Disney Movie Challenge Bonus: Howard (2020)

 Disney Movie Challenge Bonus

Howard (2020)

I hate to say it that I had no idea who Howard Ashman was before I watched this documentary.  The fact that he was so integral to the Disney Renaissance and yet was only a part of it for such a small amount of time says a lot about how important he was.  When Disney first announced that the film was coming to Disney+ and I saw it was about a songwriter for The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast I figured it would be a good Bonus post but didn’t think it would be that interesting.  Turns out it was very interesting and I learned a lot.  It also makes me sad that he is gone as I would have loved to see what else he would have written.  

So who was Howard Ashman? He was an up and coming songwriter in New York.  Before joining Disney he mostly worked on off Broadway plays.  He became Artistic Director of the WPA theatre in New York where a number of his plays were performed.  It was there he met up with composer Alan Menken who would become his most famous collaborator.  Ashman and Menken would go on to write the off Broadway play Little Shop of Horrors which would later become a movie.  It was after the success (and first Oscar nomination) of Little Shop of Horrors that Jeffrey Katzenberg contacted him to write a song for Oliver and Company.  Katzenberg then asked him to join the production of The Little Mermaid.  It was there that Ashman and Menken would go on to change Disney’s future.  After winning a couple of Oscars for The Little Mermaid they returned to Disney and helped turn Beauty and the Beast into one of the most beloved movie musicals and started working on songs for Aladdin.  

The movie delves into Ashman’s personal stories also.  From his time growing up telling stories with his siblings, to his early career in New York City, to his sometimes tumultuous relationships.  The story takes a tragic turn when he is diagnosed with AIDS.   As a gay man in New York City he had already lost friends to the disease and it was a devastating diagnoses to get as his career was starting to take off.  The disease proceeded quickly while he was working on The Little Mermaid. Fearful that Disney would not want word to get out that they had a gay man writing songs for their animated films aimed a children he tried to keep it a secret.  It wasn’t till after they had won Oscars that he told Alan Menken. When Jeffrey Katzenberg asked him to do Beauty and the Beast he was honest with him and told him he didn’t have the stamina to come to California. Katzenberg then had the animation team bring storyboards and animations to New York for him to review.  No one on the animation team knew the true reason that Ashman wouldn’t fly to California.  Also during this time Ashman and Menken were working on music for Aladdin which was Ashman’s passion project.  Ashman died shortly before the release of Beauty and the Beast.  He won a posthumous Oscar for the title song from the film.  The award was accepted by his long time partner.    

The movie is told in an interesting way.  It uses family, friends, colleagues telling his story but none of them are featured on screen.  Everything on screen is archive footage.  We get to see Ashman and those around him in action.  It’s a story told out of love and appreciation.  It’s not trying to uncover any dark secrets. There are no giant reveals that are meant to show him in a negative light.  At times it can be a bit surface level but it’s really all we need. It’s a story about how people remember him. It has his successes and his faults and that just leaves you feeling sad that we never got to hear all the stories he had to tell.  

Overall: The movie is an insightful look at a person I knew very little about.  I’m glad to have learned about him and how much influence he had on the Disney Renaissance.  Having the people talking over archived footage can seem disjointed at times but for the most part it works. While it’s not a very hard hitting film and I probably would have been underwhelmed if I saw it in the theatre I think it’s worth checking out on Disney+

Random Facts

After launching his career with Howard Ashman Alan Menken would go on to win a total of 8 Oscars over the years and currently holds the record for most wins by a living person. He also achieved EGOT status by also winning an Emmy, Grammy, and Tony.  

Director Don Hahn also directed a film about the beginning of the Disney Renaissance called Waking Sleeping Beauty.  I have not seen it but is now on my must watch list.  

Disney Movie Challenge Bonus: The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea (2000) and The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning (2008)

 Disney Movie Challenge Bonus

The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea (2000)

and The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning (2008)

Once again Disney couldn’t leave a classic alone and felt the need to make sequels. Actually it is one sequel and one prequel. 

