Friday, February 1, 2013

Movies Viewed Through the Nostalgia Goggles and Younger Siblings That Make You Watch Them

For the most part the Disney Company has the childhoods of those who grew up anywhere between the 1940's through the early 2000's by the short hairs. Hand drawn animation was big back then, and Disney presented some of it's best movies (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, The Lion King, and Beauty and the Beast ) to the world. These movies combined songs reminiscent of Broadway song and dance numbers, with remixed fairy tales (Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid),  stories from The Arabian Nights (Aladdin), and works of The Bard (The Lion King (a loose, remixed rendition of Hamlet)). However by 2002 what became known as the Disney Rennisance had long since ended, but the company was still pushing out animated movies at a rate of at least one a year. One of these later Disney movies is Treasure Planet.

Produced by Disney, Ron Clements and John Musker (both of whom directed the film), Treasure Planet was released into theaters Nov, 27th, 2002. The story is pretty much Treasure Island meets science fiction, with ships that literally sail the skies (e.g. outer space), aliens, futuristic weapons, the whole nine yards. The animation of the movie is a mix of mostly traditionally drawn sets and characters and computer animation (done with a animating program known as Deep Canvas).

I saw this movie with my Dad when it first came out in 2002, and we both loved it. As far as I was concerned, the critics who did bad reviews of this movie, had no clue what they were talking about. The story is a classic (one of which I've read), and the adaptions they made to it were wonderful in my eyes. The character design was interesting, and certain scenes were utterly beautiful (when the R.L.S. Legacy launches, the comet scene, the shots of space, ect), not to mention the music (which continues to pop into my head whenever I'm on a boat). This is essentially what I thought of the flick when I first saw it when I was eleven.

Currently I'm 21, with two little brothers who have inherited my VHS copy of the movie. Recently on one of my trips home, they asked me and my dad to watch it with them. Looking back at this piece of my childhood, through the eyes of my little brothers, I still don't find fault with it. The only complaint that I can think of, is that the song "I'm Still Here" (written and preformed by The Goo Goo Dolls lead singer, John Rzeznik), would probably have been a better fit in the movie's credits instead of in the middle of it. Aside from the song in the ending credits, this is the only lyrical song in the whole feature, the rest of the music consists of musical scores. To me this is a slight continuity issue, in what is otherwise one of the great Disney flicks.

No comments: