Jim on Film
Page 1 of 3

Disney’s Live-Action Report Card
Part 2

In my recent column Disney’s Live-Action Report Card, I espoused the success of Disney’s live-action films of late, noting that the studio’s lean toward films with a mature bent, that are increasingly appropriate for families, and that are quite good was a welcomed changed. Unfortunately, this year and only these few months since my column on the topic, things have changed drastically, and I’m not altogether sure why. The problem is not that the studio (including Touchstone Pictures) has had several high-profile films that failed to do much at the box office, it’s that almost all of their films have done poorly. I don’t know the inner workings of Disney’s live-action division well enough to even suggest why such a changed occurred except that it did occur and Michael Eisner’s reaction to it has been typical, if not a little frightening.

As with The Lion King’s success tainting the perceptions people had of the popularity of the animated films to follow it, Disney’s live-action success this year is tainted by the hits from 2003. In addition to the success of many of their Walt Disney live-action films such as Holes, Pirates of the Caribbean, Freaky Friday, and others, the studio also saw hits with Touchstone films like Bringing Down the House, Open Range, and Calendar Girls.

(c) Disney

The biggest problems this year have been from the tendency to make some curious choices. Originally, Hidalgo was advertised as a Disney movie, with exciting trailers marketing a hokey, feel-good quality in the idea of a man bound to his horse. When the movie earned a PG-13 rating, the hokey, feel-good trailers didn’t seem to fit its new classification as a PG-13 adventure story not for the Disney family crowd. After having seen the film, I’m not sure what is more surprising, that anyone reading the script would be surprised that its scenes centered around gore, human castration, and overt seduction would warrant anything less than a PG-13 rating or that nobody involved in agreeing to pay $100 million for the film or the $30 million for its marketing could see from its script that it never would rise above the sum of its potentially-thrilling parts.

(c) Disney

With The Alamo, there was the gossip about the studio’s concern over original director Ron Howard’s budget requirements and R-rated intentions. Many of Disney’s flops this year have had big names attached to them with monstrous budgets, so it is a good thing that Disney didn’t go for broke with The Alamo, at least not any more than it already did. It’s also well-known that R-rated films have a more difficult time reaching audiences than PG-13 films, so that choice seems logical as well. What’s unusual is that, according to Entertainment Weekly, the decision to break with Ron Howard happened after the set for the movie was already being built. One can’t help but feel like replacement director John Lee Hancock was left babysitting someone else’s baby, making him unable to create something of his own. Because pre-production had already started, it may be that the film became more about concept than a strong director’s vision. Whatever the case may be, with production and marketing budgets totaling $137 million and a box office gross of just under $23 million, The Alamo became one of the studio’s maladjusted offspring.