Disney Movies

[quote="Putli Bai"]

Cutebutpsycho wrote:
True confessions time - I've never seen Beauty and the Beast.

Someone get the smelling salts because I'm about to faint in a dramatic fashion due to this shocking and disturbing revelation.

Of all the Disney movies that came out during the Renaissance era, Beauty and the Beast was the one I didn't see during its theatrical release. (The Little Mermaid was my first Disney movie at the theater, so it has a special place in my heart) When it came out on VHS my dad rented it for me, and I remember not liking it for some reason. A few years ago, I had this fierce urge to watch it again, so I scoured Blockbusters and used video shops trying to find the original DVD, and finally I got my hands on a VHS copy, rewatched, and fell in love. I'm so psyched to finally see it on the big screen.

Someone get the smelling salts because I'm about to faint in a dramatic fashion due to this shocking and disturbing revelation.

"That's my third monocle this week! I simply MUST stop being so horrified!"

My niece attempted to cut her own hair after watching Mulan. Also the cat's hair. So yes, she is quite an inspiring heroine!

I'd have to go with Belle for favorite Princess since she's a book-lover like me, though it's a hard choice. When it comes to best villains, though, Ursula wins without a doubt.

Gillian wrote:Belle is the best. I don't know why this is even a discussion. January 13 re-release, y'all!

Ooh, that's awesome! My friend and I went to see it when they re-released it in IMAX a while back, and we were the only two people in the theater. We totally sang out loud and made fools of ourselves.
(Originally, there was a dude with his young daughter - probably 4 or so, I'd say. You just know he thought he was doing this great thing with his daughter, but when the beast showed up for the first time she started screaming. Apparently, a 15-foot cartoon beast is a bit much for a little one.)

I saw that re release too! Our theatre was full. I was 12 and went with my dad.

I was 12 when it first came out. It was one of the first movies my sister and I went to by ourselves.[/old]

I am a Belle fan too (yay bookishness), but we decided the moral of her story was not all that great. Since as you get older it goes from "it's what is on the inside that counts!" to "you can change your abusive boyfriend who isolates you from everyone you know!"

I've seen that argument around in a few places, but I'm sorry, I don't agree at all.

Belle is not an endlessly patient, eternally forgiving, self-sacrificing woman who just hangs around waiting for the Beast to change. She doesn't give him an inch until he starts being nicer to her. She doesn't wait for good treatment and respect; she demands it. Even after he saves her life, she reminds him that it was his stupid fault for being mean to her and kicking her out to begin with.

Besides, he isn't even her boyfriend at all until he starts being nice. She won't even eat dinner with him, much less date him.

Kiran wrote:I saw that re release too! Our theatre was full. I was 12 and went with my dad.

I was twenty-seven, heh.

A little girl once followed me around the grocery store working up her courage to blurt out "You look like MULAN!" Then she ran away. It was pretty damn gratifying to be compared to her.

Ha! That is awesome.

The Beauty & the Beast release from several years ago didn't come to my town. My mom talked about us driving over to a town two hours away to see the movie and make a weekend of it, but we never got around to it. Which is why I'm SO STOKED about it coming out again. I haven't seen that movie on the big screen since I was six years old. I can't wait!

I once watched Beauty and the Beast four times in one day. I just couldn't stop myself; I'd gotten the VHS for my thirteenth birthday back when it was a new release (more years ago than it seems now). Belle has a special place in my heart, but I love all the heroines. I prefer heroines as a catch-all term to princesses, because then you can include all the other great Disney women, like Alice and Wendy and Maid Marian and Anita and Perdita and Kida and Miss Bianca and Megara and Esmeralda and Nala and Lilo and Nani. Mulan should technically be on this list--she isn't a princess! It irks me to see her in the merchandising, but I understand why. Mulan was more awesome than just a princess, she was a war hero!

But for now, all I see are unattractive character designs (I love Merida's hair, but her head... ye gods...) and a subtle-as-a-hammer "anything you can do I can do better" message.

I'm glad I'm not the only one weirded out by the way Merida, and the other characters, look. It's so odd. It's like all the effort went into her wonderful hair. The "tomboy in olden times wants to be free" story is so overdone for me; I hope they can put a fresh spin on it, but I'm not terribly excited at the moment. I do admit that part of this is that I already have a favourite CGI animated movie set in Scotland (How to Train Your Dragon) and I don't want anything new. Even though the two movies have absolutely nothing in common other than Scottish accents.

Re: your list of heroines...

Kida is a princess. She just gets no love as part of the Princess Line because her movie wasn't a fairy tale and it flopped.

I love Atlantis: The Lost Empire. That and Treasure Planet are, I think, wonderful experiments that got more right than they got wrong (I don't care if they're "breathing vacuum" or what not, the artistic design of Treasure Planet was awesome)... but the general public disagreed so Disney decided not to pursue it further.

Yes on the heroines! I love Alice, Lilo and Nani, etc. They're just spunky as hell.

Treasure Planet is a seriously underrated movie. It's so gorgeous, and the story is good. It's Treasure Island, how can you go wrong? Though the emphasis on the surrogate father aspect of John Silver is played really heavily. I know that's the whole theme of the movie and all, but anyway. It's very quotable, too.

"It's just a lifelong obsession, Jim, I'll get over it."
"Darn it Jim, I'm an astronomer, not a doctor! I mean, I am a doctor but not that kind of doctor. You can't help people with a doctorate, you just sit there and you're useless!"

The one character design I didn't really like was Jim's. I just didn't like that floppy hair, though it was in style at the time so I see why they went there. The voice acting is great though: Joseph Gordon-Levitt! I loved that they called the ship the "RLS Legacy".

