rescue Santa, it immediately fails and does nothing but stall the plot for a few seconds. Sally doesn't contribute to the actual story of this movie at all, and is just... there. She's a forced romantic interest that the main character is completely oblivious to.

Along the same lines, Oogie kind of feels like a last-minute addition just to have an antagonist in the movie. Like Sally, he doesn't really do anything in the plot, and is just there to briefly torture Santa and have somebody for Jack to rescue him from. IMO the better conflict would have been for Santa to escape from Halloween Town on his own (or maybe with Sally's help, so she has an actual reason to be here), and for Jack to realize that he was misguided despite his good intentions and had made himself into the antagonist of his own film.

Sorry, Nightmare Before Christmas fans, but... I have to be true to my own opinion in this topic. I think that while it's a good movie, it's not a great one. Kind of overrated in my brutally honest opinion. I will give it credit for the animation, some of the songs, the creative plot, and that Jack is a legitimately fun main character who goes through some stuff. But I'm sorry. It's a mid movie. Bring on the hate.

Final Score: 5/10

Going back to the main list tomorrow, now that this incredibly well-timed two-day "Christmas special" is over. I didn't even have to break with chronological order to do it!

The Lion King
Originally released June 24, 1994

I have a memory attached to this movie that has nothing to do with the movie itself. When I was a kid and this movie was in theaters, I went to go see Star Trek Generations with my uncle. After that movie finished, he successfully snuck us in to see The Lion King, but me being a 7-year-old nerd I insisted that we left since we didn't pay to see it. I really robbed myself of a great childhood moment there.

The movie starts with every animal in the Pride Lands gathering to watch Rafiki the Magical Mandrill hold up the newborn lion Simba, who will one day rule over all of them and eat most of them. After the ceremony, his father and current king Mufasa confronts his withered brother Scar, who skipped it out of jealousy since he just lost his place in line for the throne. Scar outright warns Mufasa that he's going to kill him, but Mufasa brushes it off.

The next... day? Week? Month? Simba wakes Mufasa up to give him a tour of the Pride Lands. During this tour Mufasa is called away by his assistant Zazu who tells him hyenas were spotted in their borders, and Simba returns to Pride Rock where Scar taunts him into visiting the Elephant Graveyard. Simba recruits his best friend / arranged bride Nala and they're off. After ditching Zazu, they make it to the graveyard and are immediately nearly eaten by three hyenas named Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed. These hyenas get the shit kicked out of them by Mufasa, who sternly yet lightly scolds Simba afterward.

Unwilling to give up, Scar visits the hyenas and holds a Trump rally, gathering an army of Proud Boys. Shortly after he brings Simba to the bottom of a canyon and tells him to wait there for a surprise. The hyenas start a wildebeest stampede, and Scar runs off to get Mufasa. Mufasa gets Simba to safety, but is killed when Scar throws him back into the stampede. Simba finds his body afterward and Scar then convinces him that he's responsible and to run away. Scar's king now.

Dying of dehydration in the desert, Simba is saved by Timon and Pumbaa, two CERTIFIED GOOD GUYS (Pumbaa a bit more than Timon). They teach him the Bear Necessities -- sorry, wrong movie, they teach him Hakuna Matata -- and make him into a bug-eating NEET. He grows into an adult lion and rescues Pumbaa from being eaten by Nala, who tells him he needs to go kick Scar's ass because the Pride Lands are dying under his rule. Simba refuses, but Rafiki and Mufasa's Giant Ghost convince him to return. Nala, Timon, and Pumbaa follow.

Back at Pride Rock, Simba confronts Scar, who gaslights him into taking the blame for Mufasa's death again. Simba quickly gets him to confess and the Lioness v. Hyena war is on, and easily won by the lionesses. Simba easily overpowers Scar and gives him a chance to run away, but Scar attacks instead and ends up thrown off a cliff. He's then eaten by the hyenas, who are pissed off about Scar trying to put all the blame on them about five minutes earlier.

With Simba ruling over things, the Pride Lands return to normal. Animals come back, grass grows again, the sun shines, and he makes a direct-to-video sequel with Nala. The End.

We all know this movie's getting a 10, right? This is one of the best movies Disney's ever made, regardless of whether or not it's actually a ripoff of Kimba. This movie became a cultural touchstone filled with amazing animation, hit song after hit song, wonderful characters, and an engaging, perfectly-paced plot. It's (I think) the longest movie yet in this marathon at 88 minutes, but it feels less than that because of how quickly everything keeps moving without feeling rushed. I can't think of any way Disney could have done better with this movie.

Final Score: 10/10

Bravo on that summary! Great movie alright.

If you've got a LaserDisc player I could lend you Song of the South.

I love TNBC but can admit its because of the spectacle factors: animation, character and set design, and catchy tunes. Youre completely right to criticize the story and character roles. Ive also seen criticism of the song lyric writing that I couldnt disagree with.

A Goofy Movie
Originally released April 7, 1995

I'm going off list again, because I really wanted A Goofy Movie to be a part of this marathon. Hey, it technically counts; it's an animated Disney movie that got a theatrical release. It's just... not on the list.

Anyway, this is a sequel to the cartoon Goof Troop, with the characters slightly older. It's a road trip comedy movie with a really episodic feel to it, going from location to location and problem to problem. And quite a bit of the humor still holds up, I'm really pleased to say, even if the animation quality itself feels like a little bit of a step down after the last few big movies (specifically Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King).

Max Goof, now a teenager, is about to have his first day of school before summer vacation, and with the help of his friends P.J. and Pauly Shore (playing Pauly Shore as a dog), he hijacks the principal's speech to put on a Milli Vanilli lip-sync-concert where he plays the part of the pop star Powerline. This lands him detention, a date with his crush Roxanne (who also has a crush on him), and new status as the coolest kid in school (just in time for school to end).

Goofy, meanwhile, gets a very hyperbolic phone call from the principal who calls Max a gang member destined for the electric chair. Not wanting this fate for his son, Goofy hijacks his summer vacation for a road trip to go fishing. Max manages to "talk" him into stopping at Roxanne's house so he can cancel their date, but when his attempt to explain what's happening doesn't go over well, he lies and says he's going to dance on stage at the Powerline concert.

Thus begins the road trip. After a musical number on the world's most dangerous highway, their first pit stop is at the terrifying Lester's Possum Park, where Max is fully humiliated by Goofy's antics. Rather than talk things through, they have a fight, and then set up to camp in the woods before Pete parks his gigantic RV on top of Goofy and gives him some terrible advice. Goofy then takes Max fishing and teaches him the Perfect Cast, which he uses to catch Bigfoot. Bigfoot terrorizes them for the rest of the day and into the night, trapping them in their car where they almost talk to each other. Max, unable to sleep, alters Goofy's map to lead them to Los Angeles instead of the lake.

The next day, free of Bigfoot's antics, they're eating breakfast at a truck stop and Goofy officially declares Max to be the trip's navigator in a show of trust. This helps their relationship a bit, and things are going pretty good until Pete shows up again to eavesdrop and learn of the map alterations. He tells Goofy about it and, after Max deliberately leads them the wrong way, Goofy gets pissed and calls him out. They crash their car into a river, where they have their first legitimate conversation of the movie and figure out what's been bothering each other the entire time. Goofy almost dies going over a waterfall and Max rescues him with the Perfect Cast.

Now they've somehow arrived in L.A. and have snuck into the Powerline concert, where they do end up on stage. Rather than have security kick them out, Powerline is incredibly cool with it and incorporates them into the act, which is seen by Roxanne and everybody else in Max's school. Their quest finished, they return home, and Max confesses his lie to Roxanne. She still likes him and his laugh, though, so it's all good. Goofy fucking dies in an explosion. The End.

Another favorite of my childhood (you'll hear this a lot through the 90s), I was a little nervous that this one wouldn't hold up after The Rescuers Down Under failed me. And... I'm happy to report that this one's still good. Now that I'm older, I identify a bit more with Goofy's side of things and think Max is kind of a piece of shit, but I'm especially bothered by the fact that they don't just TALK to each other. Yeah, I know if they did that there would be no movie, but it's still a simple thing that would have solved the entire problem.

Ah well, the movie itself is still pretty well paced. The animation's a step down from the previous big theatrical releases, but with this basically just being a longer Goof Troop episode, it's a minor gripe. It's not bad animation. I commented on it having a very episodic feel to it, which it does, but these honestly help the road trip feel of the movie and kind of serve the plot, making Goofy and Max's relationship even more strained and out of touch with each other until they finally reconcile. I don't know if Pete and P.J. necessarily needed to be a part of this process, though; I think they just wanted to keep these characters in this movie, but it's a bit odd that Peg and Pistol didn't join them on their vacation. Maybe they divorced.

Final Score: 8/10

Pocahontas
Originally released June 23, 1995

I was never a big fan of this movie. I don't think it's just because I was "getting too old" when it came out, because I would have only been eight. I probably just wasn't part of the right demographic. I felt like it was kind of boring, and never got into it compared to more action-filled movies like Aladdin, Lion King, or Hercules... and as an adult, I still feel like it's kind of boring. Only now I know enough actual history to realize how... well, sanitized this movie is.

The British are coming to the New World, led by the evil Governor Ratcliffe and the not-evil John Smith. And Pocahontas, the daughter of Chief Powhatan, doesn't want to be married to her tribe's warrior Kocoum because he's boring. I don't think the movie actually mentions what tribe she belongs to, but historically she was Powhatan, so that's how I'm going to refer to her people in this review -- to avoid Prince John/Little John confusion, I'll call her father either "Dad" or "Chief".

Anyway, Pocahontas goes to visit the Deku Tree's sister, Grandmother Willow, who encourages her to listen to spirits to figure out what her dream means. Pocahontas spots some "strange clouds" moving on the horizon, which are actually the sails of Ratcliffe's ship. The Powhatan people use literally magic to put on a laser light show that makes them afraid of the British. They hope that they move on quickly, but oops, they just founded Jamestown.

Ratcliffe orders his men to randomly dig for gold while John goes exploring and figures out that Pocahontas has been stalking him. He gets the drop on her, almost shoots her, but then they realize that they're both hot. Using more magic, Pocahontas learns to speak English. She calls him a racist and sings about how he needs to check his privilege. Meanwhile, Ratcliffe's men shoot one of the Powhatan people who have been spying on them, and he's brought back to the village. Pocahontas hears ominous drums and returns home.

John returns to camp and Ratcliffe decides that the Powhatan people are hoarding all the gold for themselves. Pocahontas and John meet up again at Grandmother Willow and decide to try and talk things through with Dad. But they were both being spied on, and John's friend Thomas shoots and kills Kocoum with one of those immediately fatal injuries that doesn't leave a gunshot wound. John is brought back to the Powhatan village as a prisoner and they decide he's going to be the first one they kill in the war.

Ratcliffe dresses up as a Blackguard and leads his men in a racist anthem. The Powhatan sing the exact same racist anthem in a pretty on-the-nose "both sides"ing. They charge off to war and Pocahontas dives in front of the club before the Chief can kill John, which takes the fight out of both sides. Ratcliffe still tries to shoot the Chief, but John dives in front and takes the bullet. Ratcliffe's men turn on him and take him prisoner.

