Review of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) by Brunovn00 — 02 Jun 2019

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is one of the most visually stunning movies Disney has ever released. I really loved the animation and the visual effects, for the time they've must been breathtaking and honestly even now they hold up pretty well. It is also one of the darkest Disney movies ever made with some mature themes like lust, genocide, infanticide, among others and that's not a complaint, I actually liked that a Disney film took risks to tackle such themes in one of its movies. Stunning animation with some great, compelling and memorable characters...Except for the villain. I don't think Frollo is one of the best Disney villains, he's one of the darkest and one of the most perverse and evil, yes, but he's just a horrible person with a dumb plan, now I know that's because he's crazy but just having a character that's crazy "just cause" feels kind of lazy.

However, while I praised this movies dark tone, it's one of the most tonally inconsistent Disney movies I've seen, maybe the most inconsistent. The dark themes and disturbing imagery might not be a problem if the movie wasn't rated G, which means that this is targeted towards kids, so they have to shove in a comic relief, in this case the gargoyles, who are one of the most annoying comic reliefs in any animated movie, maybe in any movie, period. Nothing they said or made actually made me laugh, I was insted rolling my eyes out and wishing that they were in a more tonally appropriate movie.

We get from one lighthearted musical number and then immediatly the movie turns dark and disturbing, that's my problem with this movie. Maybe if they made this movie dark the whole time, remove the cheesy, lighthearted musical numbers and the gargoyles and not caring about getting a G rating, we could've get one of the best Disney movies ever, but sadly, that wasn't the case.

Sure it's not a bad movie, it's a good movie but with forgettable songs and tonal issues.