Top 15 Disney films I grew up with, #15

There are a lot of great things about childhood, and I’m sure there are many who would say that Disney made their childhood. It certainly made mine. The films I remember loving most when I was little, and even love now in late adolescence, come from Disney. One cannot deny that they have made a huge contribution to the history of not just animation and kids’ movies but the film industry in general.

The following list is my personal opinion on films that I grew up with. It was hard to make a top ten list since they are all so close, and there were about fifteen that I primarily enjoyed, so it’s the top fifteen. I also wanted to criticise the much worse films on this list. You may notice that other great Disney films like Bambi and The Hunchback of Notre Dame do not occur here. I have watched films such as these recently, and I think they’re fantastic as well. Also, to be clearer, I am talking about feature-length films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios, so Pixar sadly doesn’t count. Honourable mentions go to more recent yet equally beloved Disney movies like Frozen and Tangled, which are thus far my favourites of the 21^st Century. But these were the ones I remember loving and watching all the time when I was little. And so, naturally, my judgements have been based a lot on these films’ sentimental value. So, without further ado, enjoy this list, which will be added onto as the posts pile up.

#15: The Aristocats (1970)

Given this Disney movie was the very first to be made after Walt Disney’s death, I find its quality … forgivable. Sadly, The Aristocrats started a downward spiral leading to The Black Cauldron (widely considered in the worst Disney animated feature of all time … but everyone thankfully forgot about it). The Aristocrats is set in Paris around 1910, and it’s about these cats who are expelled from their nice home by an evil butler and have to find their way back. Let’s be honest. I don’t really fully like this movie. As a kid, the only things that attracted me to it were the occasional side characters that came in for cheap laughs, like the old man with the loud car, the annoying geese and the bumbling dogs, and also the fact that it’s set in Paris.

It’s the same thing with Thumbelina, which I liked as a kid but absolutely loathe now. If you throw in Paris and a couple of French words, suddenly it’s all dandy and magical, even though the characters and the plot have absolutely nothing to do with the setting. If it weren’t for a couple of nice shots of what Paris supposedly looked like, I would think this was just set in America or Britain. The countryside is generic and there’s nothing special to how people behave that makes the film feel at all French. The town in Beauty and the Beast, made twenty years later, has a more convincing French charm, but this movie seems to be throwing in the Paris card because it’s the only way to make the movie more than a mundane one about lost cats.

But that’s just me being anti-Americanisation. I understand The Aristocats is made for an American audience, but this really might as well have been set in America. Other than that, the songs are either unmemorable or annoying, the characters are pretty two-dimensional and the plot is quite predictable and drags at times. I watched it a lot as a kid because I had the video, but overall I dislike it now, and almost wish my parents had stopped me from watching this as a child in favour of the large amount of much better Disney films. I do have friends who love it, though, and I will remind them of the fact that this is purely subjective. Parts of the movie, like the song Everybody Wants to Be a Cat, do have their merits, even if they don’t quite hit home for me, though I do agree that the kittens are pretty adorable. But the Aristocats, objectively, is a lot better than the next movie, even though I personally have given it a higher ranking. Probably because I have a lot more to say about it.

(image source: http://www.soundonsight.org/wp-content/themes/arts-culture/timthumb.php?src=http://www.soundonsight.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Aristocats-door.jpg&q=90&w=630&zc=1)