Later, the British are preparing to bring John back to England to have his gunshot wound treated, because they're idiots who didn't bring a doctor with them and a long sea voyage is apparently just what he needs. John asks Pocahontas to come with him, but she decides she'd rather wait for the direct-to-video sequel. The End.

As I said above, this movie was kind of boring. I just didn't feel that engaged with it at all. And they also decided to ignore the actual history of Pocahontas and John Smith in favor of telling a Romeo and Juliet story, which I guess works better for a kid's movie, but it's like... if you wanted to do Romeo and Juliet, just do Romeo and Juliet. Don't take actual historical figures and completely misrepresent their lives to do it. It's also a little eyebrow-raising how many plot points are presented or solved by the Powhatan people employing actual, obvious magic.

It did have some great visuals and songs, as typical of Disney movies, so it's going to retain a few points there. But I do feel like it is, so far, the weakest of the Renaissance Era and one of the weaker movies I've watches so far overall.

Final Score: 4/10

It's interesting to note that, as one of several instances of such throughout Disney's history, The Lion King was internally viewed as the underdog compared to Pocahontas -- both of which were in production at the same time. Pocahontas was expected to be their major Renaissance hit, with Lion King being treated as more of a side project. As we all know now, basically the opposite ended up happening.

Got a late start due to a Blood on the Clocktower game that ran a bit too long, but hey, if I'm still awake and I press play before midnight, it counts.

Toy Story
Originally released November 22, 1995

Pixar's first theatrical release! When this movie came out, it was kind of an event. This was, as I remember, the first feature-length animated movie to be made entirely with computer-generated graphics rather than hand drawn or stop motion. And the visuals have aged well, but not great. There are flat textures everywhere, and the movie is filled with honestly really weird animations and facial expressions, especially where a human character is involved -- or especially Sid's dog. But hey, I'm not going to judge it too harshly for that. The movie is the first of its kind (or at least one of the first), it's almost 30 years old, and it still looks pretty good, albeit not nearly as mind-blowingly realistic as we used to think.

Moving day is coming up, and Andy's toys are preparing for it. They're surprised when Andy has an early birthday party, worried about any incoming new toys that might take their place. So, to ease their fears, the sheriff Woody -- Andy's favorite toy, and thus the de facto leader -- deploys plastic army men to do recon. Andy gets a bunch of shitty gifts like a lunchbox and bedsheets (who invited THAT kid?) until he opens a Buzz Lightyear figure, bringing it up to his room.

Buzz is more than a bit delusional, believing himself to be a real space marine and not a toy. Woody immediately becomes a jealous prick about it, and while the other toys play along (no pun intended), he just treats Buzz like an idiot. Slowly, Andy's room changes to a space theme, validating his fears of being replaced.

A couple days before moving day, Andy's going to Pizza Planet, and is told he can bring a single toy with him. Woody tries to knock Buzz behind a dresser but accidentally knocks him out the window instead. RC the remote-controlled car tells the other toys what he's done and they turn on him, but before they can execute Woody, Andy returns to the room. Unable to find Buzz, he brings Woody along. Buzz emerges from the bushes below his window and, angry at Woody, climbs onto the car.

At a gas station, Buzz attacks Woody and they both fall out and get left behind. They hitch a ride on a Pizza Planet delivery car and arrive at the restaurant, where Buzz climbs inside a claw machine thinking it's a spaceship. Woody follows to retrieve him, and they're both won by the neighbor menace Sid, who brings them back to his Bedroom of Terrors. They witness two toys being Frankensteined together and realize how fucked they are.

Woody and Buzz escape from Sid's room, where Buzz sees his own commercial on TV and realizes he's a toy. He tries to fly and breaks his arm off, then has an existential crisis that throws him into a deep depression. Sid straps a firework to his back, intending to launch him into space and blow him up, but Woody gives him a pep talk that snaps him out of his funk. The moving truck arrives moments before Sid beings Buzz into the backyard, and Woody enlists the help of Sid's pigeon-rats to rescue him.

The toys rescue Buzz by revealing their sentience to him, and he runs screaming into the house to seek decades of therapy. Buzz and Woody barely catch the moving truck, but Buzz falls off to fight Sid's dog Scud. At the world's longest residential red light, Woody opens up the back of the truck and digs through boxes until he finds RC, pushing him off the back of the truck and using his remote to rescue Buzz. The other toys think Woody is now trying to get rid of RC like he did Buzz and attack him, then throw him off the truck.

RC and Buzz pick up Woody and chase after the truck, but RC's batteries die before they can reach it. They employ Rocket Power to catch up and throw RC into the back of the moving van, with Woody and Buzz landing through the open sunroof of Andy's mom's minivan. With everyone reunited and back on good terms with each other, it's Christmas time, where Mr. Potato Head gets a Mrs. Potato Head and Andy gets a puppy. The End.

Pixar went all-out for their first theatrical film. I mentioned earlier that the animation hasn't aged particularly gracefully, but you can tell they gave it their all here. For how rough it is, any ACTUAL mistakes are incredibly rare; there were a few times I noticed some odd clipping, and Scud is animated VERY badly, but the movie's still a real treat to look at. And Randy Newman's soundtrack fits the theme perfectly.

It's easy to point at Sid as the villain of the movie, but that's not really accurate. He's more of a force of nature or a plot device, something to bring Woody and Buzz together at last. Woody himself is the antagonist of the movie, letting himself get so consumed by jealousy that he never gives Buzz an honest chance until the end of the movie. The conflict of the movie really feels like a sibling rivalry, with an only child being jealous about a new baby and all the attention they get.

Finally, I need to address the spaceman in the room. Nine years before this movie released, Jim Henson released The Christmas Toy, a movie about toys that only come to life when their owner isn't around, and at Christmas, are worried about new toys that may usurp their place. One of them is Meteora, a space-hero toy who thinks she's real and landed on a strange planet. If that sounds familiar, it's because it's Toy Story. I don't think there's any actual proof that Disney/Pixar ripped it off, but there are honestly so many similarities, and nine years is a bit too long for benefit of the doubt. I don't think I can cost it a point for this, though, because I don't think I've penalized any other movie for doing this (specifically) and Toy Story DID move in different directions after hijacking the core concept.

...why did Buzz still pretend to be a toy when Andy was around, though?

Final Score: 10/10

TMOG posted...

...why did Buzz still pretend to be a toy when Andy was around, though?

just to fit in, I guess

The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Originally released June 21, 1996

I'm a little... eh, I dunno, neutral on this one? It's a good movie with a couple important themes to it (accept yourself, and accept others) but honestly it just didn't engage me as much as other movies have. It did have one really neat narrative trick that I never caught on to as a kid and REALLY enjoyed, which I'll mention later.

Judge Claude Frollo ambushes a group of Roma (the movie itself uses the slur for them exclusively; I refuse to do so) as they try to enter Paris at night, killing a mother and taking her baby. Once he realizes the baby is deformed, he plans to drown it in a well, but a priest exits Notre Dame and asks "the fuck are you doing?" The priest orders Frollo to raise the baby as his own child to repent for the mother's murder, and Frollo's like "fine, but he lives here".

Twenty years later, Quasimodo is swingin' around the Notre Dame bell tower with his three waist-up gargoyle friends, named Laverne, Victor, and Jason Alexander. Quasimodo wants to go down into the city and join the Festival of Fools, and with a little encouragement from the gargoyles, he does just that. He's pulled into a song-and-dance number and named the King of Fools because he's ugly, which is kind of a mixed signal. Even more mixed is when the crowd turns on him and starts torturing him, until the Romani girl Esmeralda steps in to help, with a little bit of support from the captain of the guard Phoebus. Both Esmeralda and Phoebus get to join the CERTIFIED GOOD GUYS club, because they're both just great and kind and helpful to everyone, not just Quasimodo.

Frollo is pissed off that Quasimodo went to the Festival, and even more pissed off that Esmeralda helped him, wanting her found and killed. He gets even more pissed off when Phoebus refuses to arrest her inside Notre Dame, lying and claiming that she called base. While she's in Notre Dame, we learn that Jason Alexander is Disney's first officially out gay character, because he VERY OPENLY has the hots for Esmeralda's pet male goat, Djali. (I had to look it up, because I was about to misspell it as "Jolly") Later that night, Quasimodo helps Esmeralda escape while Frollo gets his first erection in 70 years by thinking about her, deciding that he needs to burn down all of Paris in order to see her either married to him or dead.

So, he has his guards start setting Paris on fire. Phoebus refuses to burn a house containing an innocent family, and instead dives in to save them from the inferno. Frollo orders him killed but he escapes, but gets shot in the shoulder with an arrow and falls in the river. Esmeralda rescues him and takes him to Notre Dame, where she treats his injury and makes out with him in front of Quasimodo. Frollo returns shortly after and tricks Quasimodo into leading him to the secret Romani hideout, the "Court of Miracles", because he somehow knows that Quasimodo has a way to find it I guess?

Quasimodo and Phoebus get to the Court and are almost killed, but Esmeralda saves them from being hanged. Frollo storms the place with a bunch of soldiers and takes them all prisoner, and the next day he's ready to burn Esmeralda. Quasimodo goes full Hulk and breaks a bunch of chains before swinging down on a rope that's constantly changing length to save her, bringing her back up to the bell tower and calling base. Frollo orders his men to attack Notre Dame, and Quasimodo holds them off with the help of the gargoyles. Phoebus rallies the citizens of Paris to revolt against Frollo and his soldiers, because holy shit, enough's enough.

Whoops, Esmeralda's dead. Frollo makes his way to the bell tower and tries to stab Quasimodo, but loses the knife to him. Whoops, Esmeralda's alive. Frollo chases them around the exterior of Notre Dame, trying to kill them with a sword, but falls off into a pool of lava. Phoebus saves Quasimodo from falling, and the day is won. Quasimodo steps back to let Esmeralda and Phoebus be together because they're both hot, even though I don't think a throuple scenario was ever off the table. He then steps outside and a little girl touches his face. The End.

Like I said above, it's not a bad movie, but it just didn't grab me. A lot of parts felt a little slow or uninteresting, and with the exception of Topsy Turvy and Hellfire, the music was kind of quiet and dull. It just wasn't as exciting as other Renaissance Era movies until the siege at the very end, and at times it felt like the plot was just plodding along.

However, I did also mention a neat narrative trick they employed. As I was watching, I realized that the movie is pretty unclear as to whether or not the gargoyles themselves are actually sentient things that can move around, or if Quasimodo is just nuts and invented his own friends out of loneliness. There are a few moments that break this theory, like when Jason Alexander hits on Djali or when they assist with holding back the attack at the end of the movie, but these parts could also be viewed as Quasimodo's imagination at work while HE'S the one throwing bricks and catapults.

Not a bad movie, but not the best Disney's ever done. Kind of middle-of-the-pack by the Renaissance Era standards.

