EW says: "Walt Disney's Live Action Films Sucked." Au contraire, mon hack (1 Viewer)

[Ernest Rister]

It hold up better today than it did in 1982. I attended Disney's premiere of a new 70mm print of the film for their wide-screen festival at the El Capitan in 1999, with Boxleitner and Lisberger in attendance to discuss the film. The film went over like gangbusters. The 20th Anniversary DVD is as big of a must-have as Brazil and The Fantasia Anthology.

 

[Chris]

Mary Poppins is a classic in all of film making; I may be wrong, but I was sure it one a few Academy Awards.. I think five?

 

[Ernest Rister]

Score, Song, Visual F/X, Actress

 

[BarryRR]

What a totally idiotic statement in EW, and I usually find them not quite this myopic. MARY POPPINS of course is the best and most obvious response to this stupid statement. I'm also happily awaiting the DVD release of SON OF FLUBBER.

 

[Todd Terwilliger]

I agree with everyone. There are many great Disney live-action films. Darby O'Gill has been one of my personal favorites since I was a kid.

 

[Mikel_Cooperman]

Arent they talking about Live Action movies from the last few years and their inability to make movies that arent based on theme park rides? Sure Pirates of the Carribean is pretty good but I think overrated. Look at their Non Pixat animated movies too. How many times can you do sequels to classics ??

 

[Ernest Rister]

No, the person was specifically taking about the man himself, and his live action films. "His live action films sucked."

 

[David_Blackwell]

Even though I was getting EW for 50 to 55 cents an issue, I had to give up on the subscription to EW because I just didn't agree with many of the things the writers said in that magazine and it made me think they were being elitist snobs.

Be seeing You,
David Blackwell

 

[JonZ]

I was SHOCKED how much I enjoyed Pirates of the Carribean.

 

[Ernest Rister]

I thought Pirates was pretty good, though it seemed to have some pacing problems, almost as if the creative team was having too much fun and couldn't bear to let the movie end. Still, I give mad props to the screenwriters who had the chore of taking the scenes from the Disneyland ride, and creating a working narrative out of them. That's why Country Bears didn't work -- if they had made a movie about a "critter country" where the animals were the main stars, something could have been done there. Instead, they put a little lost bear in a human world, trying to find his real family, and it was a disaster. It should have been more "Song of the South", less "Stuart Little", in other words.

Haunted Mansion should have been great - anyone who has heard Eddie Murphy's stand-up routines on "Amityville Horror" and "Poltergeist" know what I'm talking about. That's what that film needed -- an irreverent character dealing with supernatural, not a sitcom family man trying to bond with sitcom wife and his sitcom kids.

Pirates was a bit of a fluke -- good story, solid script (if a little long-winded), solid direction, good f/x -- but if not for Johnny Depp, I think it probably would have been another Cutthroat Island. Nobody went to see Disney's Pirate ride transferred to the screen. Everyone went to see Johnny Depp.

Still, if I had to rank the best post-Walt live-action Disney films, my votes would probably be going to things like Never Cry Wolf, The Journey of Natty Gann, Tex, and A Straight Story. I'd also give nods to Pirates of the Caribbean and Hot Lead and Cold Feet, both of which are very fun films with great performances, but I just couldn't list them above Ballard's Never Cry Wolf, or the woefully unseen Natty Gann.

 

[Claire Panke]

Ernest ya beat me to it. I love Journey of Natty Gan and Never Cry Wolf. Damn - I wish NG was available on widescreen.

Tron aged surprisingly well. Old Yeller still makes me cry.

Disney made plent of junk, but they also made some surprisingly solid, even excellent, family fare.

I confess I don't look to EW for learned cinematic analysis. I hate any publishing concept that gives films grades.

 

[Ernest Rister]

Natty Gann was shot 2.35:1. I refuse to buy the R1 Pan and Scan version on DVD. Apparently, R2 recently got a wide-screen release.

 

[Ernest Rister]

"Disney made plent of junk, but they also made some surprisingly solid, even excellent, family fare."

The worst thing that ever happened to the Disney studios, in my opinion, was the massive success of The Shaggy Dog. Unless I'm mistaken, I think it was the highest-grossing film of the year, and it opened a revenue stream of high-concept, low-budget comedies. To Walt's credit, he continued making small, personal films that spoke to him, but today, no one remembers films like Three Lives of Thomasina or Those Calloways or Third Man on the Mountain or The Light in the Forest. Most of these were flops, even Pollyanna a film Disney has a right to be proud of, and yet, Walt continued making them. Those Calloways just made it onto DVD, without a single bonus feature (those it *is* enhanced for wide-screen TVs, and it's presented in its OAR for the first time on home video). It's a strong movie, and the environmental theme of the film is more timely than ever. Brian Keith plays a recovering alcoholic obssessed with protecting the geese who fly through Vermont twice a year, and he loses damn near everything in his struggle -- his sobriety, his home, his land -- everything except for his family. The film has a deeply regrettable flaw in the unfortunate use of some rear-projection process shots in a key scene in the early going, and this reveals the tight budget of the film, but otherwise it's a small, little forgotten gem. The film isn't for everyone -- Cynical modern audiences may not take to it, especially because of that unfortunate "rear-projection" scene, which casts a pall on the film for several minutes -- but if you have the ability to appreciate films for the times they were made in, on the budget they were given, you should give the film a rent. There are some moments of powerful drama that I guarantee will surprise you (as in "This is in a Disney film?"), and the acting is top-notch. Give it a rent, if your local store has it. Do not blind buy.

