John Musker & Ron Clements: The Legacy
The Great Mouse Detective (1986):
The beginning of a beautiful friendship, and what a beginning! Based on a series of children’s books which in turn were based off of Sir Conan Doyle’s legendary Sherlock Holmes stories, The Great Mouse Detective was a brimming change of pace, a fun, clever mystery movie given fresh animation by it’s determined staff.
When little Olivia’s tinkering toy-making father is taken away from her, she goes down to Baker Street, along with the kind doctor Dawson who follows her, where the only person who could find him lives: Basil, the great mouse detective. After presenting her case and witnessing the return of the peg-legged bat that Olivia remembers taking his father away, Basil deduces that the crime lord Ratigan must be behind her father’s capture. The three go through a traditional, albeit highly enjoyable, adventure to find him and stop Ratigan’s plot to use Olivia’s father’s craft making to create a robotic recreation of the Queen of mouse-ruled England.
While Great Mouse Detective didn’t make a killing in the box-office and is typically considered to be a part of the 70’s-late 80’s dark age, but this reviewer thinks that the movie is as enjoyable as the studio’s big 4 of The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King. One reason is that the animation stands above other the Disney movies. Around this time, the studio was experimenting with computer-usage. Not only were the layouts and coloring done on computers, but the intense Big Ben battle was given life thanks to early usage of CGI.
Ratigan also completely owns the movie. Starting off as a playful enemy similar to Jafar or Captain Hook, his first appearance starts off with a playful musical number giving us the mental imagery that Ratigan is the greatest criminal mind around, albeit not one to mess with. Unlike, say, “Poor Unfortunate Souls” or “Be Prepared” which rely on us to take note of how epic our villain is, “The World’s Greatest Criminal Mind” gives the audience a chance to enjoy our foe as an entertaining persona. After feeding a drunk accomplice of his to his pet cat after calling him a mouse, Ratigan proves himself to be a memorable antagonist. At the end when he lets loose and takes Basil on over Big Ben he reveals himself to be as equally a frightening enemy as he is a joyful discussion. Lest we forget the charisma in Vincent Price’s acting, a timeless trait that stays true here.
The Great Mouse Detective is fun on a lot of levels, and was only the beginning of a good directorial team. It would be a bit presumptuous to call it the true start of the studio’s Renaissance, but comparing it to the studio’s most recent movies, there is a noticeable step up of quality in Detective lacking form the others.
The Little Mermaid (1989):
Now here is what most consider to be the kick start of the Renaissance Disney’s animation studio. For the first time in 3 decades audiences were treated to a princess story worth caring about made best by the House of Mouse. For the first time in over 2 decades, an animated Disney movie won an Academy Award for Best Song. And for the first time in who-knows-when, audiences of all ages fell in love with a fully animated Disney film. Girls found a lead worth idolizing, boys found a “girl” movie they could like and still be “tough”, and adults had their inner child rewarded again.
After the massive success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? gave the Disney studio the notion that animated features are still able to be enjoyed by any age, Jeffrey Katzenberg greenlit Clements’ idea for a animated portrayal of Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairy tale. Given an animation budget higher than any movie in recent years, the studio was already expecting The Little Mermaid to become a success, as it proved to be both critically and commercially.
The story is as timeless and iconic as any Disney story before it. Ariel, the youngest of King Triton’s daughters, is tired of living a dull life under the sea. Ariel is an adventurous girl; not able to sit still, she needs to go around and find her own adventures, which is what attracts her to the human world. After a glimpse of Prince Eric, a human bored of the life he’s living. Ariel goes as far as to trade her voice with the sea hag Ursula for legs so she can enjoy human life. While up on the shore she gets the chance to meet Eric for herself and the rest is better left unsaid.
There was more to The Little Mermaid that drew audiences in besides the time-honored, true-to-form story. For one, the animation was a key factor in it’s success. Given to a strong staff of 300 and adding in multiple uses of special effects, particularly for the movie’s usage of bubbles, Little Mermaid’s colorful, bouncy animation stood out in an era of dark Xeroxed or experimental CG features. Even Ursula’s purple-filled scenes looks lively, something that the studio’s movies really needed.
The characters are also necessary parts of the equation. Ariel was already mentioned earlier, but who can forget Sebastian the crab, the sea world’s greatest composer, is an outstanding character, a pompous guardian who fumbles in his attempts to protect Ariel. He really seems to care about Ariel for more than just his job, which allows his strictness to be just, and is still fun in many of his scenes. Flounder is also fun, the traditional guppy in all of us put on screen and given as a perfect foil to Ariel’s fearless, experimental character, and Scuttle’s “insights” into the human world are highly entertaining. On the darker side of things, Ursula gave us classic type of villain, a vicious sea hag jealous about Ariel’s looks, beautiful voice and importance, and jumps at the chance to mess with her life to receive beauty, vocal abilities, and power. Her eventual end is cruel but satisfying.
