Fantasia/2000 (1999)

reviewed by
Sean Townsend


FANTASIA 2000

STARRING: (animated) DIRECTOR: Pixote Hunt, Hendel Butoy, Eric Goldberg, Gaetan & Paul Brizzi, Francis Glebas, James Algar WRITTEN BY: Various (see above)

The original Fantasia, made in 1940, was intended by Walt Disney as the first of a planned series of 'concert features,' a continually evolving document which would showcase some of the world's finest animation married to some of the world's finest music. It was an overly ambitious-- and very expensive-- undertaking, and despite a successful run, the sequels to Fantasia never materialized... until now. Never a company to shy away from hype, Disney has decided to kick off the new millennium with an IMAX-size version of the classic, featuring seven new animated segments (retaining the original's most famous segment, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, featuring Mickey Mouse in the title role) and different pieces of classical music (except, of course, Paul Dukas' "L'Apprenti sorcier"). Assorted celebrity hosts (from Penn and Teller to Angela Lansbury) are also recruited to introduce each short. The result is quite often visually and aurally breathtaking; nonetheless, I felt strangely distant from the proceedings. No matter how hard I tried, and despite the inescapably immersive IMAX screen and sound system, I simply could not lose myself in the childlike wonder I was really hoping to feel. It was a continual reminder that I, like the company Walt Disney founded, have grown increasingly cynical over the years.

The first segment, set to music from Beethoven's instantly recognizable Fifth Symphony, is also the weakest, if only because the color-splashed, triangle-based butterfly motif seems so out of tune with the strident music. This'll be the one most people forget to tell their friends about when they describe the movie. The second piece is far more effective: with its gorgeous look and majestic humpback whales, it would have been moving enough, but when those whales rise slowly into the air in vast numbers to the accompaniment of Ottorino Respighi's Pines of Rome, the effect is absolutely spellbinding.

The third segment features the stylized artwork of longtime New York Times caricaturist Al Hirschfeld and the slinky clarinet of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in a funny little fable about a few big-city dwellers whose lives affect each other in profound ways. Although the constant references to Hirschfeld's subliminal name-dropping get annoying, the piece is probably the best match of musical and visual styles in the film.

Fourth in line is a condensed version of Hans Christian Andersen's The Steadfast Tin Soldier, whose very basic plot is hurried along by a rush of tinkling notes from Dmitri Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 2. It is followed by the shortest piece, a cute and clever homage to the original's pink hippos involving flamingos, a yo-yo, and Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals.

A Disney-character double bill comprises the sixth and seventh entries. First, Mickey Mouse tries on the sorcerer's hat with disastrous results in The Sorcerer's Apprentice (which, with its resonant themes of the miscreant Mickey and parental, authority-figure wizard, should win Disney a few more kiddie converts); afterward, Donald and Daisy Duck show up in a love story set aboard Noah's Ark to the strains of Edward Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance. This is another case, as in the Beethoven piece, in which the sheer familiarity of the music works against the animation.

The film ends on a strong note, with a segment that depicts nature's endless life cycle of life destruction and renewal by pitting a beautiful dryad against a fire-breathing, volcanic bird of prey. Igor Stravinsky's Firebird Suite provides the ideal musical tone for the segment, making it the best of the bunch.

The first Fantasia was a bold experiment in fusing two very different forms of art into something which combined their emotional power. With Walt gone, however, Disney's idea of bold experimentation has increasingly been to cannibalize its own successes in a short-sighted attempt to maintain a bloated corporate empire. For all its delusions of grandeur, Fantasia 2000 is no less derivative than any of the animated fodder the Mouse House has churned out in the last decade, no matter how big and loud it may be.

GRADE:  **1/2

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