Final Score: 7/10

Hercules
Originally released June 27, 1997

This was one of my favorites as a kid. It came out at a time when I was a huge, huge nerd for Greek mythology, and despite Young Me being a huge nerd who was bothered by the inaccuracies here (not talking about the expected pop culture references), I still loved it. As an adult, I'm more able to recognize that just like Pocahontas before it, Disney wasn't REALLY trying to tell the story of Hercules here; they were trying to tell the story of Superman.

All the gods are gathered on Mount Olympus to celebrate the birth of Zeus and Hera's son, the baby Heracles -- er, Hercules. I guess just making him the son of two gods is easier on kids than saying Zeus turned into a goat and banged a mortal woman and Hera actually wanted him dead. (It also works better with this movie being a Superman retelling) Hades isn't as thrilled with the birth because he hates the job Zeus gave him in the Underworld, and upon learning that his plan to release the Titans and conquer Olympus will fail if Hercules fights, he pulls a Maleficent and decides to kill the baby.

Hades sends his mandatory comedy relief minions, Pain and Panic, to feed kidnap Hercules and feed him a potion that will turn him mortal. They get scared off by Ma and Pa Kent before the baby can finish the entire bottle, and fail to kill him because he's still super strong. The Kents raise Hercules into a young man who destroys the entire village market because he's clumsy and everyone hates him.

That night, they reveal to Hercules that he's adopted, and he sets off to the Temple of Zeus to find out who his parents are. Zeus possesses his own statue and tells Hercules that he's a Kryptonian, and can only regain his godhood if he becomes a true hero. Reuniting him with his childhood bird-horse Pegasus, Zeus sends him to find Philoctetes, the Trainer of Heroes. Phil is retired and disillusioned, but after a display of strength from Hercules and a smiting from Zeus, he agrees to train him.

After Herc buffs up, Phil takes him to go start his hero career. Hercules' first accomplishment is to rescue the aggressively sarcastic Megara from a centaur. He's smitten with her but Pegasus and Phil hate her, probably because she's secretly working for Hades, who gets pissed when he finds out Hercules is still alive. Phil takes Hercules to the city of Metropolis -- er, Thebes -- where everyone is unconvinced of his heroics. Meg appears to beg for help rescuing two boys from a landslide. Hercules helps out and saves the boys, who are actually a shapeshifted Pain and Panic, and releases a computer-animated hydra, which he kills with rocks.

Now that the people of Thebes are convinced that Hercules is, in fact, a hero, he gets a celebrity montage and becomes rich. While bragging to Zeus' statue, Hercules learns he's not yet a true hero, just famous. Hades orders Meg to learn what Hercules' weakness is, and when she fails to find one but falls in love instead, Hades concludes that she is his weakness. Phil overhears this and runs off to warn Hercules, but rather than outright say "I saw Megara and Hades scheming", he beats around the bush until he gets frustrated and leaves.

Hades makes a deal with Hercules to release Meg in exchange for Herc giving up his strength for 24 hours, which Hercules accepts on the condition that Megara isn't hurt in the battle to come. Hades releases the Titans, who immediately begin killing people and horses and march on Olympus. Hades orders a giant gross cyclops to kill Hercules, but Herc kills the cyclops by shoving him off a cliff after Phil returns to give him a pep talk. Meg shoves him out of the way of a falling pillar, getting crushed in the process and breaking Hades' deal. Hercules gets his strength back and flies off to Olympus to stop the Titans and imprison them again.

With Olympus and the gods saved, Meg dies and her soul is taken to the Underworld. Hercules storms the gates and threatens Hades, who shows him his Soulnado. Herc offers a deal to trade places with Meg, and Hades accepts, knowing that Hercules won't survive the attempt to save her soul anyway. Hercules dives into the Soulnado and his godhood is restored, allowing him to escape with Megara and shove Hades in to be attacked by hundreds of dead Greeks. The gods are ready to welcome Hercules back to Olympus, but he chooses to remain mortal and live with Meg. Phil makes out with Aphrodite. The End.

This movie is a well-paced blast to watch, with a visual style that really stands out in the Renaissance Era. It's a bit more cartoony, but also looks kind of like Greek pottery art in a lot of ways, particularly the sharp angles and the swirly detail work on the characters and their hair/clothing. Every song is an upbeat, catchy bop, even the mandatory "oh fuck I love him" song from Megara. James Woods, complete asshole that he is, still does a fantastic job with Hades, and Danny DeVito is such a perfect pick for Phil that he needs to reprise the role in the live-action version, Zeusdammit. The plot is definitely more Superman than it is Hercules, but it's still handled in a way that feels more fun and accurate than when they tried to turn Romeo and Juliet into Pocahontas.

Final Score: 10/10

Yeah, really like the Hercules movie. Glad you enjoyed it. The cartoon was also cool.

Mulan
Originally released June 19, 1998

Another fantastic movie. I probably sound like a broken record by now constantly praising the animation and soundtracks for these films, but that's because the Disney Renaissance Era deserves that praise. So instead of going in depth about those aspects, I'll just go on to summarize Mulan... and then talk about its most glaring flaw.

Huns have breached the Great Wall, led by Shan Yu, a massive man with no other real defining traits. And our protagonist Mulan is getting all dolled up to meet the Matchmaker and find a husband, but instead lights the Matchmaker on fire and is told to die alone. Later that day, her ailing, crippled father is conscripted to fight in the Chinese army against the Huns. Knowing what she has to do, Mulan steals her father's conscription papers, sword, and armor, disguising herself as a man to go fight in the sexist army.

Her ancestors, hearing her family's prayers to keep her safe, awaken and try to send the Great Stone Dragon to bring her home. But the tiny comedy dragon Mushu accidentally destroys its statue, then rushes off to instead help Mulan win the war and earn a medal so he can be reinstated as a proper guardian. Enlisting the help of a lucky cricket who seems to just be named Cricket, he meets up with Mulan, who's unimpressed but accepts his help anyway. She proceeds to start a brawl in the camp and make everyone hate her, especially their nepo baby captain, Li Shang.

"Be A Man" plays and there's a montage of Mulan (taking the alias Ping) and her fellow soldiers being a bunch of bumbling doofuses, until she retrieves an arrow from the top of a post and motivates everyone to do better. She gets to see every last one of her fellow soldiers' wieners before overhearing the Emperor's counselor telling Shang that his unit is a failure and he doesn't deserve to be captain. Taking the opportunity, Mushu and Cricket forge a letter calling the unit to the frontlines of battle.

They arrive at a snowy mountain pass to find a destroyed village and a field full of dead Chinese soldiers, including Shang's father. While marching towards the capital, Mushu accidentally lights a rocket and gives away their position. Shan Yu's army attacks and Mulan uses the last rocket to cause an avalanche, burying the entire Hunnic army in snow. She's wounded in the fight and, while having her injury treated, is discovered to be a woman. Shang declines to execute her since she saved his life, but he does leave her behind as the army marches to the capitol. As Mulan, Mushu, and Cricket all confess their lies to each other, Shan Yu and a couple survivors of his army emerge from the snow. Mulan sees this and they ride off to the capitol to warn everyone.

Shang and his army are being hailed as the Heroes of China, but clearly feel like frauds. Mulan tries to warn Shang that Shan Yu is alive, but he brushes her off. As he's being honored, Shan Yu and the Handful of Huns attack and take the Emperor hostage, barricading themselves in the palace. Mulan helps Shang and her trio of goofy friends break in and rescue him; while the trio escape with the Emperor, she stays behind to save Shang and fight Shan Yu, killing him with fireworks.

The Emperor acknowledges Mulan's achievements and bows to her, then offers her his shithead counselor's job. She declines to go home and he gives her some rewards, then advises Shang to stop being an idiot and go after her. He does, and Mulan's grandma gets horny for him. Mushu is reinstated as a guardian as the ancestors throw a dance party. The End.

It's a fuckin' great movie. Mulan is probably one of the best protagonists Disney has written up to this point, with a clear motivation and a great journey from somebody who's portrayed as physically incompetent to training up as a very capable soldier. Her intelligence and ingenuity are also put to use in several ways to actually serve the plot, unlike other heroines such as Belle, whose intelligence is mainly treated as a throwaway character trait. I'd put her on the Disney Avengers team for sure.

Now, I did mention a glaring flaw in the opening paragraph, and that flaw is Shan Yu. As an antagonist, he's... eh. Everything about him is one note and bland, and he's kind of forgettable. I suppose the story of this movie isn't one where the antagonist HAD to be a very well-defined character, since it was about Mulan's personal journey and quest for acceptance in the face of a very, very sexist society. Shan Yu didn't need to be a charismatic and memorable character because he was actually more of a plot device. So, he really sucks as a villain compared to almost everyone else we've seen so far, but... I guess it doesn't really matter in this case?

Good movie, great movie. Disney's really on a roll these days, and surely that roll will last forever.

...Won't it?

Final Score: 10/10

I wonder which one will make you go insane.

Home on the Range? Nah, too easy.

I might not be able to watch today's movie. I'm not quite insane yet, but I did wake up today feeling pretty off, and it's getting a bit worse. I think I just need to lay down and try to sleep and make tomorrow a double feature.

I decided to power through and watch the cartoon.

A Bug's Life
Originally released November 25, 1998

Pixar's second theatrical release, and in all honesty, SUCH a huge visual improvement over Toy Story. They put in a lot of work in those three years, and it shows. The textures, character models, and animations are so near-flawless that this would honestly hold up if it were released today. I was honestly blown away watching this how well the animation holds up, I was expecting it to be a bit janky like Toy Story was... but it's not.

A colony of ants is working hard to collect a mountain of grain and berries to be an offering to a gang of grasshoppers who want their protection money. One of the ants, Flik, is a bit of a genius inventor but also a bumbling doofus, and his latest invention -- a device that makes grain harvesting much more efficient -- accidentally ends up knocking all the gathered food off a cliff into the river. In the anthill, he tries to tell Princess Atta about what he did, but the grasshoppers stomp their way inside and start threatening to kill the much younger Princess Dot, who's Flik's biggest fan.

Hopper, the leader of the grasshoppers, give the ants until the end of summer to collect double their offering. At a hearing to decide what Flik's punishment should be for putting the colony in danger, Flik gets the idea to go find bigger, stronger bugs to fight off Hopper and his gang. The other ants agree to this plan just to get Flik out of the way so he can't fuck anything else up. So he heads off to the city, where he finds a group of circus bugs who just got fired for also being bumbling dumbasses who lit their former boss, P.T. Flea, on fire. There are about nine or ten of these bugs, so I'm not going to try and name them off individually. The circus bugs accidentally destroy an entire bar, killing dozens, and Flik recruits them. They think he's a talent scout who wants them for a performance and sign up.

Back at the colony, the ants celebrate the "warriors" who have come to save them, and the circus bugs quickly figure out that they're here to fight, not perform. They tell Flik that they're a bunch of clowns and magicians and he panics. The circus bugs try to leave, but are attacked by Chekhov's Bird and end up saving Dot from being eaten, earning applause and admiration from the ant colony. This inspires and encourages them enough to stick around and help with Flik's plan to build a fake bird they can use to frighten Hopper away.

