DVD Review: Waking Sleeping Beauty

Waking Sleeping Beauty is a fascinating documentary about the renaissance of Disney animation that occurred during the 1980s and '90s. Director Don Hahn, who has been involved with the studio in various capacities since the '70s, tells the story through audio interviews from the people who experienced, which he paired with archival footage. Rather than present a glossed-over business biography, Hahn doesn't shy away from the struggles and conflicts that occurred during the transition and presents a rich, compelling story.

After years of mediocrity that saw the studio nearly taken over by corporate raiders and lose talented artists like Don Bluth, 1984 saw Walt's nephew Roy E. Disney bring in two successful movie executives to run the company. Michael Eisner from Paramount became CEO and Frank Wells from Warner Brothers became COO. Roy took over the animation department and Eisner brought in Jeffrey Katzenberg to run the film division.

There were growing pains. At first, the new didn’t bother to understand how the old worked and the old didn’t seem open to new ideas. Katzenberg cut The Black Cauldron and changed the name of The Great Mouse Detective from Basil of Baker Street against animator wishes. There was plenty of blame to go around when neither did as well at the box office as needed, and Bluth's American Tail outperformed the latter.

But as history reveals, Disney's started to climb back up the mountain. They had success with Who Framed Roger Rabbit?; Oliver and Company, which took on Bluth's The Land Before Time; and then 1989's The Little Mermaid was the start of an amazing run. Beauty and the Beast was the first animated film nominated for Best Picture and it should have beaten Silence of the Lambs. Aladdin and The Lion King would also be stellar successes, yet all was not well behind the scenes as Hahn and the participants reveal.

Article Author: El Bicho

El Bicho writes for a number of movie web sites, including Cinema Sentries, which he runs for the geniuses of Forwerd Media. He also occasionally cleans up around here. Follow at twitter.com/ElBicho_CS

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