Skummy's Disney Adventure

[Sousa]

No, we're going to do an elimination style thing and Chicken Little is going to win somehow.

[Benjamin]

OH MY GOD PLEASE LET'S DO AN ELIMINATION STYLE THING.

Also,

8 Make Mine Music
9 Fun and Fancy Free
10 Melody Time
18 The Sword in the Stone
25 The Black Cauldron
27 Oliver & Company
43 Treasure Planet
45 Home on the Range
51 Winnie the Pooh

are the ones I haven't seen.

Seriously, if anyone hasn't seen The Fox And The Hound, you should, especially if you can watch it with a kid. It's amazing.

Sousa, you should watch Brother Bear and Dinosaur. They're pretty good.

[VerbalPuke]

Yeah, Bolt is fun, my kid loves that one.

Wreck it Ralph is on the list so I don't feel like a total turd saying it's my favorite of their films. I sort of just said "hey, it says Disney, must be Disney". I didn't know that there was a separate thing between Disney and Pixar. Otherwise, another sort of Disney flick I love is the Incredibles.

[apsham]

I separate Disney movies and Pixar movies for the most part whenever I discuss them with friends - and Wreck-It Ralph is all Disney, and was pretty darn good all things considered. I kind of want them to go back to 2D animation (which probably means I should see The Princess & The Frog already) but I kind of get where things are going.

[Sousa]

I thought Wreck-It Ralph was about... half-ish a good movie. The worldbuilding in the beginning is fantastic and full of great lines ("Zangief, you are bad guy, but this does not mean you are bad guy.") and fun shout-outs to other games (My favorite was the Metal Gear Solid exclamation point in the lost and found). The problem is that most of the second half of the game takes place in the least interesting of the three big game worlds. The turns at the end are well done, but I didn't care for most of the second half of the film at all.

This is actually my favorite thing to come out of Wreck-It Ralph by the way. That and the animated short before the movie.

[TKz]

I feel the same way as Sousa on Wreck It Ralph. The world it built seemed like so much fun and the idea of Ralph appearing in various game worlds, even just for a quick cameo could have been fun, but after the first half of the film ends they stick in the Kart Racer world. Which, yeah I get for the story they wanted to tell, but ultimately it was a bit disappointing.

Robin Hood and Sword in the Stone are two of my all time favorites as well, I really wish they'd got more love. The Witch Vs. Merlin fight in Sword in the Stone is wonderful.

Treasure Planet is a ton of fun too. It's... not the best and it probably doesn't deserve more attention that it got, but I really love the Treasure Island story and there's plenty of fun ideas thrown around. Needed more Tim Curry though, as all good Treasure Island films do.

[Hailtothechimp]

I've been a tear of re-watching old Disney movies that I loved as kid. Fortunately for me, most of them still stand up. The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under are still very good. Bob Newhart is amazing as George. The Great Mouse Detective? It's got Vincent Price as Ratigan, who might be one of the greatest bad guys in all of the Disney movies that were listed. Not to mention, it is a terrific film overall. The gear scene inside of Big Ben is still mind blowing to me, especially when you remember that the movie was made in 1986!

I've also re-watched Beauty and the Beast (mostly just to hear "Gaston" again) and Aladdin, but I still enjoyed both movies and I don't think I've watched either in about 13 to 15 years.

As for my favorite Disney film... man. Gun to my head, I'd go with Hercules.

Now, let's play the game of the movies that I haven't seen, because that is way, way shorter then the ones I have seen.

6 Saludos Amigos
7 The Three Caballeros
8 Make Mine Music
22 The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
25 The Black Cauldron
38 Fantasia 2000
44 Brother Bear
45 Home on the Range
51 Winnie the Pooh

I feel like I watch too many movies now.

[Monkey D. Lars]

I'm watching Beauty and the Beast right now (certainly in my top 10 Disney films) and was thinking to open a thread about Disney Songs. People say there top 10 favorite Disney Songs and I will make bracket and we do it Elimination style. (Maybe start of with songs from the same movie against each other?)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK3x2DOoJIc

On a side note, I forgot all about this song. I love it.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

"Errr Where was I boy?"

"Uuuuh, hockety pockety?"

[MalaCloudy Black]

The Black Cauldron

I saw this movie for the first time a few years back and quite liked it, looked it up afterward and it had a lot of mixed reviews. Still thought it was pretty good though.

[Benjamin]

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

D'awwwwwwwwwwwwwww

[Skummy]

So. Here we go.

Disney Movie #1: Aladdin

Year of release: 1992

Had Skummy seen it before?: No.

This is the one that always gets people when I say I've not seen many Disney movies. People would be absolutely outraged and appalled at the very idea that I had not seen Aladdin. I used to joke that I hadn't seen Aladdin, but I had seen The Return of Jafar. Honestly, I can't remember if I have or if I made that up for comic effect.

In any case, I was obviously well aware of this one. It came out when I was a kid, and it definitely seems to be one of the more famous Disney flicks. On top of that, I vaguely remember the TV series, and the absolutely brilliant Mega Drive game - heck, it was that game that probably made me more aware of the movie than anything else, and what pushed me to make the decision to watch it.

What did I think of it? To cut a long story short, I fucking hated it.

Yeah, there was some fun animation in there, and Jafar is a superb villain - if someone wants to do an "EWB's Top 10 Disney Villains" countdown, by all means do, as they're almost always the highlight of these things - but aside from all that, I wasn't a fan in the slightest. If it had more Jafar, maybe.