Oh, yes, then there’s the music. Little Mermaid was written more like a Broadway musical than anything, which explains the quality of music we got from the movie. “Part of Your World” is the perfect example of the Disney standard of letting the music tell the story when nothing else can: Ariel’s cry out to the human world, her wish to escape sea life and to experience something different sung to the movie‘s audience and can still be heard all over. The rest of the music, including the Oscar-winning “Under the Sea” are great, but here’s the movies definining moment, as it should be for Disney: a killer song.
Eventually sparking interest in more great films to come, Musker and Clements’ second film left an impression on audiences that would only develop into something even more poignant.
Aladdin (1992):
Musker and Clements commercial peak, this worldwide half-billion money maker continued to make money for the company years after impact, and in this reviewer‘s opinion at the time of writing, contains the best soundtrack out of all of their movies.
Scheherezad-ie had a thousand tales, but the general conscious’ favorite by far was the tale of Al’s genie. Poor street rat Aladdin is given a stroke of luck when he saves the princess Jasmine from learning the brakes of suburban living and meets the girl of his dreams. Unbeknownst to him, however, the sultan’s royal advisor, the crooker Jafar, sends Al off to his “death”, only to guide him the unknowing Diamond in the Rough into the mystic Cave of Wonders. Jafar’s goal is simple: get the magic lamp and return it to him for his “greatest” reward. When Aladdin’s pet monkey Abu breaks one of the established rules of the cave(do not touch anything in it but the lamp), the cave implodes upon them and their new magic carpet friend.
Waiting for a way to escape, Aladdin notices hard-to-read writing in the lamp and rubs it, and out pops Robin William’s Genie, an endlessly fun character perfect for him. Aladdin stands out from the other three movies in the big 4 thanks to the Genie’s film caricatures(made possible thanks to the magics of time travel, even if this movie takes place centuries before there was such a thing as popular culture) and visual humor. In one classic track, “Friend Like Me”, the Genie shows Al just what he can do as a wish-granter and comic genius, done entirely in showtunes.
Aladdin, who’s proven himself to be a clever and honest protagonist earlier in the movie, uses his first wish to make him appear as a majestic prince able to win Jasmine’s heart. Once again using the magic of Genie and song he attempts to win the princess’ heart and the sultan’s approval by flashing off his wealth and charm. He succeeds easily in the latter, but Jasmine isn’t initially so sure. After s night of magic and romance, though, Jasmine comes to respect the mighty Prince Ali, even if she doesn’t know that Al is only a street rat.
The Little Mermaid was a good beginning, but Aladdin takes the new-found golden standards for Disney movies to higher depths. The animation is more lively; the test work for “Friend Like Me” blowing away fellow animators, for one thing. The writing is sharper; not only is the dialogue cleverer and the characters are given better material to use with each other, but the story feels grander, even with it’s brisk pacing. And do I need to mention the music? I’ve already mentioned “Friend Like Me” and proclaimed “A Whole New Whole” the Renaissance’s theme, but props also deserve to be given to “One Jump Ahead”, Aladdin’s catchy ode to fending for oneself, and the opener “Arabian Nights”, tuned well enough to be the later animated series intro.
Until The Lion King topped it, Aladdin was the highest grossing animated movie of all time, topping itself every other week, and became yet another landmark in animation from an era full of landmarks in animation.
Hercules (1997):
The gods granted us a film adaptation of the legendary child of Zeus back in the 90‘s when Katzenberg told Musker and Clements that to be able to make the “Treasure Island in space” movie they wanted to make, they would have to comply to his wish for an animated adaptation of the Greek myths(more on that in a moment). While Jeff left before Hercules came out, and the film didn’t do as well as he would of hoped for, it’s become something of an appreciated cult favorite in recent years.
The Muses, a Gospel-like choir who narrate the story with their voices, Hades is on the search for the Titans ever since Zeus banned him to the Underworld and hid them from him. When Hercules, the son of Zeus and Hera, is born, Hades goes to the Fates who tell him that in eighteen years, a planetary alignment will reveal were the Titans are so Hades can bring his wrath to the earth again. He has his comic assistants Pain and Panic take Hercules away from the gods and onto the earth, to poison Hercules so he can be made him mortal. Being the bumbling idiots they are, though, Herc only receives half of the poison, leaving his godly powers in tact.
