Thumbelina

This movie has some special nostalgic value for me. It was the first movie I ever saw in theaters. My mom, my late grandmother, and I were the only three there. I am not making that up. In hindsight that should have been a clue to get the heck out of Dodge, but I was only four at the time so I thought movie theaters were supposed to be like that. Because of this I decided that if I ever have kids, I am going to make sure the first movie they see in theaters is that year’s Disney canon feature, or Pixar, or something that would be remembered by the general public for longer than five minutes. That’s enough tales of yesteryear, and now on with the review.

The movie opens up, curiously enough, in Paris. Since this is based on a story by a Danish author, shouldn’t they be in Denmark? I guess I will let this slide, as the movie’s location is the least of its problems. We see an obnoxious singing bird with an equally obnoxious French accent flying through the sky and getting a little bit too close to the camera. As he flies through a horribly dated CG model of the city he sings about how to “Follow Your Heart” whatever the heck that means.

This character is named Jacquimo and he will serve as the story’s narrator. Hurray! He flies into a library and watches a tiny girly-pink book of Thumbelina open. He goes through the story’s prologue. There is this lady (who doesn’t have a name) whose biological clock is ticking away. Since she has no husband and having one night stands until she gets pregnant is out of the question, she visits a good witch that gives her a seed. When this seed is planted, a flower grew and a tiny teenage girl voiced by Jodi Benson popped out. Totally unfazed by this, the woman names her Thumbelina. The good news is that the nameless mother doesn’t have to deal with dirty diapers, spit up, and crying at 3 a.m. The bad news is that she is going to get all of the hormones and none of the cute.

The next day (?) she is on the farm with her mom and all the ugly farm animals sing the first of many annoying songs this movie has in store (seriously this song used “big” to rhyme with itself three times). When that totally pointless scene ended, we see the mother reading a bedtime story to Thumbelina. She becomes completely fascinating with the fairies she was hearing about, and asking her mother questions like “why do they have wings?” and “have you ever seen a fairy before?” When her mother sends her to bed, Thumbie asks to leave the book open. She then sings, yet another stupid song, about how she wishes that she will meet the man of her dreams soon. She follows it up by asking herself “I wonder if there are such things as fairies”.

What a coinkydink, there are fairies! And they are flying around makes to plants change colors for the fall, just like in Fantasia! We see the Fairy King and Queen and they notice their son is missing from his butterfly steed. The King is not too concerned, for some reason, but the Queen is. She knows he is off riding his bumble bee again. Because nothing says “bad boy” better than riding on a bumble jacket. Prince Cornelius happens to ride past Thumbelina’s window and thinks she is so beautiful he has to go inside and invite her for a ride on his bee. They break into (surprise, surprise) another song, only this time the song is mediocre instead of god-awful. They ride through a horribly animated CG pond where she blows a kiss to a toad dressed as a harlequin. When they get out of ear shot, the toad turns to his mother and says “I love her.” Prince Cornelius gets her safely home, gives her his ring, and promises to see her tomorrow so she can meet his parents (a little earlier for that, isn’t it). He leaves and she goes to bed.

This dude broke an entry and vandalized her book. Seems like a jerk to me.

Looks like paper cut outs on a bunch of plastic.

Oh snap, what is this? Someone breaks in and kidnaps Thumbelina as she is snoozing in her walnut shell bed. The family dog, Hero, wakes up and tries to stop the attacker. This leads to a Tom & Jerry style slapstick filled chase. Unfortunately Hero is unable to get Thumbelina back. The next morning the mother and all the ugly farm animals are sad about their loss. Prince Cornelius shows up with a buttload of gifts for Thumbelina (seriously if some guy I knew for a day was giving me that much stuff I would take that as a serious sign of desperation). He sees that her room has been ransacked and he asks Hero what had happened. Hero explains that she has been kidnapped by a toad. The Prince heads off to go find her. Did I forget to mention that Hero can’t talk? Well he can’t and Prince Corny can understand dog speak. So, yeah…

Is is just me or does this fellow look like the forgotten love child of Yosemite Sam and Goofy?