Return to the Sea picks up soon after the first one. Ariel and Eric have a daughter Melody.  Ursula’s sister, Morgana, wants revenge and tries to kill Melody as an infant. They are able to fight her off but fearing her return they swear never to let Melody go in the ocean and will keep the fact that she is part mermaid a secret from her. Jump to 12 years later and Melody is defying all the rules and swimming in the ocean. Once again Sebastian is tasked with keeping an eye on her but unable to control a teenage girl. Of course Morgana finds out and grants Melody’s wish to be a mermaid and convinces Melody to steal Triton’s trident.  Ariel must turn back into a mermaid to save her daughter before Morgana’s evil plan can come to fruition.  

The premise isn’t bad but it hits pretty much the same plot points as the first one. One of the differences is that in this one Melody is joined by a penguin and a walrus on her journey as two comic relief characters . Unfortunately these two side characters are just annoying and add nothing to the story. It’s interesting to see Ariel in the role her father was in during the first movie although that aspect is not really explored much.  The songs aren’t very good, definitely not as memorable as the songs in the original. 

Ariel’s Beginning is a prequel to the original as the title implies. The movie is pretty much Footloose underwater.  King Triton banned music after his wife died.  His daughters are miserable and miss the happy times when music was a part of their life.   Ariel meets Flounder who is in a band, she learns that Sebastian has a secret club where they play music.  There is also an evil mermaid, Marina Del Ray  who is trying to take over Sebastian’s spot as the King’s advisor.  When Marina finds out that Sebastian is disobeying the King she sees this as an opportunity to take over his role.  Eventually Ariel has to convince her dad to allow music to come back and that Marina is really evil.  

The worst thing about this movie is that there is only like one original song and it’s pretty bad.  They use "Jump in the Line (Shake, Shake, Shake, Señora)” a number of times which makes it feel like they couldn’t come up with their own music.  It’s also a song that brings to mind Beetlejuice, a much better movie so makes the filmmakers seem even more lazy.  Sally Field does the voice of Marina Del Ray which is fine but the song she sings is just really bad.  She also had a sidekick Benjamin that I couldn’t figure out what kind of fish it was supposed to be and assumed it was a blobfish (according to Wikipedia it’s a manatee). The film ends betraying the beginning of the original.  Since in this one  it’s clear that Ariel wants to bring back music and please her father it makes no sense that in the beginning of the original she is skipping singing classes and forgetting about a performance.  But maybe that’s only a problem if you watch the two movies close to each other.  

Overall: Don’t go in expecting too much from these movies and you won’t be disappointed.  Return to the Sea is the better of the two but lacks the magic of the origins.  Ariel’s Beginning just feels lazy and boring. Reading about it on WIkipedia I found out there are 2 original songs in Ariel’s Beginning but I must have fallen asleep for one of them so that’s how exciting that is.  

Random Facts: 

Tara Strong was 26 when she played Ariel’s 12 year old daughter. She also returned for Ariel’s Beginning and voiced one of her sisters. 

Ariel’s Beginning release was delayed due to production on Cinderella III. Neither was very good. 

 

Disney Movie Challenge: The Little Mermaide (1989)

 Disney Movie Challenge

The Little Mermaid (1989)

WHAT IS THE DISNEY MOVIE CHALLENGE: With Disney+ making available almost all of their films from the vault I thought it was a good time to watch all the theatrically released feature length Disney Studio Animated films. That’s a lot of qualifications so what does it all mean? It must be a film developed and released under the Walt Disney Animation Studios (so no PIXAR or Tim Burton stop motion films). Must have been released in theaters (no direct to video releases). And feature length (no shorts that played prior to the features). Currently there are 58 films. Starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 going to Frozen II in 2020.

I made it to the Disney Renaissance and I have been nervous about writing about this one.  It’s a movie everyone knows and is universally loved. What can I say that hasn’t already been said? So while I might not have any earth shattering insight I will give it a go.  

