#28 The Little Mermaid

After over 20 years of post-Walt Disney hit-or-miss films, The Little Mermaid proved to be the critical turning point for Disney's entire history. It began the Disney Renaissance, the resurgence of animation talent and artistry that continued through the nineties, redefining Disney for the modern age and reestablishing it as a true cultural institution. As a film, it established many of the tropes that would define the Renaissance, and after decades of misfires like The Aristocats and Oliver and Company, it comes off as a revelation.

Undeniably both the most ambitious and beautiful Disney film since Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid establishes the elegant, lifelike style of animation that would prove a hallmark of the Renaissance. The character designs and voice acting combine in a perfect marriage to produce a fantastically memorable cast; no one feels annoying or unnecessary. The true standout is Ursula, the best Disney villain since Cruella de Vil, who conveys a fantastic diva-esque menace before blossoming into grand scale, godlike evil for a climax that feels genuinely epic. The story, while still running with the Disney standbys of love at first sight, mutual love within a few days and getting married as a teenager, manages to still be compelling enough that its flaws can easily be ignored, and it carries a genuine sense of stakes and urgency, while having some fantastic moments of emotion.

And on the subject of emotion, it's helped along by one of the best soundtracks in Disney's canon (courtesy of the first collaboration between the powerhouse team of Alan Menkin and Howard Ashman, whose work would go on to define the Renaissance, and, for many people, Disney in general). Every song hits the mark; "Under the Sea" is irresistibly fun, "Poor Unfortunate Souls" is one of Disney's greatest villain songs, and "Part of Your World" is the establishing moment for both Ariel as a character and Menkin and Ashman as a team (and also just might be my favorite Disney song).

By the time it reaches its happy ending, The Little Mermaid feels like a massive payoff. It's the first film in decades to fully recapture the majesty, artistry, fun and excitement of Disney's best efforts; above all, it's a beautiful film. If a Renaissance is a rebirth, The Little Mermaid is just that, paving the way for quite possibly the greatest era of Disney's history.

#27 Oliver and Company

The Great Mouse Detective may have been an early foreshadowing of the Disney Renaissance, but the studio's wilderness years were not over yet, as Oliver and Company conclusively proves. Like The Black Cauldron, there are points at which it barely feels like a Disney film, but while The Black Cauldron came off like a dark, cultish 80's fantasy, Oliver and Company comes off at times like an 80's animation studio attempting to make a Disney-style talking-animals film.

The biggest problem with the film is that it's painfully dated, due in large part to the soundtrack, laden with saxophones and synth-piano that embody the corniest aspects of 80's pop (the fact that Huey Lewis sings the opening song does not help matters), in addition to being generally substandard lyrically (half of them being preoccupied with exalting New York and the "rhythm of the streets" or some such faff). The animation as well is completely lacking the timeless quality of Disney's better films, feeling more like a lesser Don Bluth effort than some of Don Bluth's own films (it might be telling that The Land Before Time opened against Oliver and Company at the box office, and roundly defeated it in its opening weekend). 

The characters don't fare much better either; Billy Joel's take on Dodger is thoroughly irritating, both for the blandness of the character and Joel's insufferable affected New York accent. Cheech Marin plays Tito the chihuahua basically as himself as a dog, while Bette Midler's Georgette, while capturing Midler's diva persona well, could probably be dispensed with completely without really affecting the plot. Jenny, the utterly generic rich girl with absent parents, is functionally an export of Penny from The Rescuers, although with far less personality and some odd animation problems; her head frequently appears too big for her body, and her facial features seem to drift at points. The villain, Sykes, meanwhile, almost seems like he belongs in a far darker film, at various points discussing the proper way to perform a hit over the phone and threatening a young girl with his vicious dogs, before getting killed by a train. As for Oliver himself, he's a protagonist entirely without agency, ping-ponging between situations through factors entirely apart from his control, existing only to be irksomely precious on a borderline-Aristocats level.

