Jim On Film
Page 1 of 4

The Disney Formula . . . ? 

The recipe for a moving drama: A person of noble birth causes his own downfall. Base fools and foolish characters make the audience laugh. Many die in a tragic bloodbath. Or in short, Shakespeare’s best-known tragedies--Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. There might be a few lonely souls who would call this paint-by-numbers drama, but to the Shakespearean scholars through the ages, these are the ingredients for some of the greatest works of literature ever written, and these four dramas are considered among Shakespeare’s best.

Unlike with Shakespeare, many negative comments have been made in the past decade concerning the Disney animated films and the perception of a paint-by-numbers formula. Whether said in criticism or in observation, the formula concept is sometimes followed back to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but usually, most people look only as far back as The Little Mermaid in 1989. Most of these critics would probably say that when The Little Mermaid hit theaters, it was an amazingly fresh animated feature worthy of all the acclaim and honor that it received, but with each film following it, the Walt Disney Feature Animation department seemed to copy themselves by having human characters who sing certain songs, have fun and marketable animal sidekicks, and whose stories are all wrapped together with an important lesson. Unfortunately, Disney’s harshest critics often have difficulty seeing beyond these falsely perceived formulas to the genuine quality of the films.

(c) Disney

By looking at the works of several other composers, this is apparent. One obvious example is with Jerry Herman who wrote, among other things, the music for Hello, Dolly! and Mame. These shows share several key similarities with each other. They both introduce the main character with a song that immediately paints them as fun eccentrics ("I Put My Hand In" and "It’s Today"). Both have songs that are over-the-top humor ("Motherhood March" and "The Man in the Moon"). They both also have standout songs where characters praise the wonders of the title characters ("Hello, Dolly!" and "Mame"). Both shows even have songs where the main characters evaluate their own lives ("Before the Parade Passes By" and "If He Walked into My Life"). These two stories do have their natural similarities, and one could suggest that Jerry Herman simply copied one score for the other, but a more accurate view is that this is probably his style in composing when doing so for musical comedies.