Back at the ‘80’s CG swamp, Thumbelina just wakes up, because apparently being kidnapped didn’t shake her up enough to keep her awake. She is greeted by a Spanish-speaking toad with the hair of Marie Antoinette and the melons of Jessica Rabbit. She introduces her three clownish sons. Somehow Thumbelina ends up telling Mama Toad that she is going to marry the Prince of the Fairies. As you can probably imagine this leads to another annoying musical number about how she shouldn’t marry him, but this time it starts with some very intelligent words from our heroine: “Oh dear”. Mama Toad wants Thumbelina to marry her son, Grundel, so she can perform in their traveling show and make some big time moolah. For some reason they leave her on a lily pad as Mama Toad and her sons take off in a boat. Not the smartest move in the world, but then again they are animals that wouldn’t recognize a fly unless it was buzzing around so we can’t expect too much from them.

Oh, no. Remember that annoying Jacquimo from the intro was reading the book to us? He’s back! I am not sure if we are supposed to believe this story is based on “true” events or if he is just reading a self-insert fanfic of his. He flies (?!) underwater to detach the lily pad from the bottom of the pond. She floats along the pond and comes to “giant” waterfall (which I am sure in reality is only a foot tall). Since Jacquimo is too stupid to pick her up and carry her to safety, she has to rely on a bunch of annoying looking bugs and a fish with a funny moo-stash to save her.

Once she is saved she longs to find her way back home, only she has no idea where she is at. I will give you three guesses on what that prompts. If you said another song, you are right. Remember that song Jacquimo was singing at the beginning? Of course you don’t. He begins singing the full version of “Follow Your Heart” right now. This honestly went on for way too long.

Back at the Fairy Kingdom, Cornelius is pleading with his father to delay the start of winter so he can look for Thumbelina. Apparently in this universe autumn lasts only one day. Either that or we are expected to believe Thumbelina has been gone for three months already. The Prince rides off on the search for his fiancée he knew for less than 24 hours.

After that very brief scene, we are back at the pond. This time it is traditionally animated because I guess the movie got sick of its own pointless CG. Grundel is sad that Thumbelina had left him. His brothers show up to tease him about how he is going to be the laughing stalk of the pond and how his woman dumped him for a fairy prince. He is determined to get her back and storms off.

And after that very brief scene, we see Thumbelina merrily skip along with three bug children with all of a sudden a beetle with the voice of Gilbert Gottfried jumps out and says “Heya Toots!” Just as a side note, I distinctly remember being in the theaters and shouting “That’s Iago!” Remember there was nobody in the theater other than me, my mom, and my grandma so I could yell out whenever I felt like it. Anyways, back to business, this beetle gets uncomfortably close to Thumbelina, kissing her arm, and feeling her up with his antenna. They make a deal if he flies her to the top of the tree (so she can see her house), she would go to the Beetle Ball with him. He tricks her and just takes her straight there.

"Aflac!" 

 At the Beetle Ball, one of the most ungodly annoying songs is playing. Trust me; just hit the fast forward button on this one unless you want it to be stuck in your head for the next six to eight weeks. Anyways Thumbelina is dressed as a bug and everyone in the audience is going ga ga over her. Even the girls want her. Her bug suit comes off and everyone reacts with disgust and horror. She is upset because she thinks she is ugly. *Fades to black*

The bug children she was with earlier are running to get help from someone, presumably from somebody who is old enough to use the big kid potty. Then Grundel hops down and blocks their path. The youngest kid spills the beans on where the Beetle took Thumbelina. The kids manage to escape and Grundel knows he has to go after the Beetle.

I am pretty sure that kid on the right is Jiminy Cricket in drag. 

