Firstly: Hunch back of Notre Dame. A good movie in my opinion, one that I only watched for the first time last night. It pleasantly surprised me - there were great characters amongst the (obviously) incredible animation and set pieces. The songs weren't bad too, an especially good one being Minister Frollo's about his lust for Esmeralda.
The film gets bonus points for trying to tackle some tough subject matter. However, it is Disney, so any strolls into the realms of cold hardreality are short and colourfully resolved. Take for instance the scene where Quasimodo is first revealed to the public, he is taunted and barraged with rotten food. Esmeralda then leaps onto stage and stops this incident with much light hearted high-jinks at Frollo's expense.
That is the unfortunate Disney curse - the need to balance out ever serious incident with cutesy, colourful, or clumsy characters. Then there are the inevitable comedy relief characters, the Gargoyles, who I was really not impressed with. The Disney curse requires many mandatory stock figures to please the kids. I know it's necessary to have them in order to make it marketable to young 'uns, but they just seem so out of place, especially in this film with a story about bigotry, racism and lust.
I quite liked Phoebus, as a male "prince" type character, he was relatively interesting. It's just a shame his background wasn't really fleshed out - he was a war hero, surely there was plenty of story to beef him up a bit?
Esmeralda was stunningly animated at times, and is pretty kick ass too. Resourceful, smart, cunning, and easy on the eyes. Not much to say.
Quasimodo was pretty good, but he just seems to blunder about and not really do anything. He's the only character who really interacts with the gargoyles, and that makes me like him even less. I would have been more satisfied had I seen Quasimodo actually put an end to Frollo, throwing him off the cathedral or something like that. I guess he was just too "nice".
Brother Bear
This film lacked a little of the oomph that Hunchback had, and alot of the classic Disney oomph that surrounds such titles as Jungle Book, Pinocchio or 101 Dalmations. I felt it was missing something like a major character, or at least a much more substantial performance from one of the main actors. It's missing Cinderella's Lady Tremaine, Aladdin's Genie.
I did like the relationship between the 3 brothers, including the obvious death of brother X. What I enjoyed more was how brother Y became the "villain". It added an interesting layer of complexity, the whole film should've been built around that in a similar fashion to the Prince of Egypt. Instead, the second half is more or less let down by the cute but tiresome Koda. I didn't find myself enjoying this character, and unfortunately the plot hinges on the assumption that this guy is lovable. He's definitely not awful - (e.g. Penny from the Rescuers) - he just doesn't have much of a personality other than "naive bear cub". Perhaps I need to watch it again.
I liked brother bear, the animation was impressive and the bears were convincingly weighted and enjoyable to watch. The comedy relief moose weren't as awful as the gargoyles, but they're nothing hilarious either. I did really enjoy the stereotypical "big black guy" character, especially because he was a bear. And bears are awesome.
