I wasn’t wrong, was I. Knew he wouldn’t like Peter Pan. I know my husband (#smugwifealert). I’ve noticed, however, that Ben tends to warm towards the films with cute and/or sassy animals. He liked Jiminy Cricket and, despite not being massively keen on the overall film, he did like Dumbo and Timothy Mouse. Which leads me to our next Disney classic, Lady and the Tramp.
Based on a magazine story, “Happy Dan, The Cynical Dog”, 1955’s Lady and the Tramp, follows an American Cocker Spaniel, ‘Lady’, who lives with her upper-middle class owners, ‘Jim Dear’ and ‘Darling’. A beautiful, well-behaved dog, Lady is loved and pampered by her owners. However, when ‘Darling’ has a baby, Lady starts to feel pushed out. She meet’s a stray dog named ‘Tramp’ and, after a traumatic experience one day, they run off together and Tramp shows her what life is like on the other side of the picket fence.
I know that Ben does vaguely recall seeing this film as child and enjoyed it, but whether he’ll feel the same seeing it 30 years later as an adult, I don’t know. I think he’ll like it, as Lady is cute (particularly as a puppy) and Tramp has that sassy attitude that he enjoys in Disney animals.
Lady and the Tramp is another of my favourite Disney films and I would watch it over and over as a child. It has a good, strong storyline, beautiful animation and fantastic characters that you can really get behind (another factor that Ben likes in a film). There are only a handful of songs, which in a film based on animals works well for me. It also has, arguably, the most romantic scene in any Disney film (I mean, who hasn’t tried to recreate the iconic spaghetti kiss… even if it was with strawberry bootlaces!). I feel that there’s very little to dislike about this film (besides maybe the casual racism regarding the Siamese cats).
9/10
Kerry😁
P.S. Just watched the live action and I will be reviewing it in due course, so stay tuned for that.
Things have been finally starting to look just a little bit more auspicious for this cynic of all things Disney, to the point where I can now say I’m just cynical of ‘most’ things Disney. These tentative steps in a direction that Kerry has been desperate for, for over a decade now, were helped to a large degree, by ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’. These steps were not helped by ‘Peter Pan’. But where I had deep-rooted aversions to ‘Peter Pan’ that were carried over from childhood (and no amount of “Mermaid Lagoooooun’s” could change that), 1955’s ‘Lady and the Tramp’ is a rare Disney entry, in that not only did I watch it in childhood, I also really liked it. I was very young at the time, and therefore have literally no recollection of anything that happens in the film, but I’m at least hoping that there are still some positive connotations deeply engrained in my subconscious that will give me a more positive eighty minutes or so than that I had to endure our previous time out… 🤞
The usual Disney choir on sedatives opens up the film, before we join a snowy scene in a posh neighbourhood. A dude is giving a box to his wife as a Christmas present. Not just a box obviously. She opens it and there’s a puppy inside. It’s fricking cute. I need to point out right now that I’m a beta-male that’s comfortable in my skin, and I HATE bravado. I’ll still enjoy sports and ‘manly’ things, but I like cute baby animals and have no problem going “aww” once in a while. So I’m very happy to watch this adorable puppy frolic around, and as long as I don’t have to witness her traumatised face as her mother is savagely murdered, I’ll be happy. As this is Disney, my confidence is low. I don’t recall being emotionally scarred by this film in childhood though. But saying that, my anxiety disorder must have come from somewhere, who knows what I’ve repressed? I really hope she wasn’t in that box for too long. That’s a shit way to present a puppy.
The couple go to bed and put the puppy in her bed in one of the downstairs rooms. They named her ‘Lady’ for some reason. Probably because if they called her something like ‘Twinkle-Toes’, the film would be called ‘Twinkle-Toes and the Tramp’. And that’s a shit name. ‘Rhubarb and the Tramp’. Just doesn’t convey that she’s a posh dog. No, Lady is a very convenient name. A good choice. Lady, however, doesn’t like being downstairs, so with some good manipulation and howling, she ends up on the bed “just for the night”.
