Back in the early days of Disney, and I’m fully understanding of this, the idea was to introduce people to a truly magical, captivating world unlike anything they had ever seen before. Though Sleeping Beauty was all the way in 1959 some 22 years after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the target audience was learning the joys of animated film and was easy to please. I grew up in a time where the fact that a movie was animated, though nice, was not so much the deciding factor that made the experience; I’ve always held movies to a bit of a higher standard so when I say that I had some very genuine problems with Sleeping Beauty, don’t get all pissy at me saying how dare I criticize such an iconic classic. The good news is that it’s all story related so it’s not like it’s going to be a shitty score at all.
Let’s get this out of the way really quick. Sleeping Beauty is an incredibly simple story filled with overwhelming fairy tale/fantasy clichés and fueled by the convenience of ignorance. Like the romantic comedies I hate so much, it’s aggravating when a situation escalates because a very simple conversation like “we’re protecting you from an evil curse that lasts until your 16” is purposely avoided for no real reason but to push the plot. And the idea that someone as evil as Maleficent put all her eggs into this one curse that would have been a bigger bitch if Aurora’s parents aged AT ALL is a bit of a disservice for her bid as wickedest fucking Disney villain ever. I’m sorry; I have to stick with Frollo here followed closely by Rattigan.
The only true Disney-esque enjoyment I got out of this movie was with the goodfairies, Flora, Fauna, and Joe Pesci (Maryweather)…kidding (Fauna was kind of boring), but other than that it was just a movie that was good for its time and holds up just enough to still be enjoyable today though not holy shit spectacular. I did like this movie, it was a smooth enough watch but, again, I’ve grown up to hold much different standards so I can safely say this movie wasn’t amazing and hate to say this, but not even really that memorable sans the choir in the background that sung the last five words of every narrated line like the background singers doing jingles for radio commercials. The pink vs. blue fight between Maryweather and Flora, that’s going to stick with me also.
Regardless, all things considered, I enjoyed it. There wasn’t anything bad about Sleeping Beauty, just wasn’t anything that phenomenal but it was worth the watch and I’m glad I own it and I would gladly share it with my daughter someday if that ever happens. I rip on it a bit for story but I understand that it really didn’t need to…and perhaps probably shouldn’t have tried to be a mind-blowing scriptwriting achievement as it was a beautiful beautiful animated film on its own with great animation, beautiful music, though perhaps it was the same exact song played over and over with different words…couldn’t quite tell, and though simple, it’s a classic fairy tale come to life. Go it.
No point pushing this further, Sleeping Beauty was ok enough to get 7 dustbusters out of 10 from me, which for an aged classic is quite good in my opinion. Perhaps if I lived back then and had a BackLOG going, this would have gotten a lot more, but as I can’t safely take that into consideration (I probably would have liked Mrs. Miniver too), I go off of my feelings right now which is, this was an ok movie, worth the watch. It probably won’t ever be a movie I’m craving, but I can see instances where I would recommend it to someone…’s daughter.
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