Link to Previous Part: The Disneyathon Part 18: The End of the 2000’s Disney movies

This is it, the final Disney era, which is also commonly known as the Revival Age. This era of Disney movies technically started with The Princess and The Frog as it was Disney’s first big hit in awhile, but I wanted this section to be solely focused on the 2010’s or the last decade.

We have four movies in this part before we tackle the bottom ten in the last three parts, so without further ado….

Disney are back in a brand new decade with a brand new film called Tangled and I really liked this one.

I actually remember seeing Tangled at the cinema, almost 10 years ago now. Don’t ask me if I would have still seen this movie if it kept the original title, Rapunzel, but I was a young kid who liked the trailer, so please let me be.

We’re back to 3D animation again which works as they adopted the more cartoony colourful look that made their 90’s 2D films so appealing. The musical numbers are here to stay it seems, and which is fine by me. While the ones in this movie aren’t as memorable as The Princess and the Frog they’re still pretty enjoyable. My favourites being I’ve Got a Dream and the Oscar nominated I See the Light.

Let’s move onto the characters such as Rapunzel, a very sweet sheltered girl who is unfortunately overshadowed by the love interest, the way cool and hilarious Flynn Ryder. It’s like Han Solo and Zapp Branngian had a baby and I think he was the reason why I ended up seeing this movie back in the day. This is definitely a first for a Disney princess film as normally the guy is too boring to stand out over the leading lady. There are two exceptions where they’re on equal footing and Jasmine doesn’t count because she’s not the main character of her film.

The other standout character was the horse, Maximus. His continuous search for Flynn while acting like a dog was hilarious. He would be my favourite cartoon horse if he didn’t befriend Rapunzel and Flynn. I’m a bit mixed on Rapunzel and Flynn being a couple as I thought they could have just became good friends and it would have been just as powerful, but this is Disney after all and they can’t change the formula too much. I guess it’s also kind of hard to believe anyone is in danger, except for the villain, when they can survive so many death defying situations. Flynn’s face shouldn’t still look as handsome as it does after being smacked with a frying pan and him landing flat on his face as many times as he did.

It’s still entertaining and quite sweet. I may or may not have been weeping at the end. 8 out of 10.

Before re-watching for this review I didn’t remember too much about Mars Needs Moms and had forgotten how bad it was.

I saw this one at the cinema one Mother’s Day, I think, and yes  we’re back to using that realistic animation that made Robert Zemeckis’s Christmas Carol such a memorable well regarded eye strain. Although, to be fair, the animation isn’t too bad. It’s well shot and the designs of the aliens and Mars look pretty cool. (How the humans look is a whole other story) The reason why this movie is bad is because we have gone back to times where the story doesn’t make much sense and the characters suck.

The Seth Green looking kid, or Milo if you prefer, I kind of hate. I can see where they were coming from as one thing I like about this movie is they do try to give a good message for kids, about respecting their mums, but the execution of that was handled very poorly. I can’t think of a protagonist I hated as quickly as I did this kid. The first thing he does is be a pain to his loving mother by not doing what he’s told, gloating about his own interests and acting all smug when he knows he’s done something wrong. I’m not really a children’s person and this is the type of quality I hate in kids, even in real life, let alone media!

That’s not all. Once Mummy is kidnapped by space aliens Milo continues to irritate me, by acting like a complete idiot for the majority of the movie. Pretty much everything is spoon fed to him and yet he still has no idea what’s going on, it’s so frustrating! Moving from that disaster, another character I’m not too fond of is the nerdy Jack Black rip-off dude. He’s kind of annoying, let alone crazy, when we first meet him as he’s really excited that he and this small boy can be bros and live in his bachelor pad. Don’t worry, Milo doesn’t catch onto any of this, because that’s expecting too much. The alien girl they meet was an improvement. All she knows of Earth culture is 60’s sitcoms and I presume Woodstock so her cringey lines were a very welcome addition.

While predictable, the story isn’t all trash as there are silver linings littered throughout the movie. I like the scene where we learn the space nerd’s backstory, too bad it’s ruined by the kid asking a really stupid question. Speaking of the kid, I loved his death scene. They were some relieving 10 seconds before his beloved mother saved him.