After that incident takes place, Thumbelina is outside crying over the fact a bunch of insects called her ugly. Jacquimo shows up and tells her that as long as the Prince thinks she is beautiful than that is all that really matters. Instead of asking him to fly her home like a person of normal intelligence would do, she asks him to look for the Vale of the Fairies where Cornelius lives. It is nighttime so they just go to bed. The next morning Jacquimo asks an anthropomorphic rabbit that is being chased by an anthropomorphic fox where the Vale of the Fairies is. When both of them tell him screw off, he gets thrown in a sticker bush and gets a thorn stuck in his wing. He is still able to fly but he knows he has to hurry because winter is coming.

We then see Cornelius calling out her name as he rides along on his bee. The bee leads him to where all the ugly bug people are hanging out. The same kid with the big mouth tells him what has happened to Thumbelina. He rides off to find her, but he just happens to ride past Grundel and Beetle having a little tiff. They come to the conclusion that if they capture the Prince and use him as bait she would come to them. Grundel tears off the Beetle’s wings and says that he can only have them back if he comes back with the Prince. The Beetle sets off but winter has suddenly begun and everything is covered in ice and snow.

Cornelius is riding along when his bee gets pelted by a hail stone. He crashes into a pond and gets frozen into a block of ice with only a finger (and not that finger) poking through. It just so happens that Beetle and his friends are walking by and they see him. They cut him out and bring him back to Grundel. By a total coincidence they go past an old shoe that Thumbelina was sleeping in. She cries as she worries that she will never get back home. The scene transitions to her mother (better late than never I always say) singing this film’s 100^th crappy song. Honestly, it wasn’t that bad and it was nice to see what her mother again. At least she is a normal human and not a butt-ugly animal like 99% of this film’s characters are.

After that three minute scene is done with, we see Thumbelina waking up in the home of a mouse. And this is an annoying as heck mouse. Ms. Field Mouse knows a lot about Thumbelina and blurts out that the prince is “dead” in a very insensitive manner. This gets the attention of the Beetle who is spying on the house from outside. Ms. Field Mouse thinks it would be good to take Thumbelina to see Mr. Mole down the tunnel. Mousie tells Thumbelina to tell a story to Mr. Mole. Not any old story, but a sad love story. And don’t just tell it, but sing it. One bad musical number later, Mr. Mole decides to show them what he found when he was out on his daily stroll: a dead bird. Huzzah! Break out the champagne and party hats, ‘cause Jacquimo is dead! As Thumbelina mourns the loss of her fallen friend, Mr. Mole turns to Ms. Field Mouse. He tells her how he wishes he had a wife because he is “lonely for companionship” (eww). Ms. F.M. is flattered by this because she thinks he is referring to her. When she found out he was talking about Thumbelina, she only agreed when he said he will pay her handsomely.

The Beetle brings the Princesicle to Grundel. He is actually relieved that he is “dead” and is pleased to know that the Beetle knows where Thumbelina is. The two leave the frozen Cornelius pop behind as they head off for Mr. Mole’s. The bug children show up to build a fire to thaw out the Prince.

Back to the Mouse House, we see Mrs. Field Mouse trying to convince Thumbelina that she is the perfect match for Mr. Mole. Then comes the worst song ever in the whole history of mankind: “Marry the Mole”. This song is so bad that it won a Golden Raspberry Award. So far it is the only time an animated movie ever won this dubious prize, and it is only one out of three to ever be nominated in any category (The Hunchback of Notre Dame was nominated for “worse written film grossing over $100 million” and Eight Crazy Nights was nominated for Adam Sandler as Worst Actor).

If anyone puts on a pin cushion and begins to sing a song about marrying an insectivore who is old enough to be your grandfather: run. Run fast, run far.  

