Word: disneyized
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Unfortunately some technical imperfections date the pre-war film and mar its polish. The color reproduction is inferior, and the animation cannot always respond to the musical rhythms. But these irritations are swept aside by the sheer excitement of Fantasia's experimental efforts. And, perhaps most interesting, Disney's successes and failures throughout the film raise a host of questions concerning the relationship between musical and visual...
Fantasia is an experiment in translating classical music onto the screen through abstract and cartoon animation. When first shown in 1940, Walt Disney's most imaginative work was frustrated at the box office. Since Hollywood has never since dared a similar experiment, the film remains an original and fresh experience for the moviegoer...
...most of the time, Disney does achieve a satisfying balance, particularly in the orchestration and visual description of a Bach fuge. The musicians themselves are first seen playing amid fantastic shadows and color. Then parts of the musical instruments, dissembled as in a Picasso abstraction, vibrate to the melodies. And finally, as the music builds up, the instruments become flashing linear descriptions of the themes...
More realistic animation is successfully combined with the sound tract when Stravinsky's Rite of Spring sets the tempo for the creation of Earth, and the growth of life upon it, including a battle between two prehistoric monsters. In contrast, Disney parodies Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours" in a fine comic ballet of elephants, hippotamuses, alligators and ostriches...
...twenty minute short, they sought to suggest the way life happens around a reef in the southern Atlantic less from the viewpoint of men than from that of the creatures themselves. There are no humans in the movie; and Producer Alfred Butterfield's commentary intelligently avoids the Disney practice of lending human characteristics to animals. The result is a restrained film which, due to fine continuity, seems remarkably real...