Save your money for something good and enjoyable

As Good As It Gets

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

The resurgence of hand-drawn animation in the 1990s, fueled by box-office success but burdened by egos. With animator Don Bluth vacating Disney in 1979, and somewhat unscrupulously taking a large group of artists along with him, the animation arm of the Disney Company was in turmoil in 1980. With disappointing returns from "The Black Cauldron" scalding the Ink and Paint Club denizens, Roy Disney, Walt's nephew and a major supporter of Disney's animated output, brought in Michael Eisner as CEO, who in turn brought in Jeffrey Katzenberg to head up the animation division. While Katzenberg immediately rubbed his artists the wrong way, he managed to get the company on the right track, leading to major successes "The Little Mermaid", "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Lion King" in the 1990s. This fascinating documentary from Don Hahn eschews the usual talking-heads format, moving the piece along with home movie footage, news clips, and by individual interview voice-overs from all the principals. For Disney-fanatics, it's a treasure trove of facts and financially-driven fantasy. *** from ****

"Walking Sleeping Beauty" is one documentary that you don't want to miss it's educational and informative it takes you to a behind the scenes turmoil at Walt Disney studios. It showed how the face of the department's film animation would change forever as the old guys would roll over to more eager and younger determined talent. A real changing of the guard so to speak. As in all business any company has drama and change and tension and thru news clips, interviews, and studio footage this film shows it all you really get a backstage pass to the changing of Disney's animation studios.For years the film department did things their way only a new wave of young artist would arrive in the early 80's(note footage of legendary Tim Burton(1989's "Batman") starting out in the art department!)Disney began to want movies with more live action and more wilder stories and this became more of a reality with the arrival of CEO Michael Eisner and film department head Jeffrey Katzenberg as ideals and new techniques started to unroll. The best of this is evident in films like the live action "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and other hits like "Little Mermaid" and "Beauty and the Beast", and "The Lion King" were mixed with great Broadway musical scores and computer generated graphics which would be the new Disney discovery like "Pixar".Sure the company still had it's ups and downs but these works and methods and people would change Disney film forever. Overall good educational documentary that any history or film fan would enjoy so please watch you will be educated.

This documentary is about the period at Disney animation from its nadir in the early 1980s through its incredible successes with "Little Mermaid", "Beauty and the Beast", "Aladdin" and "The Lion King". It talks about the process through which it regained its former glory as well as, ironically, the negative cost that success had on the studio as well. It's all very fascinating for fans of animation and is told through many interviews, archival footage and the like. It's about as interesting as you could expect--and much more interesting than another similar Disney documentary that was also recently released ("Walt and El Groupo").The only negative about the film is that it had you wanting more. That's because although it was only recently released, it stopped in the early-mid 1990s--and a lot has happened since then (mostly with Pixar taking over most of the animation duties). Seeing the film through "The Princess and the Frog" (possibly Disney's last traditionally animated feature) would be a great follow-up to this splendid documentary.

I was at a showing of this film at the Toronto International Film Festival last night followed by a short Q&A session with producers Don Hahn and Peter Schneider. Exclusively using archival footage, much of it home video quality, it tells the story of Disney animation between the years 1984 and 1994. This period started with the studios almost being closed down and ended with classic and successful animated films like 'Beauty and the Beast' and 'The Lion King'. As Don Hahn said last night "We are trained so well in the disciplines of animated films that we made another movie that is 82 minutes long and includes a laugh and a cry". The business side of the industry is examined, warts and all, while looking at the relationship between Roy Disney, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenburg, with Katzenburg probably coming off worst. Recent audio interview clips are used but the film has no 'talking heads' sequences. The film gives an insightful glimpse behind the scenes at Disney animation during this particular time period. We get to see a depressed looking Tim Burton working at a drawing board in the mid-eighties and at least two live action 'pies in the face', which must be a good thing. The bad news is that this will not be on general release until next April at the earliest. It will be shown at more film festivals this year and the producers did say last night that they will personally deliver and show the movie to appropriate interested groups in the early months of 2010 to try and create word of mouth publicity. Get your friends together and give them a call.