The Nightmare Before Christmas
Oliver & Company (Special Editi
Disney loved to mix live action with animation (Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks), but this 1977 effort falls on its face. The turn-of-the-century story concerns an orphaned boy whose only friend is a cartoon monster. While the latter is entertainingly rendered, the rest of the film strains to be enchanting and the cast overreaches in a big way. Not for anybody over the age of ten. --Tom …
Peter Pan (Limited Issue)
This Disney masterpiece from 1940 will hold up forever precisely because it doesn't restrain or temper the most elemental emotions and themes germane to its story. Based on the Collodi tale about a wooden puppet who wants to become a real boy, Pinocchio is among the most magical, mythical, and frightening films to come from the studio in its long history. A number of scenes make permanent impre…
Dreamworks SKG's second feature-length animated film blends comedy and drama in an unusual historical adventure. Two genial swindlers working as stable hands stow away with Cortez, the legendary Spanish conquistador, as he searches for El Dorado, the lost City of Gold. Luck smiles on the two con men, and they happen to find a settlement in Mexico that they believe is El Dorado; however, while t…
A minor classic from Disney, this 1973 all-animal, all-animated musical version of the familiar story is more charming than one might expect. Perhaps it's the warm, chummy take on key relationships within the legend--the way Robin Hood (Brian Bedford) gets twitterpated whenever the subject of Maid Marian (Monica Evans) comes up or the way best pal Little John (Phil Harris voicing a variati…
The first of two features Walt Disney made at the behest of the Office of Inter-American Affairs, Saludos Amigos consists of four cartoons linked by live-action travel footage. The very funny "Lake Titicaca" finds Donald Duck high in the Bolivian Andes, struggling with a recalcitrant llama. "Pedro," the story of a little airplane replacing his father on a mail run across the Andes, is a v…