Review of Fantasia (2004) by Gordon G — 17 Sep 2009

I fully recognize Fantasia's importance in the histories of both animation and what eventually became known as 'music videos'. Fantasia is gorgeous to look at (in parts) and whimsically entertaining (in parts); but, finally, it is nothing more or less than a monumental betrayal of art. It pays weird tribute to Stokowski's genius as a conductor but utterly disrespects the composers whose works it represents. One MUST. NOT. ABRIDGE. BEETHOVEN. PERIOD.

Hunter Thompson once referred to Warren Zevon as a 'gaudy, mendacious suckfish'; I find Fantasia an entire school thereof. In general, I'm in the Richard Schickel camp with respect to Uncle Walt's pop-culture empire:

'Disneyâ??s machine was designed to shatter the two most valuable things about childhood â?? its secrets and its silences â?? thus forcing everyone to share the same formative dreams. It has placed a Mickey Mouse hat on every little developing personality in America. As capitalism, it is a work of genius; as culture, it is mostly a horror.' â??The Disney Version (1968).

That doesn't mean that some Disney efforts aren't wondrous works of art in their own right; but such individual works are irrespective of the least-common-denominator entertainment-corporatism that Walt's biological and ideological progeny still thrive on. Fantasia was created on the cusp of the ascendancy of this ideal, and it's clear the medium and Disney's participation in it were in flux. Fantasia had promise, certainly, and the virtues of its visual art cannot be denied; but it is sunk, finally, by the fatal flaw that has recurred through seven decades of Disney features: the dead-certainty of its makers that their notions about childhoodâ??what sparks and soars in a child's imaginationâ??are universal and salutary. They are most certainly neither.