The Lion Guard

I’m happy the The Lion Guard is on our screens.

As a lifelong fan of The Lion King, I received the news of this series with mixed emotions. I was happy the property was getting more attention and that I would see a continuation of a favourite story, but of course the premise made me pause. So it’s a mid-quel during The Lion King 2 about Kiara’s little brother…who just never gets mentioned at all by his family or friends after that movie’s time skip? And plays a prominent role in Pride Lands politics with his group of friends, many of them belonging to species never seen in the movies, yet we have to accept all of them just vanish?

Well, to enjoy the show you simply have to accept that aspect of it. And I very quickly did, because I found myself liking the show in almost every way very quickly indeed.

A big part of that is that it’s very nostalgic. Not just because it’s obviously based on The Lion King and the animators have made great pains to emulate the style of the movie in modern vector animation – particularly successfully when it came to the lions’ facial animations, which are amazingly faithful to the cel-animated high-budget original movie. But more because of the premise and the writing, which evoke many other shows and properties of the past. With a fantastic voice cast where every actor not only evokes his or her animal but has a mellifluous voice that it’s a pleasure to listen to, I was reminded of Little Bear. The idea of young animals from different backgrounds coming together to solve the problems of nature reminded me of The Land Before Time and its sequels. The brisk writing, humour and musical numbers that were sometimes inspired and sometimes generic pap echoes the early My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. And while it’s not really a positive, the all-purpose overpowering deus ex machina of ‘The Roar’ put me in mind of the Sword of Omens in Thundercats and its ability to fix just about any problem at the end of the episode.

There were jarring elements here. Fuli the Cheetah somehow doesn’t fit the aesthetic, looking much more like vector animation than the rest of the cast. The show starts out obliquely mindful of the fact that while they prize the Circle of Life, these lions and cheetahs tear apart and eat the zebras and gazelles they live alongside, it soon descends into a herbivore-good, predator-bad pattern that conveniently leaves out how the lions actually eat. Despite this natural division, there’s obviously a bit of care taken about racial insensitivity here, too, for while the hyena bad guys still mostly sound like street gang members, there’s also some good hyenas (who sound different) to show it’s not because of their race that they’re evil – which is a pretty good message to include, but gets conveyed in a rather cumbersome way. And it was also strange and hilarious at first to hear Brick from The Middle as Ono.

Hyenas aside, I rather like the message of diversity that The Lion Guard brings, which is less simplistic than it may at first appear. The premise is very inclusive – young Kion, Simba and Nala’s cute mohawked son, is gifted with the supernatural Roar of the Elders, a roar which seems to channel the forces of nature and the magic of generations of ancestors and sends nasty hyenas flying off Team Rocket style. Scar once possessed this roar, but lost it because he misused its power – and for some reason never mentioned it in any of his appearances. It’s traditional for the lion who can use the roar to assemble the Lion Guard, the members of the pride who are the best there is at what they do – the Guard must comprise the fiercest, the strongest, the bravest, the fastest and the keenest of sight. 

Progressive Kion doesn’t stick only to lions, but assembles his Guard from throughout the pridelands – a keen-sighted egret, a swift cheetah, a bulky hippo, a fearless honey badger and then Kion at the centre of it all. Why I like this is that it celebrates diversity but also differences in cultures – each member has their own strength, their own way of living and their own knowledge, different from the others. They are diverse and fundamentally different from one another – they don’t have to mash together to all be the best at everything, or convince themselves they are all the same.

The Lion Guard become a kind of police force and community support. They keep the denizens of the Outlands at bay and help mitigate the effects of natural disasters. Some original cast members make their appearances, Ernie Sabella ever happy to reprise his Pumbaa role and James Earl Jones returning as Mufasa’s  readily-accessible ghost for the pilot double-episode (a sound-alike taking up the reins later on). Jason Marsden, Andy Dick and Lacey Chabert reprise their roles from The Lion King 2 in a highlight episode, and Cam Clarke returns not as Simba but as a background vulture.

Some of the episodes are inventive and original, like when Reirei the jackal teaches the Guard about manipulation and two-facedness, or when aardwolves are mistaken for hyenas and their absence ruins the local ecosystem. Others are a bit tired, like when a boastful celebrity eagle turns out not to be what his legend suggests he is, or when two annoying gorillas have to be escorted back to their homeland. A stronger season finale also would have been a good idea.

But I have to say, I think The Lion Guard is the best show for young kids currently airing that I know of. In terms of production quality, writing, world-building and acting, it’s ahead of the rest. Season two has just begun, and I hope the show can actually develop, as it could potentially stagnate quickly, but so far I rather like what I’ve seen!

Moana

Disney squeezed two films into 2016. Zootopia was a satisfying twisty mystery with a broad and often hilarious animal cast, while Moana offered a very focused ocean quest story with a far smaller roster.

While I certainly liked Moana, admired the decision to explore a culture Disney hasn’t touched before, and had much to celebrate technically, I can’t call it a classic – and nor do I think it will endure. In fact, having just read that directors Clements and Musker (helmsmen of Little Mermaid, Aladdin and Hercules, amongst others) wanted to adapt Terry Pratchett’s Mort but came up against rights acquisition issues, I have to admit wishing they were able to do that instead.

The progressive nature of Moana has been trumpeted enough it almost feels like criticising the piece is tantamount to being racially insensitive, but in general it’s the Polynesian elements that really shine through here. Moana herself is a superb character, likeable, believable, shaped by her background but with plenty of her own personality, too – and not just because of her little pithy comments, either. I loved seeing the animated tattoos, the supernatural manifestations of natural forces and the mythological evils. The evocation of the wonders seen by seafaring tribes was great, and there was some superb music, too – even if my favourite was the rather Bowie-ish ‘Shiny’ number that was decidedly non-Polynesian.

For me, the problem was firmly with Maui, a figure central to Polynesian mythology and a secondary character with more screentime than many Disney protagonists. He absolutely needed to be strange, formidable, a little otherworldly but most importantly, extremely likeable. And for all The Rock’s best efforts and for all the tattoos helped, he just wasn’t likeable. He was slow-witted, self-absorbed, violent, reckless and didn’t really grow or learn even as he warmed to Moana. He was oafish and occasionally murderous, and for all the Moana herself was the real hero of the piece, he was the one with the superpowers, he was the one who drove the plot and he was the one who gained the most from the events of the story – if anything, he was a big patriarchal power symbol around which vaguely feminist themes had to twist themselves. And he was no Genie or even a Wreck-It Ralph, a character it’s fun to see through the whole movie even with their flaws. He was just not interesting or compelling at all.

So with only Moana herself and a very straightforward quest to carry the film, it felt very light in the plot department. Certainly not a bad film, but nowhere near the best of these directors’ output, or that of recent Disney releases. 

