Sleeping Beauty (Disney)

Buy This Item Sleeping Beauty (Disney) by American Broadcasting Company (ABC)  Available from Amazon  $26.99  on 7-17-2008     Disney's 1959 animated effort was the studio's most ambitious to date, a widescreen spectacle boasting a gorgeous waltz-filled score adapting Tchaikovsky. In the 14th century, the malevolent Maleficent (not dissimilar to the wicked Queen in Disney's <I>Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs</I>) taunts a king that his infant Aurora will fatally prick her finger on a spinning wheel before sundown on her 16th birthday. This, of course, would deny her a happily-ever-after with her true love. Things almost but not quite turn out that way, thanks to the assistance of some bubbly, bumbling fairies named Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather. It's not really all that much about the title character--how interesting can someone in the middle of a long nap be, anyway? Instead, those fairies carry the day, as well as, of course, good Prince Phillip, whose battle with the malevolent Maleficent in the guise of a dragon has been co-opted by any number of animated films since. See it in its original glory here. And Malificent's castle, filled with warthogs and demonic imps in a macabre dance celebrating their evil ways, manages a certain creepy grandeur. <I>--David Kronke</I> Reader Reviews The movie is cute, but I have a few problems with it that ultimately made me decide not to buy it after I rented it: 1) It's too much like one of Tchaikovsky's ballets, of which I'm not much of a fan. I haven't seen his version of Sleeping Beauty (on which this was based), but I have seen his version of The Nutcracker; if you like to watch ballet, you might enjoy this one, but otherwise, no. It is not the kind of thing I would expect from a Disney movie. 2) We don't see enough of Aurora or Prince Phillip. (In fact, it seems that Aurora is better known through Disney Princess products than through the actual movie.) We see them dance together one time, and then they don't do much after that. OK, we can forgive the fact that Aurora sleeps on the job (which is really what she's doing; the original tale had her sleep for a hundered years and not meet the prince until he woke her up), because it is, after all, Sleeping Beauty. But even when Phillip is trying to rescue her, he's just a paper tiger; the fairies do all the work by releasing him from his prison, giving him a sword and shield, turning the arrows that are shot at him into flowers, etc. It's really the fairies who rescue her, while the prince gets all the credit--and no one in the movie notices this! Again, this is not what I expect to see in a Disney movie. Still, it's interesting to watch from the point of view of a student of animation. Fans of Nintendo will notice how much the castle looks like the castle from Super Mario Bros. and how much one of Maleficent's henchmen looks like Ganon (the villain from The Legend of Zelda). If you want a better movie with a similar concept, try Snow White. If you want one of Disney's movies from around that time, try Cinderella. My absolute favorite Disney Movie is The Little Mermaid; if you haven't already, I recommend that you buy that one instead.

Sleeping Beauty (Disney) Available from Amazon Price: $26.99 Updated on 7-17-2008.

SPONSORED LINKS