| I liked this, too, but of course, it had all the plot elements which
appeal to me.
One certainly should not expect the Victor Hugo novel. The
Disneyfication of the story requires some certain plot elements to be
changed. For example, Frollo is not a priest but a judge. (Disney was
the distributor of "Priest", a very good movie which did not go over
well with a lot of Catholics, for obvious reasons. It's easy to assume
Disney wanted to lay off the church for a while. :) Phoebus is much
more engaging than the Phoebus in the story (more on him later).
Quasimodo isn't half as hideous as he was in the novel, nor deaf.
And basically, Paris, while having it's problems in the movie, seems a
much nicer place.
Heaving all that to the side, we still have a story which opens with a
murder (bloodless, though) and ends with one. Well, not at the EXACT
end, but you get the idea. In between we have public humiliation,
mental and physical cruelty, lust (yeah, lust. In a Disney movie. It
was cool. :), ostracization, violence, betrayal and unrequited love.
Hey, and folks though Pocahontas was gloomy.
Fear not, though, we also have a fairly upbeat ending, a cute goat
and a trio of wisecracking gargoyles for comedy relief.
So, did it all work? Yes and no. For the kids, I don't think so, at
least not to extent as a kid-cool movie like, oh, "Aladdin". Or "The
Lion King". The small children in the audience, I think, were bored
because for them, the movie was short on action and "talky". I felt
the movie was short on action, too, but only because it seemed that no
one scene was allowed to go on for more than 30 seconds at a time. A
nod to short attention spans, I guess.
For me? Yes. The villian was really nasty. Quasimodo was a very
sympathetic protagnoist, Esmeralda looks like I'd like to and best of
all (for me) the handsome male protagonist was actually handsome! And
likable! And somebody *I'd* want to end up with. The animators
finally got a blessing to get away from the Ken-Doll look, thank God
and came up with somebody who wasn't as bland as the piece of paper
they were drawn on.
Being voiced by Kevin Kline can't hurt, either. Quite frankly, I'd go
see the movie just on the basis of that character alone. :)
My biggest beef with the movie was the necessity of making it a
musical: none of the songs tickled my fancy except for Esmeralda's plea
to God to help her people out and basically it would have worked
better as a non-musicial. My other beef was the use of either
computer-animation or rotoscoping for some of the scenes, especially
crowd scenes. It was so obviously different from traditional animation
that to me, it was jarring.
Aside from that, I did enjoy myself. I certainly appreciated the
attempt to make a cartoon not just for kids. I do think children will
like it better than Pocahantas but I think they're parents might
appreciate more of it than they do.
*** out of ****
kim
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| I tokk my six year-old son to see it this weekend, and I was kind of
disturbed. While apparently he was not bothered by it, I was dismayed to
see how little there was in this film for children.
The story was changed, of course, but there was so much murder, lust,
violence, and cruelty in it that I cannot recommend it to anyone with
small children. The only comic relief in it is the three gargoyles, but
there is not much of them to counteract the other very adult themes. If
Disney had touted this an adult animated movie, I could respect them.
But their inundating the market with Hunchback paraphernalia will make
most people think (as I did) that they had sanitized the story
sufficiently for children, but this is very much not the case.
Saying that, it is a beautifully animated film, the scenes inside the
cathedral are particularly breath-taking. I noticed that a lot,
probably not a good thing, since I should have been caught up in the
story, but I was more worried in the reaction my son would have to some
of the scenes. That he didn't react badly is probably the result of
most of it having gone way over his head.
I can't think what possessed Disney in making this their summer
animated movie, even the theme of judging people by their actions and
not their looks was lost in the tragic story.
Marilyn
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| I agree with many of the previous, in that I really liked it, but agree that
it was certainly more adult than previous Disney animated movies.
The animation is terrific (the scenes in and around the cathedral are
exquisite), Quasimodo is definitely deformed without being so repulsive as
to scare children (or ruin the marketing aspects of the movie), the villian
is one of the better villians from Disney because he believes in what he is
doing and doesn't consider himself evil, and the hero has some character.
But the big difference is in the heroine, and her affect on the other
characters. Previous Disney heroines, while all having perfect faces and
figures (Belle, Ariel, Jasmine, Snow White, Cinderella, etc), were basically
innocent girls who were interested in romance, and that is how the other
people reacted to them. Think of "Kiss the Girl" in "The Little Mermaid"
or "Let Me Show You the World" in "Aladdin" or the final scene of "Snow White"
where the Prince kisses her and she rides on the horse back to his castle.
Here, Esmerelda is not at all innocent, and both Pheobus and Frolo react to
her in that way. Frolo especially feels blatant lust for her, and the song
in his room where he decides what to do makes this very clear. Quasimodo
also feels the same, and is torn emotionally when she asks him to help her
save Pheobus, and then watches Esmerelda and Pheobus passionately kissing
after Pheobus revives.
I don't see this as a problem, because it went right over the head of my
8 year old son, and my 11 year old daughter just ignored those scenes. But
YMMV, so be warned.
But it also had one of the most delightful puns I've heard in a while.
-- Ken Moreau
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