Jim on Film
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Enjoy It!
Disney’s Best Guilty Pleasures

For many, Disney itself is a guilty pleasure. I’ve met so many people who look away with red in their cheeks, saying, “I’m just a kid at heart. I love Aladdin and Lady and the Tramp and all those great old Disney movies.�?

To which I want to respond, “Oh yeah, you don’t know the half of it.�?

For those of us who have no shame in our Disney delight, we have no problems marching through the store and picking up DVD copies of Finding Nemo or the Brother Bear soundtrack or merchandise from the latest Disney film. But even for me, there are certain guilty pleasures associated with Disney, those films or things I shouldn’t, for whatever reason, like, but I just can’t help myself.

Geppetto soundtrack
The Disney television musical Geppetto should never have been a guilty pleasure. In fact, it’s probably fair to say it really isn’t a guilty pleasure considering it’s really not that good of a movie. While it’s colorful and full of vibrant choreography much like the Whitney Houston Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, the film of Geppetto suffers from two key problems. The first problem, as was often cited in reviews, was the casting of sitcom stars as the leads in a musical production. The second problem is far more serious, and was interestingly enough the same problem Walt Disney struggled with in his original version of the story of Pinocchio . . . The little boy is so obnoxious in this film, no one really wants Geppetto to get him back.

But the soundtrack recording has several advantages. The big surprise is that, on CD, Drew Carey really doesn’t sound that bad. While there were probably one or two thousand actors who were better suited to the role of a singing Geppetto, his performance isn’t much worse than hearing a talented pop or film star trying to sing theatre music that is out of his or her league (such as Marlon Brando in Guys and Dolls). The same can also be said for Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Blue Fairy, which sounds a little more magical on the recording than in the movie. For whatever reason, perhaps it is something technical with the sound that wasn’t done for the movie, these two talented actors who were stretched thin in the movie, seem a little less stretched on the recording.

But the recording also boasts several very talented singers, much to its credit. There’s the multi-gifted Wayne Brady, who duets with Carey on a reprise of Toys, and television and Broadway stars Brent Spiner as Stromboli and Rene Auberjonois as the child-maker as well as Seth Adkins as Pinocchio.

Most important to the production is the talented Stephen Schwartz. Schwartz, who wrote lyrics for Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame as well as both music and lyrics for DreamWorks’ The Prince of Egypt and the music and lyrics for the Broadway shows Godspell, Pippin, and the new show Wicked, created eight new songs for this musical (there are fourteen tracks on the CD, including reprises and Ned Washington and Leigh Harline’s I’ve Got No Strings).

The songs on the CD are all top notch. The first song is Toys in which children rush into Geppetto’s toy shop and Geppetto is left to contemplate “Why is it the ones who see children as bothers/Are the ones who get to be fathers?�? It’s a lively tune that not only begins the film with energy but quickly establishes Geppetto’s desire to have a child.

In Just Because It’s Magic, the Blue Fairy pulls the plot out of fairy tale and gives Geppetto a reality check, telling him that “When you get the thing for which you’ve yearned/Then you find your yearning has returned.�? It is a clever direction to take the story, and this is a clever song that explores it.

In what is probably the best scene in the film and the best song on the CD, Rene Auberjonois (who sang Les Poissons in The Little Mermaid) plays Professor Buonragazzo who can make the perfect child. The song is filled with a memorable Schwartz tune and is full of his trademark clever rhymes, such as when the cast sings, “Satisfaction guaranteed, have a child who pays you heed/From a smart-mouth kid with individuality you’re freed.�? It’s such a fun song with great lyrics and fun rhymes, you can practically envision the whole scene in your head. Auberjonois is also a lot of fun in his delivery.

There’s also the good Pleasure Island (which, unlike in the movie, is performed by a singer who sounds like Usher and not the star himself) and the beautiful thematic song, Since I Gave My Heart Away.

So, while the movie doesn’t live up to its potential and the star casting leaves much to be desired, the soundtrack recording is a guilty pleasure because, even though it features two talented sitcom stars who are out of their league, you get the best part of the whole move, the Stephen Schwartz songs.

Annette Funicello CDs
Considering my parents were teenagers when Annette Funicello’s albums were popular, I always knew it was odd when, in my own youth, I would listen to the few available songs on CD tracks from various Disney collections, songs like Tall Paul, Mister Piano Man, or The Monkey’s Uncle, and I’d love them.

Like most songs from that time period, they have catchy melodies and simple lyrics (which, I guess, is not unlike much of the pop music of today), but because they are so rooted in their time period, it’s always odd listening to her singing about getting a guy’s first name initial, or dancing the latest dance non-craze like the Flapper Flip, or a boy named Jo-Jo with a dog face (and a little Nash Rambler) because it’s so foreign from our current culture.

In addition to song styles from yesteryear, Annette . . . dear beloved Annette . . . really couldn’t sing. By her own admission, she had about a three note range.

But fortunately, Annette has something much more important than talent going for her on her recordings. She’s so charming that her personality comes through the speakers loud and clear. In her autobiography, after releasing the albums Italiannette, Hawaiiannette, and others, she joked about making Kitchannette and Bassannette, but after listening to the best of her music, somehow, even those don’t seem all that disagreeable. As hokey as the songs are by today’s standards, they are mostly lots of fun and quite catchy, so while they are guilty pleasures . . . they are more pleasure than guilty.

Some years ago, Disney released a great collection of her songs, and while that is no longer available, they have made another CD available of her music. Furthermore, her albums have been released through other distributors and, while they require a bit of sleuthing, can be found.