The Aristocats (1970)

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

It's pre-war Paris. Duchess is a well groomed cat with three kittens; Marie, Berlioz, and Toulouse. Man servant Edgar overhears their loving elderly owner Madame Adelaide Bonfamille changing her will. She plans to leave her estate to the cats with Edgar as her heir after the cats' death. He decides to abandon the cats in the country. Stray cat Thomas O'Malley falls for Duchess and leads the family back to Paris.The song and music is big band and jazzy. It's the waning years of old school Disney animation. It is fun and light but lacks any long-lasting drama. The old school feel fits the time period and setting of the story. It doesn't have the big iconic tune although a couple of them are pretty catchy. The cats are cute. Edgar is a functional villain but the movie needs a more immediate villain in the middle while he is separated from the cats. There should be an animal villain hunting the family to heighten the drama. There is a stretch between being abandoned and returning to face Edgar where the movie lacks any tension. In any case, the movie has a good nature light fluffiness that is quite appealing.

When a very rich Parisian lady decides to leave all her assets to her cats, her jealous butler decides to make them disappear so he could have it all. Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, it features a soundtrack composed by George Bruns.We are probably facing one of the most underrated films of Disney Studios. It has a simple script, based on an inheritance dispute between a butler and a family of cats. The voice actors are good and the work of designers is great. The use of softer tones, combined with a firm but discreet pencil, make it very elegant and charming. The film has some important moral messages: the union of the family, as well as help to those in peril, are values ​​visible in the way the cats help each other. On the other hand, the adverse consequences that the butler suffers show the children the punishment for his envy and greed. In the film, the "dating" between Duchess and O'Malley recalls the dating scenes made twenty years earlier for "The Lady and the Tramp".One of the most appreciated features of this film is the soundtrack, which contains a number of interesting musical moments, from the song of Siamese cats to the song that kittens sing at the piano. But the most striking piece is "Everybody wants to be a cat." It comes near the climax and it's a very fun jazz, played by the stray cats.

NOTE: This film was recommended to me by Lizz Rutter for "Steve Pulaski Sees It." Disney's The Aristocats is such a charming, almost compelling story that I wished the narrative didn't need to interrupt itself so sporadically with jazz-fueled musical numbers amongst not only cats, but dogs and a variety of other animals. The musical interjections, that push this Disney film over the edge into being a full-blown musical like most of their films in this respective era, unfortunately disrupts the magic these feline characters manage to conjure up when they are just trying to sift their way through their poor circumstance.The result, as one can expect, is a film that you say "aww" to over a dozen times and a film that has you either tapping your foot or rocking your legs in melodic harmony with the music. The Aristocats is a simplistic story, concerning a wealthy woman named Madame Adelaide (voiced by Hermione Baddeley) in 1910 Paris that has just signed a will granting her lavish estate to her cat Dutchess (Eva Gabor) and her three kittens. This move greatly upsets her jealous, hot-headed English butler Edgar (Roddy Maude-Roxby), who has slaved away at serving Madame Adelaide for years and has ostensibly gotten nothing in return. As a result, Edgar conjures up a plan to get rid of the cats so when Adelaide dies, he can inherit the estate. He rounds up the four cats and throws them into the street, where the four homebody felines must learn to survive in order to be reconnected with their Madame.On the long, rainy, and uncertain road back home, Duchess meets a gentle feral cat named Thomas O'Malley (Phil Harris), who has been living off the land for many years. O'Malley is kind to Duchess, as he recognizes their predicament, but most important to note is how well he responds to her kittens, playing with them and assisting them whenever they need it. Both him and Duchess strike up an affable relationship as the gang tries to get back home, but not without a few musical numbers slowing them down along the way.The Aristocats, in a strange way, could almost be seen as a parable for single parent-dating or "getting back out there," especially for a woman who has children, which is no easy process. The film showcases such a challenge with admirable conviction and a willingness to have long stretches without musical numbers or any kind of distractions in order to allow this relationship to build. For an animated film in the modern day, even some of the best ones stamped with the Disney or Disney Pixar approval can't help but feel a bit scatterbrained in some sense, stepping over their toes to try and cover all the bases in subplots, character relations, and cause-and-effect relationships that are questionably worthy of being a focus in said film.The Aristocats was birthed in a time when animation took a more relaxed and reserved approach, which is why we could see Duchess, O'Malley, and Duchess's kittens do everything from hop aboard a train to meet two snobby swans in a river below a bridge. This kind of fluid, real-time focus on the characters makes the process and narrative development all the more natural. Of course, the film cuts back to Madame Adelaide desperately trying to find her cats, along with Edgar's conniving plan to make sure the furry beasts will never come home, and the jazzy musical numbers occasionally get in the way of a film that's already extremely short (a mere seventy-eight minutes). However, nothing truly distracts from The Aristocats being simple, effervescent entertainment with a plethora of fun characters, a timely moral, and, okay, some pretty catchy jazz numbers as well.Voiced by: Edna Gabor, Phil Harris, Hermione Baddeley, and Roddy Maude-Roxby. Directed by: Wolfgang Reitherman.

With the help of a smooth talking tomcat (Phil Harris), a family of Parisian felines set to inherit a fortune from their owner try to make it back home after a jealous butler kidnaps them and leaves them in the country.This film may have been great in its day, but it just does not hold up well. The plot is pretty basic (almost non-existent), the characters are just average, with the male lead being incredibly sexist (and the female lead somehow enjoying it). The father of the kittens is never explained, and leads the viewer to imagine the horrible circumstances that lead to their birth...The music is alright, and the voice talent is very good (with many returning for the superior "Rescuers"). There is never a bad time for Scatman Crothers. But the film does not age that great, and if it were to be remade would require quite the makeover for Thomas O'Malley.