This started a long time ago. I think Pocahontas was when it first began. Having just revived their classic style (I'm no Disney expert but wasn't there a huge gap between Little Mermaid and their previous true awe-inspiring feature film?), they delivered us the following seemingly-wholesome (albeit templated), tasteful, richly animated and wonderfully scored films:
The Little Mermaid
Beauty and the Beast
Aladdin
The Lion King
Then, they came out with Pocahontas. This movie was idiotic. It was poorly animated -- wasn't this sort of the precursor to their Hercules style? Of course maybe it's just me, because when Pocahontas came out I was finally at that age of no longer only being able to get into G-rated movies. :p I remember I was at Pocahontas, and I saw the preview for Toy Story. There was something smutty in the Toy Story preview that, being an early adolescent, I thought was hilarious and couldn't believe they had done it -- I think it was an adult joke involving Mr. Potato Head and a butt or something...
Now, all of that stuff is funny and great to pre-teens and teens alike, especially now 10 years later when everyone under 30 seems to be a complete idiot. But when you look at it in retrospect and as compared to their ORIGINAL classics and those 4 above-listed new classics, what they are shelling out now is COMPLETELY tasteless. Lame jokes, cheap laughs, fart jokes, etc. I might sound like a broken record since I just complained about this in another thread on here. But I guess they think its ok when there are celebrities doing the voices. Where were the celebrities in those four I mentioned? Huh?
Yes, Pocahontas was the start of the downfall. It might border on the edge of acceptable but in my opinion was very weak. Then they started animating their 4 neo-classics in the form of television cartoons. This convinced them that they could shell out 30 more cartoons per year with ease, and many direct-to-video follow-ups to those neo-classics and neo-not-so-classics. So they started oozing out crap from every orifice possible. They probably didn't even watch it once before they broadcast it, printed it, distributed it, etc.
//edit:
I wanted to add that I did go look up those classics I listed and saw if we had any celebrity voices. Some of the minor characters in the first two included Buddy Hackett, and Angela Lansbury. Here we have true performers. Then in Aladdin we get some Robin Williams, who also has a respectable career behind him. But it is interesting to recall that Gilbert Gottfried was Iago -- that's almost the same to me as having Roseanne Barr voice a Disney cartoon. And, of course, that Steve kid from Full House voiced Aladdin - hardly a household name. Then, Lion King brought in that dumb kid from Home Improvement, Matthew Broderick, and James Earl Jones. So overall, with the exception of Gilbert, when they did use celebrities they were only in minor roles and actually have amazing credits behind them. Pocahontas has Mel Gibson. Obviously the fame these movies was building them taught them and allowed them to use celebrities here and there to bring folks in.
Now fast forward to Home on the Range. Roseanne Barr? Steve Buscemi? Cuba Gooding, Jr.? What in God's name is happening here?
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