I have long believe that the last decent animated feature made by Walt Disney Studios was Lady and the Tramp. However, I was always of the opinion that the movie was relatively new when I first saw it in the early 80's. My grandparents had a VHS, my parents sprung for the Beta, you couldn't get L&T on VHS. We recently found a photograph of me and my brother shortly before his first birthday that my grandfther captioned "Enjoying the 1,000th viewing of L&T". Apparently we watched it a lot.
I've been reading about the Disney worker strike back in 1941 (it seems, by the way, that Disney studios have always been pretty ruthless about the way their company works), and discovered that L&T was a 1955 release. I'd never even considered it had been that long since the company had made a decent movie.
I suppose I would be able to see the merits of both Sleeping Beauty and One Hundred and One Dalmatians, the two movies after it, but I'd say that it's quite obvious that the style of animation is completely different in these films. It's gone someplace entirely different by the time the studio comes to Sword in the Stone. Compare Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella back to back and notice the difference.
I suppose there's an argument for The Lion King coming fairly close to returning to the pure visual style of some of the earlier films (anyone who doesn't just marvel at the art in Bambi does not have an opinion), but as far as being touted as this wonderful, original, groundbreaking piece- it's not. It's Hamlet with lions, which would've been good if we'd been saved some of the songs and idiotic peripheral characters (How many annoying talking animals does one movie need?).
I'm still waiting for someone to make Timon and Pumbaa are Dead), though.
I heard Disney was going to abandon hand drawn animation and go for CG, but looking it up, this doesn't appear to be true. Animation, when done well, is still a fantastic medium. CG is not the be-all, end-all. Some things are just not cut out of 3-D, I don't really want to think about Winnie the Pooh in CG, for example. Finding Nemo, though, was an awesome and totally appropriate use of CG- it's a story that benefits from the idea of a vast ocean that you can actually see (besides, how awesome were the reef scenes?). The Incredibles wouldn't have been the same movie- compare the movement of humans in that movie to the humans in Toy Story, wow.
On the other hand, think of some of the hand drawn animation out there. I will admit that Warner Brothers was hardly turning out works of art, but they're a rather stylised form that really worked for them- you know it's WB when you see it, and you can also get pretty close to nailing down during what decade it was made. But, think of the quality of a lot of the animation for kids, it really looks like no one spent any time on it, they just had to slap it together and send it out. The comparison is especially clearn when you get online and find really incredible animation made by college film students.
In it's day, Dumbo was considered a "budget" animation feature, though it just barely fits the "feature" description. Feature animation is supposed to be 70 minutes to qualify for awards and Dumbo's only about 64 (the shortest of any of the films). Even as a film that just barely scraped into the A releases, and was done for half the budget of previous major films (and in the midst of a strike and the ecnomic situation right before WWII), Dumbo is still exploring new things (Pink Elephants, anyone?) and looks good.
I understand why Don Bluth broke away from the studio. Bluth and his followers didn't like the way Disney was headed. Look at most of the titles that came out of the studio in the 80's, you'll see what I mean. Bluth wanted to return to the "Golden Age" of Disney animation. Sadly, the best film his company made was their first, The Secret of NIMH (though I'll put my money down for The Land Before Time too). I can say this because I saw All Dogs Go to Heaven in theatres when it came out and didn't like it then. This was when the only thing necessary to seal my approval was animated characters- I liked Mary Poppins soley for the reason that it had one section with animation in it.
Speaking about All Dogs Go to Heaven, though, my father has a peculiar habit of saying things that, while true, were not strictly accurate. One of the malls in my hometown had both Santa and, on the opposite side of the mall, a talking reindeer named (as I recall) Chatsworth. It was a half puppet half animatronic deal and it would carry on a conversation with you. Somehow, I almost preferred Chatsworth to Santa because he was an original- you couldn't go see him at all three malls in town.
Anyway, one Christmas my father and I got into an argument because he said that the reindeer had killed himself. Sure enough, there was no Chatsworth. All the same, I insisted that a reindeer, a fake talking reindeer at that, could not kill himself. Turns out the man who voiced the reindeer had committed suicide and since he owned the reindeer, there was no chance of a replacement.
I recall now that we had a similar argument about the main character in Dogs. He claimed that the little girl was dead and I said that she couldn't possibly be because she was in the movie. (Remember, I was five in 1989 and at this time firmly believe that my friend Crystal kept a star in her closet- I've never had a real strong grip on reality.) Turns out that the girl who did the voice for the character (and the voice of Ducky from Land Before Time), was killed by her paranoid father in a murder suicide the summer before the movie came out. I only now found that out.
Gee, that's a cheery subject, isn't it? I don't know where all this off the wall stuff is coming from lately, to be honest.
Well, g'night folks.