The failure of Atlantis and Treasure Planet makes me feel sorry for the Disney animators. They try so hard to do something new, and all audiences seem to want is the same old, same old. The stories could be tighter on both movies, but they were really reaching for something.

I should add Amelia to my list of heroines. I liked her a lot; she was an awesome captain, and while they gave her and the doctor the romantic subplot, it was cute and didn't feel shoehorned in.

Kida is a princess.

After I posted I remembered, but thinking further, she's one of the few princesses who gets to be a queen. Heck, an empress! I don't think anyone else ever got to be a queen.

My favorite Disney movie is Beauty & the Beast, so I am squealing like a little girl over its re-release. For some reason, I never saw it in the theater when it first came out, even though I saw all the other Disney movies. I still don't know why.

I agree with queenofdenile that B&B doesn't have an underlying "put up with abuse" message. I never got that from the movie. I've heard others say that it teaches girls that they can change a man, but I never got that from it, either. The Beast changes himself once he realizes what an ass he has been, and that's when Belle warms to him. I think the prevailing message of the movie is that your soul needs to be beautiful no matter what you look like on the outside. Cheesy, but so true.

Beauty and the Beast came out in December, I think, when I was 7 or so, and while I loved the movie, the Beast scared the shit out of me. I remember telling my mom the next day about being afraid of the Beast and she essentially told me to suck it up because Santa was bringing me a ton of B&B stuff for Christmas. So I got over it. It's still one of my favorite Disney movies.

What I want to know is, why isn't The Emperor's New Groove more popular than it is? That movie is hysterical. I worked at a video store in high school and we watched that movie every Sunday for like six months straight.

It was popular enough to get a TV series, which wasn't quite as funny... but Patrick Warburton as Kronk was as great as ever. And Eartha Kitt as Principal Amse and all the times Kronk would be absolutely shocked that Amse was Esma.

"Why do we even HAVE that lever?"
"Is that my voice? Is that MY voice?"

But yeah, the early 2000s are unjustly maligned I think. The movies were solid, even if they weren't breaking any new ground (except, of course, for Atlantis and Treasure Planet going into sci-fi), and one of them - Lilo & Stitch - is, in my opinion, as good as anything from the Renaissance (and it's my favorite to boot).

The only one I can't speak to is Home on the Range, which I've never seen and never intend to see. I remember it being the last planned traditionally animated feature at the time and thinking that A) that was a very sad thought and B) the movie looked like crap and certainly didn't deserve the honor of being the last. I admit it could be a perfectly adorable movie, but I couldn't get past Roseanne Barr, farm animals, and a third rate Yosemite Sam knockoff in the trailer.

I rented Winnie the Pooh last night from OnDemand. The girls (and I) have now watched it four times. It is so thoroughly charming. I certainly hope that the voice cast they'd been using over the last decade wasn't just left out in the cold, because they were there for some good (The Tigger Movie) and some bad (Pooh's Heffalump Halloween). And I don't want my complete enjoyment of Craig Ferguson's take on Owl to be sullied by the thought that Andre Stojka might have been snubbed so they could get a "name".

My favourite princess was and always will be Belle. She loves book and is a daddy's girl. That's got Scarlettfish written all over it.

I also have a huge soft spot for Aurora, but that's largely because I had a huge crush on hottie Prince Philip.

I always forget how good Lilo and Stitch is until I watch it. Lilo is one of my favorite Disney girls; I love how adorable and weird she is, and completely unashamed of how weird she is. "If I gave Pudge tuna, I'd be an abomination!"

I thought Lilo and Stitch was going to be crap -- just manic Robin Williams-y spazziness, which is what I recall from the commercials -- and I saw it and it was precious and awesome and the art was really nice. A very pleasant surprise.

I have a real soft spot for Beauty and the Beast. I had the soundtrack and the beginning part (the stuff about the rose etc.) still gives me chills. My niece got into it (she doesn't really watch movies -- she's only two anyway -- but my sister read her the books and they listened to the soundtrack), and in the car one day we were talking about it and I started singing the Belle song and she looked at me like I was a MAGICIAN, that I ALSO knew the Belle song. I do like Belle, but I just think the songs in that are so terrific (RIP Ashman). Little Mermaid too, but my youngest sister was OBSEEEEEEEESSSSSSSED with The Little Mermaid for years and I'm pretty sick of it. Every time I hear the songs though I'm struck by how good they are. And...that was really the end of my renaissance; The Lion King never really did it for me (except for the opening song, which makes me cry instantly).

Unlucky Bear wrote:What I want to know is, why isn't The Emperor's New Groove more popular than it is? That movie is hysterical. I worked at a video store in high school and we watched that movie every Sunday for like six months straight.

I just bought that one the other week. Why it took me this long I'll never know because I LOVE that movie. I remember laughing so hard in the theatre that I was crying, it was so funny. I couldn't imagine how Eartha Kitt was going to work as a voice actor but she was brilliant, and especially with Patrick Warburton.

You know the other one I liked a lot at the time but rarely hear much about is Hercules. I loved James Woods as Hades ("Whoa, is my hair out?"). That one is also on sale so I'll be getting that this week, too.

I LOVE The Emperor's New Groove. Sometimes when I'm having a pity-party I just wail, "Llama faaaaaace!" and I snap out of it. And Kronk's secret agent music!

I finally got to see Beauty and the Beast for the first time in years, and I kinda just felt like weeping half the time. When Belle takes Maurice's place? Almost bawled. When Beast let her go so she could take care of Maurice? Almost bawled. When the crazy ass villagers started storming the castle and Beast said to just let them come in? It almost rained on my face.