Oliver & Company

Oliver & Company gets a bad rap. Released in 1988, it comes at the end of Disney’s slump, following the difficult The Black Cauldron and the forgettable The Great Mouse Detective, and just before The Little Mermaid – the recognised start of the Disney renaissance. But the problem isn’t that it’s a substandard film or an embarrassment to Disney, nor a huge departure from the established filmmaking process. It’s that Oliver and Company is just decent, which for a major studio like Disney is just adequate. There’s a lot to like here and a lot that is strong and well-constructed, but the problem is that the scale is too small and it pales beside other Disney stories that are epic in their scope and the original.

Oliver & Company is Oliver Twist with animals – and in New York. Oliver is a cute kitten while the Dodger and the rest of Fagin’s gang are dogs. Fagin himself is human, and perhaps the ugliest of all Disney’s major characters, while Bill Sykes here becomes a merciless extortionist. Instead of Mr. Brownlow, Oliver is taken in by a very cute little girl named Jenny Foxworth, who made me realise that most of Disney’s supposedly cute little girls are actually rather fussy and annoying. Jenny may be the cutest of Disney’s young girl characters.

What Oliver & Company does well is its characters. Oliver is very cute and Dodger, while he could have been developed more, was convincingly compassionate. The rest of the gang is made up of tokens from stock, but they’re above average stock characters. There’s a British bulldog who loves Shakespeare, a big but dim-witted Great Dane, and a random female dog sadly given very little personality. Cheech Marin steals the show as hyperactive Chihuahua Tito, before his more threatening role in The Lion King a few years later. Then there’s Bette Midler giving an absolutely pitch-perfect performance as a spoilt, self-centred poodle who alone makes the film worth watching. I’ll never forget the way she ‘barks’. Fagin himself is a bumbling Dom DeLuise character very like the various crows and cats he plays in Don Bluth animated features, and while his final shows of compassion are nice, more could have been made of him.

The problem here is that in making it the story of one cat who gets mixed up with a petty criminal, one rich girl and one nasty criminal, the scale stays very small. Other Disney movies are about the fate of kingdoms or preventing the wholesale slaughter of puppies. Here, well, there’s a lot of peril for our little gang and surprisingly there is also some pretty violent death, but it feels like the worst that would have happened otherwise would be a little girl got ransomed.

Thus, Oliver & Company just falls short. Even in the Dickens story the stakes are much higher, be it inheritance theft, boys being shot, likeable criminals getting hung, prostitutes wanting to escape abusive relationships or serious comments on social inequality. This adaptation keeps things very light, and the price paid is becoming forgettable. But it is a bit sad the film is virtually erased from Disney’s merchandising or theming efforts. The songs are also dated and would have done better with jazzy instrumentation, the synthesised drums anything but timeless.

But this is not to say the movie is bad at all. It’s well worth seeing and the animals are cute. There are some very funny character moments and the animation, while never stunning, is nice and smooth with some interesting and well-integrated early use of CG. But the fact is that some kind of fantasy setting or a feeling of much higher stakes would have made the film much more engaging and memorable.

Finding Dory (with Piper)

Finding Dory was preceded by the short film Piper, which was a characteristically cute little story of a little sandpiper who at first is traumatised by water, but then learns to innovate by following some little hermit crabs and becomes the best little hunter around. It’s a very Pixar story, extremely cute and full of heart (though of course requires us to be highly selective with what life forms we anthropomorphise), with plenty going for it technically – not just the water effects, but the clever way the simulated depth of field imitated cameras focusing on very small things. For me, though, the strangest surprise was seeing King Crimson stalwart (and recent NyX collaborator) Adrian Belew provided the music.

The movie itself was a triumph. When the sequel to Finding Nemo was announced, people were sceptical. Finding Nemo again? But the shift of the story from Marlin to Dory was a very clever one. Dory as a character centred on the quirk of her memory loss. That made her a character who was extremely amusing but shallow – what would she forget next? Her friends? Her companions? Where did she come from? What was she doing before she met Marlin?

So here we get a quest for self-discovery from a fish with short-term memory loss. And, indeed, long-term memory loss. Dory doesn’t remember her parents, until small things begin to remind her of where she grew up. Not in the ocean, but in captivity.

Like the first film, Finding Dory is primarily a journey – or two journeys, since Marlin and Dory are separated through much of the story. On this journey, numerous characters are introduced very quickly – burly, protective but fun-loving sea-lions; insecure but loveable whales; a self-centred but good-hearted octopus; a typical small role for John Ratzenburger as a little crab quietly trimming the lawn. Sigourney Weaver steals the show without actually having a character, and there’s a very satisfying mini-cameo right at the end to tie up some loose threads from the first film.

Of course, the film relies heavily on coincidence, highly unlikely feats of action and an octopus able to thrive seemingly indefinitely out of water. But those don’t impede a simple, direct and at times very moving plot. There’s a little plot device involving shells that is particularly sweet. Having this kind of ensemble cast works well in an animation, when characters can be so distinct without having to play a very large role in the story, and the humour is always gentle, affectionate and celebrates pushing yourself a little further before and thinking outside the box.

Visually, this is also triumphant, a notable improvement from the first film, and the huge central tank of the aquarium is particularly beautiful – though of course animating something designed to be beautiful is going to result in beauty, so that helps the visual impact of the film. In some ways the ending is a little messy and one wonders if there wasn’t some huge impact on how humans view marine life, but it was also a satisfying large-scale moment in a relatively small-scale film.

Sequels are often seen as a lazy cash-in, and very often detract from the original. But this kind of sequel, made 13 years later from a place of real affection for the original, filling a gap that persists from the original storyline, is exactly how a sequel should be done. And it didn’t hurt that baby Dory was just so damn cute!

Zootopia

Disney is in another extremely strong age, following the Fairy Tale double-whammy of Tangled and Frozen with the wonderfully big-hearted Wreck-it Ralph and Big Hero 6. Now comes Zootopia, an animal allegory that holds a mirror up to human society in the time-honoured way, but with a clever and timely message that crucially seems to please everyone.

Zootopia follows Judy Hopps the adorable anthropomorphic bunny as she follows her dream to become the first-ever rabbit police officer in the multicultural urban utopia that is Zootopia. Even though she manages to surprise everyone and make it through Police Academy as valedictorian, she is constantly underestimated until she manages to wrangle a simple investigation that soon unfurls into a conspiracy that will rock Hopps’ society to the core. But with her new odd-couple friend Nick Wilde the sly fox – and a coincidental powerful little ally – perhaps she has a shot at solving the mystery.

