Nothing Exciting Ever Happens.

Hi, blog! I'm sorry I've been neglectfully neglecting you. That's just awful of me, and I'm sorry. How can I ever make it up to you?

You can't. I'm really, really pissed off and I'm never, ever gonna forgive you. I think we should see other blogpeople.

I....I know, I was being selfish, but this isn't me, honest! I can do better, really I can! P-please....just give me one more chance....

*sigh* Okay, fine. Go ahead.

...what? Really? I just.....I didn't expect you to give in so easily.

Yeah, well, I don't have much self-esteem.

Cool. Okay, where to start?

D52 Week 40: The Emperor's New Groove!

There's no shortage of divisive films in the Disney canon - at least three of which involve offensive Asian stereotype cats - but The Emperor's New Groove has to be the most curiously divisive. It divides the realm of People Who Watch Disney Films into two categories, with almost stunningly clean-cut precision. Those who watch Disney films because they're just general animation fans tend to like it, because it's something different; but those who watch Disney films out of the belief that they're inherently superior to other animated films tend to look down on it, because it's SILLY, like something produced by one of those OTHER studios, harrumph. Granted, yes, this is a very silly movie, and even in its most theoretically tense moments, it chooses instead to lovingly embrace Teh Wacky. But still, people. Go harrumph yourselves.

Where does Jesse fall? Well, frankly, I'm in the former category. I've never thought there was anything admirably consistent about Disney, quality-wise - aside from the Pixar films they merely distribute, at least. Sometimes, their in-house productions are good. Sometimes they're not. Oftentimes they're forgettable. They're consistent where it gets tiresome to be consistent, like using the same fucking story in roughly 80% of their movies; and they're inconsistent everywhere else. What makes Disney so special? Damned if I know! I'm certainly not a big enough fan to enjoy watching a different Disney film EVERY SINGLE WEEK. (I'm certainly also not a big enough fan to think it's an even remotely romantic idea to spend a honeymoon at a Disney-themed amusement park. You're welcome, Tails.)

Indeed, when I expressed my interest in the D52 thingamajig, I thought it would mostly be a recurring sort of discussion topic at most, until it unwittingly morphed into THIS, which is not a consistently consistent source of fun. Anyway, at least I was less frustrated with this particular week. Because, you see, I fall into the former category.

D52 Week 39: Dinosaur!

Congratulations are in order for Gurgi and, um....other, even less memorable characters. The Black Cauldron is no longer my least-favourite D52 film!

We have a most puzzling paradox, really: Dinosaur would've been considerably less boring had it, well, allowed itself to be "boring"! It's absolutely absurd that they went through all the trouble of making these realistic, detailed dinosaur models, then completely ruining that by giving them goofy cartoon voices - to the degree that Della Reese's voice is goofy, anyhow. Um. Well, it's goofy relative to the visuals, anyway. If Della Reese really was a dinosaur, nobody would take her seriously, and Touched by an Anchisaurus would've been cancelled after just one season, instead of *consults Wikipedia* holy shit Touched by an Angel was on the air as recently as 2003? I like the stories about angels, unicorns, and elves, now I like those stories as much as anybody else, but....seriously, that's kind of sad, isn't it? When you consider all the amazing series out there whose lives were cut tragically short because networks don't get those young people and their internets, and then TOUCHED BY A FUCKING ANGEL gets NINE SEASONS??? Screw you, CBS, and your freakishly old audience!

Consisting of dinosaurs, you could say.


Which brings me back to the movie I'm ostensibly supposed to be writing about. *takes a deep breath*

D52 Week 38: Fantasia 2000!

