Jim on Film
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Oliver & Company (1988) Of all the influential Disney films, Oliver & Company proved to be the most important. At eleven year’s old, I was continuing the Miles family annual Christmas tradition where we’d get the Sears and JCPenney Christmas catalogues and look at all the wonderful toys pictured. In the Sears catalogue was a one-page advertisement for the new Disney animated feature. Sears was carrying a truckload of tie-in merchandise, so the film was a featured attraction throughout the catalogue, but it was that advertisement that really caught my eye. It featured the main dogs in a publicity still, posing on the streets of New York, and something in the write-up caught my attention. I became aware that Oliver & Company wasn’t just a movie, but it was a new Disney movie, something no one had ever seen before. I felt like I was getting to experience history because I would be among the first to see it. I saw the movie on opening weekend, and I love loved every minute of it. It was both funny and dark, beautiful and intense. It was after seeing Oliver & Company that I would start checking out books from the library on Disney animation, classic texts like Christopher Finch’s The Art of Walt Disney, Leonard Maltin’s The Disney Films, or a classic collection of storybook versions of the Disney movies, which, after each story, would follow a one or two-paged account of what happened in the making of the movies.
Beauty and the Beast (1991) By the time Beauty and the Beast was preparing to make its debut, I had bought three of the classic Disney animated features on video—One-Hundred-and-One Dalmatians, The Three Caballeros, and The Jungle Book—even though I didn’t even own a VCR. While watching the video of The Jungle Book at a friend’s house, I became excited for the release of Beauty and the Beast because of an advertisement on the video. Closer to the film’s release, there was an article about the new style of Disney animation in the local newspaper, The Star Tribune, which I cut out and still have. I read it over and over, dying to see the movie for myself. With Beauty and the Beast, my love of Disney animation was firmly established. Before that time, my love and study of Disney animation ebbed and flowed, but after Beauty and the Beast, it never stopped. I saw it eight times in the theaters, and I remember being amazed every single time.
The Parent Trap (1961) As a kid, I had often seen bits and pieces of Disney’s live-action films playing on television on Saturday afternoons. Among them, I vividly remember being awed by the tree house in Swiss Family Robinson (and I still am to this day), feeling for the animals in The Incredible Journey, and wanting to write my own song like Brazzle-Dazzle Day from Pete’s Dragon. However, the most influential of the Disney live-action classics would have to be The Parent Trap. Once I started getting into Disney movies (and we had gotten a VCR), my mom and I were looking at Disney movies at a Target. It was during the time when Disney had started re-releasing its live-action films to video in the “Walt Disney’s Studio Film Collection�? packaging. My mom was recalling how much she had enjoyed the film when she had seen it as a kid. We ended up renting it, and when my family watched it, we howled with laughter as Susan got the back of her dress cut out, as Sharon acted as if she thought her dad wanted to adopt Vicki, and as Maggie punched Mitch in the eye. It was so much fun that renting (and eventually buying) these classic films became a regular occurrence.
Fortunately, the age of DVD has allowed for a greater depth of knowledge on the making of Disney films as well as the history of the Disney studio. Short plugs on The Disney Channel have also made the process of animation more accessible to modern audiences.
For me, the love of many things Disney became more than supporting a company’s artistic vision but also became a catalyst for my own artistic development. My love of things Disney caused my study of story structure and character development, the development of my sense of comedy and comedic timing as well as a feel for drama and dramatic timing.
For Walt Disney, it all started with a mouse. For me, it started with a few dogs, some dancing skeletons, a beast, and a triple dose of Hayley Mills. I like Disney movies.
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-- Jim Miles
Jim On Film is published every other Thursday.
The opinions expressed by our guest columnists, and all of our columnists, do not necessarily represent the feelings of LaughingPlace.com or any of its employees or advertisers. All speculation and rumors about the future of Disneyland and the Walt Disney Company are just that - speculation and rumors - and should be treated as such.
-- Posted September 7, 2004