The original 1940 "Fantasia", consisting of eight animated sequences set to classical music, was a great favourite of its creator, Walt Disney, who saw it not as a one-off film but as an ongoing project. Disney's idea was that the film should be on continual release with new animated sequences progressively replacing the original ones, so that the audience would always be seeing a mixture of old and new. In 1940, however, "Fantasia" was not a great favourite with either cinemagoers or with the critics, so the idea was dropped. The possibility of a sequel was originally raised, but never came to anything until the 1990s, when the re-release of the original film in cinemas and on video proved a success.
"Fantasia 2000" is the result. (Despite the title, it actually premiered in December 1999). Like its predecessor, it contains eight segments. Each segment is introduced by a star such as Steve Martin, Bette Midler or Angela Lansbury. The producer, Walt's nephew Roy Edward Disney, originally intended to keep four sequences from the 1940 film, but in the event only one (Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice) survived. I haven't seen the original since my own childhood in the sixties or seventies, and even then I probably saw it on a black-and-white television, so I won't attempt a comparison. I do, however, remember that I enjoyed the Mickey Mouse section immensely.
Fantasia 2000 is like a number of films consisting of episodes which are either unconnected or else connected only by a tenuous thread. Such films- "Woody Allen's "Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex..." and Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life" come to mind- tend to divide into three parts, the Good, the Bad and the Indifferent. Here the Good parts include:-
Mickey Mouse, for obvious reasons, and not all of them to do with childhood nostalgia. It is concise, funny and, of course, it tells the story that Paul Dukas's music was expressly written to illustrate. Some of the other sections use music which is not well suited to the style of animation or to the story being told. More of that later
Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. If you're going to produce a cartoon using this music, it just has to be set in Jazz Age New York City. I had never previously heard of the cartoonist Al Hirschfeld, but his work seems wonderfully suited to the mood of the music. The story follows four people- an unemployed man, an African-American construction worker, a young girl and a henpecked husband- and shows how they all realise their dreams. The colour scheme is perhaps inspired by Gershwin's title because it makes great use of blue, together with green and violet, the adjoining colours in the spectrum. Reds, oranges and yellows are used much more sparingly.
Shostakovich's Second Piano Concerto. As a child I could never forgive Hans Christian Andersen for killing off his "Steadfast Tin Soldier" and his ballerina sweetheart. The gloomy Dane should have realised that children's fairy tales are the one literary genre which demand happy endings, so I am overjoyed that Disney gave this beautifully realised version the ending it should always have had. I doubt if Shostakovich wrote his concerto for tin soldiers to march to, but his jaunty music fits the story perfectly, and there is a suitably detestable villain in the shape of that evil jack-in-the-box.
Respighi's "The Pines of Rome". Owing to a defective English-Italian dictionary, someone mistranslated "I Pini di Roma" as "Humpback Whales in the Antarctic". I had my doubts about the wisdom of using programme music to support a programme quite different to the one for which it was written, so this one only just scrapes into the "Good" category. I was, however, won over by the quality of the animation, that cute baby whale and the surreal nature of the storyline in which the whales leave the ocean to fly through the air and into outer space. You wouldn't get that in a David Attenborough documentary.
The Indifferent:-
Saint-Saëns' The Carnival of the Animals. If you're into flamingos who play with yo-yos, this is the film for you. If you're not, it probably isn't.
Stravinsky's The Firebird. I understand that Roy Edward fought hard to keep the "Night on Bare Mountain" sequence in "Fantasia 2000". He eventually had to settle for something in keeping with the mood of the original. The section, which acts as the film's finale, is based upon the 1980 eruption of Mount St Helens and tells of how the Sprite, a benevolent female nature spirit and her ally, a stag bearing a certain resemblance to the adult Bambi, fight against the evil Firebird, the destructive spirit of the volcano. Occasionally effective, but overlong and a bit pretentious, and Stravinsky's music, written to tell a quite different story, seems out of place.
And now for the Bad.
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Seldom can such great music have been put to so banal a purpose.
Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance. Elgar's marches- we hear snatches of all four- were written to conjure up some grand, solemn ceremony, so God only knows what they are doing here as the backdrop to the misadventures of Donald and Daisy Duck aboard Noah's Ark. The story itself could have been quite comical, but the music seemed quite out of place. I don't think that Disney were deliberately trying to satirise Elgar- I know some people don't care for his music- but at times it sounded like it.
