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Film animation geeks the world over owe John Lasseter so, so much. When Disney announced the closure of their traditional ink & paint animation studio, a studio which had operated since Uncle Walt first produced Steamboat Willie, cinema purists around the globe cried into their copies of Snow White, Cinderella, Lion King and The Little Mermaid. At the time, tastes in animation were moving rapidly towards the ever burgeoning technology of CGI animated films, which were seen as vastly more financially successful. Then-head of Pixar, John Lasseter, was appointed the head of Disney’s animation section when Pixar was acquired by the House Of Mouse a few years back, and he promptly set about reinventing the legacy Walt gave us – hand drawn animation. It was his insistence that the Animation Studio be returned to the prominence it once held that has allowed us to enjoy recent Disney fare such as The Princess & The Frog and Tangled: you can thank Lasseter for bringing back Disney’s original magic. Winnie The Pooh, a reboot of the AA Milne-created characters that Disney’s had their hands on for decades, represents perhaps the most accomplished effort yet in the entire Pooh canon, and is easily the best of the “new” animated features to come out of the studio.

Click here to get your Pooh on!!

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As a fan of traditional animation, I will admit to a twinge of disappointment upon learning that Disney’s 50th animated feature would be done using CGI, instead of the lovely hand drawn methods the company was founded on. Just a twinge, mind you, because after seeing the trailer for the film, I thought that perhaps they’d stepped outside the box with this one, and that it could actually be a good film anyway. Disney’s track record with animated films borne of the computer had been relatively hit-or-miss (I am, of course, referring to their non-Pixar output), with films such as Chicken Little and Meet The Robinsons feeling like Pixar-lite entries into the genre of CGI animated films – a fact which only added to my hesitation with Tangled’s production woes. Amazingly expensive to make (according to online sources, Tangled’s budget reached somewhere in the vicinity of $260m, which puts it in the Most Expensive Animated Film category) and having a duo of directors cast aside midway through, as well as a change of title, Tangled had a lot to live up to. Does it deliver the trademark Disney class, or is it a major misfire?

Click here to have your hair done.

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It’s been a long time comin’, as Sam Cooke used to sing, but we’ve finally found a return to form for the long lost (!) art of 2D animation over at Disney. After the animation department of Disney was closed down following the completion of Home On The Range, which was to be the studio’s final hand drawn film, many people were despondent about Disney ever recapturing the magic it once had after renaissance classics like Aladdin and The Lion King. It took the Disney acquisition of Pixar studios before hand drawn animated films were back on the table again, as Pixar head-honcho John Lasseter told the entertainment giant that if he was to be in charge of all of Disney animation, both CG and 2D, then the traditional stuff would have to come back. Of course, you don’t often get people saying no to John Lasseter, after all, he’s the man who gave us Toy Story, and set Hollywood on a new and different direction altogether. And so, with a sigh of relief, we have in our midst the welcome return of a traditionally hand drawn animated feature from Disney, entitled The Princess & The Frog (after all, who doesn’t want to be a frog, right?). Lasseter’s bold prediction that the hand drawn stuff was still able to draw a crowd was to succeed or fail based on this one film: no doubt on opening day, Lasseter was probably somewhere without access to media reports or telephones. I know I would have been. Was the gamble to bring back Disney’s famed animation department going to pay off? Let’s find out.

Riddip! Riddip!! More froggy action here!!!!

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One of Disney’s shortest animated features, featuring a lead character who doesn’t speak through the entire film, is still as appealing now as it was at the time of release, way back in 1941. This fact is a testament to the creative quality that makes Dumbo such a genuine family classic. It’s a simple tale, gorgeously animated and well performed, featuring some truly jaw-dropping ideas and imagery, which allows the audience to become drawn into the more “human” elements of the film. Considering the main cast are all animals, that’s no small feat.

Continue our exploration of Dumbo here…

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By all accounts, it should have worked. Atlantis, one of the latter feature animated films to come from Disney prior to the studio canning the hand-drawn stuff (which has, quite recently, come back thanks to Pixar stalwart John Lasseter), is an action packed adventure/epic in the truest sense of the word. Cobbling elements of the works of Jules Verne and a hint of HG Wells, Atlantis remains somewhat of an enigma in the Disney studio canon. It’s success, if it can be called that, remains heartfelt in the true fans of the piece, although the general public failed to support it to the point where it failed to recoup its production costs by a wide margin. In the cool light of history, it’s perhaps easy to see why many people didn’t appreciate the work, perhaps even disliked it.