Assuming you survived that musical number with the majority of your brain cells intact, we cut back to Jacquimo’s lifeless corpse. But unfortunately he isn’t dead at all, he was just knocked out. She tells him that she is going to marry the mole since her prince is “dead”. She pulls the thorn out of his wing and is somehow as good as new. Meanwhile with the insect preschoolers, they build a fire to thaw out Cornelius. At the Mole’s place Thumbelina is getting married to him. When it gets to be her turn to say “I do” she shouts “Never!” and storms out. Just then Grundel jumps down and tells her to marry him. Then the Beetle shows up with a “Heya toots!” Fortunately for our titular character Corny shows up in the nick of time to save her from the menagerie of grotesque animals chasing after her. As she makes her escape to above ground, he falls to his doom while fighting Grundle.

I will not tell a lie. I was hoping that finger was going to snap off.

I guess the Pippi Longstocking look is in this year.

This is as much testosterone this movie ever has.

Above ground, she finds Jacquimo who takes her to the Vale of the Fairies. It looks like nothing out of the ordinary, but the French turkey makes her sing. Her singing was the key that unlocks springtime, and to the surprise of no one, Corny Cornelius is still alive. They kiss and she grows her very own wings. We see their wedding with the fairies, her mother, the ugly farm animals, and the bugs attending. They ride off on his bee, and they lived happily ever after. The End.

"They grow up so fast. It seems like only three days ago she hatched."

The Pros:

• Nothing. I got nothing.

The Cons:

• More obnoxious sidekicks than you can shake a stick at.
• Each musical number was more annoying and/or more pointless than the last.
• Very obvious Disney cash in.
•  Horribly dated CG effects. If they look this bad now, they must have not looked that great to begin with.
• Way too many plot holes. Like how did the toads know where she lived? Why do the seasons only last one day? Why didn't that stupid bird fly her home in the first place?
• The excessive use of Disney voice actors. We had Ariel in the title role, King Triton as the Fairy King, and Iago as the Beetle. There may have been others I am missing.

Overall I give it * out of *****. 

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

I decided it would be good to kick things off with a review of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, since it was the first animated movie…kind of. It was the first animated movie in the English speaking world, the first in color, the first with synchronized sound, the first to be 100% traditionally animated, but it was not the first animated movie, period. That honor would belong to The Apostle, a 1917 cutout animated movie from Argentina. It is now considered lost. The oldest surviving animated film is The Adventures of Prince Achmed from Germany in 1926.  And that concludes our animation history lesson for today.

Just in case you are one of maybe five or so people who are old enough to read, but are still scratching your head thinking “Who is this White Snow you speak of?”, I will go through the plot. The movie opens with a queen asking her magic mirror to tell her who is the fairest in the land. Instead of it saying “you, of course”, it tells her that there is someone fairer. It then proceeds to describe this individual as having “lips as red as a rose, hair as black as ebony, skin white as snow”. Since there is apparently only one human being on the entire planet that fits that description the Queen lets out a gasp “Snow White!”

We then cut to a scene of Snow White cleaning the stairs. Although she is the Queen’s step daughter and a princess she is forced to dress in rags and do chores because apparently the Queen must not have any servants or something. As she is singing a song with her animal friends Prince Charming scales the fence just to see who is doing the singing. Snow White is unsurprisingly frightened by this and flees to her bedroom. But don’t worry. Once he starts singing, she decides that he is Mr. Right despite the fact she doesn't know his name.

            










The Queen decides that Snow White must be killed for her heinous crime of being more beautiful than she. In order to do the deed she gets her Huntsman to take Snow White in the forest to be killed and to bring her heart back in a box. Considering this is a fancy wooden box with a symbol of dagger going through a heart, I suspect that she must have this done often. Her bedroom probably has a collection of dozens of rotting human hearts from all the people who ever p.o.’d her in any way over the years. Pleasant dreams tonight kiddies!

            The Huntsman takes her out to pick flowers. He then sneaks up behind her but was too mesmerized by her hotness and couldn't do it. He tells her to run away and never come back. She obeys and enters the forest made of bad acid trips. When she collapses with fear, the animals come out to cheer her up. This is strange, because in my experience rabbits, deer, squirrels, and other various woodland animals run away from humans. Maybe this only happens in medieval Germany or something.