While the ants build the bird, Hopper's gang is debating if they even want to bother going back for the ants' grain, since they have plenty of food already. Hopper tells them that they're DEFINITELY going solely because Flik stood up to him, and he doesn't want the rest of the ants to realize that they're stronger than they think and outnumber the grasshoppers a hundred-to-one, and it's almost like there's a very relevant metaphor here. So the grasshoppers fly off to go get their food.

As the ant colony and the circus bugs celebrate the completion of the fake bird, P.T. Flea arrives on his circus wagon looking for them. Exposed as the not-warriors that they are, they let slip that the bird was Flik's idea. The entire ant colony immediately decides to abandon the bird plan, call Flik a selfish piece of shit for lying to them, and banish him. Hopper's gang arrives the next day and, angry at the pathetic offering the ants have provided, force them into servitude. Dot overhears a plan to kill the Queen and leaves to go get Flik and the circus bugs, who decide to go back and carry out Operation Bird.

The circus restrains P.T. Flea inside the wagon and returns to the colony, distracting Hopper and the grasshoppers with a show while Flik and a bunch of kids go get the bird. The plan is a success; the fake bird flies around and the ants create a fake panic, which triggers Hopper's PTSD. During the chaos, P.T. -- who for some reason wasn't let in on the plan -- is freed and, in an act of legitimate yet misguided heroism, lights the fake bird on fire, causing it to crash. Furious at the ants' plan, Hopper has the shit beaten out of Flik, but Flik gives a speech that helps the ant colony find their collective balls and they charge, chasing all the grasshoppers away except Hopper.

Before Hopper can be dealt with, it begins the rain. The ants scramble for the ant hill and Hopper takes the opportunity to attack Flik and fly away with him. The circus bugs and Atta fly after them, but Flik is ultimately saved when he leads Hopper to the real bird's nest, where Chekhov's Bird feeds him to the newly hatched babies in what is honestly the most brutal and horrifying death a Disney villain has experienced so far. With Hopper dead and the ants saved, the circus bugs take their leave, Flik and his harvesters are accepted by the colony, Atta is named Queen, and Heimlich the Caterpillar becomes Heimlich the Beautiful Butterfly. The End.

I don't know why I always viewed this movie as inferior to the Toy Story films flanking it as a kid. It's honestly really, really great. I already mentioned how the animation holds up spectacularly, but it also has an all-star cast and genuinely likeable characters. The plot is a bit standard and predictable, and Hopper himself is only a couple steps above Shan Yu as far as a villain goes, but he's got more personality and is a more present and personal threat. There's also a ton of great humor that holds up as a 38-year-old watching, including a lot of jokes that I didn't quite get as a kid.

It did release close enough to Antz that I think I got the two movies combined somewhat in my head, and kept waiting for lines and scenes that didn't happen here. But that's not this movie's fault, it's Woody Allen's.

Final Score: 10/10

Disney continues its hot streak of incredible movies, which will surely never end. Surely.

(Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to take some Ny-Quil and go to bed early)

Tarzan
Originally released June 18, 1999

I think I only saw this movie one time as a kid, and I owe that to a couple of factors. The first being that it seems like it came out so quickly after Jumanji, Jungle 2 Jungle, and George of the Jungle that I was already burnt out on the "wild jungle man" craze of the late 90s, and the second being that I was starting to grow older and entering that stupid age where I was starting to care more about what other kids thought about the things I found entertaining, so I was just watching less Disney in general at that point in my life. But hey, now I'm 38 years old and don't give a fuck about others' opinions of my entertainment, so I'm going to give this cartoon the fair shake it never got in my youth.

A gorilla named Kala is left childless after a leopard named Sabor off-screens her baby, and chooses to adopt a baby human whose parents have been off-screened by the same leopard in their truly bitchin' treehouse. She brings him back to the troop, who don't want to accept him, especially the leader Kerchak. But she chooses to keep him anyway and there's nothing they can do to stop her. Naming him Tarzan, he makes some really annoying friends and nearly kills the troop by causing an elephant stampede.

After Kala reassures him that he's not that different from the gorillas, Tarzan has a montage where he grows up and completes his Disney Protagonist training. Eventually, Sabor comes for the gorilla troop again, and Tarzan jumps into the fight after Kerchak is overpowered. Armed with a spear, Tarzan kills Sabor and yells his iconic yell in triumph. With their nemesis dead and Tarzan's parents avenged at long last, the gorillas finally accept Tarzan as one of their own, earning him a place in the troop. The End.

Honestly, it was okay, albeit a little short. The animation was nice but Tarzan's friends were really annoying and I didn't -- wait, hold on. A gunshot? There's still an hour left in the movie? That wasn't the climactic final battle? Alright, let's keep going, then.

While Kerchak warns the gorilla troop to stay away from whatever made that noise, Tarzan goes to investigate instead. He finds the hunter Clayton, who has been hired by Jane Porter and her father who I don't think the movie ever ACTUALLY names but Wikipedia tells me is Archimedes. Tarzan is immediately fascinated by the humans, and after saving Jane from a pack of pissed-off baboons, the two of them become horny for each other. Jane brings Tarzan back to the camp which is in the middle of being destroyed Stomp-style by the adolescent gorillas. Jane struggles to convince Clayton and Archie of Tarzan's existence until he literally drops in to learn English at an alarmingly fast rate.

Kerchak gives his troop more good advice to stay as far away from the humans as possible, but Tarzan returns to them every day to learn more and more, which seems to be an open secret among the gorillas. On the final day of their expedition, Clayton and the Porters' camp is being packed up by a very obvious crew of pirates, and Clayton tricks Tarzan into showing them where the gorillas are by promising that it will make Jane stay behind with him. Tarzan shows them, and Kerchak gets pissed. Kala shows Tarzan his childhood treehouse and implies that his place is with the humans, and Tarzan bids her a tearful goodbye as he decides to leave with them.

Whoops, it's a trap! Clayton and the pirates imprison Tarzan, the Porters, and the rest of the crew on the ship while they go gorilla hunting. They're freed by Tarzan's elephant friend who is somehow able to swim across the ocean and climb an anchor chain, and he's off to save the troop, rallying every animal in the jungle on his way. The jungle fights back against the pirates and free the gorillas, but Clayton shoots Kerchak in the battle. Tarzan activates one of his Rages and has a final battle with Clayton, during which the hunter accidentally hangs himself on some vines and dies.

Kerchak makes peace with Tarzan as he dies and names him as the new protector of the troop. As Jane and Archie are leaving, Archie encourages her to stay behind with Tarzan, then decides "fuck it" and stays behind as well. The three of them immediately strip down to loincloths and swing through the jungle. The End.

In all honesty, looking at this movie through relatively fresh eyes and with as little nostalgia (good or bad) as possible for something I've already seen, it's kind of a middling way for the Renaissance Era to come to an end. It's fine, but didn't feel as engaging or exciting as many of the movies that preceded it over the past decade and instead plays it safe, relying on established Disney tropes and not taking any chances narratively -- and as I mentioned a couple times, Tarzan's animal friends are genuinely annoying and I didn't like any of them. Clayton was at least a more present and active villain, and manipulated the incredibly naive jungle man pretty effectively.

The music was incredible, at least. I wouldn't call any of them incredibly upbeat bops like the other movies had (the camp destruction by Terk and the Adolescent Apes was catchy, but pointless) but they were all at least nice to listen to and set the tone well. I did have a weird thought occur to me when Tarzan started playing with Clayton's mustache, wondering why and how Tarzan himself was clean shaven. But eh.

Good movie, but I'd probably rank it as one of the lower of the Renaissance films. And with that era ominously drawing to a close, and a handful of movies coming up on the list that I hadn't seen before, it's a little unclear whether or not my sanity is now at risk.

Final Score: 7/10

Toy Story 2
Originally released November 24, 1999

Visually leaps and bounds above Toy Story 1, this one looks like I always remembered that movie looking like. This is also one of the movies I'd call a perfect sequel. It brings back the original cast and builds on them in meaningful ways, adding likeable new characters and a story that isn't just a repeat of the first.

Buzz is breaking into the hideout of his evil nemesis Zurg, who destroys his upper half because it's actually a video game Rex is playing. Andy is five minutes away from leaving for Cowboy Camp and sneaks in one final play session, during which he accidentally rips Woody's arm and gets him banished to the top shelf on the wall until he gets home. On the shelf, Woody discovers a forgotten squeaky toy named Wheezy who's put in a box for a yard sale while Andy's away, because Andy's mom is like that.

Woody enlists the family dog (who is modeled and animated MUCH better than Scud was in the previous movie) to rescue Wheezy from the yard sale, but in the process is discovered and stolen by a man named Al, voiced by Wayne Knight playing Wayne Knight. The other toys witness the theft and Buzz attempts a rescue but fails, leaving them with only two clues; a feather, and a vanity license plate. They decode these as leading to a toy store named Al's Toy Barn, where Al dances around in a chicken suit that definitely just has the feathers painted on.

Buzz leads a handful of other toys on a rescue mission while Woody meets his fellow cowboy toys Jessie (who comes across as more than a little psychotic), Bullseye the horse, and Stinky Pete the mint-in-box prospector. He learns that he's a toy based on an old TV puppet show and a huge celebrity, and that the full collection is to be sold to a collector's museum in Japan. He tries to escape and get back to Andy, but loses his arm completely and is forced to stay one more night. Jessie hates him for being selfish and dooming her to return to the dark loneliness of "storage".

The next day, while Woody is being repaired and repainted by a chess-playing old man, Buzz and the rescue team arrive at the toy store. There they meet Tour Guide Barbie and Buzz, seeking a new utility belt, is replaced by another faulty Buzz that thinks he's a real space ranger. The toys (now unknowingly swapping Buzz for Wrong Buzz) stow away in Al's bag and are brought back to his apartment across the street; Buzz follows behind, but accidentally releases a faulty Zurg toy in the process.

Jessie shares a sad story about her own kid giving her up to a charity's donation box, and Stinky Pete hammers in the final nail of the guilt coffin. Woody convinces himself that going to Japan is the best option and is now hyped for the trip just as his friends and Wrong Buzz arrive to save him. He plans to stay, but then hears the theme song from the first movie and decides once again to return to Andy. He invites the cowboy toys to go with them and become more of Andy's toys, but Stinky Pete has been secretly sneaking out of his box and does so again. Woody and the other cowboy toys are packed away in a secure case and Al is off to the airport; the other toys follow behind in a stolen car, except for Wrong Buzz and Zurg, who had a brief fight on top of an elevator and are now bonding with each other.

At the airport, the toys rescue Woody and Bullseye from the case, and Stinky Pete is doomed to be a little girl's new toy/artist's canvas. Jessie is unable to escape from the case and Woody, Bullseye, and Buzz ride off to save her before the plane takes off, but the plane takes off and they have to jump for it. With everyone safe the toys return to Andy's room and position themselves to welcome him home and show off the new toys, which he immediately starts playing with. The End.