Oliver and Company is a film in which very little works, coming at the tail end of a long period of Disney's history in which many things were tried, with some successes and many misfires. A new era was about to begin, however, which would restore Disney to its Silver Age greatness, and, in many ways, exceed it. The Disney Renaissance was about to begin.

#26 The Great Mouse Detective

Undeniably a more classically Disneyish film than The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective is one of Disney's most underrated successes. It's imaginative, adventurous, and brilliantly written and acted, giving us an underground animal society of London that allows the film to focus on its anthropomorphic cast without worrying about humans (with the exception of a cameo by Holmes and Watson themselves). Quite honestly, it's everything The Rescuers could have been, but better.

The best aspect of the film is doubtless the hero/villain pairing of Basil of Baker Street and Professor Ratigan, whose rivalry captures the classic nemesis relationship in a manner unique in Disney's canon. Basil, voiced by Barrie Ingham and based on the archetype of Sherlock Holmes, is delightfully eccentric, swinging between barely contained mania and suave intelligence. His Moriarty, Professor Ratigan, is voiced by Vincent Price, clearly enjoying himself greatly in a flamboyant performance that makes his interactions with Basil almost homoerotic. The flamboyance of Price's performance makes the climax, with Ratigan devolving into violent, animalistic fury, just that much more effective.

The film is also an artistic triumph for Disney's animators. The exploration and chase sequences in a toy shop (artistically reminiscent of Geppetto's workshop in Pinocchio) showcase a creative energy sorely lacking in the post-Walt era. The character designs are all charming and original, while the animation quality approaches that of the Disney Renaissance (though it's a bit hard to find justification for a barroom cabaret sequence that gets almost inappropriately risque). One of the most notable elements, however, is the sequence inside of Big Ben, which employed early CGI to generate a three-dimensional environment of massive moving gears to spectacular effect. More accessible than The Black Cauldron, more energetic than The Rescuers, and possessing a creative spirit not seen in a Disney film for years beforehand, The Great Mouse Detective earns its place as one of Disney's most fun adventures.

#25 The Black Cauldron

It's actually quite easy, while watching The Black Cauldron, Disney's adaptation of Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain, to forget that it's a Disney film at all. Thematically and visually, it has more in common with Ralph Bakshi's animated fantasy films (though still considerably lighter) than with any of the rest of Disney's canon. Perhaps because of its uniqueness as Disney's only foray into high-fantasy, coupled with its extremely dark content, the film has always been a black sheep for Disney, while at the same time being a beloved cult hit.

The Black Cauldron is quite definitely a fantasy film first, a Disney film second. The environments and character design all reflect the influence of the Celtic fantasy style Alexander originally drew inspiration from. The story and characters all embody a fairly standard set of fantasy tropes: we have the ancient, evil artifact that bestows horrifying power (the cauldron), the teenage boy who wants to be a hero, the princess (Eilonwy, who swings between being proactive and a distressed damsel as if the writers couldn't exactly decide where they wanted to take her character), the odd creature sidekick (Gurgi, whose character basically amounts to "hairy Smeagol"), and the evil lord, the Horned King (voiced by John Hurt, who rarely, if ever, gives a bad performance, this being no exception). Oh, and a pig that sees psychic visions. No, it doesn't particularly make sense in context either.

Yet, despite its adherence to formula, The Black Cauldron can actually be quite enjoyable when viewed on its own terms (even if its appeal is decidedly cult). Seeing Disney take on a high-fantasy epic is definitely interesting, and while the animation is uneven and frequently less-than-spectacular, the film makes up for it with bold, cinematic angles and camera movement. While too dark to appeal to the family audience of most Disney films, it definitely shows that Disney can accomplish quite a bit with more mature, genre-oriented material. The Black Cauldron is definitely a hidden gem in Disney's canon, and one with definite potential to be revisited in live-action; in the hands of a director like Guillermo del Toro, it could be magic waiting to happen.