This is of course a look at the current fixations the world has – diversity, integration, celebrating differences or fearing them, and comes with the refreshingly stark opening message that even if you’re told platitudes about following your dreams, it’s seldom that simple. Perhaps the cleverest part is that the messages offered by the film please opposite ends of the political spectrum. For the left, there’s the central message that if you have a dream you can follow it and defy the odds to buck the trend and win over all the doubters. For the right, there’s the concurrent message that there are fundamental differences between various groups, which come with innate limitations and strengths, and draw people into different roles based on averages – even if outliers can be encouraged. Everybody is happy.

And using animals means that time-honoured jokes based on stereotypes can be gleefully employed – only about animals, so no human groups will be offended. The film is replete with sight gags based on appearance, comments about traits associated with different creatures and even jokes revolving around slurs. It’s quite nice that using animals circumvents the current problems about being ‘problematic’, or seeking to be entirely PC.

Pace-wise this is a classic smooth committee-approved script, ticking off exposition, mystery, investigation, development, disillusion, revelation and final confrontation. It’s neither hard to predict nor new, but it works very nicely and hits all the right emotional notes. I wouldn’t say it has heart to the same degree as Wreck-It Ralph or Big Hero 6, but it absolutely gives the audience engaging characters, a fascinating and amusing world, a believable story, some hard-hitting moments and material for social debate, which is pretty good going for a children’s film.

The ensemble cast is also very strong, with the likes of Idris Elba and Oscar winner J.K. Simmons having fun with broad roles, Maurice LeMarche doing a classic impersonation, Tommy Chong being Tommy Chong and Shakira rather bizarrely providing the emotional heart of the movie as well as a rather catchy Sia-penned closing number.

I watched this movie late – I don’t think it will be showing in Japan much longer, and it’s months since its American release – but I’m glad I managed to catch it on the big screen. The way Zootopia is set up for creatures of all sizes and various climates is rather charming and the level of detail in every frame is astonishing. Another hit for Disney, and another set of characters I hope will soon be regarded as beloved characters from a classic film. 

Big Hero 6

I’ve been waiting for Big Hero 6 since the early sneak previews of the art. Admittedly, there was little more to my eagerness than thinking the world looked great and that Hiro was an incredibly cute-looking character. This was also the first time a Marvel property went through the Disney filter, so I was curious to see how that turned out.

I was only familiar in passing with Big Hero 6...largely because someone online had asked why Hiro Hamada wasn’t included in Reed Richard’s Future Foundation – which I followed out of love for Alex Power. Not that he came out of his membership of that little team very well. Anyway, I read the comics, including the utterly terrible original run centred on the Silver Samurai and Sunspot, and while there were a few cringe-inducing elements to the depiction of Japanese people, I was glad the property at least existed. The subsequent mini-serials were rather better, but the main problem was that Hiro was simply not at all likeable.

Thus I was quite glad that Disney were clearly going in a completely different direction, essentially retaining only the names of major characters, plus Hiro being a child genius with a robotic manservant of sorts named Baymax. But Disney’s Baymax is a very, very different Baymax – and that is a blessing, and what makes this film.

The Disneyfied version is set in a hybrid world of Japano-American fantasy, with the city of ‘San Fransokyo’. It’s a little bit of a shame that they didn’t feel they could simply set the film in Tokyo, presumably because that would make it less commercially viable in their home territory. But there’s also a charm to the mixed aesthetic. In this technologically advanced city, young Hiro is a bit of a rebel. He has great skill with technology, but uses it to take part in illegal backstreet Robot Wars technological cock-fights. As these are shady affairs, he gets in trouble, and it’s up to his gentle, kind-hearted big brother Tadashi to save him. He gets some very abrupt character development when he sees his brother’s research lab – including the cute inflatable healthcare robot Baymax – and is inspired. He creates what are essentially the cliche of what nanobots can do in sci-fi, only on a macro scale, and impresses the scientific community.

However, at the event at which he is presenting these, there is a catastrophic explosion. His brother goes into the burning building to try to rescue his mentor, and doesn’t make it out. After a period of mourning, Hiro’s one remaining mini robot tries to reunite with all the others – leading him to realize that the explosion was no accident. It’s up to Hiro, along with Baymax and Tadashi’s old workmates, to investigate.

There’s a lot in common with How to Train YourDragon here – including the young boy bonding with a large, powerful, rather goofy non-human companion. And the film admirably manages to hit similar emotional notes. Hiro experiences loss, determination, the dark desire for revenge, and also the exhilaration of flight. The plot moves with just the right amount of exposition, character development, action and resolution.

I do have some plot-related problems. The fact is that the last thing Hiro should have learned from his brother is that someone has to help the needy. In fact, Tadashi should have trusted his mentor could look after himself rather than recklessly putting himself in danger. Then there’s the fact that even though his actions likely make his daughter hate him, the big winner is actually the bad guy – who without his dastardly plan would have never been able to get his loved one back. So while he ended up looking sad in the back of a police car, in fact crime paid for this villain – far beyond his wildest hopes, as all he had sought was petty revenge.

I also have to confess I felt a bit manipulated by the film’s emotional moments. Hiro is already a tragic orphan, but ends up losing his brother too, and then a sacrifice must be made at the end, too – even if perhaps not a lasting one. While Hiro is utterly adorable and I did enjoy seeing him go through a wide range of emotions, at times the losses didn’t ring true and it felt like artificial plucking of heart-strings. His transition from rebel who looks down on ‘nerds’ to science buff also seemed a bit hollow. Did he have no friends at all from his robot-fighting days? No links that lasted into his later life at all? Really?

The tech was a bit much – Hiro’s invention in particular should have revolutionised all science at once. It also rankled just a little that Hiro doesn’t even think to mass-produce Baymaxes as, y’know, the healthcare robot Tadashi intended him to be.

Ultimately, though, I loved the film – just not unreservedly. It was utterly beautiful, especially the animation for water and sky and various types of energy. Hiro was an endlessly loveable little guy, and Baymax’s non-threatening personality was hilarious put into the various perilous situations we saw. The twists were obvious but compelling, and the jokes were genuinely funny. Disney is still in a very good place, and this is one of their better films since embracing CG, very much worthy of Wreck-It Ralph (and the little background references to old Disney films, like the Stitch cushions, were a nice touch). Definitely one I’ll enjoy watching again. 

Bolt (2008)

Bolt appealed to me when it had its cinema run, but like so many animated films, sadly I didn’t actually get around to going to the cinema to see it. Signalling effectively the transition of Disney Animations from ailing production house playing second fiddle to Pixar to newly accomplished CGI studio in its own right with Pixar mastermind John Lasseter at the helm, Bolt had a lot to prove – but didn’t make anything like the impact of Wreck-it Ralph or Frozen...or, indeed, Tangled. But for all that it’s likely going to be consigned with Meet the Robinsons to ‘minor feature’ status for all time, it was a whole lot better than, say, Cars II. And I liked Cars II much more than most people did.

