Waking Sleeping Beauty: Review By harveycritic

WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY

Walt Disney Pictures

Reviewed for MovieWeb by Harvey Karten

Grade: B

Directed by: Don Hahn

Written By: Patrick Pacheco

Cast: Tim Burton, John Lasseter, Don Bluth, Michael Eisner, Roy Edward Disney, Jeffrey Katzenberg, John Musker, Christopher Emerson, Don Hahn, Glen Keane, Randy Cartwright, Sir Elton John

Screened at: Park Avenue, NYC, 3/11/10

Opens: March 26, 2010

The year 2008 was a rough one in American finance-recession, job losses, pessimism, a loss in the stock market to such an extent that most investors who did not sell when the selling was good lost half their Wall Street wealth. Those with little faith in the future sold out when the market was at the bottom, while the optimists correctly guessed that in the good old American way, the market would rebound. And it did with a vengeance. In the same way, there's nothing more heartening than a tale of a person suffering loss, whether of a romantic partner or otherwise, then recovering what was swept away. Such a person would have a keener appreciation of what he now has.

The same applies to an industry, particularly since, obviously, industries are worked by human beings. One of these great stories involves Walt Disney pictures, which was in the dumps during the seventies. It seemed that people no longer had a strong appetite for animation, and the firm was teetering on the edge, in much the way that firms like AIG and Merrill Lynch were threatened with bankruptcy unless some miracle would save them from extinction.

According to Disney insider Don Hahn, who directs the doc*mentary "Waking Sleeping Beauty," Disney's problems seemed largely from a lack of innovation. The cartoons seemed same ol', though-not mentioned by this film-such 1970s works as "Escape to Witch Mountain," "Freaky Friday" may have had poor box office, but "Robin Hood," "The Rescuers" and "The Fox and the Hound" were no slouches.

But during the eighties and nineties, the company, which was founded by brothers Walt and Roy Disney in 1923, enjoyed a miraculous renaissance. Everyone today is familiar with the booming successes of "The Lion King," "Little Mermaid," "Aladdin," and to some recall "Who Framed Roger Rabbit, "Rescuers Down Under," and "Nightmare Before Christmas." The greatest accolades were bestowed on "Beauty and the Beast," which the cast of insiders in this doc*mentary note drew an extended standing ovation at the New York Film Festival for the unfinished, black-and-white projection. And New Yorkers who attend these festivals rarely deliver more than polite applause, and then only when members of the cast and crew are present for discussion.

"Waking Sleeping Beauty" is that rare picture in which a company CEO, Dick Cook in this case, gave the filmmakers free range to capture the problems of the world's largest entertainment company as well as the euphoria that greeted the financial and artistic successes of the decade. Were you to read about this in an extended article in The New Yorker or an investigative report in New York magazine, you might find the drama dry. In the movie we can see the enthusiasm of the executive and animators alike, and to Don Hahn's credit, he did away with the awful doc*mentary convention of having old people reminisce about the past while sitting in chairs across the aisle from the interviewers. Instead, Hahn depends on voiceovers to narrate the goings on during this period of frenzy when animators were often forced to attend meetings at six in the morning and remained in the studio around the clock. The spouses of these employees could not be blamed if they looked elsewhere for companionship, for here was a typical case that illustrates the idea that "my colleagues are my family." When a group of animators gets together, you don't expect the kind of chatter that might accompany a meeting of bankers in pinstripes but rather you'd expect a goofy group of creative people, mostly young, and that's what you'd get. One surprise, though, is the almost complete absence of women and African-Americans. This was a white male preserve, though no explanation was given for the uniformity.

As the executives like Jeffrey Katzenberg, Michael Eisner and Roy Disney (Walt's nephew) recounts the events of that golden age, the film often becomes plodding. The highlights are the contagious, vibrant spirits of a group of innovators who might actually have looked forward to meetings at six in the morning, easy enough when they've spent the entire nights on the premises.

The real high spots, however, were a) snippets from the blockbusting cartoons, and b) caricatures that the animators drew for one another, particularly that shows Roy Disney as he berates some workers, fire gushing from his mouth, and a similar one showing a colleague's head leaping up and out of his body. I wish there were more examples from "Beauty and the Beast" in particular, since how are we in the audience who may have only a faint memory of the picture able to see what in that masterstroke could excite its audience so enormously?

Rated PG. 86 minutes. © 2010 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online