The Magical World Of Disney #332: Top 100 Disney Movies, Part 2

98.          Strange World (2022)

Strange World is a 2022 American computer-animated science-fiction adventure film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. The 61st film produced by the studio, it was directed by Don Hall, co-directed by Qui Nguyen, and produced by Roy Conli, from a screenplay written by Nguyen, who also conceived the story with Hall. The film stars the voices of Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid, Jaboukie Young-White, Gabrielle Union, and Lucy Liu. It is Disney’s seventh animated film to tackle the sci-fi genre, after Big Hero 6 (2014). The film, set in the world of Avalonia, follows the Clades (Gyllenhaal, Quaid, Young-White, and Union), a legendary family of explorers, and Callisto Mal (Liu), the leader of the exploration and president of Avalonia, who must set aside their differences as they embark on a journey to a mysterious land below their world, inhabited by surreal lifeforms to save a resource called Pando from losing its energy power source.

Strange World takes inspiration from pulp magazines, Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Fantastic Voyage (1966) and King Kong (1933). In addition, the land of Avalonia was given an orange-and-white color scheme to contrast with the titular strange world, as the filmmakers chose red and magenta. To communicate non-verbally, several animators worked to create the movement of the character Splat. While the film is predominately CGI, the film does incorporate 2D animation from Randy Haycock, with additional 2D animation by Eric Goldberg and Mark Henn in certain scenes.

I’ve already delved into this movie as of late as I did say it’s one of the best movies of 2022 that everyone has seriously misjudged. I’ll just say it again, this was a whole lot more fun than I was expecting it to be and I stand by the belief this will have a cult following in the same vein as Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet in about 10 to 20 years, just watch.

97.          The Aristocats (1970)

The Aristocats is a 1970 American animated feature film produced and released by Walt Disney Productions and features the voices of Eva Gabor, Hermione Baddeley, Phil Harris, Dean Clark, Sterling Holloway, Scatman Crothers, and Roddy Maude-Roxby. The 20th animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film is based on a story by Tom McGowan and Tom Rowe, and revolves around a family of aristocratic cats, and how an alley cat acquaintance helps them after a butler has kidnapped them to gain his mistress’ fortune which was intended to go to them. It was originally released to theaters by Buena Vista Distribution on December 11, 1970.

The film is noted for being the last film project to actually be approved by Walt Disney himself, as he died in late 1966, before the film was released. He had, however, been working in the story development for The Rescuers (1977) as early as 1962. The Aristocats gained positive reviews on first release and was a box office success.

As far as one of Disney’s animated classics, The Aristocats isn’t really one of their stronger movies. We’ve seen this story before dozen of times, a bunch of animals get kidnapped by a greedy butler or family member because they want the inheritance they have and yeah, we’ve seen it done over and over again and if you’re seen those, you get that here.

With that said, the movie isn’t terrible, the animation is very nice, the comedy can be really funny at times, and the voice acting is great, you have Eva Gabor as Duchess, who would later become Miss Bianca in the Rescuers, and Phil Harris as O’Malley, just coming off of his role of Baloo in The Jungle Book, among other voice actors involved. The music is also really good and memorable too. I just wished that the story could’ve been more well-handled.

Maybe not one of Disney’s best movies but The Aristocats still holds up as a fun Disney animated movie, maybe not the most perfect but still very enjoyable to watch.

#100 & #99

Follow The Reviewing Network at our Facebook page at Facebook.com/TheReviewingNetwork for continuing updates and debuts for new blog posts and also follow my Twitter feed so you can see new postings right as they are posted.

‹ Time About The Movies – August 12, 1994

He’s A Family Guy #280: Guy, Robot ›

Tagged with: MagicalWorldOfDisney, TheReviewingNetwork
Posted in The Magical World Of Disney