 

[BarryRR]

It's funny how, as a kid, the most riotous laughter I ever heard in a movie theater was with Disney movie comedies, and not at some noisy matinee either--I mean, a mix of families and whatever age groups at evening shows. I can still recall the gales of laughter during the original THAT DARN CAT, the hilarity rocking Radio City Music Hall during THE LOVE BUG, and the enthusiatic howls reacting to the bouncing travails of Fred MacMurray in the two flubber films. They kind of set the standard for my appreciating the warm sense of sharing alot of memorable fun in a crowded movie house, not all that easily replicated in multiplexes nowadays. On a personal note, it was like visiting some sort of heaven when, in 1967, I went on a tour of the Disney Studios in Burbank--I saw the soundtrack of THE HAPPIEST MILLIONAIRE being worked on (with a b & w workprint being seen on a screen); I also saw a Disneyland special being shot on a soundstage (a Sandy Duncan-ish park guide was standing in front of a blue screen), and there was even a walk through the wing of one of the animation buildings! Whatever the ticket price was, well, it was an incredible thing for an eleven year-old. The studio still had the aura of Walt, who died at a nearby hospital six months earlier, as was pointed out in the building where the tour began. Anyone belittling the best of these films from this era speaks as one sadly deprived of the joy this special studio could create in a theater.

 

[Matthew_Millheiser]

No love for Bullwhip Griffin? :frowning:

 

[TomJC]

I have to back up the positive feelings for the older Disney live-action films. Additionally, having grown up in the seventies, I have very fond memories of going to the family theater in town and watching Disney's slate of live-action films from that era: The Apple Dumpling Gang, Unidentified Flying Oddball, and The Black Hole to name a few. While none of them will ever wind up on the AFI top 100 list, they succeeded in providing light entertainment to myself and other kids at the time.

EW reviewers need to think a little more about the context of the movies when making a blanket judgment about their worth.

 

[oscar_merkx]

Tron is truly one of the best films of the last 20 years and the dvd just proves it

The producers are the same folk who are making the Lord of the Rings DVDS

 

[Jeffrey_K]

I'm glad I read that. I wasn't aware that "Old Yeller" sucked.

 

[Phil Dally]

You know what I enjoyed as I was growing up? Those shows with the live bears and cougars and stuff,and the shows about yellowstone park and the prairies and things like that. If they put the shows about the parks and the praries and such on dvd, I'm sure you'll agree that the they (the parks, etc)were more pristine back in the 60's than they are now and I would love to see those shows again. Maybe on Disney Treasures.

Done Ranting

 

[Ernest Rister]

The films you are looking for are the True-Life Adventures:

True-Life Adeventure Features:

The Living Desert (Oscar-winner, Best Documentary Feature)
The Vanishing Prairie (Oscar-winner, Best Documentary Feature)
The African Lion (Oscar nominee)
White Wilderness (Oscar-winner, Best Documentary Feature)
Secrets of Life
Jungle Cat

True-Life Adventures Shorts:

Seal Island (Oscar-winner, Best Documentary Short Subject)
Beaver Valley (Oscar-winner, Best Documentary Short Subject)
Nature's Half-Acre (Oscar-winner, Best Documentary Short Subject)
Water Birds (Oscar-winner, Best Documentary Short Subject)
Bear Country (Oscar-winner, Best Documentary Short Subject)
Prowlers of the Everglades
Islands of the Sea (Oscar-nominee)

Other "Nature" Shorts produced by Walt Disney:

Grand Canyon (Oscar-winner, Best Documentary Short Subject)
Emperor Penguins
Cow Dog (Oscar-nominee)
The Wetback Hound (Oscar-winner, Best Documentary Short Subject)
Alaskan Sled Dog
Nature's Strangest Creatures
The Hound That Tought He Was a Raccoon
The Horse with the Flying Tail (Oscar-winner, Best Documentary Short Subject)
Mysteries of the Deep (Oscar-Nominee)
Yellowstone Cubs
The Tattooed Police Horse
A Country Coyote Goes Hollywood
Flash, the Teenage Otter
Run, Appallosa, Run
The Legend of the Boy and the Eagle

Other "Animal" Features produced by Walt Disney:

The Littlest Outlaw (sort of)
Perri
Old Yeller
Tonka
Nikki, Wild Dog of the North
Greyfriar's Bobby
Big Red
The Legend of Lobo
Miracle of the White Stallions (sort of)
Savage Sam
The Incredible Journey
The Three Lives of Thomasina (sort of)
That Darn Cat! (sort of)
The Ugly Dachsund

There are also numerous TV specials produced for the Disneyland/Wonderful World of Color TV Series, like "Ida the Offbeat Eagle", too many to list here right now. There were other nature/animal features produced after Walt's death, like "The Bears and I" and "Charlie the Lonesome Cougar", again, too many to list here right now.