Hard to believe it's only been eight months since I took a look at the original Fantasia (my first full-fledged D52 review, from an apparently happier time in my life!), and yet, here we are. Fastest fifty-nine years EVER! Of course, it wasn't the first time a sequel had been proposed: in the 80's, your friend and mine Wolfgang Reitherman proposed something called Musicana, "an ambitious concept mixing jazz, classical music, myths, modern art and more, following the old Fantasia format". And then this was ditched, because Recyclerman was physically unable to do anything potentially interesting by that point in that career. Why, the mere THOUGHT of doing that eventually killed him, so it was shelved. But then, in 1990, Roy Disney entered the fray, feeling the need to prove that he is every bit as much a Disney as his Uncle Waltie; and so, following in his footsteps, he produced a Fantasia film that ended up heralding the end of a period of critical acclaim and commercial successes for the studio. Just as Fantasia begets Dumbo and Melody Time, Fantasia 2000 begets Treasure Planet and Home on the Range. Thanks a lot, dudes.

Still, that shouldn't affect one's opinion on the quality of the Fantasiae themselves. After all, we should be fair, and impartial, right? So, come join me in being an impartial fairy, as I take a segment-by-segment look through Disney's first package-style film in quite some time! (It's easier to not be dreading a package film when I know that it won't be succeeded by, like, six more.)

D52 Week 37: Tarzan!

And thus, the period somewhat arbitrarily known as the Disney Renaissance comes to an end, forever. With this most momentous of occasions, one very important question comes to mind: What is it about nature-based settings that predominately feature animal characters that brought out this weird urge in Disney to hire famous pop singer-songwriters, to contribute awkward quasi-ethnic songs? There's something very 1990s about slow pop ballads set to tribal chanting and percussion, isn't there?

Yes, Tarzan is, in many ways, a good note for this era to go out on. It's really pretty! There are some genuinely interesting characters! The action scenes are nicely done! The biggest problem with the film can be summed up quite simply: Phil Collins. The again, the biggest problem with most things Phil Collins is involved with can be summed up in the same way. A Disney film doesn't have to be a musical to succeed, but if it's going to lean heavily on its soundtrack - and they often do - then those songs should be, y'know, organic and entertaining at best, unobtrusive at worst. Phil Collins manages none of these things. (Of the many petty things Trey Parker and Matt Stone have pettily been pissed off about over the years, losing to Phil Collins might be one of the most reasonably petty of them all.)

D52 Week 36: Mulan!

Y'know, the Disney Renaissance experience seems to be really hampered when you watch all of these movies back-to-back (as are a lot of cumulative Disney experiences, apparently). How wonderful it must've been to be moviegoers in the 90s - I wasn't allowed to see movies at that time, period, so I wasn't one - and have a new gorgeously drawn Disney film almost every year! Why, that's almost just long enough to forget enough about the previous one to feel like the new one's, well, new! Whereas, when you watch them all back-to-back, it's a little wearying. That barely concealed sadistic side of us all seizes on the repetition to come gradually more to the forefront, practically begging to see even ONE movie that doesn't end in unearned happy lovey-dovey romancings. For all the intriguing new directions they go in on a visual level, and all the surprisingly well-cast characters that pop up, it still always seems to boil down to the same rusty old story mechanisms, creaking away, until the end of time itself. Is this literally the only type of plot they could dream up at this time? Seriously, dudes??

And so, we come to Mulan, a film where our heroine mentions on precisely one occasion that she thinks her commander is hot, and he can't bring himself to murder her for being a woman. Clearly, They Should Totally Be Together, forever!!! ♥

D52 Week 35: Hercules!

I can't help but wonder if I would've enjoyed this movie more had I not been overexposed to James Woods' episodes of Family Guy while living in one of the few states even worse than Montana!

After the grimness of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, I suppose it's only logical to have some palette-cleansing silliness. (And when you think of silly stories, the first thing that comes to mind is Greek mythology, right???) As such, like Aladdin a few years back, we get an ostensibly serious figure who ends up being voiced by a Particularly Unlikely Celebrity whose fast-talking mannerisms surely take forever for whichever fool(s) ended up being responsible for animating them. Of course, regardless of how James Woodsed out I might be for one lifetime, Robin Williams as the Genie makes his Hades seem reigned-in and relatively tame by comparison, in that he actually has, y'know, an actual concrete characterization and stuff. (Not that I'm implying that Ed Sullivan impressions don't count as characterization in and of themselves, but-- oh, actually, I TOTALLY AM.) And, yeah, again, there's kind of a romance somewhere in there, with a lady who's forced to get close to the Big Bad against her will - which is also more tolerable than some of the previous examples of this. Despite trying a couple of interesting things, Hercules is pretty much one of the more formulaic entries from the Renaissance era, but at least it's formulaic in a competent way, I guess!