On David Bowie, Alan Rickman, and the Immortality of Artists

On Monday, January 11, the word went out that David Bowie had passed away from cancer at the age of 69. On Thursday, January 14, it was revealed that Alan Rickman had suffered the same fate. Within hours of their deaths, the news and social media were filled with conversation about these men. Statements were made by their family and friends commemorating them, while thousands of people who never knew them personally expressed sadness at their passing. By now, it's almost become a familiar script, one we've all seen before with the passings of people like Christopher Lee, and Leonard Nimoy, and Robin Williams.

It's not every time a famous person dies that they are commemorated in this way, with a near-universal expression of regret, respect, and memory. The ones that do almost always seem to have one thing in common: in some respect, they are all artists. These are not shallow celebrities of the kind American pop culture gets roundly criticized for elevating and glorifying, but people of talent, people who garnered the respect of their peers and the admiration of their audience, who had influence on their fields. People who, to the ones they inspired, genuinely mattered.

And maybe that's why people mourn the passing of Bowie and Rickman so openly. They never knew us, but we knew them. Such is the relationship between artist and audience: in putting their art out into the world, the artist becomes part of the lives of people that they will never meet. In listening to a David Bowie album or watching an Alan Rickman film, we absorbed pieces of them into ourselves, and, over time, the pieces of artists we absorb become pieces of us. Through their art, we can be influenced just as much by people we have never met as by people we have known intimately our whole lives. Would I be who I am without absorbing the influence of Philip Pullman, or Peter Jackson, or U2? No.

And in this, the beauty in the tragedy can be found, that even after the human life of an artist ends, their work and influence survives, and takes new life. In the theatricality of David Bowie, Marilyn Manson and Lady Gaga took inspiration, interpreting his influence in radically different directions that will inspire yet more artists. In Alan Rickman's performances, actors will continue to find elements that they will incorporate into their own work. And the cycle of inspiration and creation will continue, as every artist leaves in their wake a world of influence and inspiration to be inherited by new artists, to take on new forms. In this sense, every artist is an immortal.

#24 The Fox and the Hound

The opening credit sequence of sinister music and barking dogs playing over dark, shadowed shots of the forest gives indication of what is to come in one of Disney's darker films. As the studio's harshest look at the relationship between man and animal (and animal and animal) since Bambi, The Fox and the Hound recaptured some of the Disney quality missing from the films following Walt Disney's death. In addition, the xerographic style of animation was dispensed with for the first time since 101 Dalmatians, giving the film a cleaner aesthetic than some of its predecessors, with visuals that are good across the board, and, in the case of the massive, fearsome bear that appears in the climax, exceptionally striking.

The story of The Fox and the Hound can be read both as a metaphor for prejudice and as a subversion of the typical animal-themed children's film. Copper and Tod meet as children, unaware of the roles that man and nature intend for them to play, as hunter and hunted. Over time, they learn that they are by and large expected to be enemies. Copper eventually comes to hold Tod responsible for the near-death of his mentor, Chief (Disney pulls the punch of actually killing him), and swears revenge against him. Eventually, they meet as enemies, but end up saving one another's life. Thus, they end reconciled, but friends no longer; their relationship cannot survive.

As a story about prejudice, the film provides a commentary on societal roles in a way that is easy enough for children to understand. Copper and Tod initially have no knowledge or understanding of the roles expected of them, and they become friends in their innocence; there is no natural enmity between them. It is only the pressures of the roles placed on them that drives them apart, just as society tells us how to behave and how to think about others. On another level, the film takes the idea of the children's film about happy animals living in harmony and gives it an injection of grim reality: in a world run by man, there will be no happy ending for a fox and a hound.

And there is no typically happy Disney ending. Though everyone survives, Tod and Copper can never be together again. It's uncharacteristically bittersweet for a studio that is often perceived as being quintessentially child-friendly. Though the film's morality isn't purely gray (Amos Slade is intended as the villain, and holds far too personal a vendetta against a fox to be realistic), The Fox and the Hound goes in some bold directions, emerging as one of Disney's most poignant stories.