After spending years as the village nuisance, Hercules is told of his godly legacy. He heads off to find a statue of his father, who tells him that if he can prove himself to be a true hero, he can regain his godlike powers. Herc, along with his early gift Pegasus, head off to find Philoctetes in order to train to prove his godlike status. During training, he meets the gorgeous Megara, who gives Herc the courage to work hard enough to prove his worth. Little does he know what her purpose on Earth is, though, which draws Hades back into the story.
Hercules might be a tad formulaic at this point, but the fun gospel-inspired soundtrack saves the movie a great deal. A change of pace from the Broadway-themed tunes from the past few movies, songs like “the Gospel Truth”, on top of the playful, over-the-top humor, helped make the movie stand out from the overdramatic turns taken place in Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. James Wood’s Hades is another highlight. Merely a (good) joke at first, near the end he lets his invidious personality truly go full form at the end, when it seems like he may not win. Hades is an enjoyable villain with an obvious mean streak.
Hercules may not be Disney’s best film but for those looking for a bit of fun, and a change of pace from the Disney standard, it’s highly worth checking out.
Treasure Planet (2002):
Ever since the days of The Little Mermaid, it’s been a dream of Ron Clements to direct a space-age retelling of Treasure Island. Shot down time and time again by Jeffrey Katzenberg, Clements as well as Musker were given the chance to turn this interesting concept into a movie, as long as they agreed to make an animated feature based off of Hercules. Now that they were given the time to allow the technology needed to make the movie look as good as they imagined happen, Treasure Planet was on set to be released.
Yet it tanked.
Blamed mainly on the lack of interest in 2D animation at the time of release(attendance for Disney’s hand-drawn features were down at this point, especially in comparison to the booming Pixar studio‘s recent intakes), and the seemingly uninteresting concept in futurisizing a classic tale, Treasure Planet didn’t come close to making the studio’s money back, and is barely looked back upon at all. Which is a shame, because on second look, it’s a fine movie.
Jim Hawkins is your average trouble-making kid, with a love for adventure ever since a young age. Living with only his mother, Jim tries to keep an eye on the family inn while solar surfing around. True to the story in it’s own way, a spaceship crashes near the inn, with a dying pilot giving Jim a sphere, which after the clever Dr. Doppler has a look at, reveals a holograph that is supposedly a map to Treasure Planet.
Jim, who’s been fascinated with the fable of Treasure Planet since he was young, and Doppler head off on a mission to find the planet, with a crew of colorful characters. The obvious highlight here is, of course, John Silver, the ship’s cook who always seems to keep a close eye on Jim, partly for the map, it appears. After mutiny begins on the board, Jim, Doppler, and Captain Amelia leave with the map, continuing their expedition, unaware of who’s following them.
Treasure Planet took some obvious risks, but at the end of the day, Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel can be enduring in any format, be it as a book, movie, Muppet experience, or even as a sci-fi epic. It’s not as if Musker and Clements actually raped the story; liberties are taken, but traits such as Jim’s persistent character and his relationship with Silver are what built the strengths of the story to begin with.
Treasure Planet isn’t necessarily the strongest classic but it’s a good experience all the same and worth looking into if you want the full Disney experience.
5 Lesser-Known Classics Worth Checking Out if You Haven’t:
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949):
The last of the package features and one that keeps mostly cohesive stories. The Wind in the Willows satisfies British fans with it’s illogical whimsy while The Legend of Sleepy Hollow keeps patriots happy with it’s time-honored virtues portrayed on screen on top of it’s clever, fright-filled storytelling.
The Sword and the Stone (1963):
The first animated Disney movie to feature songs by the Sherman Brothers, this retelling of the classic British legend tends to be ignored in comparison to the movies that came out between it(101 Dalmatians and The Jungle Book), but Merlin’s pre-Genie slapstick magician on top of his playful chemistry with the owl Archimedes. In any form, the story of the unlucky boy becoming king is always uplifting and Disney’s rendition is no exception.
The Fox and the Hound (1981):
The last movie with involvement from the Nine Old Men and the first to kick off the work of the new blood, the innocent tale of two different species interacting with each other while being unaware of the tension going on between their masters and the type of mammals they are makes another great animal film from the studio.
The Black Cauldron (1985):
A bit underdeveloped, but still a worthy watch. Arguably one of the most controversial Disney movies, their first animated PG movie is a good beginning tale of a younger warrior. Also memorable for the awesome villain The Horned King and for being the first Disney movie to experiment with CGI in it’s animation.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996):
One of Disney’s most mature features, Hunchback took a lot of liberties from Victor Hugo’s French novel, but at the same time made a classic on par with the rest of the top 4. Quasimodo’s forgiving lead character makes his plight believable and Judge Claude Frollo’s sexual desires for the gypsy Esmeralda push the boundaries of the G rating. To keep this retrospective brief, this is a movie worth checking out, even if you’re a hardcore Hugo fan.
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