Of course it is futile to try to raise every film to the status of instant classic, but, personal taste aside, is it not just as much a waste of time to make anyone and everyone associated with a less commercially successful project feel like they should disavow themselves of any association, support, acknowledgement or participation in the making or enjoyment of these films? Biting criticism of Disney’s poorer performing films from the outside is par for the course, but when it comes from within it stinks of a carefully edited brand of political correctness, which is exactly the sort of thing echoed in the otherwise heartfelt and brave documentary “Dream On, Silly Dreamer.�? Many of the talented and hard working artists and craftspeople interviewed in the film repeatedly draw a line in the sand between the end of the dream and the beginning of the embarrassment as any film that followed “The Lion King.�? These interviews make it sound as if they were chained to their desks and fairly whipped into submission to participate in the making of “Pocahontas�? or “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.�? They leave a great many unanswered - or, more accurately, unasked - questions such as: did they produce purposefully bad work on those other films? Or did they simply not care enough about them so that they did less than their best? If they didn’t work on them, did they think that their colleagues were less talented for having done so, or worse, if they did work on them did they hate what they were doing so much that they wasted precious talent and time to focus on artistic sabotage? Where in the devil is pride of ownership and personal integrity in this mix if every failure to break $100,000 is followed by a chorus of shame and second-guessing? Selective loyalty such as this is typical of wanna-be bench-warming second-stringers who are more than willing to wear their jersey on game day but unwilling to so much as launder it the day after a defeat.

The saddest casualty in this spin war and its resulting selective hind-sight may be “Treasure Planet.�? When looking over the canon of Disney under Disney, and comparing “Treasure Planet�? to the films made under Walt’s supervision, it is arguably the one film from among recent offerings that is most like a movie Walt Disney would have made himself. The story structure of “Treasure Planet�? is quintessential Clements and Musker, which has always been the closest to Walt’s sensibilities. The pacing is tight and the characters are well developed and compelling, with superb performances – particularly Sergio Pablos’s Doppler, John Rippa’s complicated and extraordinary Jim Hawkins, and Glen Keane’s Silver (the most un-inhibited and joyful work he’s done since Ratigan.) These are precisely the sort of characters Walt shaped. The palette of the film is the richest and most appealing work Andy Gaskill has yet accomplished in his thirty-plus year tenure at the studio. The film does admittedly risk dating itself with the John Rzeznik “I’m Still Here�? that drives the montage of Silver tutoring Jim, but the very contemporary and forward thinking look at how society tends to discard father-less young men is just the sort of family issue Disney tackled in many pictures – both animated and live action. (It’s much too soon to know if the Rzeznik tune will sound as contemporary in twenty years as Peggy Lee’s “He’s a Tramp�? sounds today - a film, by the way, that is not very often represented in Disneyland parades or walk-around rubber-heads.)

The underpinnings of “Treasure Planet�? are very similar to the sentiments of personal redemption and adventurous coming of age stories that show up in many beloved Disney classics, films that may not have broken box-office records or pleased all critics, but which still come through as significant flavors in the soup that is Disney. There are wonderful lessons that bleed through great sequences in these films without ever being horribly preachy. So, Musker and Clements balance the sentiment in “Treasure Planet�? with scenes of betrayal and twist of character that follow Stevenson’s book quite faithfully. The movie only improves with each subsequent viewing, and is far more satisfying each time which is more than can be said for the one-note denizens of Shrek’s swamp, who play rather like a boulevard fare stand-up act whose jokes stop being funny after you hear them a second time. Yet “Treasure Planet�? continues to suffer an ongoing and sadistic lancing by countless pundits who were calling it a bomb before the trailers were edited and who were determined to write about how they hated it even more once they saw it, and many of whom who still hate it without having ever seen it! It would be one thing if the foundation of such criticisms was that the film was out of touch with contemporary audiences, and there is even some potential validity to the argument that the inherently nostalgic milieu of Walt is quaint when seen in the context of its time but terribly un-hip and false in today’s market. Instead, the film was clearly scuttled from within by a (then) lame-duck president of Feature Animation who was openly contemptuous of the film’s directors and who took every opportunity to bad-mouth it from development to completion. A substantial amount of the directors’ and producer’s power to guide the marketing of the film was taken away by both the president of the division and a CEO who was at near-Lear levels of madness. Eisner dictated that apologetic releases be drafted about its box office disappointment before the end of the opening weekend, and a cowardly Board who appeared more than willing to let the film take a fall for the poor fiscal oversight of the company. It was the biggest campaign to hate a movie you never saw that was ever launched, and all by the studio that produced it! The final blow was a market-wide atmosphere in Hollywood and among film critics where all guns were pre-loaded and aimed squarely at whatever Disney released next. Like Dick Cheney and friends “sport hunting�? in a controlled reserve, “Treasure Planet�? took on the job of a pen-raised duck released into the middle of a small plot of land solely for the purpose of getting blasted pour le sport. Given that scenario, chances are that “The Lion King�? would have tanked, and no doubt everyone who lets critics make their decisions for them in advance would have helped pull it down whether it deserved it or not. Jumping on the bandwagon of trashing someone else’s product is sophomoric. Trashing your own is tacky.

There is an endless amount of rich, warm, memorable material to mine from “Treasure Planet�? and some other films that fell victim to bad timing rather than poor artistry. That Robert Iger dismissed them all, and much too easily in his Bear Stearns and Co. remarks, is truly unfortunate. The failure of these films and their characters to make the parade cut should not be the measure of their value, and Mr. Iger, an extraordinary talent who has convinced not one but two Boards to buy into his vision, should know better.

Robert Iger has repeatedly stated that he is determined to restore artistic integrity at all levels of Disney. That’s not only admirable, its enough to make any Disney devotee enlist and follow him into the bigger battle of filmed entertainment’s survival in a sonic-speed technological age. Up until now he looked like the real deal, and it appears that he is genuinely doing the right thing. Still, there is a lesson in discretion here, and in humility. It’s a dangerous if not lethal poison that coats the tip of any critical arrows aimed at Disney animation’s recent past. You can either praise the talent once again at your command or you can shame them, but you can not do both without swiftly becoming the kind of schizophrenic leader who resembles various departed executives who abused their greatest assets at critical junctures in the growth of the company. Some precedent needs to be set for everyone at Disney to stop apologizing for the losses – real or perceived - and focus on the successful individual efforts and stand-out qualities of each separate film. The same holds true for the critics of Disney’s animated offerings. Not every child is a genius, but it’s pandering to join your critics in beating up on your own progeny, and shameful not to shed some light of praise and pride on them for trying admirably and having even the smallest moments of triumph. “Treasure Planet�? and “Lilo and Stitch�? and “Tarzan�? and “Emperor’s New Groove�? and even “Atlantis�? and “Brother Bear�? all have a place in the parade of Disney characters – to abandon them is shameful and wasteful and short-sighted. If they’re not memorable enough it’s partly (and possibly largely) because some people have not tried hard enough to find the existing strengths, and instead tried much too hard to make us forget them entirely. Well, some of us have not forgotten and we hope Disney will get their integrity and memory back at the same time that they welcome home the prodigal talent beating a path to their door.

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