Dumbo's a special case. I actually watched it in 2010 and made some comments on it then, but when I started watching all the films in sequence I watched it again and made a few more. Both are reproduced here in their original form:
Dumbo - 6.3/10 I was feeling nostalgic, and I had an hour to kill
(the movie seemed a lot longer than that when I was little). I was
actually surprised at how simplistic it was, and a lot of the cartoony
gags and little mini-songs made it feel a lot like an extra-long Silly
Symphonies cartoon than a movie. And man, pink elephants has got to be
one of the biggest WTF moments in any kid movie ever. I mean seriously,
WTF??? This is one of the few Disney flicks I did not enjoy as much as
an adult as I did as a child, though on the plus side clown dumbo no
longer freaks me the hell out.
But damn, the crows' song is feckin' catchy.
Dumbo
I rewatched this last year of course, so I don't really have anything
new to say, except that now seeing it in context the drop in animation
quality is even more jarring. I said last time that it felt like just a
really long Silly Symphonies cartoon, and coming on the coattails of
masterpieces like Pinocchio and Fantasia that is even more apparent. I
know they were trying to recover box office losses, but a lot of this
movie felt like they were just phoning it in.
Bambi - 7.9/10
Now this is more like it. I could tell in the first five seconds that
the Disney animation team was taking this one seriously. Bambi is
another film I haven't watched since I was a kid, and though I recall a
time when I was five where I would watch it just about every day, I
don't recall much about the movie itself. I did not, for instance,
remember any of the stuff about Bambi being a prince (despite knowing
his father was called the Great Prince of the Forest), and the parallel
both at the beginning and the end with The Lion King kind of took
me by surprise. Like Dumbo, I was also struck by just how short it was.
Just over an hour - I seem to remember it being longer, though watching
it, it didn't really feel short, either.
There wasn't much of a story to speak of; just a deer growing up in the
forest. Kind of nice I guess, and the ominous presence of Man gives it a
kind of edge and keeps it from being boring. I don't know, though.
After Pinocchio it seems like they could be doing more. Not that
there was anything wrong with the film, and in all honesty I can't think
of anything I would add to it. A good film, well executed, but not
their best. Great nostalgia value, though.
I think it's interesting to find out these two movies were made one after the other because both of them traumatized me as a child. I remember Dumbo being soo dark... I actually remember watching Bambi for the first time when I was 4 and crying and crying and crying. I think it may have contributed to my years as a vegetarian.
ReplyDelete