[7] Disney’s The Fox and the Hound opens with a young fox being chased by a hunting dog. It scrambles through the woods and finds a hiding place to ditch the baby fox it’s carrying in its mouth. Then it continues running… and is shot. And that’s just the beginning of the baby fox’s nightmare. A kindly widow adopts the fox and names it Tod. …
[8] Pixar returns to the toy box for another adventure with Woody, Buzz, and all the other toys who helped make the first Toy Story so memorable. This time around, Woody is kidnapped by a toy collector and the other toys must launch a daring rescue. The sequel is more action-packed, pitting the toys against big city traffic and Buzz Lightyear’s nemesis, Emperor Zurg, before …
[8] It’s been 11 years since Toy Story 2, and the same amount of time has passed in Buzz and Woody’s world. Andy is now heading off to college and the toys’ fates are up in the air. Will they go with him? Will they go to the attic? Or worse, what if they get thrown away? The movie explores all these possibilities and ends …
[6] Too mature for children, but too immature for adults, Legend of the Guardians may never find an audience beyond those thirteen years of age or thirteen at heart (guilty as charged.) It’s a dark, computer-animated fantasy based on a series of books by Kathryn Lasky. The story is a bit muddled, but it pulls together for the most part. Our hero is a young …
[8] Disney goes Broadway in the first animated motion picture ever nominated for a Best Picture Oscar (in the days before they rolled out a separate category for the medium). This version of the classic fairy tale is fueled by power-house songs from Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, memorable characters, and a calibre of design and refined skillsmanship unseen for decades in the studio’s output. …
[7] Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg co-wrote and co-produced this R-rated animated satire about a grocery store hot dog (voiced by Rogen) that discovers the truth about life outside the store’s sliding glass doors. But it’s an uphill battle to convince the rest of the grocery denizens that their idea of ‘heaven’ is actually the gnashing teeth of human beings! Sausage Party delivers all the naughty sexual …
[6] Breakthroughs in technology make the aural component of this sequel superior to the first, while advances in computer-generated imagery often leave Fantasia 2000 feeling cold and clunky. I like the abstract butterfly battle set to Beethoven’s 5th and the Al Hirschfeld inspired New York sequence set to “Rhapsody in Blue,” but the rest of the program is lackluster at best. Flying CGI whales set …
[7] Walt Disney was somewhat ahead of his time experimenting with music and animation in Fantasia, an astounding achievement of artistry, craftsmanship, and innovation in animation. I dig Fantasia, but it’s an uneven mix. The host segments do not stand the test of time and it caters to an impossible audience by combining cutsey narrative segments with more abstract ones. The biggest eyesore for me …
[8] Dreamworks Animation’s maiden voyage is a stunning achievement of sight and sound. Impressionistic background paintings blend with sexy, angular character designs, all set to a brilliant soundtrack by composer Hans Zimmer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz. It kills me that stories from The Bible still pass as family entertainment, but I’m glad they do — how else am I going to find a mature, animated …
[8] The Disney Animation Studios took Shakespeare’s Hamlet and transplanted it to the African savanna with an all-animal cast. Buoyed by a hit soundtrack, lush visuals, memorable characters, and a daring blend of intense drama and whacky humor, the film became the critical and financial climax of the late ’80s/early ’90s Disney renaissance. For me, the truly exceptional elements of the film are the music, …
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