D52 Week 24: The Fox and the Hound!

I know, I know. I'm running really far behind on these. I have my excuses, of course - the people who matter know, and the people who don't matter don't know. But, for now, I'm gonna pretend that my slowness in getting this up is just my homage to the laid back country bumpkin ways of the characters in The Fox and the Hound. Yeah, that's the ticket. And, I suppose I have to make a confession right out of the gate. As someone who lives in rural America, I kind of hate rural America. (There's a LOT of Amos Slades living 'round these parts.) I'm probably predisposed to dislike this, in the same way that I was predisposed to dislike Pixar's Cars. But, y'know, we'll see. It's interesting to note that Walt Disney really didn't set many of his features in rural settings, though. Even the ones that DID feature, like, barns and shit only included them as an obstacle for characters based in more urban settings, e.g. 101 Dalmatians. So, for as traditional and old-fashioned and horribly dated as it might seem, this really IS still a studio with an identity crisis trying new stuff and seeing what sticks.

And, admittedly, parts of this ARE surprisingly sticky. The Fox and the Hound is one of the most bipolar movies that I've seen as part of this project in awhile. It's pretty grating watching, say, the aggressively gentle material that comes with Old Widow Tweed fawning over her adorable baby fox. (And she names him Tod, because he's a toddler? Did she...did she think he was never gonna grow up, ever? You'd think that a very old person would understand aging by that point in her life, but I digress.) And I'm not so sure we needed the stuff with Vixey, which is a rehash of the "Bongo" short from Fun and Fancy Free, of all things, albeit with less in the gross child sexuality department. (At least Vixey, unlike Tod, has a name whose basis will be consistently appropriate throughout her adult life, I guess.) With all of this gentle formulaic blandness, it feels like it would be really, really easy to dismiss. It feels like it would be really easy to, for instance, metaphorically aim my hunting rifle right at this film's face and blow its brains out, never to think about it again. But, then, the metaphorical reluctant hunting dog, representing those fleeting moments of sticky quality, steps in to make me back down from murdering it, with my bullets made of negative amateur film criticism.

The animation, for instance, is pretty top-notch. You might not realise it, because most of the time it's completely wasted, on uninspired backwoods cuteness, and everyone looking sort of despondent while Big Mama sings her Pearl Bailey songs. (Which aren't bad songs, mind you. I'd take them over Jeanette Nolan's speak-singing any day.) And, yes, Copper looks kind of wonky, mostly because of his head, which is a bit polygonal, in a subtle but nonetheless unnerving way. But, just take my word for it, though. I'd like to point you towards the climax, with the non-Phil Harris bear-is. That's got to be one of the most intense sequences in a Disney film in a good long time! Yeah, he kind of comes out of nowhere, but let's ignore the plotting side of things and just praise the visuals. That is a REALLY well-directed scene, isn't it? I'd say it accurately captures the sort of terror you'd feel when encountering a bear. He easily swats everything away with his ginormous paws, he shrugs of a shot from a fucking RIFLE like it's nothing, and....well, yes, he's a fairly realistically portrayed bear, is what I'm saying, and bears are scary. Supposedly, this bear was the work of animator Glen Keane, who does a simply fantastic of it, playing with light and shadows in a way that evokes an almost Monstro-esque vibe, at least for me.

It should come as no surprise that Glen Keane would go on to do some fantastic animation work on some rather important characters during the Disney Renaissance, including your beloved Beast, Taylor. And, later on, he was apparently involved rather intimately with your beloved Tangled, Kevin, at least until health issues stepped in. So, yeah. Beary the Bear was a harbinger of pleasant things to come.

This is also probably the most emotional Disney film some time, with an interesting and tragic scenario rife with potential social commentary. It's hard not to feel a twinge of sadness when you hear young Tod's unbridled optimism about his ill-conceived friendship, even in the face of Big Mama's big matronly advice. So, again, it's disappointing that they end up doing so little with this material as the film wears on, mostly due to the ill-conceived Vixie stuff. Sandy Duncan is perfectly charming in the role, but all she really does is grind the social commentary to an almost total halt. I will never cease to find it reprehensible when films seem to imply that being in a romantic relationship is a wholesale replacement for any and all previously extant friendships one might have. (Just because I have Taylor doesn't mean I'd think about abandoning you guys, not in a million years, and I'd like to think it's mutual!) Still, they wisely manage to play one more effective emotion card before the movie's through. I confess that the penultimate scene, where Copper steps in to shield his friend, made me tear up. Yes, it's blatantly, cruelly manipulative and I hate them for it, but it worked.

The earlier scene where Widow Tweed released Tod was a little less effective, and it didn't make my cry; however, it DID remind me of "Pikachu's Goodbye", which made me weep like a motherfucker when I was eight years old. So, maybe it gets vicarious crying credit. I dunno.

Oh, speaking of Old Tweedy, why the hell is she nursing Amos Slade back to health at the end? Are they, like, an item now? I hope not. That would just be.........literally the worst thing to think about, ever.

And then there's The Filler Adventures of Boomer, Dinky, and the Caterpillar. It's basically a watered down version of any classic chase cartoon you might remember, a lot less clever, but at least it has the feature quality animation going for it, I guess? I'm not entirely sure of the timeframe of this film, exactly, but given that it's long enough for Tod to grow from an adorable wee kit into something adultish enough to want to have Vixiecourse, that's....that's an improbably long-lived caterpillar, isn't it? No wonder Dinky and Boomer covet him so much; clearly, he possesses the secret to immortality. Or at least unnaturally long life. At any rate, their adventures are pointless, but harmless enough. As Artificial Heart Inventor Paul Winchell's Disney characters go, Boomer ranks below Tigger, but way above Offensive Chinacat.

I've been rambling for long enough now, haven't I? The point is, The Fox and the Hound is a strange mixed bag. It was the most expensive animated film ever produced at the time of its release, this being an era where Disney was hoping to achieve box office success through sheer monetary brute force, I suppose. And it worked, sort of. There are things that are likeable about it, and then there are things that will put you to sleep. It's infinitely superior to Disney's next attempt at a big budget spectacle, but that's a story for another day........

TERRIBLE AND AWFUL AND NOT PARTICULARLY FUNNY RECURRING BAD DISNEY SEQUEL IDEA BIT: Two Foxes, a Hound, and a Pizza Place is a positively hilarious laff-fest focusing on the wacky romantic hijinks of Tod and Copper, who are friends again now, for some reason, and are competing for the affections of Vixie, for some reason, while frequenting their friendly neighbourhood pizza pie shop, for some reason! Romantic misunderstandings abound, leading up to a revolutionary climax where the viewers at home get to vote on who gets pregnant with an adorable li'l baby, not that it matters because the movie ends abruptly at that point anyway. Fun! (Meanwhile, in a dramatic subplot, Old Widow Tweed struggles to cope with the realization that her dead husband has been reincarnated, as a badger.)