D52 Week 34: The Hunchback of Notre Dame!

As a general rule, with the past Disney films we've covered, when someone boasts of how a particular movie is "unusually dark", what they secretly mean is that it's forgettable at best, horrible at worst, with no real personality. "Sleeping Beauty is unusually dark compared to other Disney films of its era!" Yeah, because everyone's drawn somewhat more angularly? Because our villainess has a less vivid skin tone than even some albinos, which is used in place of giving her an actual personality? Big deal! "The Black Cauldron is one of Disney's darkest films, period!" Well, OF COURSE it is. Having to put up with Gurgi would give ANYONE dark thoughts.

Darkness hasn't served Disney well in the past, is my point. But, somehow, The Hunchback of Notre Dame is different, not to mention even darker than either of those two films, because it's taking on real-world issues! Social injustice! Religious intolerance! Strumpetism! The idea that someone with a name like Frollo can be anything other than wacky! The really surprising thing is that it's actually willing to analyze these rather serious issues that it drags into the fray, and the result is one of Disney's most surprisingly thoughtful films, and probably the most underrated part of the Renaissance.

...though, somehow it's appropriate that people lock this film away in the belltower of their minds instead of trying to appreciate it at all.

D52 Week 33: Pocahontas!

Well, you have to give Pocahontas credit for one thing, at least. It's a more sensitive portrayal of Native Americans than Peter Pan!

But, yes. Everyone knows that Pocahontas is a film with an incredibly naïve worldview, a film with the audacity to pretend that everything's gonna be alright between European settlers and Native Americans from now on, and - furthermore - a film that abandons pretty much every genuinely interesting thing that actually happened in its subjects' lives for the sake of retelling The Fox and the Hound, as a romance, with human people. (I suppose there's also a healthy splash of far-less-magical-and-interesting The Little Mermaid in here, too.) But let's give them the benefit of the doubt, okay? Don't the majority of biopics oversimplify their subjects' lives and throw out the most uniquely interesting bits in favour of telling a more comfortably familiar story? That's just what they do, because, in all fairness, it's quite difficult to compress most interesting lives into less than two hours. Surely we can just put aside the pseudo-historicality of it and just enjoy it as a sweet and romantic romance, right??

Well, no. No matter what, Mel Gibson is always Mel Gibson. Even Disney Mel Gibson!

D52 Week 32: The Lion King!

The Lion King is, by a significant margin, the most successful of Disney's Renaissance era films, which is honestly kind of surprising, because it's also probably the strangest. The Little Mermaid? Not particularly weirder than the original tale, though certainly less depressing! Beauty and the Beast? They actually came up with reasonable reasons to have household objects sing songs and, furthermore, to make people drink fluid poured forth from Angela Lansbury's nose! Aladdin? Who cares if Aladdin is arbitrarily Arabian instead of Chinese, because you're not expected to pay attention to anyone who isn't Robin Williams anyhow! But The Lion King is pretty inexplicable, when you get down to it. It's kinda sorta Disney's adaptation of Hamlet, except with animals. And not anthropomorphic animals living in an otherwise human-style society, like Robin Hood, even! They're normal animals, living normal animal lives, and they even eat each other like normal animals, except they talk and worship certain lions as kings-slash-demigods. The worst side-effect of realistic animals is that, of course, our main character's Disney love interest is, at best, a cousin of some sort; at worst, his half-sister. Because, y'know....it's a fun film for the entire family! *wink wink*

And which popular pop artist's music is the obvious choice to accompany this backdrop of murder and political feline turmoil and incest? Why, do you even have to ask? Elton John, of course!