#23 The Rescuers

There are more than a few similarities to be found between The Rescuers and 101 Dalmatians: both are centered around an abduction, and both involve animal protagonists on a rescue mission (though the animals in The Rescuers are considerably more anthropomorphized than the dalmatians, their society is still "secret," thus avoiding the problems of The Aristocats). The villain Madam Medusa even bears similarities to Cruella De Vil, both being raging divas who abuse their henchmen (De Vil was actually originally intended to be the villain of The Rescuers). Nonetheless, Dalmatians is decidedly the better film, as The Rescuers in many ways fails to live up to its own potential.

With a story about two mice embarking on a mission to rescue a girl from an insane woman in a swamped river boat in the bayou, the film feels like it should be a lot more exciting than it is, and while there's certainly some fun to be had in it, it definitely feels lacking. Interestingly, one of the biggest hindrances to the film is its sound design and music, which feel oddly underproduced. Especially considering that many earlier Disney films have a nearly nonstop soundtrack, the total lack of background music in many scenes is jarring; it's not often one encounters total silence in a film, let alone a childrens' film, which usually feel compelled to have at least something going on to maintain the audience's attention. This lack of music drags down several scenes that should be tense and dramatic, resulting in an almost hollow feel to the production. The songs, "Tomorrow Is Another Day" and "Someone's Waiting For You," meanwhile, feel like 70's soft-rock tracks foisted onto the film (especially since they're not sung by anyone in the film, simply playing over the action).

Sound problems aside, the film also suffers to a degree from occasional animation problems (reminiscent of those present in The Sword in the Stone at points). While the voice acting is alright for the most part, it's not spectacular either; the same can be said of the background work. While The Rescuers is definitely not a bad film (a sequence of Bernard and Bianca attempting to escape from Medusa's crocodiles in a pipe organ is exactly the kind of inspired fun the film could use more of), it's definitely not one of Disney's best either.

#22 The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

The practice of fusing together a series of shorts may have proved a mixed bag for Disney in the past, but fortunately, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, composed of three previously released Winnie the Pooh shorts made between 1966 and 1974, is of a higher standard than most of the package film era. The three segments are fairly seamlessly welded together, although they are still distinctly separate pieces, giving the film an episodic feel overall.

Winnie the Pooh as a film (and as a property overall) sells itself on cuteness; however, it's a far more appealing cuteness than the irritating preciousness of The Aristocats. While a film with no real antagonists and little in the way of an overarching plot has the potential to go terribly wrong, Winnie the Pooh embraces these aspects in a manner surprisingly reminiscent of a Miyazaki film. The film is ultimately driven by the characters and their distinct personalities, none of which ever feel one-note or stale. There's an undercurrent of childlike innocence and optimism running through the film that infuses it with an appeal that elevates it above mere kid-film fodder and makes it impossible to really dislike.

The most surprisingly nuanced moment comes at the end, in a sequence newly created for the film. Christopher Robin, the child who everyone in the Hundred Acre Wood turns to for advice, is going away to school, and Pooh promises that, even though they won't be together all the time anymore, he and Christopher Robin will always be friends, and he will always be waiting for Christopher Robin when he does return. It's a strikingly poignant moment, underscoring the themes of friendship that permeate the film, and almost serves to reframe the story in a more metaphorical sense: the Hundred Acre Wood is an idyllic place, free from outside conflict, where, despite being different, everyone is ultimately friends. In essence, it's a place built on the best, purest aspects of childhood, and, although Christopher Robin is growing up and will not live there anymore, it can still be returned to once in a while, much as adults can sometimes recapture the feelings of childhood. This ending scene perfectly encapsulates all the qualities that The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh embodies in a way that no other Disney film really does, earning it a unique place of pride in Disney's canon.