Like I said -- a perfect sequel. It's actually a new story and not just a repeat of the first one, and the new characters are all really fun. There are a couple inconsistencies and the Wrong Buzz/Zurg stuff feels like unnecessary filler, but overall, I fucking love this. Once again, I give...

Final Score: 10/10

Dinosaur
Originally released May 19, 2000

Until this marathon, I had no idea this movie existed. What we have here is Disney's first fully computer animated movie that didn't come from Pixar, and... oh boy, they should have just let Pixar do it. After A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2, this movie is jarringly bad to look at. Everything looks like bad CGI that's poorly layered on top of a background, and the plot is literally just The Land Before Time with senior citizens.

Aladar is an iguanadon who's adopted by lemurs after his egg is stolen and multiple dinosaurs attempt to eat it. Growing into a young adult, he's left out of the mating ritual because he's about three hundred times the size of all the lemurs, who die soon in a meteor shower that hits their island like a targeted orbital strike. Only Aladar and four lemurs survive; his adopted parents Plio and Yar, his best friend and fellow virgin Zini, and the young Suri. I had to look up all their names because they barely do anything and I wasn't really given a reason to care about them.

While wandering the barren wasteland that is Earth, Aladar and the lemurs encounter a migrating herd, which literally walk right through Aladar while he stands there like a dumbass. They're being led by Kron, who doesn't give a shit about the older dinosaurs at the back and just wants to keep moving at the necessary pace for them to reach the oasis-like Great Valley, sorry, wrong movie. They're heading to the Nesting Grounds, which are the exact same concept.

Aladar follows the herd and sticks around the old dinosaurs protectively. They eventually arrive at a dried-up lake where they were hoping to rehydrate before continuing their march. Kron sends his second-in-command, Bruton, to scout for water while he keeps the herd moving because there's no point in sticking around, but Aladar discovers that there's water just beneath the surface, digs it up, and calls the herd back to drink. Kron's sister, Neera, decides she likes Aladar.

Bruton is attacked by a pair of Carnotaurs that are following the herd and manages to limp back to report to Kron, who immediately gets the herd moving. Aladar asks if they can move slow enough for the old dinosaurs to keep up but Kron says no, what the fuck are you talking about, we're being chased by predators. So Aladar sticks behind with the olds and they fall far behind, along with the injured Bruton, who relucantly joins them inside a cave. The Carnotaurs find them in the cave and Bruton, despite his injuries, sacrifices himself to give Aladar and the olds time to escape -- sure, what the hell, I'll give him a CERTIFIED BADASS medal for this one.

The death march continues and the Cave Crew discover a caved-in exit, which they dig through to find the Great Nesting Valley Grounds. Realizing that the usual way in is permanently blocked off now, Aladar runs back to tell Kron and the herd about the alternate route. Kron's being stubborn and just wants to climb over, but after a brief fight where Aladar gets his ass kicked and Neera saves him, the herd follows Aladar. They all moo at a Carnotaur who showed up to eat them, which scares it off until it spots Kron, who's still trying to climb. Aladar runs back to save him and throws the Carnotaur off the cliff, but Kron dies anyway.

The herd follow him through the cave and arrive at the oasis, where they start banging and having babies. More lemurs are found so Aladar's family don't end up alone and all the surviving dinosaurs are happy. The End.

I... don't know where to start with why I hated this movie. I already covered how bad the visuals are in the intro, so I won't touch on that again. It had a decent enough soundtrack and Disney was able to restrain themselves enough that the dinosaurs don't sing anything, but that kind of compounds the issue that ultimately, this movie is just a slow, boring, depressing death march. There are no real moments of levity and any attempts at it just fall flat. It's not uplifting or fun to watch and I don't know who the target audience was meant to be, because I can't see kids OR adults enjoying themselves.

Kron, at least, is an interesting and kind of engaging antagonist, so the final score will salvage a point or two thanks to this. The movie presents him as a stubborn, uncaring leader, but a lot of his decisions in the moment are honestly pragmatic and sensible. There's a moment where Neera points out that continuing on past the dried up lake without water will kill half the herd, and Kron says -- in admittedly the most asshole way possible -- that at least the other half will make it. And, let's be fair, that's an absolutely valid stance to take in the situation when the alternative is for the entire herd to just lay there and die. Similarly, when Aladar asks him to slow the pace for the olds, he blows it off because there are predators following them and they have a deadline to keep before the entire herd starves to death. Is it a stance lacking compassion? Yeah, absolutely, but they're in a situation where compassion is NOT a luxury they can afford, and Aladar's a new guy who's honestly coming across as pushy and naive.

So, yeah. I'm going to give it an extra point because Kron was honestly an antagonist that I enjoyed watching, and could understand his motivations. He had a bit more depth than Disney villains tend to have because, even though he was a complete asshole, he had the best interests of the herd as a whole in mind at all times except the very end of the movie where he refused to listen to Aladar about the safer way to their destination.

The rest of the movie, though, is depressing and ugly and not fun to watch.

Final Score: 2/10

Correction; Dinosaur is not Disneys first fully computer animated film because many of the settings and backgrounds are live action

its closer to those live action remakes like jungle book and lion king

TheGoldenEel posted...

Correction; Dinosaur is not Disneys first fully computer animated film because many of the settings and backgrounds are live action

its closer to those live action remakes like jungle book and lion king

Oh

It still looks like crap though

Dinosaur is a movie that wasn't part of the "canon" when it first came out. It was added to the list later on, probably so they could market Tangled as their 50th release.

Phantom_Nook posted...

Dinosaur is a movie that wasn't part of the "canon" when it first came out. It was added to the list later on, probably so they could market Tangled as their 50th release.

That's funny.

Forgot this movie existed. Thought it was The Good Dinosaur at first.

Fantasia 2000
Originally released June 16, 2000

A couple months ago, I watched Fantasia and scored it 1/10 because I found it really boring and pretentious. People in this topic hated me for that opinion, but I stand by it. Fantasia is boring and pretentious and I hate it. Every last goddamn second of it.

Fantasia 2000? I went into it with low expectations, because it's essentially a sequel to a movie I really didn't like at all. And... I kind of like it a lot better. Like Fantasia before it, it's broken down into multiple segments of varying length set to classical music, but the animation here is a lot more fun and, well, animated. The original Fantasia had some really animated segments for sure, but overall came across like they were trying too hard to be high-brow animation. In Fantasia 2000 they lean into things like a flamingo dicking around with a yo-yo, or Donald and Daisy Duck on Noah's Ark and each believing the other are dead due to repeatedly bad timing. They're not afraid of slapstick with this one and it made it more entertaining to watch.

But what really improved it for me is that each segment has its own narrative and story it's telling, with a defined beginning, middle, and end point. The majority of the original Fantasia felt like it was just doing nothing, but here every cartoon had a point to it and knew exactly how long it needed to be. The yo-yo flamingo one was very short because it was by far the simplest story; a flamingo had a yo-yo and the other flamingos were annoyed. Other segments, like the people in the Great Depression, were genuinely fun to watch and each character had his or her own identifiable personality and goal. There was actual storytelling here, not just pixies frolicking for twenty goddamn minutes.

Each segment is introduced by a different celebrity host, with varying results. Penn and Teller felt like an odd choice, James Earl Jones clearly had fun with it, and Steve Martin had too much fun with it to the point that you could actually see annoyance on some of the musicians sitting there while he played a violin poorly.

So, yeah, Fantasia 2000 makes up for Fantasia 1940 being a snoozefest. It's still not the most engaging watch, but it's decently entertaining. I don't think it's something I'd choose to watch again of my own free will when I have other movies available (I'm just really not a huge fan of the anthology format), but if somebody puts a gun to my head and forces me to choose between the two Fantasias, I'd pick this one in a heartbeat. At least I'll stay awake.

Final Score: 7/10

Yeah, I know it's a short review, but there's honestly not too much to say. It's still a Fantasia movie.

Sounds like Fantasia is to your topic what Baby Park has been to mine, lol.

Anyway, keep it up TC! I'm reading and enjoying every one of these (though admittedly I do skim through the synopses of movies I've already seen).

The Emperor's New Groove
Originally released December 15, 2000

...Oh, this one's gonna be a controversial score.

Kuzco is a spoiled, lazy, entitled, egotistical teenage Incan emperor and a real piece of shit. He serves as the movie's main character and narrator, and at the beginning summons villager Pacha to his palace to ask what side of his family's hill gets the best sun for a water park that he plans to build. Pacha leaves depressed while Kuzco fires his advisor Yzma, who's starting to lead the empire in his place.

Pissed off, Yzma and her right-hand man Kronk come up with a plan to poison Kuzco and replace him before word of her dismissal gets out. Kronk mixes up the vials and turns him into a llama instead, then backs down from killing him and instead loses him on Pacha's cart. Pacha returns home to his annoying kids and Kronk wakes up, thinking Pacha somehow transformed and kidnapped him out of revenge. Pacha tries to make a deal with Kuzco to get him back to the palace safely in exchange for not building a water park on top of his home, but Kuzco refuses and wanders into the jungle alone so a squirrel can try to kill him with jaguars.

Pacha inexplicably Tarzan-swings in on a vine to save Kuzco by tying them both to a log and dropping them into a river, then over a waterfall. He again tries to convince Kuzco to build his water park elsewhere, and Kuzco lies the next day in order to secure him as a guide. The lie is revealed about fifteen seconds later when Pacha falls through a bridge and Kuzco decides to let him die, but then comes back to taunt him one more time, falls through himself, and then they both save each others' lives. Pacha, thinking Kuzco will now honor the deal he just betrayed, decides to lead him to the palace again.

During all this, Kronk reveals to Yzma that Kuzco is alive, and they start searching for him. They eventually catch up at a diner where they serve gross giant pillbugs, but don't realize it because Kuzco is in drag. Pacha overhears them talking about killing Kuzco and tries to warn him, but Kuzco doesn't believe him and wanders off thinking Yzma will save him. He overhears two seconds later that she does want to kill him and tries to go back to Pacha, who has disappeared. But it's fine, because a couple minutes later he finds him talking to a herd of wild llamas and discovers that he's just been following him secretly for some reason.

Kronk realizes who Pacha is and they go to his house to wait for him, and all that really results from this are a few scenes of his family torturing Yzma. Kuzco and Pacha arrive at the palace and enter Yzma's lab to get the human transformation potion but Yzma has arrived first. Kronk betrays her when she insults him and he drops a chandelier on her, but she drops him through a trap door and summons the guards. A lot of slapstick chase ensues while Kuzco is drinking potion after potion and shapeshifting, then they all drop through a giant nose and Yzma turns into a cat.

Kuzco gets the potion and turns back into a human, and stops being a dick. He builds his summer home on the hill next door to Pacha and becomes his neighbor. Kronk becomes a scout leader to a bunch of kids and Yzma. The End.

You're all probably going to hate me for this, but this movie's scoring low. The plot itself would have been fine and was actually a really fun idea, but the pace and tone really ruins the experience. This is an absolutely fucking manic movie, moving from scene to scene in rapid succession and packing multiple jokes into every single line and character action.