The story itself is pretty straight forward.  Ariel is a teenage mermaid princess who feels like she is being stifled by her overbearing father, King Triton. She is obsessed with the human world and ends up falling in love with a human prince.  When Tritan forbids her to see him, the evil sea witch Ursula tells her she can help her. Ursula promises to turn Ariel into a human and all Arial has to do is give up her voice and make the prince fall in love with her in 3 days.  Ursula’s main plan is to use Arial to get to her father and steal the king's trident.  After she is turned into a human Ariel gets help from her sea friends including Sebastian the crab, Flounder the fish, and Scuttle the seagull. They try to help make her dream come true and prevent Ursula from taking over as ruler of the sea.  

So what makes The Little Mermaid so special? It’s a couple of things.  First the story is a more return to form for Disney.  They hadn’t made a Princess movie since 1959’s Sleeping Beauty. Also while they have made musicals (Oliver & Company came out the year before) the music in this one felt different.  It really had more of a broadway sensibility.  The Little Mermaid was also the last Disney film to use the multiplane system in place since Snow White, the last to use xerography used since 101 Dalmatians, and the first to use a new computer program called CAPS.  

It seems like when Disney needs a hit to get them out of a slump it’s a Princess movie that does it.  Of course their first big hit was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs but it was Cinderella that saved the almost bankrupt company after the lean war years.  Unfortunately Sleeping Beauty did the opposite and lost a bunch of money so it made Disney reluctant to head back into the genre.  30 years after Sleeping Beauty it was The Little Mermaid’s turn to reinvigorate Disney.  After a few lean years it seemed like Disney was losing their grip as the animation king.  Bluth studios were turning out hits like An American Tale and The Land Before Time. The Care Bears movie was made super cheap and made almost as much as The Black Cauldron which was very expensive to make.  Having the budgets cut The Great Mouse Detective and Oliver & Company made money but weren’t huge hits.  But the Disney co-produced Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a huge hit and gave Disney the chance to put a bit more money into their animation features.  And Disney must have felt they had a hit on their hands with The Little Mermaid because it was one of the highest budgets in years.  The underwater scenes required a lot of bubble special effects and Disney hired an outside studio to help with those.  

I think the music is what sets this movie apart from prior films and defines the Disney Renaissance films.  After the success of Little Shop of Horrors musical Alan Menkin and Howard Ashman we’re hired to write the music and songs for The Little Mermaid. I’m not sure what made Disney think the guys that wrote a musical about a man eating plant would be perfect for a Disney Princess Movie, but it somehow worked out great for all involved.  Menken and Ashman brought a broadway sensibility to animated films. The main effect of that was having really big musical numbers at the center of the movie.  The effect of doing that obviously would be carried over in other Disney musicals that followed.

Computer images have been slowly finding their way into animated films most notably the final battle scene in The Great Mouse Detective.  With The Little Mermaid a new system was created called CAPS that would make things easier and cheaper to transfer the drawings to film and would do away with animation cels that had been the main way for doing animations since the beginning.  It would also replace Xerography that had been in use since 101 Dalmatians.  CAPS was only used in the last scene in the film but would be the main way Disney Animation films would be made for years to come.  But the filmmakers also took a step back in time.  They used the Multiplane system which hadn't been used in a while and they also used actors as a guide for their animations.  This combining old film techniques and new makes The Little Mermaid a great example of a transition film.  

Overall: I was nervous going in that the film wouldn’t live up to the hype.  I hadn’t watched it in a long time and as a kid I always thought of it as a “girls” movie so never really gave it any notice.  But it still holds up today.  The music is great, the animation looks good, and the story is really timeless. "Kiss the GIrl" is one of my favorite songs in the film but the lyrics always feel kind of icky since it’s seems to be encouraging date rape, but it works really well in the context of the movie.   Ursula is a classic villain that is the perfect blend of smooth talker and sinister.  

Random Facts: 

"A Part of their World" was almost cut from the film because Katzenberg thought it would be too boring for kids. But the directors convinced him that it was pivotal to the plot and was kept in.  

Ursula was partially based on the drag queen Divine and has become a queer icon. 

Since the Mutiplane system hadn’t been used on Disney films in while they had to use one from an outside company.