Friday, February 26, 2016

"Hercules," "Tarzan," and "The Lion King" (Thing 1)

We watched "Hercules," "Tarzan," and "The Lion King." It gave us the chance to review and compare three different musical Disney movies.

All of the movies had certain things in common: Musical numbers; some sort of conniving villain; quirky side characters; humor; some tragic event that heavily influences the protagonist in his actions; and a timeline that follows the main character from him as a baby, to a young child, and then as an adult.

But though each movie had all of these things, some of them had better versions of it than others. My favorite parts of "Hercules" were the characters. They all had their funny moments, villain included, and personalities that felt more unique rather than a copy of other Disney characters. My favorite character was Hades, just because he was an antagonist that cracked me up, like Lucifer from "Supernatural."

The best part of "Tarzan" was the overall story. It wasn't your usual "quest for something" plot, but a more interesting approach to bridging two different worlds. I liked the different relationships between all of the characters as well as being pleasantly surprised about what would happen next. I've seen all of these movies before, but it's been so long since I've seen them, I didn't remember everything about them. However, with the other two, it was fairly easy to predict what the next plot twist would be. I didn't feel like that with "Tarzan."

And then I loved the music in "The Lion King" best. It was catchy, fun, but avoided most of the normal cheese that you can expect in a Disney movie. My favorite songs were "Hakuna Matata" and "Can You Feel the Love Tonight."

For movies that are pretty short (some of them not even hitting the hour and a half mark), they do a good job of carrying out an interesting story. I recommend all of them.


2 comments:

Dr. Mark said...

You just described virtually every family film Disney has ever released in the history of time. The best ones are just the most clever. I liked your different take on Tarzan. I suppose that backdrop makes the overall story a bit more interesting.

Boquinha said...

Wow. VERY nice compare and contrast review! I like the list of common threads you saw in all the movies and I liked hearing your take on what you liked. I prefer Tarzan's music to Lion King's, but it may be because there was definitely a period of overplay of TLK music on the radio for us back in the 90s! I remember thinking that it was right around Aladdin/Beauty and the Beast/The Lion King that Disney movies started getting better. Of course now there's Pixar, which blows everyone else out of the water practically. Great review. I like hearing what you see/think. :)