We then switch to her being a bit older, but still sleeping on the bed which is a nice way to show that she continued to get her way. After that, we get a good chunk of the usual Disney ‘go-to’ of largely plotless meanderings show cute animals being… cute. I used to sit there impatiently waiting for some sort of plot development during these moments, but after discovering that ‘development’ usually involved mummy-doe-murder and donkey-slave-children, I’ve stopped waiting, and now just sit back and watch the animals do their thing. In this case, chasing a rat.
Lady is bought a nice collar with a badge on it, that she is very proud to wear. She goes and meets up with a couple of her friends from the other big houses. Jock, who is the world’s most stereotypically Scottish dog ever, because he is a Scottish Terrier, and Trusty, an old Bloodhound who seems to only pretend to have a good sense of smell. They talk about how Lady now has a ‘Badge of Respectability’. When her male owner returns home she races back excitedly and jumps at him, whilst barking excitedly. This is something that I LOVE in this film. The way we switch seamlessly between dogs interacting like humans would, as well as seeing things from their perspective, then switching to dogs acting like dogs normally do whenever humans are around with a traditional dynamic. They do this perfectly and it’s funny as well as feeling natural.
We now head to some railroad tracks where we meet another dog. I have deduced that he is The Tramp. He has a chat with some cute little puppies in a shop window and scabs some food from a nice if somewhat overly exuberant and generic Italian restaurant owner. Then he breaks some other dogs out of a dog-pound van, escapes capture himself and finds him the posh suburbs of town. I’m liking this dog. He’s got balls (probably literally as he’s a stray so likely unneutered), a lot of character, but also a lot of warmth too. He seems like a good egg.
Lady is sad because she was called “that dog” and is being ignored by her owners. She calls them Darling and Jim Dear as that’s what they call each other, so that’s what she assumes their names are. A nice touch. I’ve realised that I’m so far being far more positive about the details of this film than any other I’ve reviewed so far. It’s also less ridiculous than most of the films I watched so far too. Trusty and Jock tell her about, in their words, “the birds and the bees”. Well, they tell her that Darling is pregnant, anyway. They weren’t giving her an impromptu sex-ed class or anything. Tramp appears in the garden to warn lady that she will be basically ignored now that there’s a baby on the way. Jock and Trusty try to reassure her.
Darling is desperate for a girl and is (recklessly in my opinion) only knitting pink things. Jim Dear wants a boy. After the baby is born, we get our first song. Well I say it’s the first song, Lady starts singing about the new baby as she goes up the stairs, But Kerry says that it doesn’t count as it’s not a full song and isn’t on any albums. I dispute this, and say we’ve had our first song twenty-eight minutes in. As we get a ‘proper’ song a mere three minutes after, it doesn’t really matter and either way, I’m happy the first song is so far into the film. I wonder if there will be a correlation between number of songs and how much a film pisses me off? I might make a spreadsheet at some point to find out. I like spreadsheets.
As Darling and Jim Dear are going away for a few days, Aunt Sarah is looking after the baby and Lady for a few days. I learnt in Media class back in the day, that a lot of films (especially ones made in America), follow a classic pattern of:
equilibrium → disruption → resolution → new equilibrium (that’s often even better than the first one).
To be honest with most American films, between disruption and resolution you could probably chuck in ‘cheesy-as-fuck-montage’ too. We’re at the disruption stage here, therefore Aunt Sarah is a bit of a battle-axe, and has two cats. So let’s play a game: Based on this film, does Walt Disney prefer dogs or cats?
It’s a close call that can only be separated by a dash of horrifically sadistic evil.
Lady tries to stop the cats eating the goldfish and tearing shit up and in the commotion that follows, she gets the blame. As a result she’s taken to the pet shop for a muzzle. Even though they attach it, the positive is that she escapes. She gets chased by three stray dogs after running into the rough part of town, but Tramp saves her and their journey to ‘hooking up’ can begin.
I’ve said it before, but I really like Tramp. Best character in Disney so far for my money. The princesses, Snow and Cinders were nice but a bit weak. Peter Pan was a bit of a bellend as were Mr Toad and Ichabod. Donald Duck is a sex-pest who I’m happy not to watch ever again, and the less said about José-bloody-Carioca the better. Pinocchio was a just a gullible fool. The Princes have had zero personality. Bambi, Dumbo and Bongo were all cute enough, but the animals in this film are far above them because they also have bags of charisma.
