Word: hunchback
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Critics have said it. Intellectual poseurs have repeated it. You have snidely asked yourself: "Where does Disney get off making a children's film out of a Victor Hugo's classic, tragic novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame? Is Disney not satisfied with mousefying Americana; must they now bastardize French culture as well...
...more satisfying (and less flaky) than "Pocahontas," "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" is reminiscent of "Aladdin," with its spectacular cartoon architecture and lively medieval street scenes. Directors Gary Truesdale and Kirk Wise (collaborators on "Beauty and the Beast") tap into the visual power of the Notre Dame cathedral, and the film's most compelling scenes are set therein...
...Hunchback" tackles more adult themes than any prior Disney movie. Unlike previous Disney villains motivated by power hunger and jealousy, Judge Frollo is driven by guilt over his lust for the beautiful gypsy Esmerelda (spoken by Demi Moore in her sexiest role of the summer and sung by Heidi Mollenhauer...
...like Aladdin for a predictable billion-dollar gross in the theatrical and video markets. But the artists at Disney's animation unit--it should be called the ambition unit--have bigger eyes. They figure that where they go, into melodrama or political sagas, the audience will follow. With The Hunchback of Notre Dame, directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise (who made Beauty and the Beast) have splashed the broody emotions of Victor Hugo's epic novel with a bold, dazzling palette. Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz (Pocahontas) have written the largest, most imposing score yet for an animated film...
...crimson-shrouded ghosts line his way to a raging hearth, where he shouts out his twisted passion. This one will be hard to explain to the kids. But then Disney animation, from Snow White to The Lion King, is a parade of grim fairy tales about death, separation, betrayal. Hunchback has new traumas for the little ones; they will be terrified, perplexed, mesmerized...