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I’ll start this review by saying out loud that I adored this film when I first saw it in the cinema. Loved it. Brilliant animation, stunning score and song soundtrack, and a great adaptation of the Tarzan legend, Disney’s more adult-contemporary look at the Ape Man analogy is entertainment of the highest order. After a spate of (relatively) recent performing films, the likes of which included Hercules and Mulan, Tarzan managed to recapture the essence of the Disney renaissance during the 90′s, begun with the classic Little Mermaid. It would be a long time again until Disney scored the same success during the 2000′s.  Tarzan was followed by films such as Atlantis, Brother Bear and Home On The Range, all decent films; but the gloss had begun to tarnish since the halcyon days of Aladdin and The Lion King.

Swing into the rest of this review by clicking HERE!!!

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There’s great films, and then there’s Snow White. Arguably one of the most influential films ever made, aside the first ever talkie in The Jazz Singer, and the first films to make use of computer graphics, Snow White was a trailblazing film that set the standard for all that followed. Hyperbole aside, Snow White remains an enduring icon and legacy from both the early days of Disney, and the beginnings of Hollywood itself, remaining the defining benchmark for animation ever since.

The legendary story of Snow White and Disney has been told and retold in the decades since it’s 1937 release, so recounting the specifics of the story would be redundant here. In the 70+ years since the film came out, it’s merits and qualities have been examined, assessed and espoused numerous times in numerous formats, all of which have come to the conclusion that the film is among the greatest examples of storytelling ever made.

Click here to continue reading our review of Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs!!

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Walt Disney was an undisputed genius. That much is certain. His ability to take famous (and semi-famous) European fairy tales and morality stories and turn them into feature films of animation so beautiful is renowned, his early works considered to this date classic masterpieces of the artform. Rightfully so, too. Who am I to try and knock the great man (after all, he’s dead, and can’t respond!), so I can really only give you my thoughts on what is one of the studios most beautifully rendered films.

Peter Pan was conceived by Scottish-born playwright John M Barrie, and his first appearance was in a published version of The Little White Bird in 1902; his leading role status wouldn’t be seen until 1904, when Pan was written into a play featuring the now famous characters we all know and love, including Wendy, John and Michael Darling. Peter Pan appeared in numerous stories, in much the same way a serialised character like Sherlock Holmes would, in which the same character would get into various serialised adventures that ended up becoming the basis for the more modern take on the character. Part of the legend of the character was held that the part of Peter himself, when performed on stage, was played by a girl, rather than a boy, to try and keep the mischievous ambiguity of the character alive and well.

Pan creator, JM Barrie circa 1910

Peter Pan, along with the Lost Boys, Captain Hook, Smee, Tinkerbell and Tigerlilly, and finally the Darling children, became part of modern English folklore, a sort of mythology of childhood fantasy so eloquently expanded a few decades later by Tolkein and CS Lewis, among others. However, the underlying themes of Barrie’s stories were a little darker than the version we see today. More on this later.

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With the release of The Jungle Book in 1967, the end of an era was achieved. In a sad coda to the films production, Walt Disney, the man responsible for creating the Disney brand, died before the film was completed, from lung cancer. As the 19th official animated film in the Disney canon, The Jungle Book is a dramatic misfire of gargantuan proportions, lacking the subtlety and magic that had inhabited almost all of the previous Walt-produced features since Snow White. Lacking real narrative substance, substituting it for character instead, was a risk Walt wanted to take with this, his swansong as producer. It ultimately didn’t pay off, although only time has revealed this in the years between original release and today.

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Imagine, if you will, a time before computer animation. When the only way of moving pictures on film was to draw them all frame by frame, usually by hand, and occasionally by xerox machine. Hard to imagine? Hundreds of people slaving over ink and paint, sketching and colouring each frame of a film destined to come together by photographing each of those frames and running them together concurrently. Yes, it’s “traditional” animation, or, more accurately, 2D animation, given the former term is used by those who consider the 3D computer-assisted films from Pixar and Dreamworks to be less artistic than those drawn with a pencil and paintbrush. In the early 90′s, the Disney Corporation unleashed upon the world four massive animated films, each made the “old fashioned way”, which became such a success that they rejuvenated the company and gave it the feeling that 2D art was going to be around forever. Beginning with Beauty & The Beast, following on with The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and finally the monster hit The Lion King, Disney had begun to claw back the prestige of it’s early days, lost to mediocrity during the eighties, with fare like The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective and Oliver and Company. Here, we’re going to pit the two undisputable giants of Disney’s late rennaissance, The Lion King and Aladdin against each other; both these films are unquestionably classic, however, only can claim to be the best of the best. Will the Genie win the day, or will the lions roar overshadow them all?

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