The issue is that this movie falls into the trap of trying to be TOO funny to the point that it stops being funny. Comedy needs serious moments to play against in order for the audience to breathe, the tone to settle, and the jokes to land harder when delivered. An action movie that tries to add too much action can become boring; a horror movie that tries to add too much horror stops being scary; and a comedy that tries to add too many jokes becomes annoying. The Emperor's New Groove adds too many jokes and becomes annoying.

Worse yet is that this doesn't really allow any depth to the characters, so there's no reason to become attached to any of them. The closest we have to a likeable character in this movie is Pacha, because he's the only one who isn't evil, annoying, or stupid. He's also the only one with conflicting motivations, because he swings back and forth between using his desire to save his home in order to blackmail Kuzco into cooperation, and his desire to help others leading him to keep bringing Kuzco to the palace even after he JUST got left to die. It makes him likeable, but also makes him come across as kind of dumb.

And, hell, we're not even given any evidence that Yzma would have been a worse leader than Kuzco, so the viewer doesn't have any actual reason to want to see our heroes defeat her other than that she's stated to be the villain. We did see her dismiss a hungry villager's concerns in the beginning, but we also saw Kuzco do that and worse. She's a "tell, don't show" villain, and that made the conflict feel weak.

Sorry, I didn't like the movie all that much. I guess it just wasn't my groove.

Final Score: 4/10

Gotta agree with that one, tbh. Emperor's New Groove fits my personal definition of a 'cult' classic in that you need a cult-like mentality to ignore its numerous flaws. It does have some genuinely funny moments (mostly between Yzma and Kronk), but I've watched it several times and overall find it to be very forgettable.

But if I'd grown up with it I'd probably have a different opinion of it. I'd pretty much 'outgrown' Disney from Tarzan onward, and my interest in animated features shifted heavily to Pixar at that point; I don't think I started caring about Disney's in-house features again until Wreck-It Ralph.

True. ENG feels like a Disney cartoon stretched into a movie. Wacky characters and their voice actors thrown into a plot. In a way though I kind of like it for that. The restaurant and chase scenes are particularly funny.

Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Originally released June 15, 2001

This is one that I had never seen before, but was always aware of. I think it's one of those movies that I didn't know Disney was even involved with at all; the art style, and similar story idea, made me think it was from DreamWorks, because it REALLY looks and feels like The Road to El Dorado. But now that I've actually seen this movie, I know that it's not El Dorado; it's Stargate.

Daniel Jackson, aka Milo Thatch, is a linguist working at a museum who's obsessed with Atlantis and thinks he knows where it is. After threatening to quit his job because they won't fund a journey to Iceland he goes home to find an attractive woman waiting for him, who introduces him to the rich and eccentric Mr. Whitmore, who knew Milo's grandfather. Whitmore briefly tests Milo on his determination and then reveals that he's already built a cool-ass submarine and assembled an expert crew to find Atlantis, and offers Milo the position of linguist/guide.

Milo meets the crew, and there are a lot of characters in this movie so like A Bug's Life I'll only name them if they become relevant in the writeup, and they're off. Most relevant is the military leader, Commander Rourke. During the journey Milo mentions a legendary guardian "The Leviathan" but theorizes that it's just a statue or myth meant to scare people off, but joke's on him, it's a giant robotic lobster. The Leviathan destroys the cool-ass submarine in a battle and most of the crew is killed, but the characters with names survive in escape subs along with a few dozen gas mask-wearing soldiers.

Now stranded in an underground cave, the crew drives their Wacky Races vehicles deeper inside, guided by Milo who they continue to treat horribly. At one point Milo mansplains boilers to the crew's expert mechanic, and this is the turning point where they start to accept him and share their respective backstories. After a swarm of fireflies burn down their camp, Milo is found by a scouting party of Atlanteans led by the princess Kida. The crew arrives at Atlantis itself where the king tells them to fuck off back where they came from, but Kida insists that they might be able to help with a vague problem.

This problem, as it turns out, is that Atlantis is slowly dying due to a lack of resources and the fact that their people have forgotten how to read their own writing and use their own technology. Fortunately, Milo is able to read and speak their language, so he's free to mansplain to Kida how an ignition key works on a flying fishmobile. She leads him into an underwater cavern to translate some ruins, and they learn that the Heart of Atlantis is a giant crystal that powers the city. When they surface, Rourke and the rest of the crew have turned heel and hold Kida hostage, threatening to kill her if the king doesn't reveal where the Heart is so they can steal and sell it.

Rourke figures out that the Heart is in an underground cavern beneath the throne room, and descends along with Milo, Kida, and his partner Helga. Kida is absorbed by/absorbs the Heart and becomes a glowing god, whom Rourke and the crew lock in a box and prepare to depart, leaving Milo behind. Milo guilts the crew into siding with him and Rourke and Helga leave with the soldiers and Kida. After the king explains some backstory and dies, Milo shows the crew and Atlanteans how to use their flying fishmobiles, and they fly off to battle.

An admittedly cool underground dogfight breaks out inside a dormant volcano, where Rourke is trying to blast his way back to the surface and escape on a balloon. During the fight he betrays Helga and she shoots the balloon down with a flare, Milo turns Rourke into a crystal Hulk using a piece of glass, and Rourke is killed by a propeller. Milo and the crew bring Kida back to Atlantis as the volcano begins to erupt, and she uses her god-powers to awaken multiple giant stone statues that surround the city in a force field, protecting it from the lava flow before she returns to normal.

As Atlantis returns to prosperity, Milo chooses to stay behind while the rest of the crew is returned to the surface along with a shitload of gold. They later get their cover story straight with Whitmore in order to cover up Rourke and Helga's deaths and protect Atlantis and its secret, and the weird mole guy gets naked and buries himself alive in a giant vase. The End.

I actually really loved this movie, even though it's incredibly derivative of Stargate. Milo as a character is literally Daniel Jackson in every way; a widely mocked academic obsessed with an ancient legend, who's given a chance to prove himself by an elderly rich person, then thrown in with a military unit who's already set to go, immerses himself in the culture, stops the military guy from killing everyone, then chooses to stay behind in the end. The similarities are so numerous and on-the-nose that I refuse to believe it's anything but a ripoff -- even more blatantly than Toy Story ripped off A Christmas Toy or Hercules ripped off Superman, so I'm a little on the fence whether or not to penalize it for that.

But everything about this movie is fantastic. It's a legitimately fun and exciting action/adventure movie with a colorful and fun cast, albeit a lot of them don't contribute anything and are just there for laughs. But even the comic relief characters demonstrate themselves to be capable and reliable in their respective fields, so there's never a reason to doubt why would they be picked for the crew. Everyone here is likeable in their own way, including the movie's villain.

If I had seen this movie as a kid/teenager, there's no doubt I would have been absolutely obsessed with it and watched it on a loop. It's still a very fun thing to sit and watch as an adult, though, with a lot of humor that would go over kids' heads and some actual moments of violence and a little sex appeal for the horny dads (sorry, Fandom). It kind of appeals to just about every age and is very well put-together. I really liked it, and aside from being a little unoriginal can't think of a lot of major flaws... oh, what the hell, even though it's a very blatant Stargate ripoff, I think it deserves this score.

Final Score: 10/10

I actually saw Atlantis in theaters back in the day. It was on a school field trip to the theater. The only thing that stuck out to me back then was Rourke turning blue and exploding.

When I watched it again as an adult, I enjoyed it a lot more.

The thing I remember most is how hot Kida is.

This one is going to be a much shorter review. I spent all day in the ER with my grandma, and I'm honestly a bit exhausted even after unwinding with a pizza and a movie. I've still got a Pokemon to draw before midnight so I don't lose my perfect streak, too.

Monsters, Inc.
Originally released November 2, 2001

Monstropolis is facing an energy crisis, because their primary source of energy -- human childrens' screams -- is becoming harder to harvest because kids are getting harder to scare, what with their video games and YouTubes and the ever-present horror of the American school system. Big hairy blue guy Sullivan (aka "Sully") is the top scarer at energy provider Monsters, Inc., along with his best friend and personal assistant Mike Wazowski. His rival is a chameleon-like monster named Randall who is also a monstrous asshole.

After his shift, Sully discovers that a child's door has been left on the Scare Floor and investigates, accidentally releasing a human toddler who he would later nickname "Boo" into the monster world. This is a problem because monsters believe that, despite their dependence on them, human children are toxic and will kill them all. I mean, I get it, I've worked around kids and they're gross. Sully panics and stuffs Boo in a bag after seeing Randall exit her door, and for some reason brings her to a public restaurant where Mike is on a date.

Sully and Mike bring Boo back home and she laughs at Mike's pain, which causes a power surge and blows out the entire building. The next day they bring her back to the factory to try and return her to her bedroom, but she gets away from them and all kinds of hijinxs (I have no idea how to spell this word correctly) ensue. Eventually Randall corners Mike, having deduced that he's responsible, and tells him that he'll arrange for Boo's door to be on the Scream Floor at lunch. This results in Mike being accidentally abducted in her place and brought to a secret room in the factory where Randall tries to hook him up to a device called the Scream Extractor.

Sully and Boo rescue Mike and they leave to escape, but Sully decides it's better to tell their boss, Mr. Waternoose, about Randall's shenanigans. He barges in on a training exercise and scares a robot, which also frightens Boo. Waternoose reveals himself to be in on the plot and they're banished to the Himalayas, where they briefly meet the Abominable Snowman. Mike and Sully fight and Sully returns to the factory through a door in a remote village, arriving just in time to rescue Boo from the Scream Extractor. He's fighting Randall when Mike also somehow appears and they run away again to find her door.

The monsters and child then take a ride on the door's conveyor system, trying to arrive at Boo's door. Eventually, Sully and Boo are cornered by Randall, who almost kills Sully until Boo gets over her fear of the lizard and beats the shit out of him with a bat. Sully then throws him through another door and Randall is presumably killed and eaten by rednecks in a swamp. Waternoose is then tricked into confessing to the plot in front of the government agents trying to clean up the factory, and arrested.

Sully finally returns Boo to her room, bids a tearful goodbye, and her door is shredded to cut her off from the monster world. Under Sully's leadership, the factory repurposes itself to make children laugh instead of scream, which solves the energy crisis and improves workplace morale in general. Mike gets laid and then reveals to Sully that he's secretly rebuilt Boo's door from the scraps left behind after it was shredded, and Sully peeks through, teasing a sequel that would become a prequel and I'll watch in about... *checks schedule* ...three weeks.

Monsters, Inc. is another really solid Pixar movie. While the studio has had some missteps, this definitely wasn't one of them. It's a really clever and cute twist on the "monster in the closet" fear of childhood that everybody in the audience could relate to, and it has some genuinely threatening antagonists. The story does drag in a few places and some of the character decisions are absolutely nonsensical, but overall it's a really great watch with only a few narrative and pacing flaws, and Pixar continues its streak of perfect movies... at least for now.

