#34 The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Of all the places Disney has mined for source material, Victor Hugo's grim Gothic tragedy is surely one of the more unexpected choices. In adapting Hugo's novel into a musical about prejudice, social outcasts, and religious zealotry, Disney created what is doubtless their most adult film. It's a bit surprising The Hunchback of Notre Dame managed to scrape by with a PG rating - and, had Disney allowed it to go to a PG-13, it could have been one of Disney's greatest films.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is anchored by the relationship between its protagonist, Quasimodo, and its antagonist, Frollo. Quasimodo is designed to be genuinely ugly without being visually repulsive, still allowing the audience to sympathize with him, and Tom Hulce's performance conveys his naivete and innocence perfectly - he is a gentle being, raised in isolation, desiring to experience life outside Notre Dame, but convinced by Frollo that the world is too cruel to accept him. Frollo, meanwhile, is truly one of the great villains of Disney's pantheon, for much the same reason that Gaston is such an effective villain: he is a villain that exists in reality, whose evil we can know from our own experience. Frollo is a religious zealot, too deeply convinced of his own sanctity to ever admit fault, obsessed with destroying the Gypsies he holds responsible for the immorality of the world around him. Most dangerous is his obsession with the Gypsy woman Esmeralda, who he blames for corrupting him by inciting his lust, to the point where he will willingly kill innocents and burn Paris to remove her temptation from his life. Tony Jay's sublime baritone grants Frollo his sinister presence and menace, nowhere more effectively than in the song "Hellfire," which ranks with Pinocchio's Coachman and Fantasia's "Night on Bald Mountain" as the darkest sequence in Disney's canon. Filled with imagery of damnation and sexual lust, "Hellfire" steps into unprecedented territory for a Disney film.

On the subject of music, The Hunchback of Notre Dame captures the grandeur and drama of a true theatrical musical more than any other film of the Disney Renaissance. Rather than being concerned with providing earworms or fun sequences, the songs largely serve as a means of character development. "Out There" establishes Frollo and Quasimodo's relationship and illustrates Quasimodo's yearning to experience life outside Notre Dame; "God Help the Outcast" draws the contrast between the desires of the ordinary people of Paris and the persecuted gypsies. Composer Alan Menken also delivers some of his most underrated work, with towering strings, horns, and choirs giving the score a grand Gothic feel, anchored by the "Hellfire" leitmotif.

For such a boldly mature film, it may come as unsurprising that the weakest aspects of Hunchback come when it tries too hard to be typically "Disney." Specifically, one can look at the three gargoyles, Victor, Hugo, and Laverne, whose presence severely taints the film. The three are painfully one-note, their personalities amounting to "old woman," "fop," and "Jason Alexander," and their musical number, "A Guy Like You," is quite frankly wretched, attempting to inject the anachronistic humor of Robin Williams' Genie into the film. But this is not Aladdin, the three are not Robin Williams, and the gargoyles' antics are totally at odds with the tone of the film. 

While the presence of the gargoyles certainly drags the film down, the superior qualities of The Hunchback of Notre Dame are readily apparent. Had Disney been more willing to dispense with fluff and fully embrace the film's identity as a dark, mature story, it could have been one of the pinnacles of Disney's canon. As it is, while certainly a film of quality, it stops just short of true greatness.