There is also plenty of stupid stuff like we learn they vaporise the mums with the sun so they can transfer the mum’s discipline into the nanny bots so the superior lady race don’t have to raise the feral babies themselves because they have better unknown things to do. A thing I really didn’t like was this instant translate whatever your language is to English device the space nerd gives Seth Green. It’s a really lazy plot device and when we first meet the alien chick I thought he could only understand her because of this device. But no, I was wrong, it stopped working there and then fixed itself when the head alien showed up at the end!

Mars Needs Moms is far from the worst movie ever as the people who made this clearly tried, but despite their best efforts the movie bombed, thus ending this weird bizarre trend for now. Too bad it’s ultimately ruined by a big misstep which I like to call Milo! 3 to 4 out of 10!

Back to the good stuff and it’s another Winnie the Pooh movie. Nothing to complain about here, especially since the last Winnie the Pooh movie held the title of best movie in the Disneyathon for a little while until our current reigning champion overthrew it.

So how does this new Winnie the Pooh fare? I think it’s about on par as it’s awfully innocent and cute. It’s also incredibly short, at just over an hour, so it’s a good movie for young kids and it’s so charming that I’m sure even parents or curious adults will like it. If you like a nice story where the characters get into some shenanigans and learn a good moral at the end, then you’re going to love this.

While I personally enjoyed this movie I do have my gripes. I don’t know if the songs were that necessary, but, whatever, they’re fine. I’m very mixed with Jim Cumming’s voice performance for Tigger as he almost crossed into the annoying territory, but he does a great homage to Sterling Holloway’s original Pooh performance. As of now, this is the final 2D animated movie from Walt Disney Animated and it’s one of their weaker ones, animation wise, as you could mistake this for a TV movie. Lastly I think the movie let Owl off way too easily as he unknowingly caused all of the problems in the movie. Look at how much pain you put Eeyore through, when he’s already been through so much!

Short and sweet, this is great, highly recommend it. 8 to 9 out of 10.

2012 gave us Frankenweenie, a remake of a short film from director Tim Burton, who came back to create this new film. He also helped create The Nightmare Before Christmas so we should be in good hands.

I don’t think I need to explain what the inspiration for this movie is as it’s obviously his 2005 film, the Corpse’s Bride. The main guy in that also had big white eyes like the kid in Frankenweenie and they both learn to care for a lovable friendly flesh detaching zombie thing. (I admit when I’m stretching it.)

Actually this movie is more like the Bride of Re-Animator, the sequel to the BC Approved Re-Animator, as the main character is awfully devastated at the death of the love of his life, but in this case a dog. Then the dog is brought back from the dead and the main villain releases a wave of ugly disgusting dead creatures.

I’m not really a pet person, but even I can see this movie is cute. Sparky the undead dog is incredibly innocent and was the star of this movie. I really didn’t care about the main kid as he was boring and doesn’t really have much going for him except he’s an outcast and really loves his dog. Can’t really blame him because the other kids are narcissistic super villains in the making as they always have an evil stare while doing the Mr Burns banging their fingers together. Even when their plan blows up in their face in the finale they can’t help but stroke their massive ego by taking the opportunity to find an alternate way of winning a stupid science fair.

Making this movie black and white was an interesting idea. I liked that the movie started with a kid’s first stop motion movie within a professional stop motion movie. I just like stuff like that, along with some of the references to classic horror movies. Other than that, as someone who admires the type of movies Tim Burton makes, I think this is definitely one of his weaker ones. I’m sure there was some passion in some parts, but most of it felt pretty streamlined. It felt like you could sit it next to any other Disney film and it would blend in seamlessly, unlike his previous movies like Nightmare or even Corpse’s Bride that felt more like a Tim Burton movie.

Overall it’s looks like a Tim Burton movie, but it has the soul of a Disney movie. Not that there is anything wrong with that as it’s still an enjoyable watch, just don’t expect anything amazing from this. 7/10.

My Official Disneyathon Ranking List

Link to Next Part: The Disneyathon Part 20: The Big Hitters!