Next, we get some beaver eating. Specifically, eating the straps on Lady’s muzzle. What a helpful beaver. Following this, Tramp shows Lady the benefits of being a stray and his tricks for getting food. He takes her for an Italian. The one owned by that stereotypical and exuberant dude I mentioned earlier. He’s very nice but a little batshit crazy. It may just be me who thinks that. It may seem perfectly sane to some people that when two trampy dogs turn up outside your restaurant, the logical thing to do is light some candles, serve them up a portion of your house speciality and SERENADE THEM WITH YOUR FUCKING ACCORDIAN! It’s a lovely gesture though. The speciality in question is spaghetti and everyone knows this scene. It’s beautifully done.
The next scene is them, awakening on a hill somewhere the following morning. We all know what happened. And as they’re dogs, we can safely say that alcohol wasn’t a factor in that decision, so no regrets all round. Tramp tells ‘Pidge’ as he likes to call her about the joys of being free. Life without fences rather than life on a leash. He makes a damn good point. Obviously being free involves scaring the crap out of chickens, so that’s what they do. Unfortunately after being chased away, Lady gets caught by the Dog Warden and taken to The Pound.
Now Disney clearly likes to try and ruin everything they touch in some way (just my experience, don’t yell at me), and they have a bloody good go now, using a couple of their preferred methods of torture, namely, hideous songs and animal death. Firstly, the dogs in the pound literally howl a rendition of some famous song I vaguely recognize. It’s unpleasant. What’s more unpleasant is that they felt it necessary to have one of the dogs destroyed, just so we, the viewer, can never fully escape from reality and all the misery that accompanies it. I do understand that the grisly demise of most of the Pound’s residents is a good plot device to make us really worry about Tramp’s capture later on, but still… a little escapism please. A couple of the stray dogs in The Pound are the two that Tramp freed from the Dog Warden’s van, earlier in the film. They’re jealous of Lady’s collar as it means she’ll basically get out alive. The dogs are, however, digging a hole so they can escape. Clever dogs. Lady is informed that although he is very cunning and good at avoiding capture, Tramp is, in fact, a right old slut. Must make that night on the hill feel a bit icky…
Once Lady is collected and brought home, she is tied up outside. She, as well as Jock and Trusty, give Tramp the cold shoulder when he turns up and essentially slut-shames him. A bit later a rat sneaks into the baby’s room and because Lady’s tied up, she can’t catch it. Fortunately Tramp is obsessively hanging around and goes after it. This doesn’t go very well. They trash the bedroom, get the blame, Lady gets locked up and Tramp gets taken off to the pound. It doesn’t go very well at all…
Remember the whole equilibrium → disruption → resolution → new equilibrium thing I was talking about earlier? We’ve had quite enough disruption and now that shit needs to be sorted out. So Darling and Jim Dear return and with Lady’s help, discover the rat. They realise that she and Tramp were trying to help. Now Aunt Sarah looks like a right dick. I was hoping she gets some sort of gentle comeuppance like her cats clawing her eyes out, but alas that never happens. So now the dogs chase down the Dog Warden’s van, with the help of Trusty’s sense of smell which turns out to be fine after all. Trusty and Jock scare the horses causing the van to tip and Tramp is saved. But oh no! Trusty is under the cart and motionless. Is he dead?! Fortunately, it turns out he’s not. A big thank you so much to Disney for resisting the temptation to murder something.
