Word: disneyized
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...hundred aching clashes between rival high schools. There will be parades this week in Philadelphia, Houston and Hollywood, and of course the big Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City. (Missing from that extravaganza, however, will be the familiar figure of Mickey Mouse. Walt Disney officials, who control appearances by replicas of the celebrated mouse, do not want him to become too familiar during the celebrations of his 50th birthday. Last week his chief sortie was to a White House party given by Amy Carter, where he got a hug from the hostess's father...
...longtime Tolkien addict himself, Director Ralph Bakshi knew these dangers; he also knew that the task of translating this ring-cycle to the screen had stymied some of the most formidable names in Hollywood, including Walt Disney, and still he plunged ahead. Bakshi brought to this project none of the brass and sass that animated his earlier cartoon features including the X-rated Fritz the Cat and the jive-talking Heavy Traffic. If reverence had wings, his new picture would fly. The fact that it hobbles simply proves again that the road to Mordor is paved with good intentions...
When he died last week at 84 in his home in Stockbridge, Mass., Norman Rockwell shared with Walt Disney the extraordinary distinction of being one of the two artists familiar to nearly everyone in the U.S., rich or poor, black or white, museumgoer or not, illiterate or Ph.D. To a tiny minority of these people, Rockwell was a kitsch factory, turning out relentlessly sentimental icons of mid-cult virtue?family, kids, dogs and chickens, apple pie, Main Street and the flag?in the corniest of retardataire styles. But to most of them, Rockwell was a master: sane (unlike Van Gogh...
...whole thing is just another cleverly put ecological tract. What sustains the viewer, however, besides the sound plotting, is the stylishness of the piece. Except for an unfortunate arty prologue with featureless backgrounds and stylized bunnies, Watership Down is made in the classic manner of the old, excellent Disney films. The background painting is rich and highly detailed, and this allows the multiplane camera to exploit its ability to create the illusion of three-dimensionality, rather like the great tracks through the forests of Snow White and Bambi. Disney's craftsmen might have made better visual definitions of characters...
Watership Down may not be the ideal rendering of a book in which a lot of people have a vested emotional interest, but it is a worthy addition to the classic tradition of screen animation. Like the great Disney pictures of the past, it is illuminated by a darkness and an energy that rescue it time and again from blandness and cuteness and give it those resonances that will reverberate in a child's imagination. -Richard Schickel