The second-highest grossing film of 1994, and at the time the record-holder for most successful animated feature ever released, The Lion King occupies a very special place in my development into the angry contrarian that I am today, for it was the first time that the twelve-year-old me had ever felt something that I’ve come […]
Once again, it all comes down to Howard Ashman: it was in the late 1980s, as animation was purring along for The Little Mermaid, and the story for Beauty and the Beast was just barely starting to take form, Ashman suggested another musical project for Disney: an adaptation of Aladdin, one of the tales in […]
It is sheer coincidence of scheduling, and nothing but, that I come to write about the 1991 Disney animated feature Beauty and the Beast on Thanksgiving, but it could not possibly be more appropriate; for there is no animated film produced during my lifetime for which I am more thankful. With The Little Mermaid comfortably […]
The unprecedented financial success of The Little Mermaid, the highest-grossing animated film of all time at its first release, meant inevitably that it was going to be copied, heavily, by the films that followed it; for the Walt Disney Company certainly was not averse to making money hand-over-fist, and they also subscribed to the conventional […]
After two decades of creative floundering following the 1966 death of Walt Disney Feature Animation’s founder and namesake, the late 1980s must have seemed like a very wonderful time to be employed at that studio. For the first time, there was a clear guiding hand that directed the company’s efforts, in the form of Peter […]
Soon after the 1984 takeover of Walt Disney Productions, when the future of the company’s feature animation division was still in considerable doubt, Roy E. Disney and Jeffrey Katzenberg nevertheless had enough faith that they would be able to pull things out that they concocted a truly extraordinary plan for the studio’s future success: a […]
When Jeffrery Katzenberg was plopped in charge of the Disney Animation Studios in 1984, he didn’t only inherit the massively blighted production that was The Black Cauldron – there was another story that had been pushed reasonably far into pre-production before its sister project’s cost had forced a temporary shutdown. In the impersonal warehouse where […]
On July 24, 1985, Walt Disney Productions released its 25th animated feature film, The Black Cauldron. The film grossed somewhat more than $21 million in its domestic theatrical release, on a production budget that has still never been officially announced, though it assuredly was much more than $21 million: as much as $45-$50 million according […]
With The Rescuers, it seemed that the new blood at the Disney Animation Studios had figured out what was what, and were all pumped up to do something even bigger and better, for with the great majority of the old guard retired or planning on doing so any moment, it was clearly a rich time […]
The last animated film released by Walt Disney Productions in the 1970s is a transitional work, the handing of the torch from one generation to another. Even though several of the older generation who was still around at this point managed to stick around for one last film, 1977’s The Rescuers still has a valedictory […]
Even in the depths of the horrible stretch of critical, commercial, and artistic failures that plagued Walt Disney Productions between 1970 and 1988, there’s one spot of true brilliance, although the degree to which The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh belongs to that interregnum is debatable. Its roots lie in the comparatively strong period […]
Walt Disney Production’s 1973 Robin Hood, I must confess, holds a very important place in my heart. It was while re-watching the film as a young person (for I had a marked tendency to watch Disney films very often in youth) that I first realised that there was such a thing as a Disney picture […]
