A mouse, gone sadly astray....

We caught up a bit on our Disney movies lately, and apparently we're caught up permanently, since Disney has reportedly decided to stop making hand-drawn, traditional animated films entirely. This is yet one more example of how Disney, once a great company, somehow completely lost its mind at some point in the last five or six years.

Home On the Range, the one in current release, is actually quite a good little movie. It's a bit schmaltzy in spots, but by and large its sensibility lies more with the zaniness of The Emperor's New Groove than with the more syrupy stuff Disney's famous for. This movie worked for me on about the same level of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, with humorous little asides and character touches that make the going worthwhile, since there is exactly nothing surprising about this story at all. (Well, there is one surprise: the method the Evil Cattle Rustler uses to nab his prey is really pretty funny.) The voice-work is, as always, first rate; even in the darkest of hours, the Disney people still have their knack for getting the right voice for the right character. I can't envision any movie other than this one that would include Dame Judi Dench and Roseanne Barr in its cast. (And Lance LeGault, a longtime favorite character actor of mine who hasn't been in much lately, has a welcome turn as a stern bison.)

And then there's Brother Bear. We watched this on DVD the other night. It really is better than its reputation – I was expecting a crapfest, but it's not. It's surprisingly thoughtful and funny (this is one of those Disney movies that seems designed to inspire a spin-off movie about its secondary characters, in this case, the two lunkhead moose), and its animation is stunning. Parts of the nature-stuff put me in mind of similar landscaping in the films of Hayao Miyazaki, believe it or not. The film's story also starts out strong, but the ending is a pretty stunning collapse. About two-thirds of the way through the film I had a sinking feeling, because I could see that the film had set up a perfect tragic ending, and I also knew that there is no way Disney would ever have the courage to release a film with the tragic ending I envisioned. And, it didn't.

(For those curious about the plot, three Eskimo -- I think -- brothers confront an angry bear, who kills the eldest brother. The youngest goes after the bear, while the middle brother wants to let it be; and the younger brother kills the bear. But then "the Spirits" intervene, and the younger brother takes on the form of the dead bear, leaving his old clothes behind. Middle brother finds the clothes and assumes that the bear has killed his younger brother, and now goes after the bear, planning to kill it. So, brother is tracking brother with intent to kill, not knowing it's his brother. And the brother-turned-bear befriends an orphaned bear cub, eventually learning that the bear he killed and whose form he now inhabits was the bear cub's mother, whose initial angry reaction was simply maternal protective instinct. I won't tell how it all ends, except to note that this tale's potential for glorious tragedy goes completely unfulfilled.)

But that's not what bothers me most; the DVD presentation really gave me pause. It was released, as Disney has been doing lately, as a two-disc "Collectors" set, like many movies these days, but it's not like you're getting tons of extras. Instead, with this set, you get two copies of the movie itself, with a handful of extras. The films are included both in the widescreen format and in the fullscreen, pan-and-scan format. So, for consumers like me who are accustomed to choosing which aspect ratio to buy (and really, if you're any kind of film buff at all, you already know that "fullscreen" is for dunces), with recent Disney DVD releases, you have no such choice: you're forced to get them both. And since there are really only enough extras included that they really could probably get them onto a single-disc release if they wanted, this is basically Disney's way of still being able to charge for a two-disc set. Thanks, guys.

But it gets a little worse. Not much, but a little. When looking at the discs in the box, I saw that disc one was labeled something like "Original Theatrical Aspect Ratio", which was fine by me. The other disc, though, wasn't just labeled "Fullscreen". Disney labeled it "Family Friendly Fullscreen Presentation". (Emphasis mine.) No two ways about it: this pissed me off.

What on Earth is "family friendly" about a fullscreen release? Nothing that I can see. My own daughter has never asked about "those black bars above and below the movie", and I've never bothered to explain it, because what's the point? She focuses on the movie, which is as it should be. But more than that: if Disney is really trying to keep fullscreen video afloat, it just shows just how out-of-touch they really are. Widescreen is normal now. It is common for me to see fullscreen DVDs in the bargain bin at stores while the widescreen releases are still full price, which is a clear indication that the retailers are saying, "Nobody wants these fullscreen ones anymore". And more than that: when Julia Roberts goes on Letterman to promote her new movie, the clip they show is always in widescreen now. Movie ads on TV are themselves increasingly in widescreen. The only holdouts for fullscreen, it seems, are the TV networks (which is odd since quite a few regular TV series now are shown in widescreen, even though they are produced for a non-widescreen medium).

Disney's labeling of "fullscreen" as "family friendly" may seem a tiny thing to bitch about, and it probably is. But it's a startling example of Disney's problem, and it isn't that people want computer animated movies instead of hand-drawn ones, and it isn't that Disney's movies just don't tell good stories anymore (because, Treasure Planet aside, they do). Disney's problem is more fundamental: it's that, on some level, Disney just doesn't get it. Disney has gone from being a leading company to being the fumbling person saying, "Where is everybody going? Tell me, that I might lead them there!" It's really sad to behold, and I hope they can pull out of it, somehow. I'd like my daughter to see the Magic Kingdom while it's still got some magic in it.