Something like Homeward Bound meets Finding Nemo with the delusional-ideas-of-own-abilities comedy from the first Toy Story, cute animal story Bolt has a bit of everything – comedy, action, sweetness, emotionally heavy notes, and quite a few sharp jibes at Hollywood, including an especially cutting and brilliant depiction of a manipulative agent. 

The story is that there is a successful TV show called Bolt, which is rather like Inspector Gadget but with Gadget and Brain merged. A little girl – who is even called Penny – gets into scrapes because a terrorist organisation is after her, but has her highly-intelligent dog for protection. Fortunately, Bolt has been enhanced to gain super speed, amazing strength, heat ray eyes and an incredibly destructive superbark. The real Bolt is the star of the show with his real owner, who wishes he could just be a normal dog – but that’s not possible because the director has mandated the dog truly believe what he’s doing is real. In other words, Bolt truly thinks he has amazing powers, and has an incredibly sheltered life – even for a dog.

The show isn’t doing so well, so a network executive demands darker stories – which include a cliffhanger. Leaving Bolt genuinely distressed for his owner leads to him escaping in a rescue attempt and, as seems usual practice in this sort of story, getting knocked out in the back of a delivery van and being taken right across the States.

Bolt at first believes himself depowered by the mysterious properties of styrofoam, but undeterred, goes to look for Penny. He asks some pigeons, who lead him to a cat that has been extorting them – cats being the underlings of the bad guy in the TV show. This alley cat – who turns out to have a genuinely very sweet yet understated backstory involving being left behind when her human family walks away, leaving her to fend for herself after having been declawed, is forced along for the ride, and after picking up a crazy fanboy hamster (who never seems to miss HIS old human for a second), they make their way to Hollywood. But will there still be a place for Bolt?

In animation terms, it’s just a little dated and clunky now, especially the human characters, but the animal designs are very strong and the acting matches well. I had no idea that the actors were John Travolta and Miley Cyrus until the film ended, but both suited their roles extremely well. Also fun to see Malcolm McDowell voicing yet another crazy English bad guy.

I don’t know why Bolt wasn’t more of a success. I guess that it needed a bit more scale to really draw in the crowds, but it benefited from keeping things small and simple – in contrast to its show-within-a-show. The humour was good, the music was good, the emotional parts were good and the payoff was good. I guess it was just that little bit too straightforward to stand out in the crowded market of kids’ American CG animated feature films. 

Sleeping Beauty (1959)

Well, after going to see the enjoyable but flawed Maleficent, it felt like the right time for a viewing of this classic. And this may surprise some, but this was in fact – barring, possibly, as a baby – the very first time I ever saw Sleeping Beauty. I’ve seen bits and pieces, of course – clips of Maleficent’s big entrance, that most persistent of earworms ‘Once Upon a Dream’, which rather makes me think Disney should lift melodies from great composers more, Prince Philip’s kiss of true love – but I am almost certain that this was the first time I’d seen the full film. The most exposure I had to Disney’s version of Sleeping Beauty has been through Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep.

It may be a result of this lack of experience, but I had a lot of misconceptions about the film, and honestly I think they’re pretty widespread. For one thing, with Aurora being part of a trinity of the most iconic fairytale princesses with Snow White and Cinderella, the film feels like older Disney than it really is. Sure, Cinderella is 1950 and Sleeping Beauty is 1959, the same decade, but for all the continued involvement of the Nine Old Men, the Disney of Alice in Wonderland and the Disney of Sword in the Stone feel rather different, and the difference is visible here, not least because there is a clear attempt at a distinct, stylised, sharp-edged style, especially in the opening sequence of crowds gathering for Aurora’s christening.

Other misconceptions I had included that the main character was Aurora, or even King Stephan – really, quite oddly, the central figures of the narrative are the three fairies Flora, Fauna and Merryweather, who are also the only characters who really get any development. I was also under the impression that one of Maleficent’s main problems was that unlike this film, it shows Aurora as asleep for only a matter of hours whereas the real story has the princess sleep for a hundred years. In fact, the same problem exists here – Maleficent leads Aurora to prick her finger and fall into an enchanted sleep, which she remains in only for as long as it takes the fairies to free and arm Philip and get him to his love.

I understand why this has been done – like many modern readers, the Disney writers clearly had a problem with the idea that the princes wakes when total stranger arrives and kisses her, which is hardly true love. Maleficent even dismissed the idea that two young people who meet once and are attracted to one another can be said to share ‘true love’s kiss’ a day later. All of which, of course, is more pleasant than the infamous older versions in which the prince impregnates the enchanted sleeper without her even knowing about it and accidentally wakes her by sucking on her fingers and extracting the splinter that had caused the enchanted sleep. Creepy, man.

But from my point of view, even this very 50s view of romance seems creepy. Aurora is messing about with the cute woodland creatures, the owl and squirrels very much like those who will feature prominently in Sword in the Stone using Philip’s coat and boots to pretend to be a prince, and seeing this and chuckling to himself, Philip steps in and takes the place of the cutesy animals. Rather than screaming and getting out the mace, Aurora finds this charming and loveable.

But the fact is that the romance, 50s or not, is functional and the plot still works. It is also tempting to be influenced by Maleficent and imagine that ‘Good’ King Stephan was actually a very nasty piece of work who had set Maleficent against him, and that Maleficent herself was sympathetic, but as I said in my review of that still-enjoyable film, one of its main flaws was that it had to write its own story rather than successfully managing to weave into the classic narrative. Thus the fairies were different and it was Maleficent herself who provided the ‘true love’s kiss’ get-out, and the ending was a complete departure.

Intriguing as the reinterpretation was, the cartoon Maleficent is wonderful, easily one of Disney’s top villains – and they do villains so well. She is evil because that is her nature, not because of her twisted backstory. She turns into an awesome dragon, rather than transforming her henchman. Her scenes are not without humour – as when her minions reveal they have been looking for a baby for fifteen years. And her devilish, elegant, regal design is a thing of brilliance.

Too bad Aurora and Philip are so bland – and I have real difficulty perceiving Aurora as just-sixteen when she looks 25. But again, it’s the fairies who are the film’s true centre, and they are very clearly defined, especially the likeable, fussy Merryweather. Diablo also gets remarkably good characterisation for a bird with a very minor role.

