Chris Buck
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The romance is just heating up at the end, so be prepared to head back to the video store for Tarzan and His Mate.
Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Tarzan" books have been the inspiration for seemingly hundreds of movies, some great (the 1934 "Tarzan and His Mate"), some goofy ("Tarzan's Desert Mystery," which finds the ape man simultaneously battling Nazis and dinosaurs) and some ghastly (last year's unwatchable "Tarzan and the Lost City").
Although it sticks strictly to the decades-old Disney formula, Tarzan is anexciting, accomplished work that ranks with the wonderful Johnny Weissmullermovies like Tarzan and His Mate (1934).
Tangled (2010)
Directed by Nathan Greno
influenced Frozen (2013), Tarzan (1999)
Themes Music Plot Visuals
Headed by Chris Buck (2007's " Surf's Up ") and Jennifer Lee (writer of 2012's " Wreck-It Ralph ," making her directorial debut), "Frozen" reminds, if doesn't quite match, 2010's glorious "Rapunzel"-inspired " Tangled ," right down to its fairy tale inspiration and delicious musical leanings.
Its songs, too, are wonderful, echoing Disney’s 2010 hit, “Tangled.”
Following closely in the footsteps of 2010’s Tangled, right down to the fraught family relationship, the character design, and the oversized quadruped who acts like a puppy, Frozen hits many of the same beats, and finds some of the same freshness in a complicated family dynamic.
It is in this way that the film makes its most definitive break with Pixar; for Tangled is not photo-realistic in the way that Pixar films tend to be, and it took a great amount of work to get the film to look as unrealistic as it is - the years of tech development that stretched the film's pre-production over a decade were largely devoted to finding new ways to give the backgrounds the texture of oil paintings - a huge step forward from the 3-D painting technology Deep Canvas that premiered to such acclaim in 1999's Tarzan - to giving the characters an impossible "glow", an internal illumination that has nothing to do with realism and everything to do with painterly nuance, to making Rapunzel's thirty yards of hair move not with fidelity to physics but out of the need to explore character and emotion.
Anna's traveling companions are an earnest rustic named Kristoff, who cuts and sells ice for a living (his business has taken a hit from the local climate change); Kristoff's mute but savvy reindeer, Sven; and a funny little snowman, Olaf, whose habit of detaching and reassembling his body parts recalls Mr. Potato Head from Pixar's "Toy Story" trilogy.
Frozen is really about a powerful subtext, just like Toy Story is really about figuring out who you are, and Toy Story 2 is really about the existential crisis of choosing who you want to be, and Toy Story 3 is about reminding people what Toy Story 2 was about (yeah, I said it).
Meanwhile Pixar stepped in and stole the company’s animated show with “Up,” “Cars,” “Toy Story” and “Wall-E,” to name a few.
And if you prefer the hand-drawn animation of latter-day Disney releases like “Aladdin” to Pixar ’toons like “Toy Story,” you might be beguiled by the visuals.
The year after The Lion King, Pixar released the first CGI-animated feature, Toy Story, launching a string of 11 consecutive box-office smashes and artistic triumphs, including such masterpieces as Finding Nemo, WALL·E, Up and Toy Story 3. Disney floundered for a decade until the company bought Pixar; and Pixar creative guru John Lasseter took creative control of both groups, with the mission of reviving the invaluable brand of Disney Animation.
Some 20 movies, starting with the 1918 silent (with Elmo Lincoln in the title role) and going on to the Johnny Weissmuller/Maureen O'Sullivan classics (the first of which, Tarzan the Ape Man, came out in '32), the 1981 Miles O'Keeffe/Bo Derek remake, Hugh Hudson's 1984 Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (with Christopher Lambert and Andie MacDowell), and last year's Tarzan and the Lost City (with Casper Van Dien and Jane March).
Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984)
Directed by Hugh Hudson
influenced Tarzan (1999)
Some 20 movies, starting with the 1918 silent (with Elmo Lincoln in the title role) and going on to the Johnny Weissmuller/Maureen O'Sullivan classics (the first of which, Tarzan the Ape Man, came out in '32), the 1981 Miles O'Keeffe/Bo Derek remake, Hugh Hudson's 1984 Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (with Christopher Lambert and Andie MacDowell), and last year's Tarzan and the Lost City (with Casper Van Dien and Jane March).
The actress earlier performed voice-over work for 1984's live-action Greystoke: the Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, kindly agreeing to re-dub all of Andie MacDowell's lines; MacDowell, forever a cartoon in her own lame way, was so typically mush-mouthed in her turn as Jane that the sound engineers could not understand her.