Final Score: 10/10

M Inc is great. Also it spawned a running gag that everyone is really dedicated to.

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Lilo & Stitch
Originally released June 21, 2002

Okay, this is a BIG movie. While I was watching it I tried to keep mental notes on plot points I wanted to hit, and realized after a while that there are a lot of plot points. It's a surprisingly involved story that manages to fit a lot in its runtime without feeling bloated, and I'm going to do the best I can to condense the summary down into a single post.

Out in space, a mad scientist named Jumba is being sentenced for the crime of creating Experiment 626, which he designed to be strong, hyper-intelligent, indestructible, and incredibly violent. Because, you know, mad scientist. So Jumba is imprisoned and 626 banished to an asteroid, but manages to break free and escape from Captain Gantu, crash landing on a remote planet known as Earth -- specifically, Hawaii.

Jumba is for some reason assigned to bring 626 in (I guess the space cops didn't have anybody better suited for the job on their payroll) and Stitch is hit by a truck. We now meet our other protagonist Lilo, who is wonderfully psychotic and beats the shit out of another little girl at the drop of a hat. She and her sister Nani are dealing with a social worker named Mr. Bubbles who threatens to take Lilo away if Nani can't clean her act up in three days. So, Nani takes Lilo to adopt a dog, and they leave the animal shelter with 626 (now named Stitch) because apparently everyone in Hawaii is too blind and/or stupid to realize that he's not a dog.

Stitch immediately fucks up their family unit by getting Nani fired and destroying their entire house, only chilling out when Lilo reads him the Ugly Duckling. Bubbles returns to tell Nani she's on thin ice for losing her job and that he doesn't like Stitch. Jumba and his space-cop-assistant whose name I forget are stalking them every step of the way, waiting to capture Stitch. After Nani's job hunt is repeatedly sabotaged by Stitch's Elvis lessons, they take their opportunity while everyone takes a break to surf with boyfriend David, nearly drowning Lilo in the process.

Bubbles was watching and tells Nani he's fed up and taking Lilo away in the morning. Nani and Lilo share one last night together and Stitch bails, having realized that he made things much worse. After Nani leaves Lilo alone one more time (despite Bubbles' warning not to), Jumba and Cop show up and destroy the house in a battle with Stitch. Bubbles arrives to yell at Nani about how fucked up the situation is and Lilo runs away, captured alongside Stitch by Gantu and placed inside a giant glass pill so they can travel through space. Stitch escapes but Lilo can't, and he and Nani enlist Jumba and Cop to help rescue Lilo.

Using Jumba's ship, they engage in a dogfight that ends with a gas tanker being blown up in a volcano. David surfs everyone back to shore and Bubbles is waiting on the beach along with the leader of the Space Cops. They're both swayed by Stitch's words, change of character, and most importantly his adoption papers into allowing him to stay on Earth and the family not to be broken apart. Bubbles reveals himself to be a former CIA agent who once saved Earth with mosquitoes, Nani marries David, their house gets rebuilt, and everybody sets up for multiple sequels, TV series, and at least one unnecessary live action remake. The End.

This movie became a huge hit for Disney, and for good reason: it's great. It's a genuinely hilarious movie with some touching moments, and a lot of fun characters with really cool alien designs. Elvis Presley is honestly the perfect soundtrack for the film, and as mentioned above, the story and plot are packed with a LOT of events but it keeps everything moving at just the right pace to keep it interesting without ever becoming overwhelming or boring. I don't know how good the followup material wound up, because I never watched any of it (and, honestly, probably never will unless I do a second Disney marathon for sequels and TV shows), but this movie itself gets

Final Score: 10/10

I feel like Disney's on another roll. Either that or I'm just becoming too acclimated to their formula to be non-biased at this point.

Tag

A Goofy Movie

I see you did Goofy movie Ducktales Movie also hit theaters in 1990

TMOG posted...

(and, honestly, probably never will unless I do a second Disney marathon for sequels and TV shows), but this movie itself gets

I can't wait to see you do that one, some of the Disney tv shows are my favorite.

Treasure Planet
Originally released November 27, 2002

A sci-fi reimagining of the novel Treasure Island / the live-action movie Muppet Treasure Island, this is a movie that I thought I'd never seen before but had a memory or two unlocked while watching. So I guess I must have actually seen it at least once when it came out, and it just didn't stick in my memory very much. And, to be completely fair to myself, it's not really sticking in my memory that much an hour after watching it.

Jim Hawkins is a young man who's obsessed with space pirate stories, particularly the story of Captain Flint. After being arrested again by a pair of robot cops, the space pirate Billy Bones crash-lands near his mother Sarah's inn and dies after entrusting the contents of a treasure chest to Jim and warning them about a cyborg who's pursuing him. The cyborg and his crew arrive moments later and burn the inn down; Jim, Sarah, and their family friend Delbert narrowly escape.

Back at Delbert's mansion, Jim opens the package to find a golden orb that serves as a map to the fabled Treasure Planet, where Flint left his treasure. Feeling motivated, Delbert volunteers his own money to hire a crew and fund the expedition to find the One Piece, and despite Sarah's hesitance to allow it, brings Jim along with him. They meet their crew, led by Mr. Arrow and his captain Amelia, who definitely caused a new generations of furries to become aware of themselves. Amelia doesn't like the crew that was hired and assigns Jim to work as a cabin boy under the supervision of ship's cook/cyborg Long John Silver and his comedy relief sidekick, a floating ball of shapeshifting goo named Morph. For some reason, Jim decides to let Silver in on the fact that he knows he's the cyborg that destroyed his inn.

While Jim swabs the deck, he realizes that the crew doesn't like him at all, especially a giant spider-lobster named Scroop. After Silver breaks up a fight between the two of them he meets the crew below decks to reveal that they're a pirate crew (shock) and plan to mutiny once they reach their destination. Silver then bonds with Jim and teaches him how to be a space-sailor, and after a while a star goes supernova and the ship is almost lost, but gets away. During the chaos, Scroop cuts Arrow's lifeline and throws him overboard, and he gets sucked into a black hole and dies.

Feeling responsible for Arrow's death since securing the lifelines was his job, Jim is depressed and blaming himself. Silver comforts him and realizes that he's starting to feel a genuine attachment for him, as Scroop watches from above. The next day Jim chases Morph into a barrel of purple lemons and overhears Silver talking with the other mutineers about the mutiny, and as the ship arrives at Treasure Planet, he confronts him about it. Silver starts the mutiny and Jim, Delbert, and Amelia escape, but leave the map behind when Morph playfully switches places with it.

Stranded on the planet, Jim meets an old and malfunctioning robot named Ben. Ben says he served on Flint's crew and knows where the treasure is, kinda, because his memory unit is missing. Silver tracks the group down to Ben's home and surrounds it, but Jim manages to sneak back on board the ship and steal the map back while Ben fucks around with wires and makes things worse. During the mission, Jim throws Scroop overboard and kills him.

Silver recaptures the map team when they return to Ben's home and they get dragged along to follow the map, which leads them to an enormous portal that can open to anyplace in the galaxy. Jim deduces that the treasure is in the core of the planet and they open a portal there, finding a pile of gold that would make Scrooge McDuck blush. Jim finds Flint's skeleton and Ben's memory core, reinstalling it. Ben reveals that the treasure is booby trapped two seconds after the booby trap starts to go off, thus making his missing memory a completely meaningless MacGuffin.

While the treasure destroys itself, Jim hotwires Flint's ship and Silver goes after him. Some stuff happens but I really spaced out hard at this point and somehow Jim wound up clinging to the side of a wall, and Silver gives up the last bit of treasure to save him. They return to the surface just in time to be picked up by Delbert and Amelia, who have regained control of the ship in my absence. They won't make it out in time to escape the planet's explosion but Silver helps Jim build a flying surfboard so they can use the portal to escape.

With all the action done, Jim finds Silver about to make his escape in order to avoid prison, and helps him get away. Silver gives him the few pieces of Flint's treasure he managed to keep in his pocket out of gratitude before sailing off forever. Sarah uses the money to rebuild her inn, Delbert and Amelia get laid and have kids, and Jim is welcomed into the military academy. Everybody has a dance party as Silver looks down from the clouds like Mufasa. The End.

This movie started out strong, but either it or myself started running out of steam towards the end, and I found it really hard to keep focused. Aside from that there were a few other flaws; some of the animation was a little off, including Silver's animations, which at times looked really unnatural and more like he was a bag of water sloshing around. The musical choices were also weird. In the middle of the movie, when Silver and Jim were having their father/son bonding montage, the song playing was a really generic-sounding rock song that didn't match the tone or theme of the movie or events at all and took me out of it.

On a more personal gripe, there was a bit too much gross-out humor in this movie for me, including an alien eating a bowl of worms and an alien that spoke -- frequently -- via fart noises. I know it's a kid's movie and I'm not the target audience for it, but that kind of humor always feels way too juvenile for me and I hate it. Ben was also a pretty useless addition to the movie and was more annoying than he was funny.

Aside from putting it in a sci-fi setting, this also doesn't do much to add a unique spin to adapting Treasure Island and was kind of a standard experience that you'd expect for the story. The movie's kind of middling to me, breaking the streak of perfect scores I was giving. It had to happen sometime, I guess.

Final Score: 6/10

Treasure Planet is one of my favorites.

Finding Nemo
Originally released May 30, 2003

Another movie that became a cultural mainstay, this is one of Pixar's most beloved classics. I even have a memory from high school where a teacher was asking which movie should be put on and most of the class was voting for Finding Nemo, and for some reason the teacher decided it would be a good idea to put the entire responsibility on me to be the one to decide between this movie and whatever he clearly actually wanted to show -- and the disappointment on his face when I chose to side with the class. Ha, suck it.

A clownfish named Marlin (voiced by Hank Scorpio) and his wife Coral have just moved into a new anemone with their 400 eggs, who are promptly eaten (along with Coral) by a barracuda. Marlin and only one egg are the only survivors of the family genocide, and he names the child Nemo and becomes incredibly paranoid and neurotic. After taking Nemo to his first day of school and helicopter-parenting, Marlin shows up to the field trip just in time to see Nemo abducted by a diver and taken on the boat.

Marlin gives chase but quickly loses sight of the boat, but meets a blue tang named Dory who is a CERTIFIED GOOD GUY but ironically voiced by a secret monster. Dory has short term memory loss and ends up leading Marlin to a support group for sharks, where they find a mask that got dropped from the boat and has the diver's address written on it, which Dory can read, because she's a forgetful fish of many talents.

Meanwhile, Nemo is placed in a dentist's fish tank and quickly welcomed by the rest of the fish, but learns that he's doomed to be given away as a present to the dentist's niece Darla, who instantly kills every animal she touches. The fact that the dentist knows this and still wants to give her a living thing as a birthday gift makes him an absolute fucking monster imo. The tank fish come up with a plan to have Nemo clog the tank's filter and make it filthy enough that the dentist is forced to remove them, at which point they would roll out the window and into the ocean. The plan fails and their leader, Gill, gives up and feels guilty for putting him in danger.

