20 – The Aristocats
I definitely remember seeing 1970s The
Aristocats when I was a kid. I
remember liking it a lot. I have to wonder then, does it still hold
up? Well I can tell you I definitely don't have the same taste that I
did as a kid. I found myself being bored way more often than usual. I
can't say the movie is absolutely terrible, but it's definitely not
even close to good.
The
first character introduced is Madame Adelaide. She is the owner of a
cat and her three kittens. She cares very much for her cats and
really doesn't have anyone else she cares about in the world. She is
also very rich and decides to write a will giving her fortune to her
cats. When her cats die, her fortune will transfer over to her
butler, Edgar. Madame Adelaide isn't a terrible character. She
clearly cares about her cats and shows that a few times throughout
the movie. She really doesn't do anything else though.
Duchess,
her cat, is very sophisticated for a cat. She raises her kittens to
be “aristocats” and teaches them different ways to be cultured
such as painting and music. She doesn't really have too much of a
personality otherwise. Her kittens, Toulouse, Marie and Berlioz also
kind of suffer from a lack of personality. They each have a little
quirk about them that differentiates themselves from each other but
they otherwise don't do anything notable in the story. Things just
sort of happen to these characters and they get bailed out of trouble
by the other characters. I guess you feel a bit bad for them because
they want a father figure in their life but they're so underdeveloped
that it's hard to care.
Their
main source of trouble is the butler, Edgar Balthazar. He is the two
faced butler of Madame Adelaide who overhears that he is to receive
the inheritance after the cats die. Of course, this causes him to go
and kidnap the cats and try to get rid of them. This guy has got to
be one of the worst villains I've ever seen in a movie. He is way too
silly and stupid to be taken seriously. All of his scenes are just
excuses for some slapstick humor and it really gets annoying. He
reminds me a bit of Captain Hook but even he had some anger issues.
Edgar is really just an idiot. Even his reasoning for doing the
things he does is stupid. He knows that he is guaranteed the
inheritance once the cats die but what does he think the cats are
going to do with it? He would obviously have control over it and his
stupid idea that the cats would outlive him is ridiculous.
The
character that actually finds and helps Duchess and her kittens after
they've been left out in the country is the alley cat Thomas
O'Malley. He's probably the first character in this story that
actually has a clear personality. Unfortunately, it's also a really
annoying one, but at this point I'll take it. He's very suave and
charismatic and immediately tries to hit on Duchess when he sees her.
He never really crosses over into sleazy but he gets dangerously
close. He gets along very well with Duchess and her family and that
is actually pretty terrible. Part of why I was so bored with this
movie was because there was absolutely no conflict. These are two
cats from different worlds, they need to have a bit of friction
before we can believe that they belong together. It's nice that he
likes the kittens and they look up to him but there is just no
chemistry between him and Duchess. The one little conflict comes at
the end when Duchess has to choose between him and her home but he
just sort of lets her go without a fight. At least he does stuff.
On top
of all these boring characters they decided to fill time with even
more. There are the two hound dogs, Napoleon and Lafayette, who give
Edgar some grief. They don't do anything. The mouse Roquefort who is
a friend to the cats and goes to get help for them when Edgar gets a
hold of them, but ultimately doesn't really do anything. The two
geese Amelia and Abigail who kind of help the cats get back to Paris
but really weren't needed and don't do anything. And who can forget
the Scat Cat and his friends who are friends with Thomas who sing a
song and then proceed to not do anything.
So
this movie basically doesn't have style or interesting characters
like The Jungle Book. It
doesn't have the compelling plot or great action like One
Hundred One Dalmatians. I'm glad
they had a plot at all but it was so thinly constructed and easily
solved that it didn't benefit the story. There were no stakes at all.
In Dalmatians you
could really feel the tension in all the action scenes. This movie
was just all fluff. It was kind of cute seeing the cats do things
they normally wouldn't like paint or play instruments but it just
seems weird in a story like this. It definitely didn't make me like
the characters more. They really just kept making situations for
musical sequences like The Jungle Book, except
that that story had interesting characters. Not to mention the
musical sequences in this movie are garbage compared to The
Jungle Book. The movie just
didn't feel like it really had heart. You don't care about the
characters cause they haven't really gone through anything. It feels
like they were trying to repeat their success with Dalmatians
but with cats and ended up just
making it feel like a cheap knock off. Worse yet, it's boring.
Tomorrow.
More Animals.
20
down. 33 to go.
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