With so many wildly differing segments, I can't really sum up the film in a single phrase, but as the good elements outnumbered the bad I will award it 7/10.
"Fantasia 2000" is the result. (Despite the title, it actually premiered in December 1999). Like its predecessor, it contains eight segments. Each segment is introduced by a star such as Steve Martin, Bette Midler or Angela Lansbury. The producer, Walt's nephew Roy Edward Disney, originally intended to keep four sequences from the 1940 film, but in the event only one (Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice) survived. I haven't seen the original since my own childhood in the sixties or seventies, and even then I probably saw it on a black-and-white television, so I won't attempt a comparison. I do, however, remember that I enjoyed the Mickey Mouse section immensely.
Fantasia 2000 is like a number of films consisting of episodes which are either unconnected or else connected only by a tenuous thread. Such films- "Woody Allen's "Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex..." and Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life" come to mind- tend to divide into three parts, the Good, the Bad and the Indifferent. Here the Good parts include:-
Mickey Mouse, for obvious reasons, and not all of them to do with childhood nostalgia. It is concise, funny and, of course, it tells the story that Paul Dukas's music was expressly written to illustrate. Some of the other sections use music which is not well suited to the style of animation or to the story being told. More of that later
Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. If you're going to produce a cartoon using this music, it just has to be set in Jazz Age New York City. I had never previously heard of the cartoonist Al Hirschfeld, but his work seems wonderfully suited to the mood of the music. The story follows four people- an unemployed man, an African-American construction worker, a young girl and a henpecked husband- and shows how they all realise their dreams. The colour scheme is perhaps inspired by Gershwin's title because it makes great use of blue, together with green and violet, the adjoining colours in the spectrum. Reds, oranges and yellows are used much more sparingly.
Shostakovich's Second Piano Concerto. As a child I could never forgive Hans Christian Andersen for killing off his "Steadfast Tin Soldier" and his ballerina sweetheart. The gloomy Dane should have realised that children's fairy tales are the one literary genre which demand happy endings, so I am overjoyed that Disney gave this beautifully realised version the ending it should always have had. I doubt if Shostakovich wrote his concerto for tin soldiers to march to, but his jaunty music fits the story perfectly, and there is a suitably detestable villain in the shape of that evil jack-in-the-box.
Respighi's "The Pines of Rome". Owing to a defective English-Italian dictionary, someone mistranslated "I Pini di Roma" as "Humpback Whales in the Antarctic". I had my doubts about the wisdom of using programme music to support a programme quite different to the one for which it was written, so this one only just scrapes into the "Good" category. I was, however, won over by the quality of the animation, that cute baby whale and the surreal nature of the storyline in which the whales leave the ocean to fly through the air and into outer space. You wouldn't get that in a David Attenborough documentary.
The Indifferent:-
Saint-Saëns' The Carnival of the Animals. If you're into flamingos who play with yo-yos, this is the film for you. If you're not, it probably isn't.
Stravinsky's The Firebird. I understand that Roy Edward fought hard to keep the "Night on Bare Mountain" sequence in "Fantasia 2000". He eventually had to settle for something in keeping with the mood of the original. The section, which acts as the film's finale, is based upon the 1980 eruption of Mount St Helens and tells of how the Sprite, a benevolent female nature spirit and her ally, a stag bearing a certain resemblance to the adult Bambi, fight against the evil Firebird, the destructive spirit of the volcano. Occasionally effective, but overlong and a bit pretentious, and Stravinsky's music, written to tell a quite different story, seems out of place.
And now for the Bad.
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Seldom can such great music have been put to so banal a purpose.
Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance. Elgar's marches- we hear snatches of all four- were written to conjure up some grand, solemn ceremony, so God only knows what they are doing here as the backdrop to the misadventures of Donald and Daisy Duck aboard Noah's Ark. The story itself could have been quite comical, but the music seemed quite out of place. I don't think that Disney were deliberately trying to satirise Elgar- I know some people don't care for his music- but at times it sounded like it.
With so many wildly differing segments, I can't really sum up the film in a single phrase, but as the good elements outnumbered the bad I will award it 7/10.