The Little Mermaid (1989)

Director: John Muskier, Ron Clements

Cast: Jodi Bneson, Christopher Daniel Barnes, Pat Carroll, Kenneth Mars

Have I Seen it Before: I’m having a hard time imagining anyone who hasn’t seen the film, doubly so for anyone who came of age in the 90s, and triply so if they had a younger sister.

Did I Like It: What’s not to like? The film may not have anything terribly profound to say about our world or the world in which it was released—or, at least, we hope it doesn’t, but I’ll get to that in a bit—but are there any films, animated or otherwise, where nearly every single shot is iconic? Even the Pixar films can’t quite accomplish that feat. Besides, any film that has René Auberjonois leaning that hard into the French of it all has to be an all-timer. Come to think of it, anything with René Auberjonois in it is good*. I don’t make the rules, I merely enforce them with great glee.

Sure, there’s an undercurrent of misogyny fueling the story. That could be an easy thing to point to as something “not to like.” But I ask, if for no other reason than I am genuinely not sure what the correct answer is, but is Ariel really such a defeat for female agency in film? She is prepared to give up quite a lot to—ultimately—chase a boy. But there never seems to be a moment where she wants something else that is somehow denied to her. Does she not have—for good or for ill—quite a bit of agency as the story progresses? If her ambitions are not the viewer’s ambitions, does that automatically introduce distance between the film and its audience?

Then again, she’s only 16, so King Triton offering up his youngest daughters to forge a detente—if not quite alliance—with humanity. There’s no way that’s not gross, right?

*How a movie like Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) can get away with cutting him out of the film and still be good is beyond me… Probably why, gun to my head, I enjoy the home video cut of that film the most of all possible cuts.

Hercules (1997)

Director: Ron Clements, Jon Musker

Cast: Tate Donovan, Danny DeVito, James Woods, Susan Egan

Have I Seen It Before?: Never. After right about The Lion King (1994), the degree of my familiarity with Disney feature animation becomes spotty at best. Why now? I accidentally scratched my wife’s car, and watching this on Disney+ is my penance.

Did I like it?: And it wasn’t that much of a penance at all. Even in their relative nadir, Walt Disney Feature Animation would never let something out of the lab that was not designed within an inch of its life to entertain as many people as possible. So what’s not to like about the movie? I mean, I think there isn’t a warm-blooded creature still living who could use less James Woods in their lives, but how about those muses? Danny DeVito is always terrific, and you can’t help but smile when you hear Michael Bolton crooning over the end credits (although that might be a bit of historically revisionist criticism, I’ll admit).

There’s an element of Disney animated films that never work too well for me. The cell animation in this film is pretty great, and each character is designed as if they are the relief art on a Greek vase. Cell animation is great. I wish they continued to make more movies like this. But this is an interesting post-Toy Story (1995) era where the Mouse House (and to be fair, any other feature animation of the era) felt the need to fuse computer generated images with their cell-animated characters. It most often happens in action sequences, and it never looks quite right. I am not sure if it was a cost-saving measure, or if there was a sensibility that merging these two styles would be the cutting edge of artistry, but twenty-plus years later, the seams will always show.

Aladdin (1992)

Director: Ron Clements, John Musker

Cast: Robin Williams, Scott Weinger, Linda Larkin, Gilbert Gottfried

Have I Seen it Before: As a child of the 90s, even if I hadn’t specifically sat down with the intention of watching it at any point, I would have absorbed all of its 90 minutes through sheer osmosis over the years.

Did I Like It: Coming off the heels of The Little Mermaid (1989), the animated Disney renaissance was in full swing by the time Robin Williams entered the recording studio. I wonder if this would have ultimately been a competent if unremarkable music if the film didn’t completely shift tones about halfway through and becomes another stand-up special for Williams. The plot zips through its obligatory Disney tropes to let Williams just bubble forth with words that may not fit in the film but are singular to its success.

How Disney could have soured its relationship with Williams and not made the Genie the new crown jewel of its empire in the 90s is an early example of the mismanagement that became the legacy of Michael Eisner’s tenure with the company. I’d say that the decision to produce a live-action remake with Will Smith in the role of the genie was a sign that the company has lost its mind now, but it made a boatload of money, so what do I know?

The filmmakers made an attempt to use the at that point still embryonic CGI technology to assist in some of the fluid motion in certain shots. At the time, they must have seemed new and exciting, but with nearly thirty years and approaching infinite number of exclusively CGI films since, the seams show, and it ages poorly. It’s a nitpicky thing to fixate on, sure, but when a film captures that old Disney magic, it’s hard to notice anything that doesn’t particularly work.

Now if they did go ahead and remake the film, one wonders if the magic would hold up. One wonders.

Moana (2016)

Director: Ron Clements, John Musker

Cast: Auli’I Cravalho, Dwayne Johnson, Rachel House, Temuera Morrison

Have I Seen It Before?: No.

Did I like it?: Yes.

After the acquisition of Pixar by Disney, and the pollination of creative executives into Disney Animation, the Mouse House has lifted itself out of its slump and produced insanely watchable movies, whereas before they were content to churn out direct-to-video sequels and make just enough money to make sure the shareholders stay happy.

Moana happily fits in this Disney renaissance. The script is perfectly crafted, to the point where it could legitimately be used in examples for books about writing screenplays. The setting is new and interesting. I cannot think of any film that immerses itself in Polynesian culture and mythology like we see here. The cast is both filled and headlined with performers representative of the cultures depicted.

And yet, something about the movie bothers me. It feels like such a story should not only include representation in front of the camera, but also behind. This story should have come out of the cultural marrow of someone from that culture. Pixar isn’t necessarily blind to this, as their recent short Bao (2018) brilliantly showed. Am I to truly believe the three people best qualified to both write and direct the tale of Maui (Johnson) and Moana (Cravalho) are three white guys from Burbank who had sufficient seniority in the Walt Disney Corporation.

By all indications, the writing of the film went through several hands before it reached its final version, credited to Disney in-house writer Jared Bush. At one point, even Taika Waititi took a pass at it that was apparently largely abandoned. It’s heartening that the film credited a large team of cultural advisors, but one of them didn’t have a burning story to tell on their own? It’s a fine film. The music keeps occasionally running its way through my head, even as I type this a few days after first watching the film.

I just can’t help think that there was an even better film somewhere in there, and the corporate realities of modern film-making robbed us of something that could have been not just special, but transcendent.

Why in the hell wouldn’t they go with a script originally written by Taika Waititi? Why?