D52 Week 20: The Aristocats!

Well, hopefully without being too terribly morbid, I think I have to at least acknowledge the elephant in the room here. With Walt Disney having nobly donated his body to science - the science of putting things in fancy freezers - we come to the first film made without his guiding hand. And, yes, I've done a fair amount of complaining about his simplistic artistic choices throughout this project thus far, probably more than people were willing to tolerate, honestly. Even still, I want to be absolutely sure to give credit where credit is due and acknowledge what a truly stabilizing force the man was. As conceptually strange as some of the things we've seen have been, would you say that any of it felt somehow un-Disney? You really couldn't say that, no matter how much it was clear that the studio was having yet another identity crisis at any point. (Well, okay, I guess the package films.) But now....now we're approaching a point where you very much could say that. Without such a unifying force pulling the strings anymore, of course things would start changing and of course visible uncertainty would start setting in. It was inevitable! Sometimes the new directions would work. Sometimes they wouldn't. Two months of confusion separate us from the relative stability of the Disney Renaissance, starting with The Aristocats.

STEP ONE in Disney's identity crisis is to conceptually cannibalize its former self, and regurgitate it for all to see. This movie's kind of like 101 Dalmatians, you see, in that it's about pet animals being [species of said animal]napped by [same animal species]nappers, who are of course too stupid to live, but fortunately they have potentially amusing animal friends and acquaintances to help them on their Incredible Journey back home. It's also kind of like Lady in the Tramp, in that it's about a female who comes from money who falls in love with a trampy guy who very much doesn't come from money, and also, has a cynical view of humans, though he comes around in the end, around the time the lady's owners adopt him. They don't even try to hide this, because Frenchie the Milkman ("SACRE BLEU!") comes right out and calls Thomas O'Malley a tramp, as if to say, "See, audience? He's every bit as wonderful and loveable as this character you might also remember as being wonderful and loveable, please?" It's also kind of like The Jungle Book, in that Phil Harris only does one voice, ever.

In regards to the former, Edgar is certainly no Cruella de Vil, nor is he even a Horace or a Jasper. (He might be more effective than the hell-rat from Lady and the Tramp...maybe.) Why does he think he needs to take the adorable little kitties out into the French countryside BEFORE he kills them? Surely there was a version of this plan that could've NOT involved having to precariously balancing living breathing creatures while zipping around on his pathetic little motorbike? Judging by the dollar signs in his eyes, he is apparently not even aware that he lives in France, a country where the American dollar is not the standard official currency. He's pretty much just a total idiot, you see, though to be fair that was more an example of a bunch of people who worked on this just not putting any thought into their joke, but oh well, let's not get pedantic. Yes, Cruella lost much of her intimidation factor by way of being someone who you wouldn't really expect to do anything for herself, but that's still several shades more intimidating than a man who does try to do things for himself, and fails spectacularly, every time, and will obviously never ever stop succeeding at finding new ways to be humiliated, because he is a loser.

(Question for Those Who Might Know: Is it customary for butlers to be included in wills at all? Isn't what Edgar's getting still more generous than the typical live-in manservant would expect to get? I honestly don't know. Such are the perils of living in a non-butler country.)

In regards to the latter, though, Duchess might actually be more interesting than Lady. Is it just the novelty of being subjected to her Eva Gaboranian accent? No, I suppose it's more than that. In perhaps the one improvement this film makes on the then-standard Disney formula, Duchess is a surprisingly easygoing and open-minded female character. Though she gets in her appropriately haughty lines about how aristocrats don't do this and that and such and so on, she also possesses a potential to find amusement in the world around her that, y'know, a LOT of the studio's leading ladies showed a disturbingly inhuman lack of. And, frankly, it makes her considerably more charming than Generic Princess A that she is so readily willing to go along with O'Malley's (dated) swingin' lifestyle instead of being yet another petulant hardass. Nonetheless, she's a confusing character. Thomas is a perfectly lovely father figure and all, but don't her kittens have an actual father? He's not even mentioned in passing. Since it's Eva Gabor, though, they're probably from a previous cat marriage she'd just like to forget now. But, also, though they appear to be the same age and are ostensibly from the same litter, those kittens appear to be of three entirely different breeds, and....well, it's just completely confusing, that's what it is.

