Sleeping Beauty (1959)
Fantasia was just a warm up for creating stories from classical music pieces given how Disney would later revisit the idea nearly 20 years later.
Brief Backstory
For Disney’s sweet 16th animated feature, Disney decided to go back to medieval fantasy with Sleeping Beauty, making this the second Disney movie to actually take place in a medieval time period. Although critically panned at release, it has become another major landmark for animation years later.
Story
An evil fairy named Maleficent curses the newborn Princess Aurora to meet her maker on her 16th birthday. The fairies decide to hide her until that day, but Aurora ends up in hibernation after touching the spindle of a spinning wheel. Prince Philip ends up also in the clutches of Maleficent and must charge his way out and save Aurora from her sleeping state.
Random Facts
James Rolfe ranks Sleeping Beauty as his 5th favorite Disney movie.
Along with the Jungle Book and Cinderella, this was one of the first Disney movies my mother saw. Unlike those two, I never really cared much for this one.
Some of the music used in the movie was reused in Robin Hood when Robin Hood was trying to get out of the castle.
George Bruns took over for composing Disney movies though he had already been doing so even before this movie came out.
Second Disney animated feature to be shown in Cinemascope. Consequently, this caused initial home video releases (Walt Disney Classics to be precise) to be shown in pan and scan. The masterpiece collection version that came out in 1996/1997 brought it back to its’ original aspect ratio with a documentary after the film ended, which was the same for the Jungle Book and Peter Pan.
Random Opinions
Why wait for Aurora to drop dead on her 16th birthday? That seems kind of pointless.
The escape from Maleficent’s castle makes me think of Halo: Combat Evolved when you’re put on that time limit to get away from the Pillar of Autumn.
The fight against Maleficent as a dragon is like fighting Bowser in Mario games. To be fair a lot of the visuals make me think of Mario games anyway.
Doesn’t the owl that Aurora dances with look like Big Mama from The Fox and the Hound?
Dress color wars seem to have inspired the quest “Goblin Diplomacy” in RuneScape which you could easily cheat by having orange, blue, and regular goblin armor. There I saved you a shitload of time.
Maleficent failed to make it on the top 50 villains by AFI though I believe she deserved to be put on there regardless of her whole “wait 16 years” bullshit.
Aurora doesn’t have that many lines in the movie. She has her song number and that’s about it. Dopey the Dwarf had way more character than Aurora.
Can I ask about Hubert and Stefon’s wine fetish? I don’t like wine and have a problem with wine snobs, but then again, I refused M&Ms and snickers bars when I was six and even prior to that as a three year old I’d avoid hershey’s chocolate bars and eat spinach instead or something like that. I’d upload some footage of myself as a two to three year old not eating my own birthday cake but I don’t have the footage. Footage from 1995 had my late grandmother relaying that I wasn’t getting any candy and my father said “no he won’t” in regards to this.
Pros
- For as idiotic as Maleficent’s plot is, you have to admit, she is quite a nasty villain. It’s no wonder why she ends up high on the best Disney villains lists.
- One of the best looking animated movies of all time.
- The climatic duel of Prince Philip against horrible Maleficent as a dragon is iconic.
- Maleficent’s voice actress (Eleanor Audrey) is fantastic. She was already amazing in Cinderella as Lady Tremaine, and her performance as Maleficent actually topped it.
- Pretty funny scene with King Hubert and King Stefson screwing around in the dining area midway through the movie.
- Aurora is one of the better looking Disney Princesses out there – to be fair they all look great.
- Amazing soundtrack composed by George Bruns.
Cons
- Like I said earlier, Maleficent doesn’t exactly have the best plotting. I won’t repeat that.
- Aurora doesn’t really stand out that much in terms of characteristics – about as flat as southern Illinois or the eastern shore of Maryland!!
- Not as much comedy as other Disney movies, depending on your view.
- Unrealistic relationship between Aurora and Philip. In real life they wouldn’t go “hey we were kids would you like to marry me” just from seeing each other. Still it’s a fantasy movie and these tend to play by their own rules.
Rating: 6/10 – Decent
Cinderella to me is more enjoyable than Sleeping Beauty. However, I can’t agree that Sleeping Beauty’s a weak movie, as it has a lot of decent moments.
When it comes to medieval fantasy movies in general, this one would be on my favorites list, though far below Snow White, Sword in the Stone, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail and others.
2 responses to “Sleeping Beauty”
-
It’s gonna sound controversial, I prefer Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent movie over Sleeping Beauty. The latter has a ton of problems. The former’s an improvement. I wrote both articles on ‘em.
-
This in my eyes was one of Walt’s weakest Disney movies, not counting the package movies. I like fairy tales and always have, but Sleeping Beauty to me was one of the weaker ones.
-
Leave a Reply