It doesn’t feel Disney is showing its greatest strengths here. The musical centrepiece is Tchaikovsky’s. The animation, while fine, is less ambitious than it was decades before, with repeating parts and some lazy colouring. The story relies on a very brief love affair, bland heroes and a sleeping beauty who sleeps for less than a day. Yet it just about hangs together on its quirkier strengths, as well as the better-chosen borrowed parts. But it is less impressive than many Disney classics. 

Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)

As Mulan and Tarzan are still relatively well-regarded, Fantasia 2000 and Dinosaur were set apart by being strange experiments and The Emperor’s New Groove is one people tend to be on the fence over, Atlantis tends to have the unenviable place in the Disney canon of the one people can point at and go, There! That’s where Disney’s ‘difficult’ period started! Usually then looking at Lilo & Stitich the year after and adding, Yeah, well, Lilo & Stitch is a weird anomaly.

It’s true that Atlantis is probably the point that Disney was most visibly slipping out of its ‘renaissance’ return to glory. Ironically Disney’s most dry film, it has no songs, very few bright colours and comic relief only in an incredibly sarcastic switchboard operator, a deadpan demolitions expert and a dirty, perverted and creepy Frenchman. It aims for childlike wonder in the Jules Verne mould but by only packing the well-trodden story of a single half-hour cartoon – young dreamer is taken to magical city by mercenaries only for them to turn out to want to plunder the place – it ends up rather dull. Very unusually, I didn’t even want to finish it in a single sitting.

I didn’t catch Atlantis at the time, and really felt very little attraction to it. In the years since it came out, I’ve mostly heard about in the context of ‘You know how The Lion King ripped off Kimba? Yeah, well, Atlantis ripped off Nadia! And Laputa too!’ Honestly, I don’t see it – the ideas that are in both are pretty ubiquitous adventure story elements and staples of adaptations of Verne works, so I can let Disney off the hook on this charge...not that I’ve seen more than two episodes of Nadia, mind you. Yet!

There’s a lot about Atlantis that appeals. Getting a left-field artist like Gerald Scarfe in to design characters had worked nicely on Hercules, so having Hellboy creator Mike Mignola work on this film seemed like a good bet – and there are some great designs here. The cast is strong, with big names experienced in animation putting in good work – Michael J. Fox is very much at home, and Leonard Nimoy’s rumbling patriarch plays to his strengths rather more than Galvatron did. Cree Summer also appears as the poster girl, the veteran putting in an excellent performance – and though she’s one of the very first voice actresses I ever took an interest in (through her work in Inspector Gadget and Rugrats), she certainly isn’t always spot-on...I’ll never forget how irritating she was in the dub of Final Fantasy X.

For all that these elements appealed, however, the film falls down in far more respects. The animation is functional but the heavy use of CG is badly dated now in a way that the wildebeests in The Lion King never will be, having been too foregrounded. The design is too haphazard, feeling at times like the researchers just threw everything that suggested ‘ancient culture’ at the board to see what stuck. The animation is bizarrely careless for Disney – just look how the chalk that rubs off on Milo isn’t reversed as it should be. That story just has far too little brain to move anyone, and we’ve certainly seen the concept too many times already. The large cast don’t have time to be adequately developed or distinguished. Whoever thought of the Ireland/Iceland mistake doesn’t quite understand translation. And then there’s the fact that Milo, for all Michael J Fox tries hard, is deeply unlikeable. He’s too cocksure for an underdog, his clutziness seems affected mostly thanks to his animation, and there is zero chemistry between him and Kida.

The best Disney films have a lot of heart, emotional turmoil that isn’t scared of crossing into cheesy territory, believable romance and some point of identification for the kids. The problem with Atlantis isn’t that anything is done drastically wrong, just that...well, nothing manages to stand out as superb either. 

Bambi

Bambi is not a familiar Disney film to me, though of course the little deer and the fate of his mother are deeply entrenched in popular culture now and I doubt it's possible for any but the youngest child to be surprised by what was reportedly such a harrowing scene for original audiences. It was not harrowing for me, however: it's a favourite family anecdote that when I, as a very young child with work-addicted parents, was taken to a theatrical re-release I reacted to Bambi's mother's disappearance by telling the rest of the cinema, 'Don't worry! She's only gone to work.'

If IMDB's rerelease years are to be trusted, I was two years old at the time, and I haven't seen the film since. At least, not all of it. I had a Bambi duvet cover in my childhood, though, and through clip shows and cameos the process of cultural osmosis has meant that most of the film's major elements were not entirely unfamiliar, but still, I was able to watch the film with a fresh eye.

Quite famously, the film didn't do particularly well on release, clashing with the Second World War, upsetting children with its middle-act bleakness, annoying hunters with its political message and making animation fans question if it had lost the point of animation by focusing on realism. But it is now considered one of the greatest Disney films, its middle act is certainly front-and-centre in any debate on emotive issues in animation and of course it has been very profitable in the long run. 

It's also another remarkable reminder of how technically accomplished Disney were in their early years. There was really no competition for them outside the United States. While Princess Iron Fan and Momotarou show animators still struggling to make characters walk naturally or seem like they have any weight at all, Bambi showcases how characters and scenery look reflected in water, heavy snowfall and storms and even a fire raging out of control, which may not quite be up to the standard of later fires, but is certainly both impressive and cleverly-done, especially in how it is often offscreen. Similarly, the character animation is superb, with the mixture of studies in animal motions and cute faces much more advanced than it may at first seem to one very familiar with the cute Disney animal aesthetic. One need only look at the rather more dated, strange motions of Friend Owl - and his gimmick of suddenly getting very close to the screen - to remember how the staples of character animation were not yet locked in place, and to remember how unusual this sort of animation was in a wider context, and how very accomplished. 

But Bambi is of course an extremely simple story. Bambi is born, a 'prince' amongst the woodland creatures, and has an adorable time learning to walk and talk with the annoying hyperactive bunny Thumper and the gender-confused skunk Flower. He is impressed by the adult deer, and by his father despite how utterly emotionally remote he is (apparently the subject of Bambi II, though I've not seen it). Then his mother is shot, which is terribly sad, but he grows up to happily find a mate and fight off nasty hunting dogs. The wicked men - never actually shown - get their comeuppance when they cause a forest fire they clearly couldn't escape from (apparently Walt had to be dissuaded from showing their agonising deaths onscreen), and the story ends optimistically with the new generation. It is very simple, and a lot less arbitrary than the likes of Pinocchio or Alice in Wonderland, yet quite surprisingly given its reputation as amongst the most babyish of the Disney films, it is also remarkably mature and uncompromising. More of it is about death and sex than it is about cutesy animals. 

