Well this one was a surprise for me. This was one of my favorite movies as a kid
and going into this review I expected to like it as much now as I did then, and
I don’t.
At first I really didn’t understand why I didn’t like this
film as much as I used to. The animation
is good and I love certain details like the paint drops running down to create
the opening scene after the credits.
Although I do have to wonder who was supervising the animation during
the dancing scene with Madame and George because Duchess is off model for that
entire section with no explanation.
The characters here are likable and there’s great voice
acting from everyone including Disney veterans Sterling Holloway, Eva Gabor,
and Phil Harris. George the lawyer is wonderful and everything I want to be
when I’m old. He is fun, funny, spry,
and totally annoying to Edgar. He also delivers
my favorite line in the film “Elevators are for old people!” He’s great.
As an adult I also get a lot more of the in jokes like the names
of Toulouse, Napoleon, and Lafayette. I
also got the wine joke when everyone is running off to save Duchess and the
kittens which I never got as a kid. The
slapstick with Edgar and the dogs is still funny. Finally the songs are catchy and memorable.
So why did I find the film blah over all? I think it’s because it’s kind of a slice of
life picture mixed in with this adventure to get Duchess and her kids home and
it kind of falls flat. There is no theme
here or an arc for any of the characters.
Thomas doesn’t struggle with loving Duchess and her having kids and
being a house cat. That struggle is
certainly cliché but at least it would have been some kind of struggle. Duchess is steadfast in her need to be there
for Madame over her love for Thomas so outside of the one scene on the rooftop
there’s no drama from that. The kittens
have personalities, but they don’t really stand out that much or have any
growth over the course of the film either; and there is a bunch of padding in
here like the goose family that really doesn’t need to be there.
Also Edgar is such a one note villain and his plan comes
right out of nowhere. Yes we see he is
greedy, but he acted like a nice if a bit haggard guy that genuinely seemed to
like Madame before so why is he suddenly only in it for the money? Can we get some backstory here or
something? Also his abrupt plan proves he
is dumb as a post. Edgar buddy you
already appear to have free room and board.
When Madame dies you can probably move into a bigger bedroom and use
some of the inheritance for yourself to buy clothes and good food and explain
that you need that stuff to keep in good health to provide a good life to the
cats. Or if you want to go the dark
route abandon them after she’s gone and no one will be looking for them and the
story won’t end up on the front page of the paper!
So in conclusion it’s certainly not a bad film, but it’s not
as engaging as it used to be because it’s very surface level storytelling. We don’t get deep characters with great
motivations or layers. We don’t have a
theme or goal of the story outside of the simple get the characters home and
make Edgar go away. So there isn’t a lot
of re-watch value for an older audience member.
Kids can enjoy the songs and the comedy and I think that’s enough sometimes
for younger viewers. It’s not a powerful or impactful piece of
cinema for me, but for a fun bit of entertainment fluff I can think of worse
films to spend an afternoon watching.
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