Marlin and Dory continue their trek across the ocean and end up in a cloud of jellyfish, which sting the shit out of them and cause them to lose consciousness. They wake up riding on the backs of turtles, and after telling his story to the young ones, the Legend of Marlin spreads across the ocean and eventually reaches Nemo himself thanks to a pelican named Nigel. Knowing that his father's on the way, Nemo tries Operation Filter Jam again and succeeds, and now Operation Filth Tank can commence.

Unfortunately, this fails when the dentist just installs a new sci-fi filter that cleans the algae-covered tank overnight. He puts Nemo in a bag as Darla arrives, along with Marlin and Dory, hitching a ride in Nigel's beak after being spit through a whale's blowhole. Nemo pretends he's already dead so the dentist will flush him down the toilet and back into the ocean, but the dentist just heads for the trash can instead. Nigel storms the dental office and creates enough chaos that Gill is able to launch himself out of the tank and send Nemo down a drain, but Marlin saw the act and thinks Nemo's actually dead.

Depressed, Marlin swims away from Dory towards a fishing boat moments before Nemo emerges from a pipe. He finds Dory and they catch up with him, but end up caught in the net. After breaking the fishing boat and saving an entire net full of fish, they return home. Nemo rejoins school and Marlin is more confident, Dory has joined the shark support group, and the fish from the tank break the new filter and successfully execute Operation Filth Tank and then Operation Ocean Roll. Now floating in the ocean, they try to figure out how to execute Operation Bag Escape, but will probably just die. That's kind of a downer.

A really fun, episodic road trip movie with heist elements thrown in, Finding Nemo keeps things moving and really shows off a lot of ocean environments and life. All the fish they meet have their own quirky personalities, albeit some are more annoying than others. I also never fully realized how many catchphrases from this movie took off and were repeated to me ad nauseam through my entire life, but that kind of speaks to how much of a touchstone this movie became.

One thing I will say is that it feels like it goes on a bit longer than it needed to. I was getting a little bored of it towards the end, and it seems like they tried to add a bit too much conflict to a movie that didn't need a lot of conflict to begin with. It's also a little weird that the only thing to spin off of this was an unnecessary sequel movie, considering it kind of set up well for a series to follow it. But, eh, I don't get paid to make those decisions. I don't get paid at all. In fact, I'm paying for a Disney+ subscription to do this. What the fuck

Final Score: 9/10

Brother Bear
Originally released November 1, 2003

This movie is kind of like a Renaissance Era film that came just a few years too late. There was a pretty clear attempt here to recapture the magic of that decade; the animation style, characters, humor, and soundtrack really, really feel like that's what they were going for. In some aspects they succeeded in this goal, but it comes juuuuuust shy of pulling it off.

Shortly after the Ice Age thawed out, a young man named Kenai is excited because he's about to be assigned his totem animal. He's less excited to find that his animal is the Bear of Love, because he's a bit of an angry incel and wanted something cooler. So when he's blamed (rightfully) for a basket of fish being stolen by bears, he sets out to grab the basket and ends up cornered on top of a cliff. His brothers, Denahi and Sitka, arrive to save him but Sitka ends up sacrificing himself by creating a landslide.

At Sitka's funeral, Kenai fully casts aside his totem and sets out on a vengeance quest to kill the bear. He succeeds at killing the bear on top of a mountain, a move that upsets the spirits enough that they transform him into one. His brother Denahi arrives shortly after and, seeing Kenai's discarded clothing, believes that Kenai has become the second brother he's lost to the same animal, and decides to have a vengeance quest of his own.

Kenai wakes up the next morning and the tribe's elderly shaman tells him he's a bear now and has to go to a specific place if he wants to change back; a pair of mountains where the Aurora Borealis happens. After being teased by a pair of aggressively Canadian mooses (meese?) Kenai falls victim to a snare trap and is rescued by a Scrappy Doo-type bear cub named Koda, who's become separated from his mother. Denahi shows up and chases them, and after they lose him, Kenai and Koda set out for the Salmon Run, which is right next to the mountains.

During the journey Kenai is a complete fucking dick to the convincingly adorable Koda. He eventually warms up to him when the meese catch up and reveal that they're leaving an easily trackable trail, and Kenai suggests they ride on mammoths for a while. Koda's briefly confused about where they are but eventually recognizes the area, and tells Kenai that they just have to cross a barren volcanic wasteland to arrive at the Salmon Run. So they do, and Denahi attacks again, this time sporting some brand new facial hair to mark him as the movie's antagonist.

They escape over a log spanning a canyon, and Denahi tries to jump across and follow. Kenai tries to save him but fails and Denahi falls into the river below. They've now arrived at the Salmon Run, where bears from all over the area are partying, having fun, catching fish, sharing stories, and falling in love (but oddly enough without slapping the shit out of each other). Koda finally tells the story of how he became separated from his mother and Kenai has a panic attack, realizing that she's the same bear he killed and he's responsible for Koda becoming an orphan.

Kenai confesses everything to Koda and the little bear runs away, now frightened of Kenai. Kenai heads to the mountains and has another encounter with Denahi, but just before Denahi can land the killing blow, Koda executes a flawless flying tackle and runs off with Denahi's spear. At this moment an eagle turns into Sitka's ghost and turns Kenai back into a human. Realizing that Koda needs him, Kenai asks to be turned back into a bear, which Sitka and Denahi both agree to.

Later, the tribe is holding another ceremony, in which they accept the re-transmogrified Kenai and Koda into the tribe as furry equals. Everyone's happy and Disney adds a Pixar-style blooper reel to the credits, and Disney+ informs me that there's a sequel I won't watch. The End.

As said above, this movie was an obvious attempt to recapture the magic of the Renaissance Era. Everything about it feels like it could have and should have been released about three or four years earlier; honestly, it might have had a slightly stronger reception back then. I'm kind of surprised to see that the actual reviews are middling on it, because honestly, it's not a bad movie.

That said, it's also not one of Disney's best. While it's well-paced and has some great jokes in it ("Quit telling people I'm dead!"), it was clearly trying to emulate another era of Disney rather than establishing its own identity. I also have to knock it for having a formulaic, predictable plot; the very second Koda appears on screen, literally anyone who's ever seen a movie will know that the bear Kenai killed was his mother, and it doesn't come across as a genuinely shocking reveal or twist due to how obvious it was.

Despite everything in the above paragraph, I can't say I hated the movie. Actually, I liked it. It came out a bit too late to be part of my childhood, and it's another one of those ones that I was aware of but never watched before. It was a good attempt to try and bring back the Renaissance, but unfortunately, it fell short of that goal and would instead be one of Disney's last traditionally animated movies that weren't direct-to-video. I'm really going to miss them.

Final Score: 7/10

>Grabs popcorn bucket, as my all-time favorite motion picture is is coming up very soon

masterpug53 posted...

>Grabs popcorn bucket, as my all-time favorite motion picture is is coming up very soon

Home on the Range?

Phantom_Nook posted...

Home on the Range?

That's the exact reason I edited my post from 'next' to 'coming soon,' lol.

I'm only two and a half minutes in to Home on the Range and there's a very real possibility that this one breaks me

Its all uphill from here!

Home on the Range
Originally released April 2, 2004

There was a time in my life where I had never seen Home on the Range. Unfortunately, that time is now over.

This movie begins with Roseanne Barr narrating and I feel my insides shrivel up because this is the voice I'm going to be hearing for the next hour and a half of my life. She's voice acting a cow named Maggie who's being sold to a farm, where they make a bunch of jokes about how fat she is before revealing that the farm is bankrupt and due to be sold in three days. Feeling an absurd amount of immediate loyalty, Maggie enlists the other two cows, Grace and Mrs. Calloway, to go ask a horse for more time so they can win the state fair, because horses have that kind of authority in the first place.

Arriving at the town, they start a bar brawl before meeting up with the horse, Buck, who dreams of being a kung-fu hero. He gets his chance when he hears that legendary bounty hunter Rico is coming to town in order to capture the rustler Alameda Slim, and is loaned to him because apparently bounty hunters don't own their own horses. The three cows are accidentally tied to the wrong wagon and led to a herd of incredibly horny bulls who want to have sex with them. Mercifully, this is interrupted by the timely arrival of Alameda Slim and his Three Dipshit Nephews, who unmercifully yodels for about three or four minutes to hypnotize the cows and bulls into following him. Except Grace, who's immune to his yodeling because she's tonedeaf. This ability of hers never comes into play in a meaningful way.

The three main cows manage to get separated from the herd before Slim brings them back to his hideout, and Maggie vows revenge. The other two cows don't give a shit and want to go home, and I empathize with them. But after a peg-legged jackrabbit tells them where Slim's hiding out, they go to capture him for the reward money. Buck gets ditched by Rico because he's annoying as hell and decides to go capture Slim as well to prove himself a hero.

I realized while taking a leak mid-review that I mixed up the order of events in the above paragraph. Trust me, it changes nothing if I go back and change it. Nobody cares.

Buck gets stopped at the door by Slim's buffalo, who's working as a bouncer. He lets the three cows through because cows are allowed through, and Buck figures he has to try and find a different way in. He convinces Rico's new horse to ditch him and somehow makes it inside the mine. Grace brutally rips off the jackrabbit's tail so she can plug the other three cows' ears, and after all the stolen cattle are loaded on a train to be sold, they attack and tie him up in a mine cart. There's a slapstick chase where possession of the unconscious Slim is passed back and forth between the cows, Buck, Rico, and the Three Dipshit Nephews, and in the end the abduction fails and the cows end up on the train instead.

Rico is revealed to be on Slim's payroll, covering his tracks while pretending to bounty hunt him. Buck says "fuck you" and goes back to the train to free the cows with kung-fu, and then they steal the train and drive off to the farm before Slim can buy it. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that this is all a scheme to buy up land cheap as a revenge that's never elaborated on. The villain's motivation and reason to buy land "for revenge" is literally never elaborated on.

Anyway, they drive the train onto the farm just as it's sold to Slim and he's about to sign the deed. All the farm animals beat him up and he's handed over to the sheriff for the reward money, which is conveniently the exact same amount as the debt owed to the bank. The farm is saved and all the animals win first place at the county fair, somehow. I don't know how three separate cows can all win first place. Two of the incredibly horny bulls and Slim's buffalo show up to the farm so they can get laid. I don't want to be around anymore. The End.

This movie should have been released a day earlier than it was, because I'm pretty sure it was made as a joke. The animation would be insulting as a Disney Channel series, never mind a movie they actually, somehow, released in theaters. I can't imagine families taking their kids to see this in an actual theater and ANYBODY leaving happy. There's not a single character who's likeable, there's not a single joke that lands, there's not a single moment of tension or genuine emotion or well-animated scene.

I literally don't know how this movie got released in the state it's in. It's borderline insulting to its audience, and everybody involved in making it should be ashamed of themselves. It's so bad that I'm retroactively bumping Fantasia up to 3/10 in my blind rage, because not only does it need to score lower than every other movie I've seen so far, but there needs to be a gulf between them.

Final Score: 1/10