So we get a happy ending of Tramp living at the house with Lady and clearly enjoying a life surrounded by fences and, judging by their 4 puppies, much humpage. Oh, and a gift from Aunt Sarah at Christmas which now makes me thankful that the cats actually didn’t scratch her eyes out… But this leads me nicely into my one small criticism (not including the destroyed dog at the pound) that I found. It’s not so much a criticism so much as something that doesn’t quite sit right with me. I’m a big believer in freedom, and I’m slightly uncomfortable about the notion of ownership. I get that dogs and cats are domesticated and therefore seemingly prefer things that way, but as demonstrated, (rather bluntly) in this film, a dog that is no longer owned by a human will ultimately be, quite literally, destroyed by a human. So although being owned is a far happier ending to being put to sleep, the fact the ‘happy ending’ involves Tramp embracing the confines of fences and collars, it suggests that the writers are portraying it as worse for him to be the freedom-loving-dog-who-don’t-need-no-man beforehand. But to be honest, as this is the first Disney film I genuinely enjoyed, I’m inclined to say fuck it, and just appreciate the fact I’ve finally enjoyed Disney…
Because I did genuinely enjoy it. And I really liked it. I’ve quite liked a few of the previous ones, but this is the first time I actually felt like I was watching one of these films because I actually wanted to, and given the choice, wouldn’t just go upstairs. Or to the pub. The two ‘lead’ characters (pun unintended) were both warm, likeable and full of personality which meant I was really rooting for them. The supporting characters were good, the plot was good and the Disney-isms of the early films that have made me roll my eyes film after film, were scaled back or absent altogether. For Disney and me, it’s fourteenth time lucky, which is actually quicker than I expected… Although nothing’s permanent. Sleeping Beauty is next…
Additional: Ok so this is a few days later and last night, Kerry put on the Lady and the Tramp live-action remake. This caused me a problem, but a good problem. I was going to score the original LATT 9/10. But then I watched the remake and realised that I liked that a lot more (apparently a lot of other people didn’t, but I’ll get to that in the future). And then it dawned on me that I’ve maybe spaced the scores on the films I watched so far, a little bit too widely, especially on the upper end, and I’m forgetting that modern films tend to be a lot more well-rounded and better presented…. So I need to be slightly more reserved and a bit less ‘Amazon product reviewer where everything is 1 or 5 stars’. So maybe ‘Cinderella’ should be a 7 instead of 7.5 for example, and ‘The Reluctant Dragon’ 6 instead of 7 etc. That being said, I’d still give Bambi 1/10…. With that in mind though, I still say for this film:
8.5/10
Ben🙄
Once in Neverland, they meet pirates, mermaids and fairies, amongst others. I don’t think I need to go into much more detail, as most people know the story well.
They also have a dog called Nana, who continues Disney’s trend of animals that have capabilities that are somewhat above what one might usually expect from them. It can clean, serve drinks, spell words with blocks as well as look after the children. So yeah, slightly advanced for a canine.
Peter Pan likes Wendy’s stories about him, and so she doesn’t have to move out of the nursery which would stop her telling them so easily, she must go with him to Neverland, so she won’t grow up. Wendy does the responsible thing you should do, when a strange flying boy tells you to leave the house at night and go to an unfamiliar land. She agrees and insists on bringing her very young brothers too… So she brings in John, who in another lifetime was the first-choice actor for the Harry Potter series, and Michael who can barely even talk yet, to go on this inexplicably reckless mission. At some point, Wendy also tries to kiss Peter, much to Tinkerbell’s disquietude and chagrin (using these words twice is too much then?), which is somewhat forward, even for a twenty-three-year-old.
They arrive in Neverland, where the excitement and adventure of the story can really begin! And where my concentration goes off a cliff. Adventures and high drama involving pirates really isn’t my bag. I never liked any of the Pirates of the Caribbean films. My tastes seem to be quite different to that of most humans I’ve discovered. We go aboard a pirate ship, where there are some annoying and ugly pirates, unsurprisingly. They all bully a servant dude. His name is Mr Smee. If you’re a presumably single servant to some bad dudes AND you’re called Mr Smee, you haven’t really been dealt the best hand. Captain Hook is looking at a map. Ah! In the North-East of the map is Mermaid Lagoooooun! Excellent. He wants to know where Peter Pan is, as the reason he has a hook for a hand is that during a previous fight with Peter Pan, a crocodile bit his hand off. The crocodile also swallowed a clock at some point, and now stalks Hook, whilst ticking. And I thought normality would resume after Alice In Wonderland. A very entertaining moment occurs when some dude starts singing and because his voice is extremely annoying, Hook decides to deal with that issue by shooting him. That was funny. You wouldn’t have shit like that in modern films. It’s also lucky Snow White never went on vacation to Neverland, as she would have been full of lead within the first hour. Another fun moment is Smee shaving a seagull’s arse, by the way.
