Day 6: Everybody Wants To Be A Cat

THE ARISTOCATS (1970)

Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman
Starring the voices of: Eva Gabor, Phil Harris, Scatman Crothers, Pat Buttram, George Lindsey

The trend these days for animated films is to make them as appealing to adults as possible.  Sure, we've got to keep it relatively clean for the kids, but the focus is on story and character development and the finer aspects of film-making. 

So then, it is sometimes a treat to go back to earlier days and see what animated films used to be like; a simpler time when movies were sanitized for our protection, the characters stated outright what they felt and plot points were spelled out for us so we didn't have to do any thinking.  Man, those were the days.

Here, we have The Aristocats (not to be confused with The Aristocrats, the 2005 documentary about the world's dirtiest joke).*  A rich old French lady bequeaths her entire estate to her cats, as rich old women are wont to do.  And as the will stipulates, once they die, her faithful butler Edgar gets everything.  Given that there are four cats living about 12 years apiece, Edgar, who apparently doesn't plan on living that long, decides to do away with them.  He must be pure evil, because who would ever want to harm the lovely Duchess (Gabor) and her three kittens, Marie, Toulouse and Berlioz (which I have to admit are really cute names).  This privileged feline family lives happily enough until Edgar puts them all to sleep!  No, not in the veterinary way, but with sleeping pills in their food.  After they've dozed off, he ditches them in the country where's he's hounded by Napoleon (Buttram) and Lafayette (Lindsey), two trouble-making farm dogs.  When everyone comes to, they find themselves stranded in the French countryside.  But along comes a smooth-talking alley cat named O'Malley (Harris) who, after wowing Duchess with his hep-cat lingo, decides to accompany them home.  Along the way, they meet up with other animal guest stars, including a swinging (or "Schvinging," as Duchess says) jazz combo headed by O'Malley's bestest bud Scat Cat (Crothers).  After a pretty darn good musical number - probably the highlight of the film - O'Malley and Duchess confess their feelings for one another, but decide that, due to their differing lifestyles, they should just stay friends.  But after Duchess and company return home, Edgar decides to send them off once and for all in the most crackpot way possible: locking them in a box and mailing them off to Africa.  Luckily, O'Malley and his gang show up to save the day, and all is well, as Edgar ends up in the box and, we assume, lives out the rest of his days getting chased by elephants on the Serengeti. 

So all animal puns aside, this movie wasn't all I had hoped for.  I was actually pretty eager to see it, as I'm a huge fan of Disney's The Rescuers, which followed seven years later and Robin Hood and The Jungle Book that preceded it.  This film seems like it was rushed into production, as the story was weak and uninteresting; it was really more gag-driven than anything else, which isn't a bad thing, but gags are like special effects.  They can only carry the film so far.  The saddest part of watching any disappointing film is the feeling that everyone involved could have done better.  And I know the Disney folks were/are capable of so much more. 

But on the plus side, there is the musical number "Everybody Wants To Be a Cat," which is the best part of the film.  It's a catchy little tune that really sticks out in an otherwise mediocre movie, and I'll be humming it for days.  And if you're into saccharine cutesiness, the opening ten minutes deliver that in spades.

This actually poses an interesting question: have animated films come so far in recent years that we've become spoiled?  Or was this just a rough spot on Disney's track record?  I'd say it's the latter.  Yes, the both the medium and the art form have come a long way in a short time (thanks mostly to Pixar), but I can still sit down and enjoy other films in the Disney cannon because of the characters, the story, the songs and the vocal performances; in other words, everything that was lacking in this film.  But it's okay.  Even the best filmmakers have a few blotches on their record.

*Do NOT click this link if you are squeamish or easily offended.