I’ve always been more a cat guy.
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Disney made a lot of animated movies, but only three of them really connected with me as a kid: Lady and the Tramp, 101 Dalmations, and The Aristocats.
Two of them featured dogs, though as far as I was concerned, the cats stole the show.
Most memorably, Lady and the Tramp featured the Siamese cats, slinking from their basket and stalking birdcage and fish bowl, raking claws down the drapes, wreaking havoc on the house. Pure pet mischief. And, of course, poor Lady found herself punished for the cats’ misdeeds: “Oh, that wicked animal, attacking my poor, innocent angels….”
Problematic, I know. But nonetheless delightful.
And where would the Colonel— near-deaf, and possibly daft—have been without his loyal Sergeant Tibbs?
I don’t remember a lot about my childhood, but I do remember that I saw both of these movies several times before “cartoons” became uncool for me. And, given this was the Mesozoic Era—e.g., VHS wouldn’t even be available, let alone popular, for several more years—Disney must have re-released them to theaters fairly often. (Not as often as I remember, though, if Wikipedia is to be believed….)
I loved both of those movies. But I remember being excited when The Aristocats was released. I was nine—and I didn’t even mind how gushingly romantic it was. It was about cats!
Of course, I missed all the class-based humor. The title was completely lost on me; I don’t think I even knew the word aristocrat. And when, probably as an adult, I finally got the joke, it didn’t resonate. Indeed, the pun remains hollow, like the title of a foreign film whose translation, if there is one, I don’t understand.
My interest in Disney waned fairly quickly after that. The next film they released—Robin Hood—came out when I was twelve. I’m sure part of the reason I didn’t like it was that I somehow saw myself as “too old” for animation at that point. But it left such a bad taste that, aside from a re-release of the gorgeous Fantasia (which I wouldn’t have seen, aside from my artist father’s recommendation), I missed pretty much every one of Disney’s animated films: The Rescuers, The Fox and the Hound, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas, Tarzan…
I still haven’t seen most of those.
Finally, though, I’ve been able to let myself admit that I do, in fact, enjoy Disney animation—though I’m not sure if it would ever have happened if I hadn’t had kids right about when Cars hit the scene.
This is part of a series, echoing the “10 Day Movie Challenge” that I got sucked into on Facebook:
Every day I must select an image from a film that has impacted me in some way, present it without a single explanation and nominate somebody to take the challenge by starting his/her own post and selecting someone to continue.
Without a single explanation? Nice try.
Previous posts:
- #day1 – For your eyes only
- #day2 – Wait until dark
- #day3 – Blade runner
- #day4 – Flashdance
- #day5 – Star wars