Apart from the cyclical framing of death with births, Bambi has a lot in common with The Lion King. Both present their talking animals as just that, rather than giving them human bodies or funny hats, which is my preferred form of anthropomorphism. Neither have human characters, though of course they have their mark on the world and the story of Bambi. Both follow up their heart-wrenching scenes with high-energy contrasting scenes, and allow their protagonist to grow up - albeit very quickly. But there is a distinct difference in tone - The Lion King has the epic proportions of power struggles between royals, whereas Bambi is contemplative and almost detached, in a way perhaps masked by memories of Thumper skating on ice or skunk romances. 

Though the story is very light on the ground, there is certainly more to Bambi than I ever gave it credit for, and it remains part of a body of work of a studio far, far ahead of anyone else at the time. Don't let it being the story of an adorable baby deer fool you - there is some depth here, if you allow yourself to look for it. 

Frozen

For me, Frozen is unusual in the Disney canon in that in a reversal of what I so often feel, my head tells me I should like it but my instinct is one of mild dislike. 

It has a lot of overwhelmingly positive things - a good story that makes some political statements for Disney, excellent performances, the best songs since Mulan (though admittedly I have a soft spot for the ones from The Tigger Movie), genuinely funny comedy, likeable characters and another box ticked in the 'Disney adapts classic fairy tales' list. 

And yet...I felt like for all the achievements, there was always something pulling the film down, so that in the end, I have to say that except when it came to songs, I much preferred Tangled, to which despite the creators' insisting that the adjectival titles are not linked, this is really very much the spiritual successor. It felt like a whole package, whereas to me, Frozen didn't quite seem complete. 

Though I'm well-used to supporting Disney totally changing their source material, I felt like this adaptation of The Snow Queen was a bit of a missed opportunity. Apparently, the concept was in development hell for such a long time - discussed but shelved in the 40s, revived in the 90s, considered as a Pixar film in the early 2000s and then finally given to Disney long-timer (one of the numerous future big names on-board for The Fox and the Hound, as I listed in my review of that film, and later the director of Tarzan) Chris Buck to shape into Frozen. They had difficulties with the character of The Snow Queen being so sinister and remote - and, presumably, too White Witch-ish - but had a breakthrough when they made her sympathetic. There are strokes of genius in this, especially how nice it is that for all the film looks to be leading towards the girls needing to be saved by a man's love, when ultimately that's not the important thing at all, but...

Well, I miss Kay and Gerda and the Thief Girl, and the fact is that The Snow Queen is one of the only - perhaps the one and only - classic fairy story where the boy is the one who's the captive in distress and it's the girl who sets out on the epic quest to rescue him. Despite the step forward for female empowerment that comes from Jennifer Lee being a co-director here and the first woman to ever have that position in Disney, sticking to the original's format, I think, would be much more the political statement for Disney, as well as being a story I always like hearing. Oh well, there's always TMS's World Masterpiece Theater-style anime adaptation, which is rather closer to the source...but I haven't actually managed to finish watching in eight years and really need to start again from the beginning. 

All that remains of the original, though, is the fact that there's a queen with powers of ice and snow...and the idea of a shard in the heart. Well, and that there is a reindeer and there are trolls, I suppose, though the latter are nice ones whose aesthetic - Troll Dolls meet Rock Lords via Jim Henson - just about ends up working. Other than that, well, about the only other point of influence is the vague cold-parts-of-Europe setting, mostly Norwegian but with very Western Russian high society and the Danish hangovers from the original. 

Otherwise, this becomes a story of two princesses in the fictional kingdom of Arendelle (no, not Arundel), one of whom secretly has mutant powers. When she accidentally nearly kills her little sister, she and her parents decide to essentially lock her away and for her powers to be kept secret forever. Of course, this is not so simple, and when she comes of age and is crowned queen, a bit of drama brings out her dangerous side and she flees to make her own Superman palace and hide away. However, she has inadvertently brought out an eternal winter and must be stopped. 

Loose ends are neatly tied, ice effects are beautiful and despite the rather cringy non-rhymes that reminded me far too much of the joke that was Crazy Town's 'Revolving Door', the big belting lead song 'Let It Go' is a triumphant ear-worm that ought to be one of Disney's enduring tracks. I actually know next to nothing about Idina Menzel, having to be told that she is acclaimed for being the original and definitive Elphaba in Wicked (and not being able to stand Glee), but this song was clearly written for her and her impressive lungs, and works well - with some very modern sassy moments so that it doesn't feel derivative. Both her Elsa and Kristen Bell's Anna (most recognisable possible Norwegian names for Americans, methinks) are believable, likeable, flawed and sympathetic. Hans, while rather cardboard, fits the story well and Kristoff - though I wouldn't mind a better transition from his childhood to his apparently solitary adult life. 

Then there was Olaf. I really think that Olaf was very misjudged. He was excellently written, with a series of fantastic jokes - especially his song about his absurd dream - and the vocal performance got the annoying-likeable balance just right. But...the design really, really didn't. I couldn't stand the design for the snowman - buck-toothed, repulsive, goofy and seemingly derived from what an artist from the Beano might have thought looked funny in the seventies, I really, really thought the film (and extended trailer featuring a skit with him and the reindeer) would have been much more appealing had he looked...well, more like a snowman, and less hideous. 

So yes. There was a lot to celebrate here, and Disney's main CG studio is in a very strong position after Tangled and especially Wreck-It Ralph, but several factors held me back from wholeheartedly liking what I saw. 

Also worth mentioning, though, was the short that came before the main feature, Get a Horse!, which was a rather sweet attempt to recreate classic-era Mickey Mouse with a modern twist. Also directed by a woman - Simpsons and Avatar episode director Laura MacMullen - which makes her the first ever woman to direct a Disney film solo, it is a conscious attempt to be classic, featuring Mickey, Minnie, Pete, Clarabelle Cow and Horace the Horse - and even for one moment that made me fanboy for a moment, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Opening with a very passable imitation of the Golden Era (though with its smooth in-betweening, non-jerky rhythms and scale of characters on screen (as well as lack of random violence to animals) is easily identified as a modern imitation even before the gimmick - of bursting out through the cinema screen into CG and being able to manipulate the film to rescue Minnie, that is. They also quite charmingly decided to opt for sounds extracted from the archive of the early cast - including, of course, Walt himself - which is only slightly stilted and awkward. Generally, a fond nod to days past that I found quite charming. I really need to revisit the early cartoons more myself.

Stitch! The Movie (2003)

Well, after watching Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch has a Glitch, it made sense to also check out Stitch! The Movie, which as I said in that review, actually came first, in 2003. Made during a period of unrest in Disney’s television department when the animators for the television shows went to Disney Channel while Disney MovieToons became DisneyToon and became part of Disney Feature Animation (and thus started to improve), there’s an element of confusion as to which department made this, but I strongly suspect that it was the Television Animation guys, because for one thing, it was a direct-to-video film intended to kickstart a spin-off series they were making, and for another, the quality here is much, much lower than in Stitch has a Glitch, and has Rough Draft written all over it – so it was no surprise to see them in the end credits.