I refocus to find Peter Pan, Wendy and Co in a hideout with a load of boys. Apparently, they’re the ‘lost boys’. And Peter Pan is banishing Tinkerbell for trying to trick the boys into shooting Wendy. So I’m informed that Tinkerbell has her own film series and is usually nice but even though I know that she is jealous of Wendy because she fancies Peter Pan, that is seriously, SERIOUSLY dickish. As in unforgivable! Also, bearing in mind that Peter Pan is a teenage boy, and that Tinkerbell is the size of a hand, I’m not sure how a relationship like that could ever work… Oh. Right. Also, I’m waiting for Peter and Wendy to get down to business. And it’s perfectly fine to wait for that as because even though he has never grown up, he is still probably technically about forty-five, and she is obviously twenty-three.
Ah brilliant, its Mermaid Lagoooooun!!!! It’s lovely that Wendy doesn’t have to just think about the Mermaid Lagoooooun, now she’s in Neverland she can actually VISIT the Mermaid Lagoooooun. The mermaids only have shells or hair covering their breasts and I find it slightly arousing… 😳 I think I just said too much. The mermaids seem to love Peter, and just like Tinkerbell, they are jealous of Wendy. They try to force Wendy into the water. When she protests, Peter replies, “They were only having a little fun, weren’t you girls?”. One of the lovely mermaids replies, “We were only trying to drown her!” That made me laugh. I like them. After they disappear from the screen, my concentration wonders off yet again….
Donald Duck discovers that even after the rope he was clinging to breaks, he doesn’t have to immediately worry, thanks to “Disney fucking with physics”.
The way water falls, Disney style.
Wendy is worried about Tiger-Lily. Who the fuck is Tiger-Lily?! My god, I should really pay attention, but I’m bored! I stop the film to be brought up to speed on exactly what the hell is going on. No wonder I didn’t pay much attention, this really is not my type of film. And I quite enjoyed Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland. It’s looking like I won’t be three for three for appreciating the Disney films of the fifties…
For me, this was probably a good film for kids, and probably a decent film for a lot of adults…. who are not me. I wonder if we are supposed to like Peter Pan. It’s just that I find him to be a lot like one of the popular boys at a high school. Very confident, has a lot of girls throwing themselves at him (and mermaids and fairies in this case) totally up his own arse and to be honest, I thought he was a bit of a dick. In fact, there was no one in the film that I particularly liked. Even Wendy I found to be annoying and too dumbly sycophantic towards Peter. I’ve spoken a few times about my need for a strong protagonist (a Zack Morris if you will) in a film, and not for the first time, I found this Disney film lacking.
I appreciate that having a trip to Disneyland Paris postponed is a real first-world-problem, but obviously I would much rather that than risk spreading a virus that can kill those with underlying health conditions. Additionally, though, seriously stop panic buying! It’s fucking ridiculous. Rant over.
I found this approach at around the twenty-five-minute mark. With my pad and pen set aside, I sat back and stared at the screen, with my body relaxed and my eyes slightly glazed, and let the experience vigorously penetrate my mind. Almost literally a ‘mind-fuck’ if you will. But by attempting to stop the forces that are compelling me to question and resist, as well as allowing the film to create its very own psychedelic haze around my brain, I’m in some way mimicking both the demographics I mentioned above and everything starts to make sense. Sort of.
Despite the absurdity of ‘The Madhatter’s Tea party’, there feels like cohesion and direction in amongst the chaos. I fricking loved this part of the film and it’s definitely my favourite Disney segment so far. I especially love the Mad Hatter proclaiming that the rabbit’s clock is exactly two days slow. The problem is apparently caused by the wheels inside it. His attempts to fix it involve pouring tea on it and spreading jam, butter and mustard (sorry, not mustard, that would be silly; lemon) inside it. I know it’s a famous scene and I can see why. But for every Madhatter’s tea-party however, there’s a story about ‘curious oysters’ or playing cards singing about ‘painting the roses red’ that didn’t hit the same spot. And that’s just my opinion. I’m sure every scene will float different people’s boats.
