#1 Dumbo: that scene with the mom cradling him through the bars of her cage always gets me balling...plus what underage child doesn't appreciate seeing pink elephants on parade when drunk? #2 Lion King: for all the reasons listed above. #3 Little Mermaid: Ariel is hot
No doubt about my #1(To be honest, it's probably one of my 10-15 favorite films, regardless of genre). 1. Lion King Also like Aladdin, the Pixar stuff, and Mulan.
So true.... Little Mermaid is great, so is Nemo. Jungle Book has the best Disney song ever, The Bear Necessities.
since music/songs has been brought up a lot as a reason to like a movie, what would everyone's favorite disney song be? i'd probably have to say "under the sea" from little mermaid followed by "just can't wait to be king" in lion king, which edges out "a whole new world" from aladdin. i guess no coincidence those are my 3 favorite.
Great pick! I'd have to with "Friend Like Me." FFP; have you seen Little Shop of Horrors? It's from the guys behind the songs in The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin.
no wonder i like it so much. i had never seen it before until last semester when it was on hbo but i really liked quite a few of the songs and have probably seen a lot of it 4 or 5 times now. the theme song is great but suddenly seymour is my favorite from the movie.
Mrs. droxford says: 1) mulan 2) beauty and the beast 3) aladdin 4) little mermaid Those are the top ones from the 1980's on. Prior to that, you just can't compete with Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty. -- Mrs. droxford
Disney has stopped producing traditional animated pictures - last one being Home on the Range - their rationale being I believe that traditional hand drawn animation is dead - which I believe is total crap, they just can't come up with good stories anymore (like Home on the Range). And so they're going to be doing computer animation from now on (Their first one being Chicken Little). As for favorite Disney movie... it's a crime to put any Pixar movie on that list...cause for one, every Pixar movie has been leagues better than any Disney movie made in the past decade at least....and two, Disney was only the distributing arm of those movies...it was all Pixar, hence it wasn't really a Disney movie. Same thing kinda goes for Pirates...that's more of a Bruckheimer movie, plus it wasn't distributed by Disney directly, but by Touchstone.
Aladdin Lion King Song is "Never had a friend like me" and Jafar's song at the end "here's a blast from your past whose lies were too good to last .. " - Jafar cracked me up Rocket River "He was obviously less than worthy!" - Jafar
With 3 and 5 YO girls, we are big into Disney movies. I like: 1. Robin Hood 2. Aristocats 3. Mary Poppins 4. Jungle Book
They did a commercial (or it could have been a direct-to-video movie) recently with all of their classic characters computerized. It felt so wrong.
Do you know why they just can't come up with good stories? Surely there are many more fairy tales and historical events just waiting to be twisted into Disney versions. Did Disney piss off all of its top writers and they signed elsewhere?
I think it's more that they feel cgi is more popular and therefore more profitable (didn't Finding Nemo surpass The Lion King?). It's not like they couldn't just take a script for a computer animated movie and have it hand-drawn.
IMHO... Building a Disney story has become exceedingly difficult. Traditionally, Disney made movies with little regard to depictions which are considered, by today's standards, unacceptable. Ethnic characters were either non-existant or subject to racial stereotypes. Lead characters where frequently limited to the caucasian race. But with today's films, Disney attempts to do things differently. With movies like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Pocahantas, Mulan, and Brother Bear Disney has tried to heroize characters of different cultures or who are physically challenged. You would think that this would open up their realm of storylines, and it does. But Disney becomes faced with a careful dilemma: how to build a story about a Chinese girl which will not racially stereotype, which will respect the culture, and yet will be appealing to people of all other cultures. It must be musical and appealing to children, but must also be moderately appealing to adults as well. It must have a story which will keep audiences riveted but must not contain too much violence, which is difficult to do with the popularity of violent images in society today. The primary reason The Lion King is and was so popular, is because there are no cultural boundaries. There are no black or white lions. No Chinese or Native American lions. There's just lions. They appeal to children of all ethnicities. Media, in general, is starting to realize that, if cartoon characters don't actually depict people, the audience for that cartoon is greatly expanded. Cartoons like Roly Poly Olie (robots), PB&J Otter (animals), The Backyardagins (animals), Teletubbies (critters), Mrs. Spider's Sunny Patch (bugs) and many others follow suit along this methodology. Disney's sensitivity to ethnicity also places them in a hot spot. Chinese people may feel that Mulan is too white, or Americanized. But Disney may be tweaking their character in that direction in order to also appeal to a caucasian American audience. The same can be seen in other Disney films that introduce other ethnicities, but 'Americanizes' them a bit. Lilo & Stitch (Hawaiian), Aladdan (Persian), Beauty & the Beast (French), Hercules (Greek) all contain characters with specific ethnicities that place Disney into this delicate balance between respectful cultural depiction and mass-cultural appeal. The result can bring benefits by enlightening people to be more accepting of other cultures and by expanding Disney's market to multiple cultures. But, it can make it much more difficult for Disney to find and write a good story. Additionally, Disney also makes it hard on themselves. It seems that Disney has gotten somewhat stuck in formula for making animated movies. Just hire movie stars to perform voices, hire an 80's pop star to perform the music (Phil Collins, Sting, Etlon John, etc.), Mix in some computer graphics with the traditional animation and you've got yourself a Disney film. People are wanting something original, and Disney must face the difficult task of finding ways to bring originality to their films. -- droxford
I'd have to agree with wat AntiSonic and droxford said. It's a combination of things. CG movies have become more profitable than hand-drawn. Couple those low returns with the usual expensive and time-consuming factors that accompany traditional animation and you start to see why studios have moved away from them. Then there's the Dreamworks factor....cause some of the top execs at Disney left to start Dreamworks sometimes in the mid-90's ...and just look at the animated movies done by them compared to Disney since then. Not quite Pixar league (in terms of story) but a lot better than the mouse house. And then the fact that Disney movies have become very formulaic. Star cast + talking animal comic relief +plenty of songs + phil collins + good concept but under-developed story does not a good movie make. You take the best Disney movie made in-house the past 5-7 years....in my opinion was Emperors New Groove....which followed none of those conventions. But the movie didn't seem to do that well cause it wasn't even heavily promoted. But yeah...Disney is just a shell of its former self...they have had good conepts too, but have fallen totally flat once reaching the screen... Atlantis anyone?! As for my fav of the bunch... I guess it'd be Lion King... I can't hardly even remember the older ones... I didn't grow up on Disney... for better or worse
I saw it in theatres when I was about 6 or 7, probably 1970-71 or so. I also have it on DVD. It is a collectors item because it Disney won't release it because of the slavery overtones. Always good to pretend bad things never happened. 1. Lion King DD