       











The creatures help her find a place to stay by taking her to a house secluded in the middle of the woods. Snow White sees nothing out of the ordinary despite she has to crouch to fit through the front door. She believes that the house belongs to seven orphans. Since the house is an absolute pigsty, the first thing she does is clean it up. This scene gets a lot of flak from feminists that say it is sexist. They think the way she cleans and sings a happy song about it is a message to little girls that it is your place to do housework and you are going to love it. I personally don’t see a problem with it. I always just thought she was doing it to be kind and was naturally a bit of a neat freak.

"Breaking an entry is fun"

            

          As all of that is going on we see the Dwarves Dwarfs working in their diamond mine. Their names are Grumpy, Sneezy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Dopey, and Doc. And it is painfully obvious who is who. I must point out that this mine is bursting at the seams with pre-cut gems the size of apples right on the surface, but the little guys are digger even deeper. Just…why?

            Before we go any deeper, there is something I must say: when I was little I was borderline obsessed with Dopey. I had a Dopey sweatshirt, Dopey doll, Dopey watch, a crazy straw with a little figurine of Dopey on it, not to mention all the other Snow White themed stuff I had that featured him. Also I was him for Halloween one year. I am not making that up. I am not sure why I liked him. Maybe I liked the way he never talked.  Okay personal insight on my childhood memories is over and we can get back to the story.

Doc went to college to avoid all the hard labor. In unrelated news Dopey looks like he has been living up to his name again.

This section would not be complete without this image

            Meanwhile at Casa del Dwarf Snow White decides to venture upstairs. Giving the condition the kitchen and living room were in, I would be a tad leery to venture upstairs, but then again that’s just me. She sees the Dwarfs’ beds with their names on it. When she gets to Dopey she bursts out laughing. Clearly she found the egregious use of 1930’s slang in a timeless fairy tale as amusing as I did…wait…hold on a second. What was that? Dopey, Sneezy, and Happy have their beds pushed together. Like with no space in between them. Sneezy has to crawl across one of the other guys to get into his bed. Okay…Anyway, Snow White decides that this is the place to lie down and go to sleep despite the fact I am sure Sneezy’s bed is filled with used snot rags.

I guess what happens at the Dwarfs' Cottage, stays at the Dwarfs' Cottage.

            The Dwarfs come marching home to see that the lights are on and the chimney is smoking. Suspecting trouble must be brewing they approach with great caution. Upon entering the house they elect Dopey to be the Guinea pig to investigate what is upstairs. Once he sees Snow White in their beds, he is terrified and bolts down the stairs. He is so frightened he even uses his vocal cords. On the way out the door he gets mixed up in a bunch of pots and pans and the other guys mistaken him for a monster. After beating the crap out of him for a couple of minutes Doc exclaims “Hold on there. It’s only Dopey!” Dopey uses elaborate game of charades to which Doc takes to mean that there is a monster in the bedroom.

I think what Dopey is saying is that there is a girl in his
bed, but I suppose the monster thing is more believable.

            The Dwarfs plan to attack by sneaking up with their pickaxes ready to go. Thankfully Doc had the sense of pulling back the bed sheets before they did anything. They saw that there wasn’t a monster at all, but a girl. When she began to stir they hid behind the bed. She looked up and reacted with the same amount of horror I would have if I woke up and realized I was being watched by seven old guys. But her horror turns to amusement when she realizes that what she thought were child sized chairs and beds were actually owned by little men. This prompts a guessing game where she tries to figure out who was who. If I were the Dwarfs I would have totally trolled her. Like Happy needs to start yawning, Bashful needs to start sneezing, and someone needs to light up a joint (Snow White: “You must be Dopey!”).

This is actually Walt Disney's favorite gag from the movie.

