029 ... My Favorite Animated Movies
Submitted by Infomaniac on Wed, 02/13/2002 - 12:52
Tags:
- Shrek
- The Year Without Santa Claus
- Toy Story 2
- The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (w/Horton Hears a Who)
- Toy Story
- Monsters, Inc.
- Peter Pan
- Robin Hood
- Snow White
- Rikki Tikki Tavi
- The Little Mermaid
- Aladdin
- Cinderella
- Pinocchio
- Bambi
- A Bug's Life
- The Aristocats
- The Lion King
- The Lion King 2
- Tarzan
- Sleeping Beauty
- The Little Mermaid 2
- Beauty & the Beast
- Fantasia (I haven't seen 2000)
- Antz
- Mulan
- Pocahontas
- Haiawatha (LAME, rotten animation, but after we've watched it several times, it's so lame it makes us laugh. Oh, and the title is spelled that way, even if it is normally spelled Hiawatha. Got it off Half.com for $5.)
Author Comments:
Thanks jim, for the clone
By the way, just because something falls toward the bottom of the list doesn't mean I don't like it. Actually, I think I like everything on this list, I'm just ranking them.
Cloned From:
Thanks for cloning! I love it when that feature sees some use. Good list - you've reminded me of some movies I really should add to my list (like The Grinch). I find this list interesting, because you seem to generally favor classic over modern, except the computer-animated movies seriously buck the trend. I'm also surprised (but not hurt :-) to see Beauty and the Beast ranked dead-last, even behind some direct-to-video sequels. Say it ain't so...
Where o' where is Fantasia?
I had cut it out of the list and forgot to replace it. I'll throw it in there. It is not one of my favs, though. To much like an animated musical. I'm kinda like the father in the Holy Grail, the one who built a castle, it sank into the swamp...etc. who kept on interrupting his son Albert with "Stop it! Stop that singing!"
Yeah, I should move Beauty up a few notches, but I actually liked Mermaid 2 better. I dunno, if I'm gonna be forced to watch shows with my kid, I have to favor the ones with scantily clad nubile half women half fish than Belle. Not that Belle isn't hot, but ARIEL! Hubba-hubba!
I thought Lion King 2 was a great sequel, equal to that of the first.
Your assessment (classic over new, but CG above all) is pretty close. There are a few exceptions, but that's really the trend for me. One thing I like in the classics that you don't get as much in the newer stuff is this whole BS PC stuff. I mean, remember when Hansel and Gretl actually KILLED the Witch? Burned her to a crisp! Now THAT was a story. The woodsman got to split open the wolf, and out pops grandma...SWEET! In Germany they have Max und Moritz, some seriously maligned hoodlums that get what's coming to them...several times over. THAT was the day of story telling.
These days, you don't "kill someone," they're just "never heard from again." LAME. God forbid you step on anyone's toes because you'll either be boycotted or sued.
Not that the new stuff is BAD, but they sure put a leash on what they can do. And I go on and on about how I want the authors to be able to off someone if they want, but the reason I rank Toy Story 2 over the original is because TS2 is MUCH more friendly than TS1 (Like I want my 2 y/o watching what goes on in Sid's bedroom or back yard?) I know I'm hypocritical there...but it's MY opinion, right? LOL
My nod to PC-ness is that I really don't like my daughters absorbing passive-women stories. Although I did recently have a chance to rewatch Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and they are technical marvels.
I hear ya on the taking the grim out of Grimm, but I'd say movie-wise Disney has been sugar-coating them from the get-go. After all, in the Disney version Sleeping Beauty wakes up. The villian in Snow White merely takes a header after trying to drop a boulder on the dwarves, and Gaston merely takes a header after stabbing The Beast in the back (although we do get to see the vultures being their descent towards the off-screen roadkill in SN). True, Jafar is merely bottled up in Aladdin, while the villian in Sleeping Beauty gets a sword in the heart. But in The Little Mermaid Ursula gets stabbed with a SHIP, then she EXPLODES, and then her GIBLETS float down to her accursed garden upon which all the merfolk spring back to their true forms! So I think it's a bit of a generalization that the older stuff is less compromising where violence is concerned.
But make no mistake, I admire you for preferring the older stuff. Wish I did. Despite my best efforts I'm too much a child of the now, I guess.
P.S. I'm one of those freaks that didn't like The Lion King.
Wow. You two have touched on an issue I've been deliberately avoiding here for some time. Having studied children's literature, I can tell you that even the Grimms brothers sanitized the stories. Most of the fairy tales we know were meant to scare the crap out of little kids in order to cram them with a good dose of caution. Without going too much into it, I really feel that Disney has sanitized and homogenized children's stories and done serious harm to the culture of children's storytelling. When companies like Pixar began to come out with movies I just about did a jig. I find it very refreshing to see someone else try their hand at contributing to what could be a fantastically rich culture of children's stories.
As a kind of side note, I really believe that children's stories are not just for children. Being that they're less complex, they more plainly lay out their characters as types and approach their themes more directly than "adult" stories. I think that by examining the stories we tell to our children we can see more clearly our societal values and concerns, as we tend pass these values on through storytelling.
Hmm, do I get into a conversation about religion so early in my 'citizenship' in this community? Ah, why not.
To me, religious text is for a adults what children's stories are for kids: a collection of nice stories that we can all learn from. I'm standing by for incoming, but the Bible is a bunch of stories with morals (or lack there of, and people learn to get morals). Stories handed down from generation to generation teaching people how to be good people. Isn't this what children's stories are for (except, of course, to entertain the children)?
Regardless of whether you have religious convictions or not, that's basically what the texts are. Many Christians feel that the stories in the bible are just that: stories. The story of the Ark, the story of Genesis, the story of Cain and Able. While they have the proper conviction to conform with Christianity (Jesus, salvation, etc.) they believe that the stories, while maybe based on some form of fact, are pretty much fictional, and are not meant to be literal, but lessons to learn.
Children's stories are basically that, but without the baggage of faith and conviction. Jews, Gentiles, Muslims, Hindus all can read the story of The Three Little Pigs and get the moral (or value from it): If you play, you pay; if you work in the beginning, it pays off in the end. The way it originally was presented was: Play and you die, put in the hard work and you'll live (and even eat your enemy! Ha!)
The point? I forget, but aren't the classic kids' movies great?
Another tangent . . . I just read A Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket (what a great nom de plume) and it was great. Chapter One:
If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the three Baudelaire youngsters. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire were intelligent children, and they were charming, and resourceful, and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife with misfortune, misery, and despair. I'm sorry to tell you this, but that is how the story goes.
And dagnabbit, it's true. Good stuff.
Now THAT's my kinda book!
Sean
I added Rikki Tikki Tavi on here. If you haven't seen it, it's great. Orson Welles is the narrator.