As you all know, The Walt Disney Company is turning 100 this year. To celebrate the occasion, I decided to start a marathon on watching all but three movies from Walt Disney Animation Studios starting July 5th. The films that I will skip like jump rope, however, are Dinosaur (not to be confused with The Good Dinosaur), Home on the Range, and Chicken Little. In case you're unfamiliar with these movies, I'll explain each of them, even if you have seen the films before.
Dinosaur is about an Iguanodon named Aladar, who was raised by lemurs when his egg crashed into their domain. When the lemur's home is destroyed by a meteor shower, Aladar joins a mixed herd of dinosaurs, including an elderly Styracosaurus named Eema and her dog-like Ankylosaurus Url, an enormous sauropod named Baylene, and a female Iguanodon named Neera. Together, they journey to the breeding grounds, a haven free from predators.
Dinosaur was originally going to have no dialogue, to differentiate itself from The Land Before Time. However, Michael Eisner, who was running Disney at the time, wanted the movie to have dialogue so it could make more money. The film premiered May 19th, 2000, and despite being the highest-grossing animated movie of the year, it got mixed to negative reviews from critics and even audiences. I personally call Dinosaur the 'Lion King 2019 of its day', as it was a film that did well financially and had technical innovations, but was, in the end, a movie that most people don't really care about.
Home on the Range, released Spring 2004, was the last hand-drawn animated film before John Lasseter rejoined the company. The premise of the film is simple: A trio of cows go on an adventure to capture a cattle rustler in order to save their farm. This film suffered greatly from a cliched plot, characters that are either underdeveloped or downright unlikable, songs that pale in comparison to the Disney Renaissance musicals, and perhaps the worst Disney Villain ever. No wonder people went to see Shrek 2 instead of this film.
On November 4th, 2005, Disney released their first CGI movie without Pixar, and their worst reviewed film to date, Chicken Little. It's about a young rooster named Ace, who scared the town of Oakey Oaks into thinking that the sky was falling. When everyone finds out it was just an acorn, Ace, who everyone calls Chicken Little, tries winning the town's love back by winning a baseball game. When aliens start invading the town and start dematerializing everyone, it's up to Ace and his ragtag team of friends to save the world.
To put it simply, Chicken Little can't decide if it wants to be The Bad News Bears, Independence Day, or Shrek, so it tries being all three at once. HOWEVER, this wasn't always the case. Early in development, this adaptation of Chicken Little had Ace as a girl who wanted to go to summer camp to ease her overreactions and save her father's relationship. Later, Chicken Little has to stop her evil camp counselor in order to save her town.
This actually sounds like a promising concept, as summer camps are rare when it comes to animation. Yes, you have the Cartoon Network shows Camp Lazlo and Summer Camp Island, as well as the SpongeBob spinoff Kamp Koral, but there's rarely an animated movie about summer camp. However, Michael Eisner and David Stainton meddled with the project, making it the mess we know today. The film got such negative reviews that director Mark Dindal and producer Randy Fullmer quit the animation industry. Luckily, John Lasseter and Ed Catmull would become heads of both Pixar and WDAS and bring the latter studio back to their glory days with Tangled, Wreck-it Ralph Frozen, Big Hero 6, and Zootopia.
Anyway, once a week on Facebook, I will upload mini-reviews of each of the Disney movies from oldest to newest. That means I will review seven films a week. With all this said, stay tuned, everyone!