Alice is bored of normality and wants her own world full of nonsense. Within 4 minutes she’s singing and taking to birds. Why is there always so much singing and talking to birds? She spots a white rabbit that is late for something and decides to follow him, without really giving a satisfactory reason of why she feels she has to. One can assume that the ‘what the fuckness’ of this occurrence would cause most of us to do the same though, so I’ll let her off. She runs after him with her cat in tow, and then we reach a moment that I feel needs to be discussed here. After chasing the rabbit into an unpleasantly tight warren, she falls down a seemingly bottomless hole. The normal reaction of falling down a seemingly bottomless hole would usually involve much screaming, cursing with perhaps a small amount of soiling oneself. The reaction to falling down a seemingly bottomless hole, will never be, and I repeat, never be TO LOOK AT YOUR CAT AND HAPPILY WAVE AT HIM WHILST EXCLAIMING “GOODBYE!”
ey’re cute little oysters. Innocent and… well, curious. Just like babies with their shell bonnets in their shell cots. They have happy smiles and big wide eyes; these creatures have been almost humanized and possess all the traits that people biologically find adorable and feel compelled to protect. The walrus eats them. The fucking walrus eats them all alive. We’re not at Bambi levels of “hey, let’s fuck you all up for shits and giggles”, but we still have another example of Disney joyously using animation as a vehicle for sadistic dickery. You can tell when something pisses me off as the cursing increases dramatically. I’ve cursed quite a lot in twelve Disney reviews…
The biscuit makes her grow to the size of a house, which is problematic as she’s in a house, which results in her wearing the house like some sort of weird armour. She has no one to blame but herself. That being said, when a big bird comes along and starts singing about “smoking the blighter out” and generally showing zero compassion or interest in her safety, I can’t help but feel that they should be a bit nicer. But that is a recurring theme of this movie; It seems that most of the people she encounters are complete and utter arseholes. I think that this is supposed to interpreted that the moral here is ‘even if it is more exciting, nonsense isn’t necessarily better or for that matter, nicer’. Or ‘anything outside the norm is bad’. Hmmm, not sure how I feel about that.
Speaking of not cool, the Queen of Hearts. I really hate the Queen of Hearts. I know you’re supposed to hate her because she’s a dick, but I find I hate her in a way that makes me want her gone from my screen rather than being compelled to see her comeuppance. The other problem with this segment is that including a stronger and slightly more defined plotline here (at least compared to the previous segments) exposes the lack of depth throughout the film as both its strong point, and its weak point. Let me explain. The lack of substance really worked to the films advantage for most part, as not being given motives or understanding, the ‘wheres’, ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of people/animal’s actions made them that much more random and for, most part, funny. When you start including at least slightly more lucid plot points, such as a sham trial from a bad-tempered queen, that lack of depth makes it a damn sight harder to stay invested in how it plays out. I would have been happier if Alice had just met more good-natured lunatics that were involved in harmless meaningless shenanigans, such as the Mad-Hatter for example…
Elsewhere, Alice part-sings and part-cries her way through a song that I will skip through whenever I watch the film again, a caterpillar makes letters and shapes out of smoke from a shisha pipe and we have a mischievous cat that can turn invisible and stand on his own head. Events that are no more and no less absurd that happenings throughout the rest of the film.
