Bambi

This film is receiving a lot of bad reviews on this website. WHY? "The cover will gather dust" indeed! Not while I'm around!

Anyway, this famous and popular film is about a little fawn/calf (young red deer are called calves and he might be a red deer) called Bambi, who is learning to live in the forest with his mother and two main friends to play with, Thumper and Flower. Also, Bambi is not just any fawn/calf. He's the young prince! Will he manage to take his rightful place as great prince of the forest?

I love and have loved this film for about 90% of my life. It is a beautiful classic, has stunning animation, a good story and I love all of the characters, except for the baddie dogs at the end. They are the only baddies you see on screen - and I like that.

So if you haven't watched this classic, WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN WATCHING THEN? Watch it, you're guaranteed to love it! :) ;) :()

Blissful, playful, moving and inspiring, Walt Disney's "Bambi" is a precious jewel that will last longer than most of us will. Indeed, it has a timeless quality, matched with a charming music score and wonderful character voices. Pauline Kael of The New Yorker poked fun at the voice-changes when the infant animals grow up over winter (sort of a puberty-in-the-thicket), but what other way was there to show the passage of time and how it changes everything, even the woodland creatures we take for granted? It's an amazing achievement. The song score never elicited a hit the size of, say, "When You Wish Upon a Star", but it does feature the sprightly "Little April Showers", which underscores the very best sequence. ***1/2 from ****

The characters and story from Walt Disney's adaptation of "Bambi" still hold up as well as they ever did. The animation, likewise, still looks very attractive and detailed. It's understandable if the animation in itself doesn't strike everyone now as being particularly impressive, given the many recent achievements in animation, but in itself it is an excellent job with the resources of its time. It all makes for an appealing and thoughtful classic that is still well worth seeing.

The main characters are well-chosen, especially Bambi himself and the always-engaging Thumper. Some of the best scenes are simply those of the various animal friends playing together – the scene of Thumper and Bambi on the ice being perhaps the most endearing of all. The change of seasons is used to great effect, both aesthetically and in advancing the story and its themes.

It's pretty interesting to contrast "Bambi" with "The Lion King", by no means to decide which is 'better', but rather to take note of the slightly different ways in which they handle some very similar material. Both present the story of a young animal 'prince', the way he explores and learns about his world, and the ways that he must adjust to the tragedies and challenges of adulthood. There are also a number of other interesting similarities. Bambi is at once the more innocent, yet also the more somber of the two.

One very interesting difference is that the greatest threats in "Bambi" come from humans, who are wholly external to the world of the characters, and over whose actions the animals have no control, whereas in "The Lion King" the threats and conflicts are all amongst the animal characters themselves. Both movies deserve to be ranked among the very best animated features of their eras, so there's no need to prefer one over the other – it can just make for even more interesting viewing to notice how these differences help to give each of the two movies its distinctive character.

"Bambi" is the kind of movie that can stick in your mind for many years, especially if you first saw it when young. The characters and many of their adventures make it very appealing, often even adorable, and yet it also portrays some of the most serious (and frightening) things that can happen in the lives of the young. It's a fine movie that accomplishes a lot, and it has held up quite well over the years.

Bambi (1942) is often sneered at by contemporary film goers my age. In their minds, outside of the death of Bambi's mother, the film is a cutesy little joy ride about a happy little deer and his happy little forest friends frolicking about grassy meadows. They also find it much too slow and lacking in plot for their interests, instead switching on the film's spiritual successor The Lion King (1994), which most of my generation holds up as the greatest animated film of all time.

No offense to The Lion King, but it doesn't even come close to touching the greatness of Bambi. Outside of a few whimsical moments, this is a dark film about the cycle of death and life. It's more of a meditative piece than a traditional narrative, which will not appeal to those who absolutely require a detailed plot. The animation and backgrounds are breathtaking. Like the other early Disney features, there's strong traces of German expressionism in there (ex. the fight between Bambi and a rival deer is mostly shown in silhouette and violent colors, Bambi and Faline's dreamlike run through the meadow, etc.).

The atmosphere is not as cutesy as people recall. There is an undercurrent of dread to the whole thing, a sense of danger. As beautiful and enchanting as the forest can be, it is also dangerous. The way man is handled in the film is surprisingly mature: instead of putting the main characters against a laughable caricature, mankind's presence is unseen and feels more like a natural disaster than a living entity. In fact, Bambi might be one of the most adult films in the Disney animated canon. Ignore its saccharine reputation and give it another look.

From the opening scene where the multiplane camera glides through a quiet forest until the stirring forest fire climax, a viewer has to be aware he is watching one of the all-time great films. So much of the cycle of life is covered that it's hard to realize the film is a mere 69 minutes. In a book called 'The Making of Bambi', Ollie Johnston reveals that originally there was much more footage that Disney eventually trimmed, cutting out whole sequences before the film previewed. Obviously, he made a wide decision.

There is no extraneous scene here, it moves seamlessly through its cycle of life story with the charming animal creatures carrying the story to its logical conclusion. The background music complements all of the drama and comedy. The storm sequence is the most beautiful blend of music and drawings ever achieved by the Disney artists. The naturally drawn deer are the result of months of careful preparation and study, giving the entire film the feel of a nature study as well as giving the audience great entertainment.

The choral work is extremely effective, particularly on songs like 'Love Is A Song' (Oscar nominated), 'I Bring You A Song' and 'Little April Shower'. The impressionistic forest glows with a life of its own and is the real star of the film, thanks to the influence of Japanese artist Tyrus Wong. No wonder this was Disney's favorite film. It will stay fresh and young forever. An awesome achievement!

In conclusion, having done some choral work myself as a glee club singer, I especially appreciated the great contribution made by the mixed chorus (male/female) that does such a wonderful job on all of the choruses that blend so seamlessly with the rich background score. Truly exceptional choral vocals conducted by Charles Henderson.