Fantasia 2000
Mar. 27th, 2021 08:00 amFantasia 2000 is the first of a stretch of Disney movies that I considered myself too old for, and either didn’t see till long after they came out or haven’t seen at all. (Or, in one case, haven’t even heard of. The very next movie on the list is Dinosaur, which as far as I can tell fell into the abyss directly after release, because it has never obtruded on my consciousness before.)
I love the idea of Fantasia 2000, and I would love to say that I loved the movie itself. And there were some great parts! I loved the way the movie sort of loops around full circle, starting with abstract triangle butterflies which come back again, at the end, when the mystical wood spirit is bringing the land back to life after the volcano destroys it. It strengthens the theme of rebirth, I think, of things coming full circle, to bring back imagery not just from the beginning of that particular short but the beginning of the movie.
I also very much enjoyed the “Rhapsody in Blue” short, set in New York City during the Depression. And the cameos are very fun. (James Earl Jones! Angela Lansbury!)
Overall, however, the quality is uneven. In particular, the CGI has NOT aged well, and looks awkward and ugly in conjunction with the hand-drawn animation. This is particularly disastrous in the “Pines of Rome” sequence, perhaps partly because it’s the first segment where it shows up (by the time it shows up in the “Steadfast Tin Soldier” sequence, you know what to expect and just sigh), but also because the concept of flying humpback whales is so beautiful, and the hand-drawn portions of the animation (the waves, the ice, the aurora) are so beautiful… and the CGI whales are so awkward and let it down horribly.
Also, Fantasia 2000 lacks the sheer off-the-wall creativity of the original Fantasia. Except for the butterflies at the beginning, all the short features in this film tell stories. Of course some of the original Fantasia had shorts that told stories, too, but you also had ones where it was just a string vibrating in time to the music, and maybe that particular aesthetic looked a little bit too nineties-era-screensaver to work in Fantasia 2000, but it’s also got nothing as sheerly exuberant as the dancing flower sequences in Fantasia.
This movie needed to go a little bonkers, is what I’m saying. It needed to risk failing spectacularly in order to have a chance of achieving sublimely, and instead it failed in small safe ways and did not approach glory at all.
I love the idea of Fantasia 2000, and I would love to say that I loved the movie itself. And there were some great parts! I loved the way the movie sort of loops around full circle, starting with abstract triangle butterflies which come back again, at the end, when the mystical wood spirit is bringing the land back to life after the volcano destroys it. It strengthens the theme of rebirth, I think, of things coming full circle, to bring back imagery not just from the beginning of that particular short but the beginning of the movie.
I also very much enjoyed the “Rhapsody in Blue” short, set in New York City during the Depression. And the cameos are very fun. (James Earl Jones! Angela Lansbury!)
Overall, however, the quality is uneven. In particular, the CGI has NOT aged well, and looks awkward and ugly in conjunction with the hand-drawn animation. This is particularly disastrous in the “Pines of Rome” sequence, perhaps partly because it’s the first segment where it shows up (by the time it shows up in the “Steadfast Tin Soldier” sequence, you know what to expect and just sigh), but also because the concept of flying humpback whales is so beautiful, and the hand-drawn portions of the animation (the waves, the ice, the aurora) are so beautiful… and the CGI whales are so awkward and let it down horribly.
Also, Fantasia 2000 lacks the sheer off-the-wall creativity of the original Fantasia. Except for the butterflies at the beginning, all the short features in this film tell stories. Of course some of the original Fantasia had shorts that told stories, too, but you also had ones where it was just a string vibrating in time to the music, and maybe that particular aesthetic looked a little bit too nineties-era-screensaver to work in Fantasia 2000, but it’s also got nothing as sheerly exuberant as the dancing flower sequences in Fantasia.
This movie needed to go a little bonkers, is what I’m saying. It needed to risk failing spectacularly in order to have a chance of achieving sublimely, and instead it failed in small safe ways and did not approach glory at all.