The Aristocats: Critic Reviews

The real beauty of the picture, which is as amusing, smoothly machined and beautifully colored as any Disney should be, is in the characterizations, sustained within a sprightly but simple format.

This 1970 animated feature is dull, careless, and all too typical of the Disney studio's slapdash output before the unexpected renaissance of The Rescuers.

Helped immeasurably by the voices of Phil Harris, Eva Gabor, Sterling Holloway, Scatman Crothers and others, plus some outstanding animation, songs, sentiment, some excellent dialog and even a touch of psychedelia.

The animals' exuberance is so infectious and their "acting" so true to human life that by the fadeout The Aristocats does, indeed, give the audience paws for reflection.

Jazz and hijinks make this Disney cat tale meow.

Insofar as the film has any real ambition driving it, that ambition seems to be that the Disney brand name must be kept alive until somebody could figure out what to do with it.

An enjoyable mix of fine animation, catchy songs, and outstanding voice characterizations.

One of the less successful Disney offerings from the beginning of the 70s.

has a charm behind it that shines through

A nice-enough Disney feature that some consider an under-appreciated classic and others view as a movie that's distinguished only by the inclusion of a handful of cool jazz tunes.

The Aristocats is largely an up-scale cat version of 101 Dalmatians minus the deliciously dastardly villain.

Proves that even the studio's halfhearted larks still have life in them, thanks to golden-age animators...tunesmiths...and vocal talent.

The Aristocats is one of the slightest of director Wolfgang Reitherman's contributions to the Disney animated feature canon, which is to say it's still among the studio's least suffocatingly ornate and ideologically risible films.

...not a bad film...just a middle-of-the-road one from a studio that has given us some true animated classics.

Purr-fect.

The cat's pajamas, dah-ling!

always a classic, if tepid

Fun, light Disney cartoon.

...don't expect [The Aristocats] to be even close to such Disney masterpieces as The Lion King or Beauty and the Beast.