34 – The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Today's movie is 1996's The
Hunchback of Notre Dame which,
like Pocahontas, has a
bit of a reputation. It seems to have been better received than
Pocahontas overall by
reviewers when it came out but I don't think I've ever heard anyone
say anything kind about this movie in person. Obviously, I don't know
every person in the world so it's hardly scientific but I did wonder
why this movie either never got mentioned or got so much hate when I
asked people. After watching the movie, and reading some of those
reviews, I have a theory as to why it was so well received at first.
The
story is based on Victor Hugo's novel of the same name. At least,
it's loosely based since it's a Victor Hugo novel, which means that
nearly everyone dies by the end. It begins with a deformed baby whose
mother was killed by the Judge Claude Frollo. He then goes to kill
the baby for being an “unholy demon” but is convinced by the
Archdeacon to atone for his sin of killing an innocent woman by
taking it and raising it himself. He does, however he does it while
convincing the poor boy that he is a monster who should never leave
the Notre Dame bell tower or he will face all the evil people in the
world. Twenty years later, the young man, Quasimodo, dreams of
leaving the bell tower but is afraid of disobeying his master. One
day, he finally decides to leave to join a festival but ends up
getting humiliated by the people. He is saved by a kind gypsy named
Esmerelda and falls in love with her. He then has to help her escape
Frollo, who has also developed a bit of an obsession with her.
Basically, just your average feel good Disney romp for the family...
Quasimodo
has to have the saddest story I've ever heard of for a Disney
protagonist. His mother is killed by Frollo for being a gypsy and is
then almost killed by Frollo only to have him adopt him and raise him
thinking that he's a monster who would never be accepted by society.
You really feel bad for him because despite his awful upbringing he
has developed into a really great person. It's also really hard to
know what he should do since his only attempt to join society ends up
ridiculously badly for him. You still want him to be successful but
it's hard to see how he'll accomplish that. Unfortunately, the story
doesn't focus on his journey nearly enough. It keeps jumping between
him, Frollo being a dick, the boring romance between Esmerelda and
Captain Phoebus, and these idiot gargoyles that Quasimodo is friends
with.
Frollo,
who I think I mentioned is a dick, is the most evil Disney villain
I've ever seen. On top of all the horrible crap he does to Quasimodo,
he's incredibly prejudiced against gypsies and he's absurdly cruel.
He kills people and burns down houses with absolutely no problem. He
gets a weird attraction to Esmerelda but he kind of hates himself for
it because he hates gypsies so much. I appreciate dark villains but
this guy was just so evil that he sort of crosses into ridiculous
sometimes. This happens mostly because of misplaced humor but I'll
get to that later. He is very scary and commands a ton of power. This
is very different from Ratcliffe from Pocahontas. That's
great because when Quasimodo does finally triumph over him, it really
feels like it was a tough battle.
Esmerelda
is a very kind gypsy who offers help to Quasimodo when he gets
humiliated by the villagers. Later, she finds that she needs help
from him to escape Notre Dame and Frollo. She tries to convince
Quasimodo that he isn't a monster and their friendship is a highlight
of the story. Or at least it would be if they spent more than five
minutes on it. She ends up getting a really weird and out of place
romance with one of Frollo's soldiers, Captain Phoebus. Why would
they take focus away from her relationship with Quasimodo? They
needed to make their theme clear, that what's inside a person is much
more important than what's outside.
Captain
Phoebus is just a cookie cutter hero that you can see in countless
other Disney movies. He falls for Esmerelda immediately and
disapproves of Frollo killing innocent people. I will give him credit
in that I never felt like he was only disobeying Frollo for
Esmerelda's sake. Otherwise he's kind of a boring hero at best and at
worst he takes focus away from the real hero, Quasimodo. I really
feel like they just needed a good looking hero to make the movie more
palatable.
This
movie goes back to an old tradition of Disney I haven't seen for
awhile; horrible side characters. Victor, Hugo (HAHA, get it??) and
Laverne are three gargoyle friends of Quasimodo who help convince him
to join the Festival of Fools in the beginning of the movie. They are
otherwise totally pointless and only pop up to spout off some
inappropriate jokes. They're there to lighten the mood because the
story is so dark but it just feels awkward when they pop up and start
complaining about pigeons when people are DYING. They had some humor
between Quasimodo and Phoebus that I think worked really well and
they could have had more of that, rather than waste time with these
guys. Clopin is the narrator of the story and leader of the gypsies.
He sings a bunch of songs and is actually fairly interesting but they
don't do much with him. Djali is Esmerelda's completely pointless pet
goat. Finally, the archdeacon is the one who saves Quasimodo as a
baby and tries to uphold justice against Frollo. He grants Esmerelda
sanctuary in the church from Frollo and tells her to pray for help.
If one
thing is undeniably great about this movie, it's the animation. The
shots of Notre Dame and Paris are just beautiful. The music really
isn't bad either but the story was so weak, the music suffered. When
Esmerelda sing-prays to God it just feels out of place and strange.
That religious angle definitely comes from the source material but it
feels so random and out of place in this version. The songs are
mostly, and fittingly, dark except one really pointless one by the
gargoyles. I can't really say much more. The music isn't terrible but
they really didn't know what they wanted to say.
The
major theme of this movie was that a person can't be judged on their
appearance. Quasimodo was the biggest example of that but Esmerelda
fit as well since she was a kindhearted gypsy which didn't fit with
the way most people thought of gypsies. Frollo also fits since he was
supposed to be a Judge but isn't exactly fair about who he punishes.
Phoebus even fits since he's supposed to be a Captain that only
follows orders but goes against them for justice. They then tried to
fit in that awkward romance between Esmerelda and Phoebus. They made
this weird internal battle for Frollo about being attracted to
Esmerelda. I don't think that Quasimodo and Esmerelda needed to end
up together but they really needed to explore their friendship more.
On top of that, the random humor just feels so out of place. It
doesn't mix well like they mixed the darkness and humor of Beauty
and the Beast. I get it, it's
hard to adapt a super dark story like this and make it kid friendly
too. The result they got was just bi-polar and it feels like it
doesn't commit one way or the other.
So why
was it well received if it is such a mess of a movie? Well, I could
be wrong. If I'm not, however, I think that the themes it deals with
were just brand new to people for a kid's movie. You can forgive it's
shortcomings if it, at least, tries to say something new that we
haven't heard before. I think it's just a weak story that doesn't
deal with the issues it chose very well. The problem isn't that the
movie is dark, for me, the problem is that the movie doesn't feel
sincere. I feel like a group of people just sat around with a copy of
Victor Hugo's novel, added a bunch of characters to make the movie
more kid friendly, wrote the story, then stuck a bunch of “funny”
scenes in between to make it less depressing. The movie should have
focused on Quasimodo and his struggle to prove that he is a good
person. I think it did that, to an extent, but got filled in with
needless gargoyles, a half baked romance and a borderline cartoonish
villain.
34
down. 19 to go.
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