Disney, which slumped after Walt Disney's death in 1966, regained its touch in the mid-'80s under the urging of Jeffrey Katzenberg, the new studio boss, and Walt's nephew Roy Disney, who godfathered a new generation of animators. The cartoon revival was dramatic on the big screen as well. "My son's seen Bambi and Pinocchio countless times, so he won't put up with bad TV animation." "Video has made children discriminating consumers of cartoons," says Simpsons creator Matt Groening. In commercials and music videos, in Nintendo games and as a top-selling portion of the videocassette market, animation appeals both to adults nostalgic for their Roadrunner days and to ) kids, whose attention span just about carries them from one frenetic cartoon frame to the next. On TV, the prime-time success of The Simpsons (the medium's best-written series, no question, no competition) and the cult appeal of Nickelodeon's gross-out, only slightly homoerotic Ren & Stimpy is matched in daytime slots by cartoon shows from Disney and Fox. Moreover, at a time when mass art is fragmented, even divisive - when virtually no species of entertainment has universal appeal - the hip, comic ingenuity and emotional breadth of the best cartoons reunite the consumers of popular culture with Hollywood's surest instinct to please in a vast Saturday matinee of the spirit. has the form been so commercially successful and artistically exhilarating. ![]() Not since the 1940s - with Pinocchio and Dumbo from Walt Disney and the great cartoon shorts by Tex Avery at MGM and by Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones at Warner Bros. Hoary formulas (sci-fi, sitcom) near exhaustion, and a smoggy dusk shrouds the industry like crape.īut for animation, this is a Golden Age. In its tatty bazaar, peddlers hawk worn-out notions as if the items held their former glamour. ![]() The old world - the one of current Hollywood movies and TV shows - is in disrepair. Robin Williams! An enthralling new world. Boy meets, loses and gets Girl in an Arabian kingdom of cotton-candy palaces, tiger-mouthed pyramids, wicked viziers, larcenous monkeys, misanthropic parrots, a truly magic carpet and a genie who changes shapes and personalities faster than you can say. "Don't you dare close your eyes!/ A hundred thousand things to see!/ Hold your breath, it gets better!"Īnd it does, in the Disney comedy-adventure Aladdin, produced and directed by Ron Clements and John Musker. Artists wave the wand of a pencil over a piece of paper and, like the most genial genie, create unbelievable sights, indescribable feelings. But the Tim Rice lyric, riding the lush carpet of Alan Menken's melody, also defines the sorcery of movie animation. Aladdin the street rat is taking Princess Jasmine on a flight into the liberating skyland of first love.
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