Cinderella gets woken in the morning by some extremely clever birds and mice. Is it going to be a Disney princess thing that they are all mates with stupidly advanced fauna? Snow White was the same. Still, give me a bird that can do rudimentary household tasks over a slice of Latin propaganda any day of the week. Within three minutes, she’s singing. Her voice isn’t as horrific as Snow Whites, but suffice to say, I’m rolling my eyes and preparing for the worst. Golden age, my arse. She has a bath whilst the birds cop a good perv. Then the mice start talking to her. I cannot understand a word of it. Kerry can. Once again, she demonstrates she is fluent is Disnish, much like when Donald Ducks talks, and I’m lost at sea, so she translates for me. Ooh, I just thought; there will be no Donald-sodding-Duck in this film! Unless there’s a highly unusual twist anyway. So that’s a good thing at least. Apparently, the mice are saying that a new mouse has been caught. Ah, yes, a mouse has indeed been caught. So Cinderella follows the usual protocol. She opens the humane trap, and then talks to him, and then puts a jumper on him and gives him a name… wait a second, she does what now?! All the other mice have little mouse clothes too. Ok, her imprisonment at the hands of her stepfamily have clearly sent her bat-shit crazy. Or maybe she’s just suffering the psychological effects of Lassa fever or the bubonic plague due to the fact she spends her days TRYING TO FORCE RATS INTO FUCKING CLOTHING! …Exhale.
Cinders then takes her stepmother’s fatfuck cat down for breakfast. This cat is a dickhead. The fact its name is Lucifer should be a hint there. Makes you really wonder the mentality of the stepmother to name her pet Lucifer. Perhaps she had another cat named Beelzebub that got run over by a speeding horse and cart? There is also a dog in the kitchen. He is not a dickhead. Cinders tries to make them get along after discovering the dog was dreaming about chasing the cat (perfectly normal, people discuss their pet’s dreams with them all the time). The dog tries, but the cat is being a troll though. As I said. Dickhead.
After hearing the stepfamily play horrible music, we cut to Cinderella who is doing her chores and singing. Then we go VERY Disney. Lots of bubbles with Cinderella’s face in them, etc, etc… The whole scene is a lot quicker than the meanderings in previous films, but there must be some sort of contractual obligation that animators get at least a certain amount of time to indulge in artistic wankery. An invitation to the ball is delivered. The stepsisters are very excited and scoff when they discover that Cinderella wants to go. The problem is that all single chicks must attend. So the Stepmother says Cinderella can go as long as she finishes her chores and can get something nice to wear.
As she has so many chores to do, she hasn’t got time to make her mother’s old dress fit for purpose, but fortunately that’s where the remarkably advanced mice and birds are at hand. They decide to surprise her by giving it a makeover. Then the mice start singing in their squeaky way, because God forbid they could just have a nice conversation whilst they do the dress maintenance. Beer time for me, I think. The mice also steal an unwanted sash and necklace from the stepsisters, despite Fatfuck Cat’s attempts to be its dickhead self and thwart them. Honestly, if the cat was named something like Fluffy or Buttercup or Sparkles or Kevin, rather than Lucifer, it wouldn’t be such a…. well, dickhead.
Cinders then does something very stupid. I’m already establishing that Disney Princesses are naïve, trusting and see all the positive in the world. I like these rare sort of people and they give me feelings of hope for the world, but my god are they gullible dipshits. Rather than treading with caution and thinking, “my stepfamily probably don’t like me very much or want me to be happy as they ABUSE AND ENSLAVE ME, so I think I should wait for them to go out before leaving my room as it’s quite likely they will attempt to sabotage me.” No, instead, she takes a somewhat different approach and marches downstairs, basically calling “WAIT FOR ME, LOOK AT MY LOVELY DRESS!” You IDIOT! Quite frankly, as the stepsisters partially strip her, there’s a part of me that thinks, “what the hell were you expecting here?”. But even I am left feeling awful for that fictional drawing as it runs into the garden sobbing.
You know when things are crappy, and the efforts of wildlife ultimately fail? Thank fuck for Fairy Godmothers! You think it’s all over, and then you see the twinkling stars in the sky and poof! There she is, showing you magic tricks with a pumpkin. That pumpkin is turned into a coach. The mice, who thought their work was done and were probably ready for an early night with a piece of cheese, find themselves turned into horses. Fairy Godmother also gives her a lovely gown and a pair of glass slippers. Now she can go to the ball. But all these things will revert back into their original form at midnight. I have a question. Why? That seems to be cutting it rather close doesn’t it? Wouldn’t tomorrow afternoon make a bit more sense? There are so many potential dramatic pitfalls doing it this way. But then saying that, Fairy Godmother is very old and may have strict rules on sex before marriage, so wants to ensure that Cinderella doesn’t have time to get her end away that night.