Kala (Glenn Close, who dubbed Andie MacDowell in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes), a mother gorilla whose new child was similarly devoured, discovers Tarzan squirming in his cradle and adopts him instantly, though husband Kerchak (Lance Henriksen) refuses to regard the boy as a son based solely on his human countenance.
Snow White: A Tale of Terror (1997)
Directed by Michael Cohn
influenced Frozen (2013)
Plot Themes Characters
…did have baddies -- Michael Cohn?s bloody 1997 Snow White: A Tale of Terror does not match the 1937 original?s…
Hans and Anna’s whirlwind romance seems no more hasty than the love at first sight of Sleeping Beauty or Snow White , though Frozen jerks us back to reality when a shocked Elsa tells her sister that she can’t marry someone she’s only just met — and Kristoff tells her the same thing.
Ever since “Snow White,” the cute craftsmanship of Disney cartoons has blotted out the homicide and sorcery in the source material, which is often the folklore of central Europe.
They’re not the stepmother from Snow White.
Disney is at its best when it’s working with classic stories and/or fairy tales (think “Aladdin,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Snow White” and “Cinderella”).
A couple of characters seem influenced by sisters Anna and Elsa from Frozen and a brawny blowhard is very similar to Beauty and the Beast's Gaston.
Directed by Oscar-winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom, with a screenplay by Rydstrom, Irene Mecchi and David Berenbaum (from Lucas' story), Strange Magic has many of the same narrative elements as Disney's smash-hit Frozen – with sisterly tensions seemingly carried over directly – but comic relief character Sunny (Elijah Kelley) is no Olaf the Snowman, just an over-excitable singing elf who is a permanent strain to watch.
If Lucasfilm had bought Disney instead of the other way around, the smash hit “Frozen’’ might have turned out like “Strange Magic,’’ a jaw-droppingly terrible animated musical that mismatches George Lucas’ inane story about a pair of fairy princesses to an oddball selection of the “Star Wars’’ creator’s favorite pop tunes.
Given that wised-up gender politics have largely become the princess-pic norm (as demonstrated by superior recent Disney releases like “Frozen” and “Maleficent”), Marianne’s bratty makeover feels more like a sop to convention than anything else, which could also be said of just about every aspect of this thoroughly derivative and unengaging fantasy.
The Little Mermaid (1989)
Directed by John Musker
influenced Tarzan (1999), Frozen (2013)
Plot Music
3 Stars (out of 4) Tweet Snow Day By Jeffrey M. Anderson Based on a tale by Hans Christian Andersen, as was Disney's great The Little Mermaid (1989), the new Disney animated feature Frozen almost recaptures the spirit of the greatest of Disney films.
The story is based loosely on "The Snow Queen," a tale by Hans Christian Andersen, whose collection Disney has mined many times, from "The Little Mermaid" to "Thumbelina" and many more.
Like The Little Mermaid, the animated film Frozen mines Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales for material, discards the most brutish bits, and applies a heavy Disney top gloss.
The tunes may place it closer to “Tangled” than “The Little Mermaid,” but there’s wit and whimsy in this 53rd Disney cartoon, a distant cousin of Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairytale, “The Snow Queen.”
Very loosely based on "The Snow Queen" by Hans Christian Andersen (who also, of course, wrote "The Little Mermaid"), "Frozen" is that rare thing in movies of any sort: a story of sisterly love and loyalty.
But then again, the same can be said for most of the music, which resuscitates the singsong backdrop of classics like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast – most amazingly, with the catchiness and the emotional heft that the songs in those films had as well.
Some 20 movies, starting with the 1918 silent (with Elmo Lincoln in the title role) and going on to the Johnny Weissmuller/Maureen O'Sullivan classics (the first of which, Tarzan the Ape Man, came out in '32), the 1981 Miles O'Keeffe/Bo Derek remake, Hugh Hudson's 1984 Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (with Christopher Lambert and Andie MacDowell), and last year's Tarzan and the Lost City (with Casper Van Dien and Jane March).
Tarzan, most famously incarnated by Johnny Weismuller in the 1930s and 1940s, has been one of Hollywood's most durable archetypes, sturdy and popular even when the films have been cheap and disposable, like last year's Tarzan and the Lost City.
Following closely in the footsteps of 2010’s Tangled, right down to the fraught family relationship, the character design, and the oversized quadruped who acts like a puppy, Frozen hits many of the same beats, and finds some of the same freshness in a complicated family dynamic.
