[MoriartyL]

I've been watching a lot of Disney movies lately, too. First I watched a bunch of 80s ones, then I started back from Snow White and watched in order. I just got up to The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. (I skipped Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros, though. I also didn't watch Fantasia because I'm hoping to rewatch it with a few friends soon.) Some of them (Bambi, all the package films) I'd never seen before. And some (Pinocchio, Dumbo) I had only the faintest childhood memories of. A few random impressions:

• All the early animation is gorgeous.
• Jiminy Cricket is a fantastic character. Ironically, he might be the most human character in any of these movies. He's constantly messing up, he makes impulsive decisions, he speaks with an old man's moral superiority while not having as many of the answers as he thinks he does.
• Dumbo was a very pleasant surprise! As a little kid I don't think I saw it many times, but enough for the whole experience of rewatching it to be incredibly nostalgic. As I watched I remembered exactly what it was like to watch it back then, not in terms of the plot (which I hadn't really understood), but in terms of all those emotions. And it's such an emotional, sad story. The whole thing is being an outcast and making a fool of himself and hitting rock bottom and dealing with it with drinking (!) until they see scary hallucinations (That totally freaked me out as a kid!) and only in the very end getting somewhere. I wonder how much of these feelings come from the Great Depression.
• Fun and Fancy Free was very entertaining all around.
• I'm very glad I watched The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. The Wind in the Willows section is a classic- as good as any of the full productions, though regrettably only half as long. The Sleepy Hollow story was less successful, but it was worth watching for that hilarious dancing scene. What I didn't like about it was that I detested Ichabod. Mr. Toad is crazy, but he's fun crazy. Ichabod's just selfish and mean.
• Bambi was very pretty to look at, but much too long for the tiny amount of plot it had. It would have worked better as a short, like Bongo.
• The "nature" model of love story is repeated over and over, yet each time the animators drag it out as though they think it's the freshest thing in the world. (I'm talking about the boy-meets-girl, boy-turns-into-brainless-machine, boy-floats-in-clouds, boy-looks-like-he's-going-to-lose-girl sequence.)
• The Fox and the Hound would be a good movie if they'd cut out the worm subplot and the love story. And the songs. And that annoying Mama owl character.
• If I didn't know ahead of time that The Black Cauldron was a Disney movie, I wouldn't have guessed it. It is so completely unlike every other Disney movie I've seen in plot and tone and pacing! Incidentally, it's not a good movie. Most of the character designs are bland, the plot is cookie-cutter fantasy stuff, the stakes are low, the world is boring, the pace is slow, the music is silly, the constant gimmicky effects are often pretty but just as often flawed enough to pull you out of the story. I do like Gurgi, though. A whole movie starring Gurgi would probably have been more fun.
• The way they force the name of each of the package movies into a song is annoying.
• The Peter and the Wolf short in Make Mine Music is completely ruined by Sterling Holloway's (He's the voice actor who did Pooh Bear.) narration. He doesn't stop blabbering about what you can see plainly, not for an instant! So how are you supposed to enjoy the music?