Waking Sleeping Beauty

I was at a showing of this film at the Toronto International Film Festival last night followed by a short Q&A session with producers Don Hahn and Peter Schneider. Exclusively using archival footage, much of it home video quality, it tells the story of Disney animation between the years 1984 and 1994. This period started with the studios almost being closed down and ended with classic and successful animated films like 'Beauty and the Beast' and 'The Lion King'. As Don Hahn said last night "We are trained so well in the disciplines of animated films that we made another movie that is 82 minutes long and includes a laugh and a cry". The business side of the industry is examined, warts and all, while looking at the relationship between Roy Disney, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenburg, with Katzenburg probably coming off worst. Recent audio interview clips are used but the film has no 'talking heads' sequences. The film gives an insightful glimpse behind the scenes at Disney animation during this particular time period. We get to see a depressed looking Tim Burton working at a drawing board in the mid-eighties and at least two live action 'pies in the face', which must be a good thing. The bad news is that this will not be on general release until next April at the earliest. It will be shown at more film festivals this year and the producers did say last night that they will personally deliver and show the movie to appropriate interested groups in the early months of 2010 to try and create word of mouth publicity. Get your friends together and give them a call.

This documentary is about the period at Disney animation from its nadir in the early 1980s through its incredible successes with "Little Mermaid", "Beauty and the Beast", "Aladdin" and "The Lion King". It talks about the process through which it regained its former glory as well as, ironically, the negative cost that success had on the studio as well. It's all very fascinating for fans of animation and is told through many interviews, archival footage and the like. It's about as interesting as you could expect--and much more interesting than another similar Disney documentary that was also recently released ("Walt and El Groupo").

The only negative about the film is that it had you wanting more. That's because although it was only recently released, it stopped in the early-mid 1990s--and a lot has happened since then (mostly with Pixar taking over most of the animation duties). Seeing the film through "The Princess and the Frog" (possibly Disney's last traditionally animated feature) would be a great follow-up to this splendid documentary.

The resurgence of hand-drawn animation in the 1990s, fueled by box-office success but burdened by egos. With animator Don Bluth vacating Disney in 1979, and somewhat unscrupulously taking a large group of artists along with him, the animation arm of the Disney Company was in turmoil in 1980. With disappointing returns from "The Black Cauldron" scalding the Ink and Paint Club denizens, Roy Disney, Walt's nephew and a major supporter of Disney's animated output, brought in Michael Eisner as CEO, who in turn brought in Jeffrey Katzenberg to head up the animation division. While Katzenberg immediately rubbed his artists the wrong way, he managed to get the company on the right track, leading to major successes "The Little Mermaid", "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Lion King" in the 1990s. This fascinating documentary from Don Hahn eschews the usual talking-heads format, moving the piece along with home movie footage, news clips, and by individual interview voice-overs from all the principals. For Disney-fanatics, it's a treasure trove of facts and financially-driven fantasy. *** from ****

I did love watching this as it showed us how intense the pressure wa for disney in tekhe 80s, but came back up with a resurgence of films.

I'm an avid fan of Disney and Disney history. I was elated to hear about this documentary and bought the DVD. Absolutely fascinating subject if you care anything for the history of Disney's place in the entertainment world. It was great to see all the archived footage from the 80s and 90s.

My only gripes with this doc is that there's SO much stuff to cover it can't possibly be done with the confines of a feature length. So to me it felt very rushed as they were pushing through subjects and materials really fast. You may think you'll get a lot of John Lasseter in this and Tim Burton but you don't. they only mention Nightmare Before Christmas and move on. A bit dissatisfying for me since I'm fascinated in the outside people who were working for Disney at the time.

All in all a great Doc on a fascinating subject. But it felt rushed and leaves out quite a bit of stuff I felt should have been mentioned. Maybe one day Ken Burns will make a doc on the subject and I'll finally get my 10 DVD box set! Until then, it's great for the basics. Still a MUST SEE for Disney fans!!! Go see it!