Where Stitch has a Glitch was impressive for a sequel, there is little impressive here. The movements are stilted, jerky and often nonsensical. The character models are loose and often unsightly – especially poor Lilo from the side. The plot itself is functional and entertaining enough, depicting how an evil rival to Jumba called Hämsterviel – Python-esque French to Jumba’s Russian – tries to get his hands on the 625 other experimental creatures Jumba created before making Stitch, as he was Jumba’s partner and financed the projects. Hulking jobsworth Gantu from the original film is hired to get these experiments, currently in capsule form, which he manages to do except that Experiment 221 was already taken by Lilo and Stitch. They kept Experiment 221 because upon hearing about these other experiments, realise that Stitch has a family – ‘cousins’, as they call them – which is rather what Lilo & Stitch is all about. Rehydrated, 221 turns out to be rather like Stitch but with the powers of electricity, and a similar vocal performance from Frank Welker, who for me will always be Megatron.

Thanks to the alliance of these two powerful creatures, Hämsterviel’s rather arbitrary plot – which he adapts from kidnapping Jumba for ransom to killing and cloning Stitch to make his own personal army – doesn’t stand much of a chance of working, especially when upon activating Experiment 625, he finds him to be a fat, lazy yellow version of Stitch with a sandwich obsession, although remarkably unlike his kin a perfect grasp of English in an annoying Brooklyn accent.

In the chaos, the various pods are scattered across Hawaii, where upon contact with water they will become evil, setting up the collection-quest scenario of the ensuing series. It’s a bit of a mess and clumsily-done, but it’s functional and at an hour long hardly outstays its welcome. It is, however, cheap and rather insipid Disney formula stuff and only for completists. Rewatch the original instead, or opt for the far superior Stitch has a Glitch.

On the upside, I know what’s going on when Experiment 221 – renamed ‘Sparky’ by Lilo – attacks in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. So that’s a plus!

Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch has a Glitch (2005)

Somewhat confusingly, Lilo & Stitch 2 is not the second Lilo & Stitch film, but the third. It is, however, the direct sequel to the first film, so set before the events of the actual second film, 2003's Stitch! The Movie and its subsequent TV series, the latter still in production when this film came out. For the rather minor, odd child of the Disney feature film studio in the midst of its difficult period, Lilo & Stitch certainly gave rise to quite the franchise - and that's not even mentioning the Japanese series, the bizarre Kim Possible crossover or Kingdom Hearts.

So, before the introduction of any of the rainbow-coloured Stitch derivatives, this film retains a more simplistic, less-gimmicky core. Disneytoon were finally pushing against their bad image of churning out highly inferior sequels and this was even slated for a theatrical release until finally going direct to video...which given that Return to Neverland made it to big screens can be attributed only to nostalgia trumping quality in the world of Disney executive decisions - which I have to say are very probably correct.

For all the negative connotations that come with the idea of a Disneytoon direct-to-video sequel, the quality here is good. The animation is not feature-film Disney but it is also not an embarrassing drop or inadequate for the big screen. The casting is strong - if you can't get the original voice actress for Lilo (because she is busy voicing Lilo elsewhere, supposedly), you can't do much better than getting Dakota Fanning in instead, especially when the two are good friends and she does an excellent impersonation while retaining a few of her own recognisable quirks. Despite not directing this - and How to Train Your Dragon still a few years off - Chris Sanders returns to voice Stitch (as he seems happy to do for just about anything), with helm duties taken by future B.O.O. creator/director Tony Leondis - alongside Michael LeBash.

In a classic sequel to a sci-fi story, and as hinted in the title, here we find Stitch having a glitch. When Jumba made him, he was not quite fully charged-up, and thus he is now losing energy. As he does so, he reverts for a few moments to his original, highly destructive personality. This causes a great deal of problems for Lilo, who is trying to put together a hula dance in honour of her deceased mother, only for Stitch to periodically go feral and destroy things. Little Lilo only sees it as him being randomly cruel, and he himself can only describe it as his 'badness' coming out, so it causes much heartbreak between them, especially when he keeps causing problems on a pilgrimage to all the sites Elvis visited in Hawaii.

Eventually, everything comes to a head and Lilo realises just how serious Stitch's problems really are, seemingly too late. In truth, the ending is very clumsy indeed - how did Jumba's machine get there?? Couldn't we have had a line about the readings malfunctioning or some residual power trickling through rather than the ultimate cheese of it being declared impossible and too late only for it not to be? Especially since, y'know, this being a midquel takes most of the tension out of the situation.

But ultimately, this is better than the vast majority of Disney sequels, and the Stitch story lends itself to continuation. It's simple, its characters are well-defined and interact well - including comedy aliens and hapless love interest for Lilo's big sister - and the chance for a big ole group dance at the end is always going to be sweet. It's uncomplicated, unambitious and clumsy at the end, but it's also very cute, perfectly functional and a lot of fun. So I don't mind recommending this above just about any Disneytoon sequel I've seen except Simba's Pride, and let's face it, there are definitely rose-tinted spectacles affecting my view on that one. 

Pinocchio (1940)

Few, perhaps, would call Pinocchio their favourite Disney film of all time. But even so, it manages to be one of the very best examples of Disney in their golden age, its images and music etched into the consciousness of much of the world far more than anything about the wicked, murderous little imp of the original book, and few can dispute that the film was hugely successful, and far, far ahead of anything else that any other animation studio could produce. Watching it through for the first time since childhood, with hopefully a more discerning eye, I can truly appreciate just how daring the animation here was, not just in realising those signature cute Disney characters, but special effects like lightning, the distortion of a glass bowl, motion underwater and one scene of children going to school that has the kind of wonderful complexity we’ll likely never see in traditional animation again. Then of course there’s Woolie Reitherman at the height of his ambition, animating Monstro with such bravura detail and fluidity that for my money it far outstrips even his work on Maleficent as a dragon.

The character of Pinocchio is of course familiar to almost anyone in a cultural milieu that includes Disney – which is most of the world.  He’s a little puppet boy whose nose grows when he tells lies, who must learn to be good in order for a fairy to make him into a real boy. It’s also quite well-known that this film is one of the weirdest and darkest in the Disney canon – to my mind far more so than The Black Cauldron, which is often regarded as Disney going too far. The film sees a little (wooden) boy carved by a lonely old man getting waylaid on the way to school for the very first time, groomed into becoming an actor by wise-talking ne’er-do-wells, passed between various abusive ‘owners’ until he is in the bad company of other boys who teach him to smoke and drink, all the while guided by a ‘conscience’ who is endearing in part because he is – or wishes to be – a total philanderer. It wouldn’t pass today. And to this we must add that that the story is downright surreal and at times potentially terrifying for a child – getting past the idea of a wooden boy coming to life through magic, we still have a world where crickets, foxes and cats are members of regular society, where boys who are bad turn into donkeys for no other reason than that they are making jackasses of themselves, and where a monster sperm whale goes about swallowing entire boats.

