Film Snark

A young white girl with blond hair in pigtails with pink bows stands with her hands on her hips, wearing a white shirt, blue pinafore, white bloomers, white knee socks and black shoes with a strap. She looks angry at her sister, a teenage girl with brown hair wrapped in a yellow scarf, pink collared shirt, blue jean shorts with a cuff, and white socks, standing in front of a bookcase holding a telephone receiver in her hand from an old black tabletop rotary phone.
C
Disney Animated Features

Make Mine Music
Released: April 20th, 1946

Hits and misses in this one. I had to find these ones on YouTube, Make Mine Music isn't available on Disney+.

This is a mixed bag. If I was ranking some individual elements, they'd be rated differently; as a compilation, this is okay but the cartoons don't really feel like they go together.

Notable Grossness

A woman getting angry at the animator for drawing her with a larger butt, and the animator erases her butt so it's smaller. Come on man. Grace Martin's see-through dress to see her figure is sort of..............irritating, especially since her dress is already no bigger than her figure. Also the ending of The Martins and The Coys is gross, making a gag out of domestic violence. Normally violence in cartoons doesn't bother me but the explicit context of a married couple beating each other up at home feels different to me. A minstrel song appears in the Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met.

The Martins and the Coys is all right. It starts out cute, I like that the families all look exactly the same, it's a funny visual gag. I don't like that it ends with Grace and Henry beating the hell out of each other as a joke.

Blue Bayou is an outtake from Fantasia and it's clear that it belongs there. All the Cats Join In is one of my favorite short cartoons ever for the simple fact that it's got bobby soxers swing dancing. It's really cute (notwithstanding the grossness listed above). I love the drawing-while-cartoons-are-moving concept usually, and it's used to great effect here. Without You only doesn't belong in Fantasia because it's a vocal song. But it's very abstract and it's a 40s ballad, so.....eh, yawn. Casey at the Bat is another classic. I wish the beginning didn't say "the ladies come out to the park, and they don't know the difference between a ball and a strike, but they're here to ogle Casey" (paraphrased). Like....why can't we do both? But I think the animation belies their intention; after Casey's first strike, one of the ladies shouts "KILL THE UMPIRE" and pulls out a hatpin so she can stab the umpire with it - that's a lady who knows the game, I tell ya.

Two Silhouettes is a ballet to a ballad. Like........ech. There are a couple of tiny neat special effects, but ugh, it's just too sappy. It looks like they did an interesting animation technique - where they would normally have real actors in an animated scene (think Mary Poppins, Bert and the kids when they go through the chalk drawing), they turned the live actors into silhouettes on the background instead. Little too on the nose for me, symbolism-wise.

Peter and the Wolf...is Peter and the Wolf. It's fine. It also feels like it belongs in Fantasia, even with narration. I don't think the narration adds anything. The version I saw was a re-recording with David Bowie doing the narration. I looked up the history of Peter and the Wolf, and I didn't realize it was written in the 30s as a bit of Russian propaganda for children (showing good Soviet values), I thought it was much older than that.

Johnny Fedora and Alice Blue Bonnet was one of my favorites as a kid. It's adorable and I love the vocals, they feel so 40s to me. It reminds me a lot of Johnny Guitar because of the refrain from Alice. Nothing exceptional in the animation but it's pleasant. Johnny getting beat up and chomped on by a dog always makes me sad. A giant whale dressed in a black cape, curly black mustache, and black goatee sings and shoots fire from his mouth. The caption says 'Faust in the original whalesong'

The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met is okay, but uses a minstrel song. Also - I'm not a big fan of most opera, so it's an awful lot of operatic singing. 'Largo al Factotum' from 'Barber of Seville' is an exception, I never get sick of that song. Willie the Whale at the Met in the fantasy sequence, in a bunch of different costumes and special effects, was funny. It's a weird story with a weird outcome though, ending with some weirdly religious "miracle" and "heaven" talk.

December 29th, 2020
Pete's Dragon
A movie release poster shows a group of white people, 4 men, a woman, and a young boy, surrounding a green animated dragon with pink wings and red hair. The poster says "Coming at Christmas, Walt Disney Productions' Pete's Dragon"
Bedknobs and Broomsticks
Five human actors, a woman, a man, and three children of various ages, sit on a flying brass bed with a floral blanket, with the moon and clouds behind them. Below them, illustrated animals are in various poses: two fish dance together (one in a suit); two fish and an octopus play in a band together with the words "The Briny Boys" on the front of the drum kit; an alligator, a rhino, and a gorilla run around a soccer field in yellow and green athletic outfits; a lion in a crown and red royal robe stands with one foot on the soccer ball; and a secretary bird in a suit with glasses stands watching.

Recent Snark

Bert, a chimney sweep, Jane, a young blonde child in a red dress and yellow overcoat, Michael, a young strawberry blonde child in short pants and a button coat, and Mary Poppins, a nanny in a red dress with a black hat with white flowers, stand on a rooftop, covered in soot.

Mary Poppins

Julie Andrews is a genuine delight, whether she's being fun or she's irritated. It's not just her voice, her whole presence is just delightful. George and Winifred Banks are excellent side characters, and the kids are as adorable as they need to be. Dick Van Dyke is a national treasure and I won't hear a word against him.

Structurally, there's not really a plot, but that makes sense given that it's based on a series of kind of episodic books. It's also very long. I think the length and episodic nature takes away from the character study of stuffy, cross Mr. Banks and how he learns from his children (and Mary Poppins and Bert) how to retain a sense of wonder and joy. But it's consistently fun. The music is delightful, the dancing is wonderful, and the adventures Mary Poppins and Bert and the kids go on are spectacular. I'm sure I have nostalgia for it but I think this stands up, to be honest.

The dings on the grade are for occasional bad costumes, bad makeup, the length, the imperialist nonsense. I'm honestly tempted to raise it back up because of the flawless animation/live action melding.

September 13th, 2022
Bigfoot, a giant humanoid creature with red fur, sits in front of a cardboard box with a downward pointing arrow on the side, wearing a pair of white men's briefs underwear on his head. He holds the crotch hole open with his fingers so he can look out. Goofy, a dog-like humanoid cartoon with black skin and a pale face, and long ears, watches from his yellow car several hundred feet behind Bigfoot, with his son Max in the passenger seat; Max looks similar to Goofy.

A Goofy Movie

I know this is shameful for someone my age but I've never seen this movie before. I may have caught bits of it when my brothers were younger, but the only thing I remember is Pauly Shore doing the leaning tower of cheese-a. I'm pretty much going into this one blind.

March 1st, 2022