The quirky thing about "Frozen" -- not to be confused with the 2010 stranded ski lift horror film -- stems from the husband-and-wife songwriting team of Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, the former being the creative force behind the Tony-winning musicals "Avenue Q" and "The Book of Mormon," two sexually frank, adults-only works that would never, ever, bear the Disney logo.
The pointless, image-darkening theatrical 3D presentation notwithstandingthe 2D version is the one to seek out"Frozen" joins the ranks of Pixar's " Disney's 53rd animated feature has nothing to do with people stranded on a ski lift, but the studio has felt the need to repeat the same title, "Frozen," already used for Adam Green's white-knuckle 2010 thriller .
With songs from husband and wife team Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez (2011’s Winnie the Pooh; Lopez was also part of the Tony award-winning writing teams for Broadway musicals Book of Mormon and Avenue Q), Frozen is almost a full musical.
But unlike 2009’s throwback The Princess and the Frog, which felt like nothing more than a tired retread of the pursuit-of-romance motif that had long since been laid to rest, Frozen is — we can hope, anyway — the start of a new era for the wonderful little subgenre Disney has claimed for itself.
While it is technically a “princess movie” in the vein of Cinderella (1950) and The Little Mermaid, the story’s fixation on love and its role as the ultimate redeemer is not limited to romantic affection.
Walt Disney once complained that he didn't want to make 1950's Cinderella because he worried having another princess film after Snow White—released thirteen years prior—would make it seem like the company was running out of ideas.
Though the patriarch of the clan thinks he's dangerous, eventually this outsider becomes the leader of the clan—just like Disney's "Tarzan," in fact.
It's essentially a prehistoric road movie with a little Tarzan thrown in for good measure (once again, Disney recycles themes and ideas).
But it has so many echoes of previous Disney cartoons, especially the wilderness extravaganzas -- "Bambi," "The Jungle Book," "The Lion King" and "Tarzan" -- it registers as a hollow audiovisual remix.
Unlike Minnie Driver in 1999's far superior "Tarzan" or Demi Moore in 1996's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," the voice work, supplied by several well-known actors (i.e.
It's all rather formulaic Disney material, borrowing entire scenes, subplots and character relationships from any number of previous Disney and non-Disney animated features, including last year's "Tarzan" and Don Bluth's 1988 feature "The Land Before Time," whose story "Dinosaur" replicates almost verbatim.
Indeed, much of Frankenstein‘s exploration of a grown-man-coming-into-own-humanity reminds me of one of my non-binary foreshadowing childhood pillar movies: Tarzan.
First, we could look at it as the directorial debut of Sergio Pablos, an animator who rose through Disney in the 1990s, ending up getting his first supervising animator credits on 1999's Tarzan and 2002's Treasure Planet , after which point it was bad business being a supervising animator at Disney as it shuttered and re-tooled its feature animation division.
Reminiscent of Tarzan and Treasure Planet (both of which Pablos worked on), the design work creates appealing and compelling characters.
Pablos came up during the final years of Walt Disney's traditional, hand-drawn animation department, working on such blockbusters as " Tarzan ," " The Hunchback of Notre Dame ," and "Hercules."
Pablos worked on Disney’s Treasure Planet and Tarzan, and that lineage is readily apparent in the bouncy, vibrant life that runs through all the character movements.
Pablos, who worked on Disney classics like “Tarzan” and “Hercules,” didn’t just return to hand-drawn animation; he used new software to add light and texture to his work, which is both evident and needed in the gray, foggy landscape of Smeerensberg.
Pablos -- who, along with writing the story for the two aforementioned films, had a hand in animating Disney classics like Tarzan, Hercules, Treasure Planet, and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame -- begins his latest work with a sentimental recollection of the lost art of letter-writing.
For Buck, who’s been in Disney’s animation trenches since 1981’s “The Fox and the Hound,” “Frozen” is his third feature — and his best — as a director.
Instead, writer-directors Chris Buck (a veteran Disney animator with credits dating back to “The Fox and the Hound”) and Jennifer Lee (who co-scripted “Wreck-It Ralph”) give us a more conventional tale of two sisters, younger Anna (Kristen Bell) and elder Elsa (Idina Menzel), heirs to the enchanted Scandinavian kingdom of Arendelle (also a return of sorts to Disney tradition after the dutiful PC dues-paying of “Pocahontas,” “Mulan” and “The Princess and the Frog”).
She and co-director Chris Buck, a Disney veteran whose credits date back to The Fox and the Hound, make a compatible team who understand how to balance the traditional and the new.