Or that during the evening Cinderella might start singing a horrible song and his son will leg it? Or that Cinderella will make a quick getaway at midnight when the magic from a fairy godmother starts to run out, in turn destroying her dress and transport? Why is the King not considering these things?! Fortunately it seems Prince Charming has left Cinderella rosy cheeked and moist, so no issues there. Also when Cinderella starts to sing, Prince Charming decides to join in, because Disney. However, the questionable, reckless and bizarre time regulations placed upon the spell come back to create much unnecessary drama when midnight rolls around, causing Cinderella to leg it, minus of course, one of her glass slippers.
She has no toes. Kerry thinks it’s because she’s wearing stockings. But that doesn’t make sense. If that’s the case, then why will the slipper only fit her? Simple. It’s because she has no toes.
ng to bridge the tricky gap between creative indulgence, plot-free meandering and emotional destruction of the innocent, this will undoubtably stay in last place in my Disney rankings permanently. If, in the future, Disney decide to make a three-hour remake of ‘Home Alone 4’ interspersed with scenes of their most elderly writer suggestively touching himself to a soundtrack of Elmo from ‘Sesame Street’ singing the greatest hits of Cher, I’m certain Bambi will still fall a notch below. The fact I scored it one point was purely because of the cute animals that weren’t shot.
Shameless propaganda, an overload, and I mean overload of musical numbers and cultural dances, along with the fact that each of the Three Caballeros seemingly compete for the award of ‘most annoying twat’ means that I wasn’t the only one to have never heard of this film before. Some things are forgotten about by society for a reason.
In theory, animating two literary classics to a high level should be a home run in terms of delivering a good film. The critics indeed did seem to like this film, but I was bored silly by it, and for large parts so was my Disney-loving wife. For me, the Sleepy Hollow adaptation was far more entertaining that the Wind in the Willows one. I’m curious what the public, Disney fans or not, think…
Again, I’m sure some people will rate this higher and granted it does have one of the most cohesive stories of the early films. At the same time, it has donkey-slave-children. So, checkmate.
The more tolerable of the ‘Latin America is wonderful, please don’t join the Nazis’ films. Unremarkable, but at times fun.
Bizarrely I quite like the story about Bongo the bear, and I’m not adverse to the adaptation of Jack and the Beanstalk. Songs about ‘giving her a slap’, creepy ventriloquist puppets and Donald-sodding-Duck are a different matter, however. For a relatively unknown film, this could have been worse still.
Like Pinocchio, this has a more defined story, but without the donkey-slave-children to ruin it. When it goes off the proverbial deep end with the infamous ‘Pink Elephants on Parade’, it’s still a headfuck, but a far more pleasant one. I don’t rate this as highly as most would, but that’s probably to be expected.
Some stories kept my attention more than others, I don’t know if the final segment was bad or if I was just suffering burnout from two hours of classical music fused with animation. I don’t see how such a concept will hold the attention with today’s youth, even with a maverick, crazy, daredevil personality such as Deems Taylor at the helm.
Considering this is one of the least known films, and I tend to be a tough viewer to please, this was, at least at times, a surprisingly enjoyable film. Mostly this was due to the insights into the process of making the films, which I found to be far more enjoyable than the fruits of their work. To be fair, the final ‘title’ cartoon, is probably the best animated story I’ve seen so far. Plus, the sexual tension between Robert and the sound effects lady was captivating.
I know I scored it below ‘The Reluctant Dragon’, but looking back, this was the most well-rounded and entertaining of the films so far. I also think this is the film I would recommend more to first time viewers. The Dwarves were good fun, Snow White’s voice was unbearable but otherwise the music was better than the rest of the top ten (excluding Fantasia), and there wasn’t as much animated indulgence. It was also the only time the “Baddy” got a fitting comeuppance. Finally, I think this is the film that would have kids giggling more than the others. If you said to me this was the best of the first ten films, at the start of this project we’re undertaking, I probably wouldn’t have made it to film two. And would I watch it again? Hmmm, maybe. Possibly. I’m not sure. Which probably is an achievement of sorts…
Disney - Guide for the Misguided 