In America, little Fievel Mousekewitz learns while growing up in Russia in 1885, "there are no cats. And the streets are paved with cheese." This establishes, immediately and neverendingly, the monotonous pattern of rodentized clichés and stereotypes: especially ethnic clichés and stereotypes, Jewish, Irish, French, Italian. There has been no …
Robust, fast, reckless (unafraid, for example, of giving offense to Native Americans), funny, punny, with much of the footloose imagination of an old Looney Tune: the Land of Plenty is envisioned by the immigrant rodents as a U.S. map with bas-relief plateaus of cheese; a roadside sign of "You Are …
Fox Family Films presents an animated alternative to current Disney, but as little an alternative as possible: a spunky feminist heroine (but why, at age eighteen, does she have no memory of herself at eight?); a callow ineffectual hero; a stentorian villain (Rasputin raised from the dead); cute animal sidekicks; …
A microbiological invasion from outer space gets off to an immediately gripping start: a walkie-talkie transmission from a small New Mexico town chokes off, an elaborate defense mechanism clicks into operation, and four civilian scientists are rousted from their homes and speeded to a top-secret, cylinder-shaped laboratory sunken in the …
Very early and very primitive Marx Brothers comedy. It has a number of numb areas, particularly when Margaret Dumont or some other straw figure shrugs or grins or grimaces on one half of the screen while one of the Marxes showboats on the other half. It has, as well, some …
Animator Richard Williams simply took too long at the drawing board. Peter Cowie's annual International Film Guide reported in its 1977 edition — repeat, 1977 — that "The Thief and the Cobbler [as it was then known] is especially dear to Williams's heart. Although it has been in active preparation …
The first Disney animated feature put into production after Uncle Walt's death; and the decline, while not teeth-rattling, is definitely felt. O'Malley the Alley Cat (with the hep-cat voice of Phil Harris) does the most to uphold the tradition. Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman.
Feels more like ninety. Either way, it is almost as effective as summer camp for keeping the kids tied up a spell. David Niven, Cantinflas, Shirley MacLaine, and practically everyone else in the Screen Actors Guild are in it. Michael Anderson directed.
Quaint animal tale, freshly, ripely illustrated by prior documentarian Chris Noonan, about an orphaned porker who, taken in tow by a sheepdog, revolutionizes the business of herding when he introduces reason and politeness into it. Sometimes the cuteness gets overaggressive, but the absence of any obligatory child actor minimizes the …
Before and after all else, this is simply a sequel, with some of the common symptoms of sequelitis: a swelling of the head, a puffing-up of the body, an overall putting-on of pounds. The critics' exaggeration of the original's modest charms can only have aggravated the situation. (The same director, …
Gabriel Axel's film, from a story by Isak Dinesen, treats of two spinsterly sisters devoted to Good Works on the Jutland Coast near the end of the last century, of how they came to have a French maid, and of how the maid, after fourteen years of gratuitous service, came …
In this storyless and humanless paean to woodland creatures (Man is regarded as the eternal enemy, the bringer of fire, destruction, death), the Disney animators are able to give free rein to their appreciation of the natural world, of Romantic landscape, of animals' little idiosyncrasies, of types of weather and …
Well, now, looky here. An animated movie about a mermaid who is also a princess. Why, it's almost just like ... [REDACTED AT THE REQUEST OF THE WALT DISNEY MOVIE STUDIO CORPORATION]
"Hey kids! Welcome to Disneynature! It's a lot like regular nature, except we've added slo-mo, and also some anthropomorphic aspects to keep you ADHD tykes interested. 'Anthropomorphic' is derived from the Greek 'anthropos' — man — and 'morpho' — form. It means that we change the form of things so …