The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
Directed by Gary Trousdale
Isolated in the bell tower of Notre Dame, Quasimodo longs to experience the world beyond the cathedral walls, despite the wishes of his stern guardian, the Judge of Paris Claude Frollo. His first venture into the city leads him to Esmeralda, a fearless Romani woman whose defiance of Frollo's tyranny draws her—and Quasimodo—into his dangerous obsession.
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What critics compared The Hunchback of Notre Dame to
…defeated not just Walt Disney but also the well-oiled machine that the Disney studio became in the 1990s, when even Victor Hugo's grim novel of society and fate, The Hunchback of Notre Dame , was successfully crammed into the formula of a 90-minute animated Broadway-style musical.
If anything, Verbinski (working in an unencumbered R-rated register, from a darkly adult script by Justin Haythe) seems more indebted to classic Lon Chaney silents like The Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, early examples of body horror undergirded with deep psychological damage.
There’s a touch of early-era body horror here, taking cues from the classic Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but A Cure for Wellness is unabashedly R-rated.
I saw him as the American militant equivalent of Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame — a monstrous force of power, deceit, hypocrisy, and lustful racial fetishization that serves to enhance his authority.
Although better than its immediate predecessors, Hercules and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and its successor, Tarzan, its memory and legacy have never been protected by Disney the way that “The Big Four” (the fourth member being The Little Mermaid) have been.
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The songs by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz (the team behind Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame , Menken's much better writing partner Howard Ashman stubbornly remaining long-dead) are effective enough in the moment - and lead to the film's most transcendent scene, a Freed-style musical extravaganza in Central Park - but they're not all that memorable.
Speaking of excellence, the music is by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz (the duo behind Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame).
Beginning the film with an ominous psychotic determination, the unravelling imperfection of the situation results in his performance devolving into a bad impression of Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
An early song performed by Broadway diva Donna Murphy, "Mother Knows Best," calls to mind Frollo's lyrics in Disney's greatest achievement, The Hunchback of Notre Dame: "The world is cruel/the world is wicked/it's I alone whom you can trust in this whole city/I am your only friend…"
Yes, there's a quick aside here to "The Tingler," if you're observant; an even more fleeting one to the Lon Chaney "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." (And of course the central situation is from "The Creature From the Black Lagoon" - or, perhaps more accurately, the first sequel, "Revenge of the Creature."
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Who'd have thought that Victor Hugo's sprawling epic The Hunchback of Notre Dame could be transformed into the story of a misunderstood teen, or that the Hercules legend could be purged of any reference to adultery, or that the tale of Pocahontas, involving a 27-year-old British captain and a 12-year-old Algonquin girl, could be the basis for a love story?
Unlike more serious Disney fare (The Hunchback of Notre Dame anyone?)