Waking Sleeping Beauty

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.

"Walking Sleeping Beauty" is one documentary that you don't want to miss it's educational and informative it takes you to a behind the scenes turmoil at Walt Disney studios. It showed how the face of the department's film animation would change forever as the old guys would roll over to more eager and younger determined talent. A real changing of the guard so to speak. As in all business any company has drama and change and tension and thru news clips, interviews, and studio footage this film shows it all you really get a backstage pass to the changing of Disney's animation studios.

For years the film department did things their way only a new wave of young artist would arrive in the early 80's(note footage of legendary Tim Burton(1989's "Batman") starting out in the art department!)Disney began to want movies with more live action and more wilder stories and this became more of a reality with the arrival of CEO Michael Eisner and film department head Jeffrey Katzenberg as ideals and new techniques started to unroll. The best of this is evident in films like the live action "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and other hits like "Little Mermaid" and "Beauty and the Beast", and "The Lion King" were mixed with great Broadway musical scores and computer generated graphics which would be the new Disney discovery like "Pixar".

Sure the company still had it's ups and downs but these works and methods and people would change Disney film forever. Overall good educational documentary that any history or film fan would enjoy so please watch you will be educated.

I grew during the Disney Renaissance, so I figured that a documentary about all the 1990s classics that gave my childhood fond memories sounded cool but it was bit disappointing. This is an interesting documentary and I thought that the behind the scenes footage and interviews about what lead to the Renaissance era and the making of some of their movies was good. However, the 87 minute runtime is too short and it's first 20 minutes is spent detailing the history that lead into the Disney Renaissance when that easily could've been explained in just 2 or 3 minutes. More time could've been spent discussing the making of each of the Disney Renaissance movies. Only the makings of The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, The Lion King, Rescuers Down Under, Beauty and the Beast, and Pocahontas get discusses in detail while other movies of that era such as Toy Story, Hercules, Mulan, Tarzan, etc. Barley get mention at all. This is still an interesting documentary nonetheless. I thinnk it'd be a cool idea if Disney made a drama film about the Renaissance in a style similar to Saving Mr. Banks.

This actually made me cry at one point. Besides that, it's nothing crazy or super memorable.

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.