#20 The Aristocats

The first film produced after Walt Disney's death, The Aristocats proved positive that the Silver Age was well and truly over, managing to encapsulate all of the problems with talking-animal movies. At least Lady and the Tramp and 101 Dalmatians had some restraint; their animal protagonists did, in fact, act like animals. They didn't run around wearing clothes, or play instruments, or bloody well hijack a motorcycle and drive it, all of which occur at some point during The Aristocats. It doesn't even make sense in context, since the humans for the most part treat the animals as just plain animals, and yet the Madame is apparently unfazed by her cats painting and playing the piano.

Speaking of the Madame, can we all agree that people who leave material inheritance to their animals are uniformly terrible? And yet the audience is supposed to be completely on board with the Madame's decision, leaving her butler, Edgar, as the villain for wanting to gain her inheritance before the cats. Sure, it's probably greedy of him, but can you blame a long-suffering servant who is apparently viewed as less-deserving to his employer than her animals? It's yet another example of the Lady and the Tramp problem of vilifying humans for not putting animals on the same social level as humans, a conceit which instantly falls apart upon consideration for obvious reasons.

As for the titular Aristocats, they're all irritatingly precious on every level, being the animal equivalent of the sheltered upper class. Thomas O'Malley, voiced by Phil Harris, is at least a bit more appealing as a character, but not by much. There's also a pair of rich-English-twit geese and their sloppily drunken uncle, a gang of swinging cat musicians (who inject some desperately needed energy into the dull and badly-paced plot with the number "Everybody Wants To Be A Cat"), and two dogs who, despite living in France, have Southern accents for some reason, and who apparently attack passing motorists with zero actual motivation. Meanwhile, the quality of the animation takes a step backward from The Jungle Book, with the Madam especially being a pencil-line ridden mess.

Yes, The Aristocats is cute, but that's really all it is. It has very little substance or enjoyment to be found for any audience but small children, and only succeeds in being saccharine. As an entry in Disney's canon, it's a decidedly weak one.