The Aristocats

An instructive example of where the Disney studio stood about 40 years into the project—and it’s not a particularly encouraging example. Nothing particularly clever lives here. Compare this film's style to the wit of Aladdin or the Pixar movies (particularly the earlier ones) and this flick hardly seems like the product of the same studio (and, in a very real sense, it’s not, when you consider the difference in eras and crews).  On the animation itself, as befits films of this timeframe, characters are more roughly drawn, though backgrounds are still beautifully rendered. Some of the musical numbers here are entertaining and even a bit sophisticated for a Disney work of this era, but at the same time, much of the comedy is juvenile and slapstick, as we’ve seen in previous outings from the same production team. In the larger picture, one thing becomes clear at this point, after having watched four decades of the filmography: Disney films back in the day were consistently backwards looking, always set in the past, and as a result—or as an intentional product, depending—are inherently regressive and conservative in outlook. It is a wonder, after all, that the studio not only became what it eventually became—today something far beyond a movie studio—but that Disney was even what it was back then: a property that had a lot of clout and cachet even in its period of decline. Bottom line for this work: it is barely above Saturday morning cartoon quality, and it would be almost another two decades before Walt’s baby would see its revival. I guess "what's in a name" is something more than we imagine.