The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney)

Immediate impression: the animation here is exquisite, some of the best in the canon to this point. The songs are inconsistent; some are quite good, others rather bland. The story works quite well--it is a fairly faithful adaptation of Hugo's original, as far as I can tell, so it's a time-tested tale. So the story works...except for its climactic betrayal, when the rules of who gets to be whom are upheld, contravening much of the case made by the whole rest of the narrative. That’s standard operating procedure, of course, found in a thousand tales, but it grates a bit more here, where the very arc of the plot builds the case for rejecting such notions, and a more modern interpretation would have been welcome. (It's not like today's producers and publishers--or even those of 25 years ago--ever shy away from changing a story to suit the times and their own tastes; witness Pocahontas just a couple of films back.) All in all, setting aside that one quibble, this is a solid effort from the Disney studio, not quite up to the dizzying heights of the earlier in the decade works, but probably better than its immediate predecessor (the aforementioned Pocahontas) and at least as good as much that came after. Not perfect, but a win is a win.