Then again, it's not like there's not also a bunch of other confusing stuff in this movie, too. Like the way this version of France is inhabited by people who speak in pretty much every accent possible...except for French. Duchess has the aforementioned Eva Gaboranian accent, Madame Adelaide and Edgar are presumably British, then there are Americans from all different regions of the U.S., topped off with the Russian, Italian, and Chinese members of Thomas O'Malley's Multiethnic Stereotype Jazz Band. (Let's not forget that Paul Winchell's resume includes both voicing Chinese Cat, and....inventing the artificial heart.) The only French character in the entirety of this film's version of France is the aforementioned milkman, on screen for maybe half a minute at most, whose SACRE BLEUing comes across as a very unique and exotic and foreign thing. IN FUCKING FRANCE. Well, to be fair, one of the (Deep Southern) dogs is named Napoleon, and there's one other French phrase in the film, as the kittens prepare to excitedly devour Edgar's wicked cream of the cream...

The biggest moment of confusion probably comes at the conclusion of Edgar's creamy little crime caper, though. Okay, so he's been soundly thrashed by a bunch of animals working in tandem. (Movies always portray these sorts of thing as if they're charming, but think about it - if you saw a bunch of animals of all species teaming up on a guy in real life, it would look less like happy-go-lucky animal camaraderie, and more like a nightmarish epidemic of demonic possession.) And they've shipped him off to Timbuktu, which is the industry standard when it comes to arbitrary locals far, far away from wherever any given action might be taking place. And nobody saw them doing this. So, the only people who actually knew that Edgar masterminded the operation were animals, presumably. But somehow Madame Adelaide takes his absence to mean he'd kidnapped the kitties anyway, and writes him out of her will? But....if he meant enough to her to be in her will in the first place, then why isn't she the least bit concerned about his mysterious disappearance? Why do we skip right to the negative, Madame? Yeah, you were right, but still.

I actually remember kind of liking The Aristocats as a kid! Not a favourite, but it seemed alright. My former affectionate indifference towards it has certainly been knocked down a few pegs now that I've revisited it in such close proximity to 101 Dalmatians and Lady and the Tramp. (Air Buddies saves it from being the worst "kidnapped pets trying to find their way back home" film I've watched in the last six months.) And while I've previously adored scores from the Sherman Brothers, this time their work isn't terribly memorable, though "Scales and Arpeggios" is reasonably cute. (The most memorable song, "Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat", is actually the one they didn't write.) So, despite some good feline animation and some good voicework, this is probably the least memorable film we've encountered in awhile in this project. We're definitely in a non-classic era now...

....OR ARE WE? Beneath it all, could this be another psychological thriller a la The Three Caballeros? Perhaps these terrible evil cats were just biding their time, waiting for an acceptable excuse to bump Edgar off once and for all! It wouldn't be surprising, because everyone knows that cats are sociopathic monsters who enjoy recreational murder.

TERRIBLY UNNECESSARY DIRECT-TO-DVD DISNEY SEQUEL OF THE WEEQUEL: Riding high on a wave of positive publicity after the Edgar incident, Duchess (Arianna Huffington now I guess) decides to run for a seat in the French Purrliament, in The Aristocats II: The Bureaucats! Things get considerably more complicated, though, in the worst possible way, when the press uncovers a scoopworthy scoop - her daughter, Marie, is dating her opponent's son (Ross Lynch), which is of course a forbidden kitty romance that can never be! Until Thomas reminds Duchess that their romance was once forbidden, too. Even though that wasn't really the case in the original at all, but, whatever. It's enough to convince Duchess to change her mind, and those crazy kids get married and are very happy together! Also, Duchess wins the seat in Purrliament. OF COURSE she does. Her opponent doesn't really matter at all, so let's just assume he's a total buffoon played by, oh, let's say Paul Rudd.