Entertainment

The Disney Year: “Aristocats” is simply outclassed

Kittens Toulouse, Marie, and Berlioz shove through the cat door of their expensive mansion home (Disney).

Nathan Tucker, A&E Editor
September 16, 2015

The output of Walt Disney Animation Studios–currently totaling 54 full-length films–has been cherished by audiences young and old for almost 80 years. In this weekly online feature, arts and entertainment editor Nathan Tucker will review and rank each of them.

It is clear to see how the animators at Disney reacted to Walt Disney’s death by watching The Aristocats, the first film they made afterwards: they panicked.

Their first step (once they stopped hyperventilating) was to stuff every ghost of Disney past they could into a blender, then throw the resulting concoction onto the wall and see what stuck. So the plot of Aristocats has the same skeleton as Lady and the Tramp–female housepet falls for street-dwelling charmer–only this time, they are cats (because that worked in Pinocchio) and the housepet is accompanied by her three kittens (because baby animals were cute in Dumbo and Bambi). The cats are stolen by an incompetent pet-napper, just as in Dalmatians, and also repeats that film’s military rank gag (“I’m the leader, I’m in charge,” a dog drawls). All of this is drawn in the light and sketchy style that only ever worked for Dalmatians: it meets no such success here.

Because The Jungle Book was the last film made under Walt’s supervision, its elements have a particular effect on this film. Phil Harris voices the alleycat, because his Baloo was already a definitive version of the “walk on the mild side” rebel-in-name-only, and Sterling Holloway comes back to voice another character with another vocal tic (who just so happens to be a mouse this time around, because mice had been good for Disney in the past). The Sherman Brothers contribute another song about a group of swinging outcasts who are exactly like hippies, except that they dig jazz.

None of it even remotely feels like it belongs in the same film, and whole swaths of the finished product could be cut with no effect on the plot. The entire slapstick affair between the catnapper and the rural dogs who steal his motorcade is unnecessary; so is the appearance of the geese, which exists solely to set up a joke on butts and another on drunkenness. The menagerie of racial stereotypes that make up the alleycat jazz orchestra are eye-rolling at best and brazenly offensive at worst.

There is an evident charm sparkling through every few frames, but it is always destined to go nowhere, settling into predictable patterns done better everywhere else. The overall feeling here is one of unnecessary obligation, like having to go to your cousin’s wedding across the country: not as if it isn’t fun–but it certainly is not worth the investment required.

The List: