disney – alan williamson

The Little Mermaid (1989)

One of the more whimsical Disney outings the Little Mermaid is now, after 26 years, firmly concreted as a classic. With signature tunes, such as Under the Sea and Kiss the Girl it still gets my foot tapping.

What is interesting about this particular Disney cartoon, for me at least, is that it is the first Disney animation that I watched as an adult when it first came out. Up to this point, every other outing could be considered a childs movie for a child.

The story itself is harmless enough. Spoiled teenage girl, growing up in a single parent household, with an overbearing protective father who doesn’t want her to grow up. She gains the attention of a man, an much older man incidentally, who seduces her into a whole new world. With the help of a scheming enemy of her fathers, she manipulates her way to get what she wants and is thrown into this new foreign world.

Father not too happy and goes off on one.

Throw in some musical numbers and you have yourself a great family movie about a very dysfunctional family.

Ach … Disney movies shouldn’t be looked beyond the surface. Just let yourself go and be seduced with a fairy tale.

#102 in the series

Viewing Date
Saturday, 28th November 2015 (Orlando)

Rating
7/10

IMDB YouTubeTrailer

Frozen (2013)

Let it go, Let it go, can’t hold it back any more!

Feels right, that while I am in Disney World, I should be watching this movie as part of my series. I will confess the journey to this movie for me wasn’t your conventional path. I came to this one very late. In fact, I came to it only because of my youngest son, doing a parody of the Elsa ‘cold didn’t bother me anyway’ strut. So because of that, I had to explore the song to which he was inspired from and found the iconic Let it Go.

I was hooked. It then took me a long time before I actually watched the movie. Small confession time. I went to Disney World in Orlando back in August, and watched the Frozen stage show before I had actually seen the movie. So to say I was late to the Frozen party is an under statement.

I then watched this movie for the first time, with my youngest back in August. It was cute and fun to watch it through the eyes of a 9 year old boy.

However, fast forward a few months, here I watch it without the wonderment of a 9 year old.

The movie is okay. The songs are okay, apart from the classic, Let it go. The overall movie I personally find to be adequate but no where near as good as say The Lion King. The Lion King was more than just a single song, which I fear Frozen suffers from. Sure there are some excellent ‘b’ sides, but take away Let it go and would the rest of them stand on their own? I doubt it.

While this movie is Disney’s (and the worlds) most successful animation, I rate it #3 behind Lion King and The Little Mermaid.

Now that said, I am huge Let it go fan. I love Elsa and find her as erotic as you can find an animated character to be (we will talk about the Disney Hercules singers at a later date).

So all in all, great movie, some what loses it after the big number is played.

#101 in the series

Viewing Date
Friday, 27th November 2015 (Orlando)

Rating
6/10

IMDB YouTubeTrailer

Tomorrowland (2015)

Oh Disney, where did this go so wrong? You have such talent available at your finger tips, such vision, huge resources, and this is the best you can do? A disjointed, mess of a movie, with a story line that only “clicks” about 10 minutes from the end, and I say click barely.

I actually don’t know how to describe the storyline, because I am still unsure myself what it was all about. I believe there is some morality or warning about what will happen if we don’t get our act together and do something about climate change. But I could be mistaken.

George Clooney takes on the role of Frank Walker, a young inventor who tries to impress at the 1964 World Fair with his jetpack that doesn’t quite work. Disheartened and rejected, Athena (Raffey Cassidy) see’s hope in him and shows him a world of such futuristic technology he is amazed.

Here is where we start to get off the rails quickly. We have robots as humans, and robots as well, robots. We have time travel thrown in, jetting back and forth between the present and the future.

The movie is a complete disaster.

Britt Robertson (from Under the Dome) is the modern day hopeful that seeks out the older Frank Walker to help her understand what is going on. We are truly behind Britt in this quest, because the audience is equally as clueless as to what is going on.

Tim McGraw pops up (yes the country singer) as her NASA engineer father who is her complete inspiration, and in his defense, he like us, has no real clue what is going on. You may think he is acting, but I think this is truly genuine.

Every story needs a bad guy, and Nix (played by

Hugh Laurie) is our token bad guy, except he isn’t, or is he? Is just misunderstood? I don’t know. I don’t care!

And there in lies the problem with this one, you really don’t care what is going with this story. There is no character loyalty built up.

Now with all that said, the movie looks spectacular. The sets are beautiful and quality and attention to detail is as you would expect from this level of Disney investment ($190M). For those fans and familiar with DisneyLand and DisneyWorld will enjoy the references, complete with tunes from some of the famous rides. I may never sit in the Its a Small World ride in the same way ever again.

This could have been such a great movie and re-watching the trailer I see where I was sold a bill of goods.