I can scarcely believe that so much work, so much money, so much love and so much good will, resulted in THIS. Even leaving questions of quality aside, the film is so SHORT. The original `Fantasia' was over two hours; the sequel is just 75 minutes, over ten of which have been borrowed from the original in any case. Segments which are too short individually combine to form a concert that's too short overall. The film huffs and puffs as it's strangled by its own brevity. For instance:
* Beethoven's 5th symphony, 1st movement. The original `Fantasia' gave us ALL of the sixth (well, minus some exposition repeats); this time we get just a single narrow slice of the fifth (again, minus exposition repeats - and we need them more this time). There's SOME congruence between the images on screen and the music they illustrate. Or at least, there WOULD be congruence if these images were illustrating the symphony as a whole. The triumphant blaze of colour which the animators fling at us after a couple of minutes is absent in Beethoven's fifth until the start of the fourth movement. We don't even get so far as the second movement.
* Respighi's `The Pines of Rome' has been shorn of its lovely `pines of the catacombs' sequence. This is a minor point, because the segment fails for many other reasons - I'll get to them later.
* `Carnival of the Animals' (by Saint-Saëns) consists of I don't know how many tiny, delicious musical tidbits. The animators have only bothered to use ONE of them. The result is some vibrant, fresh, funny animation that's over in less than two minutes. Why bother?
* The constant tin soldier story has been set to a tiny, one-movement Shostakovich piece that, whatever they tell us, doesn't suit it at all. I can understand why they chose Shostakovich, but this particular piece never settles down to give the images time to breathe. Why not, say, the ninth symphony - complete, of course ...? At least that has one or two slow bits.
Oh dear. But it gets worse. Remember that the original `Fantasia' was a masterpiece. Look at Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker suite. Not only do the images express whatever of value lay in the ballet; they soar with the music in a way that no ballet ever could. But it's not just Tchaikovsky. Every movement is like this. -Well, there is one exception: the second movement of Beethoven's sixth. But apart from that, the images, however surprising they may initially appear, flow DIRECTLY from the music. The animators working on the sequel have tried hard; I'm sure they have; but to no avail. It's as if animators of today can no longer listen to music at all.
For proof, consider `The Pines of Rome'. Were they TRYING for a mismatch? Respighi's tone-poem suite illustrates what it claims to illustrate: the mood of four pine-laden parts of the city of Rome. It's bright, sharp, sunlit, Mediterranean music. If this had been part of the original Fantasia program the animators would have STARTED with Rome, although they may have gone on to something else (a Rome of the past, or of the future, or a fantasy city, or the insects inhabiting the pines of Rome, or something). What do we get instead? Plastic computer-rendered whales, swimming around lugubriously in an Arctic winter. They just don't fit, and there's no way to disguise this. The final movement of the Pines suite is a march. WHALES CAN'T MARCH. There's no way to disguise this, either.
This is just the most extreme instance. The film as a whole is a flop. (Anyone who has read my reviews of other Disney efforts will know how much it hurts me to say this.) It falls even further beneath `Allegro non Troppo' than that film, for completely different reasons, fell beneath `Fantasia'. I must mention one thing, though: the `Rhapsody in Blue' segment, created hastily at the last minute, is superb; not QUITE worthy of `Fantasia', but close.
* Beethoven's 5th symphony, 1st movement. The original `Fantasia' gave us ALL of the sixth (well, minus some exposition repeats); this time we get just a single narrow slice of the fifth (again, minus exposition repeats - and we need them more this time). There's SOME congruence between the images on screen and the music they illustrate. Or at least, there WOULD be congruence if these images were illustrating the symphony as a whole. The triumphant blaze of colour which the animators fling at us after a couple of minutes is absent in Beethoven's fifth until the start of the fourth movement. We don't even get so far as the second movement.
* Respighi's `The Pines of Rome' has been shorn of its lovely `pines of the catacombs' sequence. This is a minor point, because the segment fails for many other reasons - I'll get to them later.
* `Carnival of the Animals' (by Saint-Saëns) consists of I don't know how many tiny, delicious musical tidbits. The animators have only bothered to use ONE of them. The result is some vibrant, fresh, funny animation that's over in less than two minutes. Why bother?
* The constant tin soldier story has been set to a tiny, one-movement Shostakovich piece that, whatever they tell us, doesn't suit it at all. I can understand why they chose Shostakovich, but this particular piece never settles down to give the images time to breathe. Why not, say, the ninth symphony - complete, of course ...? At least that has one or two slow bits.
Oh dear. But it gets worse. Remember that the original `Fantasia' was a masterpiece. Look at Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker suite. Not only do the images express whatever of value lay in the ballet; they soar with the music in a way that no ballet ever could. But it's not just Tchaikovsky. Every movement is like this. -Well, there is one exception: the second movement of Beethoven's sixth. But apart from that, the images, however surprising they may initially appear, flow DIRECTLY from the music. The animators working on the sequel have tried hard; I'm sure they have; but to no avail. It's as if animators of today can no longer listen to music at all.
For proof, consider `The Pines of Rome'. Were they TRYING for a mismatch? Respighi's tone-poem suite illustrates what it claims to illustrate: the mood of four pine-laden parts of the city of Rome. It's bright, sharp, sunlit, Mediterranean music. If this had been part of the original Fantasia program the animators would have STARTED with Rome, although they may have gone on to something else (a Rome of the past, or of the future, or a fantasy city, or the insects inhabiting the pines of Rome, or something). What do we get instead? Plastic computer-rendered whales, swimming around lugubriously in an Arctic winter. They just don't fit, and there's no way to disguise this. The final movement of the Pines suite is a march. WHALES CAN'T MARCH. There's no way to disguise this, either.
This is just the most extreme instance. The film as a whole is a flop. (Anyone who has read my reviews of other Disney efforts will know how much it hurts me to say this.) It falls even further beneath `Allegro non Troppo' than that film, for completely different reasons, fell beneath `Fantasia'. I must mention one thing, though: the `Rhapsody in Blue' segment, created hastily at the last minute, is superb; not QUITE worthy of `Fantasia', but close.