What did I think was so bad about it? I think, in a lot of ways, it pushed the buttons I hated about Disney movies when I was a kid. And just like if you loved them, I'm sure that nostalgia and fondness for your childhood favourites will probably overshadow some of the flaws in the films, if you hated the idea enough as a kid, there's going to be a little bit of a hangover of that in adult life. As a kid, I liked Looney Tunes. I liked Tom & Jerry. I liked my cartoons to be a little anarchic, and not really to have any moral message - the protagonist wasn't necessarily a hero, the villain wasn't necessarily a grotesque. They just did what was fun, and got into scrapes, and then got better. Disney always used to piss me off with tacked on moralising - and singing. I used to absolutely detest it in kids' movies when characters would break into song, seemingly at random.

And do you know what always stuck in my mind as probably the cheesiest, worst offender of sappy, saccharine Disney music? A fucking Whole New World. It's awful. It's Tim Rice at his Tim Ricest. It's appalling. I fucking detest it, still. That said, "Arabian Nights" is bloody great, and works brilliantly as a recurring motif through the film. Of course, there's worse music than this to come in other films, unfortunately...

And what else? Disney's tendency to take whatever classic story they're "adapting" and change it into a "fish out of water" narrative, where the hero just doesn't feel like he belongs. That pops up in this, and just about everything else. Plenty more where that came from.

In all honesty, I was uncomfortable from the very beginning. Outside of Aladdin and, to an extent, Jasmine, I was a little on edge about how almost every character was drawn. This is 1992, and every single supporting character is drawn like an evil Turk in a 1930s Popeye cartoon, and talks about cutting off the hands of thieves and so on and so forth. It's not so bad that it stopped me being able to watch the film without feeling like I might be automatically signed up to an EDL mailing list or anything, but it certainly didn't warm me to it.

I'm saving the worst 'til last, of course. The Genie. The fucking Genie. Robin Williams' fucking Genie. I'm not sure I've ever encountered a more irritating character in any movie I have ever patiently sat through. Good fucking lord. It's, at best, a Robin Williams vanity project. At worst, it's the progenitor of the school of thought that an animated character making a pop culture reference automatically counts as a joke, and thus, responsible for every piss poor Dreamworks CGI film. It's appalling. It's Robin Williams cycling through impressions that were mostly dated then, let alone 21 fucking years later. 21 years! If this movie were a man, he could drink in America! Most of the kids watching it today aren't going to get half of these fucking jokes, guy. Most of the kids watching it then wouldn't either, if only because most of them aren't even fucking jokes. It's this bizarre attempt to cram the frenetic and genuinely quite enthralling Robin Williams of his stand-up comedy and, to some extent his early film career, into a strictly controlled and family-friendly cartoon character, and it doesn't work, but isn't that basically a description of half the movies made in the '90s? Or at least he seems like he was in that fucking many of them, anyway.

I'm going to stop there, because I'm struggling to put into words just how much that massive blue sod pissed me off.

Current Ranking:

1. Aladdin, by default.

Next up...Mulan.

[VerbalPuke]

I thought Wreck-It Ralph was about... half-ish a good movie. The worldbuilding in the beginning is fantastic and full of great lines ("Zangief, you are bad guy, but this does not mean you are bad guy.") and fun shout-outs to other games (My favorite was the Metal Gear Solid exclamation point in the lost and found). The problem is that most of the second half of the game takes place in the least interesting of the three big game worlds. The turns at the end are well done, but I didn't care for most of the second half of the film at all.

This is actually my favorite thing to come out of Wreck-It Ralph by the way. That and the animated short before the movie.

Yeah, I do agree with most of that. The world they create is brilliant, and the support group for bad guys is such a fun scene. That said, I enjoy the second half, its just nice seeing the bad guy Ralph having such a big heart for the misfit glitch Penelope. She is a bit obnoxious (it is Sarah Silvermans voice after all), but she is endearing in her own way.

They're supposededly considering a sequel.

[TKz]

On second thought, don't watch Lilo and Stitch. I like that film. I wouldn't want to see this happen to a film I like.

[apsham]

I'm just sad now.

[Sousa]

This is 1992, and every single supporting character is drawn like an evil Turk in a 1930s Popeye cartoon, and talks about cutting off the hands of thieves and so on and so forth.

This was sort of endemic of a lot of Disney films when they try to "branch out" into other cultures. Even Mulan, which I love to death, has its share of big-toothed caricatures, "ancestors" being crammed in to replace "God," and I'LL HAVE NUMBER FOUR WITH EGG ROLL jokes. Ironically, if you go to Epcot in Disney World you get a much more interesting and educational take on the Middle East, even if their section on Morocco is Aladdin-themed, which only makes sense if you don't know where the Arabian Peninsula is.

Also, the racist caricatures largely prompted Disney to make Pocahontas, which attempts to ameliorate their sins by chocking the film full of mid-90's "noble savage" tropes.

I've already mentioned the Genie, but yeah, Jafar is so good and Disney villains in general rule the roost. That said, Mulan doesn't really have an interesting one, so there's that.

[Skummy]

I don't feel I talked quite enough about how good I think Jafar is. He's absolutely fantastic.

And don't worry guys, I liked Mulan more than Aladdin. The next one will be less angry. I can't promise they all will.

[Sousa]

The entire string of horrible villain puns near the Final Boss part just seals it for me. "I'M JUST GETTING WARMED UP!"

And then he uses a pun as a pretense to change into a snake for some reason.

[MalaCloudy Black]

I never realized until I read that list just how many Disney films I'd seen. I counted something like 8 that I hadn't, and then when I went to YouTube them I realized holy shit, I have seen these, I just didn't know what they were called (Three Caballeros).

[Benjamin]

Man, Skummy's no fun