The tactile, snow-capped Arendelle landscape, including Elsa’s ice-castle retreat (imagine Superman’s Fortress of Solitude with a more feminine touch), is “Frozen’s” other true marvel, enhanced by 3D and the decision to shoot in widescreen — a nod to the CinemaScope richness of “Sleeping Beauty” and “Lady and the Tramp.”
Headed by Chris Buck (2007's " Surf's Up ") and Jennifer Lee (writer of 2012's " Wreck-It Ralph ," making her directorial debut), "Frozen" reminds, if doesn't quite match, 2010's glorious "Rapunzel"-inspired " Tangled ," right down to its fairy tale inspiration and delicious musical leanings.
Directors Chris Buck (Tarzan) and first-timer Jennifer Lee (who previously co-wrote the script for Wreck-It Ralph) use Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen as an inspiration — not a foundation — for a funny, exciting and visually dazzling adventure that qualifies as a full-blown musical.
The script from " Wreck-It Ralph " co-writer Lee, inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen story " The Snow Queen ," has lots of cheeky, contemporary touches but is firmly and safely rooted in Scandinavian fairy tale traditions.
While it’s found a few viable candidates (Tangled, the exceptional Wreck-It Ralph), it hasn’t discovered the right combination of character, concern, and charm — until now.
Lee was one of the writers of last year's inspired Wreck-It Ralph, and her Frozen screenplay has some of the same baroque plotting, if not much of the wit.
Much of Frozen feels mighty familiar, right down to the character models: Young Anna is Vanellope from Wreck-It Ralph, facial tics and all, while teen Anna and Elsa are both Rapunzel with different hair.
From the silent features of the 1910s and 1920s through the kinda terrible Johnny Weissmuller B-movies of the 1930s and 1940s through the horrific “Tarzan the Ape Man” with Miles O’Keeffe and Bo Derek in 1981 through the ambitious and competent “Greystoke” in 1984 through Disney’s animated “Tarzan” in 1999 (not to mention all the stage plays and TV shows and radio serials), we’ve had tons of Tarzan adaptations — but not a single legitimately great movie.
Like James Bond, Tarzan on screen has never gone away, but unlike the dapper double-oh agent, his movie appearances rarely generate much notice — one would have to go back to the final year of the last century to find a Tarzan flick that more than 12 people saw (that would be Disney's 1999 animated take).
The last live-action Tarzan movie was released in 1998 (Disney produced an animated one the following year), and like a lot of his contemporaries – the Lone Ranger, Green Hornet and Burroughs’ John Carter among them – Tarzan’s name doesn’t conjure up a certain kind of classical pulp adventure but rather a hazy memory of something your grandparents once watched in black and white.
Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Directed by Gary Trousdale
influenced Frozen (2013), Tarzan (1999)
Music Visuals
At one point, former animation A-listers Linda Woolverton and Alan Menken were involved but, although neither lent their talents to the final version of Frozen, Christophe Beck's score echoes Menken's work for The Little Mermaid and the mix of whimsy, romance, and energy Woolverton brought to Beauty and the Beast is in evidence.
Here, they push boundaries further much as they had in 1991 with Beauty and the Beast.
While Disney figured out the latter in 1989, the former continuously proved troublesome as it failed to come together in both the 1990s and 2000s, with its most recent stint in turnaround coming after a version from Beauty and the Beast’s creative team (Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise, Linda Woolverton, and Alan Menken) fizzled.
It returns to the late-’80s/early ’90s Alan Menken/Howard Ashman Broadway musical style that rejuvenated the animation division with The Little Mermaid (1989) and Beauty and the Beast (1991) while also fully embracing the vast visual possibilities of computer-generated animation, whose ability to render glistening vistas of sun-dappled snow, weirdly refracting walls of ice, and the intricacies of the most delicate of snow flakes makes the idea of the film being done any other way almost unthinkable (for some time the plan was to produce it using traditional hand-drawn animation).
Gone was the tyranny of the planar background; gone also was the jarring CGI sheen found in the ballroom sequence of Beauty and the Beast , the "sanctuary!" scene in The Hunchback of Notre Dame , or even the wildebeest stampede in The Lion King and the snowy assault of the Huns in Mulan .
The last time Disney got it right was Beauty and the Beast, but it’s been downhill from there.
(READ: Do Females in Animated Features Need to Be Pretty? ) A soft-shoe number with brilliant choreography of character, voice and visuals (it ends with a swirling tracking shot that quotes the one that accompanied Julie Andrews singing “The Sound of Music”), “In Summer” makes Olaf’s weather delusion sound and look deliciously delirious: “A drink in my hand, / My snow up against the burning sand, / Prob’ly getting gorgeously tanned / In summer.