But all of this is thanks to the source material, and in fact Disney have heavily toned down the original’s more surreal content. Even the part with the jackasses comes from the Italian source, presumably without that pun. And unlike Alice in Wonderland, which is similarly surreal, there is of course a genuine journey of growth for Pinocchio, from naïve newly-made little puppet boy to brave young adventurer willing to sacrifice himself to save his father. It his the right emotional points and deftly segues between its different story arcs, and though it would be nice to see some of the villains here get their comeuppance, at its heart Pinocchio has the cautionary tale.

It’s fun to watch Pinocchio and remember that it was made over seventy years ago, when Hitler was still alive, when people could still remember having been acquainted with Queen Victoria or Oscar Wilde. It’s amazing how little the quick-talking character type has changed, or the national stereotypes – listen to those Italian outbursts, that strange idea that the British say ‘hop to it, you blokes’, or that funny little Bavarian outfit on the for-some-reason now-German Pinocchio. It’s also quite amusing to hear that execrable ‘YOLO’ phrase very nearly in complete form here: ‘Lampwick says a guy only lives once!’

The studio’s system of allocating a particular animator to a specific character has never worked better than it did here, and some of the Nine Old Men are on top form. Reitherman aside, here we see Ward Kimball being given a main character for the first time (to stop him storming out after his work on Snow White got cut), and his Jiminy, while having very little to do with a cricket (as he himself liked to quip), is classic Disney expressiveness; Milt Kahl had his Miyazaki moment of offering an inspired revision and suggested Pinocchio become a cute little boy, and from then on was cemented into the studio’s hierarchy; Eric Larson puts his stamp on the cute animals, including the adorable and hilarious little cat Figaro; and Kahl worked with Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston on Pinocchio himself. Though they’re not amongst the Nine Old Men, there was also sterling work here from the creators of the two Disney Dogs Goofy and Pluto – Art Babbitt, who expertly brought Geppetto to life, and Norm Ferguson, who as well as being one of the animation directors took on the anthropomorphic fox and cat Honest John and Gideon, the latter of whom amusingly has just hiccups provided by Mel Blanc, as all his other lines were cut to make him a comedy mute character – putting the performance in line with Dopey, Dinah and the Sword in the Stone dogs.

Pinocchio also, despite its songs all being delivered in snippets, also provided some real musical signatures for the company, and its Oscars were deserved. With this second feature film, Disney established its place as the only studio capable of such spectacles, and though the War put a dampener on initial returns, it’s small wonder that the film has a place in history, and gets frequently referred to – after all, Pinocchio can be seen in Tangled and the Genie uses his face in Aladdin. Classic. 

Hercules (1997)

Not counting once when it was on in the background around Christmastime, I haven’t seen Hercules since its original theatrical run, since which time it has more or less established itself as one of the group of ‘Disney Renaissance’ films that provided a bit of a latter-day golden era for the studio, although in my opinion it was the beginning of that happy decade petering out, with Mulan and Tarzan rounding out the success story with some weaker works.

But Hercules, which I tend to consider amongst the less impressive of the era’s films, was in every way stronger than I had given it credit for. It’s actually a very solid, likeable and memorable piece, and in every area – story, music, humour, production and performances – it succeeds. It may not have the emotional impact of The Lion King or the outright bizarre genius of Aladdin, but it certainly works, and works well.

Perhaps the best move Disney made with this film was to get Gerald Scarfe in to do the character designs. Scarfe, most famous for bringing to life those wonderful marching hammers and grotesque schoolteachers and judges that are the highlights of the film for Pink Floyd’s The Wall, but is also a very well-known political cartoonist. His strange style can be easily seen in the characters of The Wall, especially the huge pointy noses of the Fates and the little minions Pain and Panic. His aesthetic is darker and more grotesque than most Disney, even when it comes to bad guys, so the way this film stands out somewhat is unsurprising but welcome – and his stamp is certainly on the trip into the Underworld. And his design for Hades, coupled with James Woods’ brilliant fast-talking New Yorker performance, is a triumph.

A fast-talking New Yorker? Yes, indeed, it’s only going to take a few seconds of this film for the Classical Scholar and the layman alike to realise that this film is gleefully full of anachronisms, much like Aladdin is (and never mind silly theories that Aladdin is in fact set in a post-apocalyptic far-future wasteland based on how long the Genie says he’s been in the lamp). In fact, simply the fact that they use the better-known Roman name for Hercules but the Greek names for everyone else probably tipped off most before the film starts filling the screen with references to American Express and a whole lot of soul/gospel music. The take on Greek mythology is somewhat singular – a very faithful father-figure Zeus actually conceives Hercules with Hera, instead of with some mortal woman when disguised as her wife/a swan/some rain. He is made mortal by insidious Hades, who has been told by the Fates that only this new child can ruin his plan to free the imprisoned Titans (elemental monstrosities rather than Cronus and co) and take over Mount Olympus. Well, firstly, it’s fine to muck about with Greek myth – it’s really not as if the Greeks were very consistent themselves, and there are plenty of different versions. And secondly, let’s be honest – this is still Disney, and the old Olympian Gods aren’t that compatible with the family values expected of them.

The voice acting is great, even if Danny de Vito’s predictable turn as Philoctetes – a name chosen, I feel, because it was easily shortened to the recognisable ‘Phil’ – and Rip Torn’s enjoyably warm Zeus are the only big-name celebrities to pick out on the cast list…though the lovely old-school epic opening has Charlton Heston narrating for some authenticity, which was a lovely idea, harking back to not only the big epics but older Disney films with opening narrations. Femme fatale Meg is definitely one of the more complicated and interesting Disney heroines. And the Muses get some of the best lines in their songs, a couple of which – ‘Zero to Hero’ and ‘Go the Distance’ – really stand the test of time. WHO PUT THE HRRK IN HERCULES?

There’s only one thing that holds Hercules back a little from being one of the classics, and that’s…well, Hercules. Both as a kid (with a weird chin) and as an adult, the problem is that he’s just…kinda bland. He has to be the archetypal hero, but that just adds to how uninteresting he is. I root for him, I just…don’t particularly care for him. The result is…a slight hollow feeling.