Fantasia

I've recently realized that it's very hard for me to remember which classic Disney movies I've seen all the way through, and which ones I've only seen sequences from on the Disney Channel and read the storybooks for in pre-school. I can't say for sure, but I don't believe I've ever seen Sleeping Beauty, for example, but I remember things from it.

With this in mind, I am now watching Fantasia, and I know for a fact that I've never seen all of this. They only ever showed choice bits of it on the Disney Channel. The Sorcerer's Apprentice, of course. As a kid, I feel like they tried to fool you into thinking there was a whole Mickey Mouse movie where he's a wizard, only to find out it's a bunch of orchestras and faeries and stuff, with a brief Mickey Mouse interlude. And I certainly wouldn't have appreciated the classical music at that point. I doubt Fantasia would have held my attention at all back then.

Now that I've grown up, I'm obviously no longer an easily distracted, non-art-appreciating little shit. Fantasia is widely considered Disney's masterpiece. I'm inclined to agree. It's a perfect marriage of image and sound, and to this day, is the pinnacle of what can be achieved by animation. I doubt I need to go into any details. We all know about Mickey the wizard, the little racist Chinese mushrooms, the awesome dinosaurs, the ballerina hippos, etc. Even if we haven't seen the whole movie put together, I'm sure we've all seen much of it in parts. I never even knew about the interstitial segments where the guy introduces the pieces and gives us a little background.

Anyway, I could surely go into detail about each wonderful segment, but I like to keep these short, so I'll wrap it up with these words: Soooooooooooo good!

Fantasia: Come on, man. A+

The Blu Ray was packaged with Fantasia 2000 as well, so expect a surely less enthusiastic review for that soon. Also packaged as a special feature is Destino, an aborted short film collaboration by Walt Disney and Salvador Dali, recently completed. It's beautiful and worth checking out.

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