            After the formalities are over, it is time for dinner. Being the uncouth swine that they are, the Dwarfs dive in like dogs that haven’t eaten in month. Snow White makes them go outside to wash since they were dirty and smelly. For some odd reason they have at least seven bars of soap even though they act as if basic hygiene is total enigma to them. Grumpy, the He-Man Woman Hater, refuses to let a female tell him what to do, just makes fun and laughs at the other guys. Doc says not to listen to “that old warthog” and Grumpy replies that “you nanny goats make me sick”. I am guessing these must be vile obscenities in the Dwarf community. This leads to a bunch of wacky shenanigans such as the other guys putting bows in his beard and drenching him in perfume (one question: Where did they get that stuff from?) not to mention Dopey accidentally ingesting a bar of soap.

This doesn't need one of my dry remarks to be funny. 

"Hey Doc, want to play doctor?"

            We cut back to the Queen’s castle where she is showing the Mirror “Snow White’s” heart in a box. After the Mirror reveals that the Huntsman gave her the slip, she goes psycho. Throwing all rational thought out of the window, she goes to her secret evil lab to transform herself into a hag. This is different than the original story where she merely dresses like a peddler woman. My guess is that they did not want to portray Snow White as a bloody moron who can’t see through her step-mother’s paper thin disguise. Since Snow White deserves a fate worse than death for her abomination against society, the witch decides that a sleeping death would be most appropriate. That way the Dwarfs would bury her alive and she would suffocate to death.

            










Back at Chez Dwarf, the little men decide to through a party for Snow White. Dopey gets on top of Sneezy to make a size appropriate dance partner for Snow White. The party comes to an end when Sneezy lets out one of his infamous sneezes (seriously dude, take a Zyrtec). The Dwarfs ask to hear a song from Snow White. She sings the famous Someday My Prince Will Come. This is very hypnotic to the Dwarfs, who except for Grumpy, were in a dream like state.

Ah, yes. It just wouldn't be 1937 without jokes about ethnic stereotypes. 

My guess is that Sneezy was on top last night. 

 Luckily for her, she finished her song just before the alarm to go to bed went off. They thought it would be nice to allow her to have the bedroom upstairs while they stay downstairs. This leads to a totally pointless fight over a pillow that was on a bench. They could have grabbed their pillows from upstairs and let Snow White use that one. Do you guys seriously want your princess resting her head against Sneezy’s snot and drool soaked pillow? I didn’t think so.   

I get the feeling that this is not an uncommon occurrence.

We cut to a brief scene of the witch lacing an apple with the poison. She walks further down in her lair to get on a boat to get out. I noticed she has lots of skeletons hanging around. Who were these people? Snow White’s father? The previous Fairest in the Land? Lord Starchbottem? (Seriously if you have not seen The 7D on Disney XD you should check it out. I know it looks god-awful, but if you pretend that they are different characters that happen to have the same names as the Dwarfs it ain’t half bad).

            The next morning the Dwarfs leave for work and warn Snowy to not let any strangers in. She kisses each one of them on the head. Grumpy realizes that he truly does care for her, but he has to put on his tough guy exterior, lest anyone else knows he has a soft side. There is something that I need to point out, and I might ruin a few childhoods in the process. You have been warned. I know it was totally innocent, but Dopey wants Snow White to kiss him on the lips. Not only that, but he seemed way too aroused by the kiss on the head he received from a 14-year-old! So yeah…let’s move on.

Dopey you sick freak.

            S.W. is now home alone baking pies for the Dwarfs when Witchie Poo shows up. The animal friends immediately know something is fishy, and attack the witch. Snow White figures that someone that ugly can’t be evil and scolds the critters. They know that there is only one thing they can do at this point: get the Dwarfs. The movie keeps switching back and forth between the witch convincing Snow White to eat the apple and the animals convincing the Dwarfs to get back to the cottage. Sleepy rather nonchalantly states that the Queen must have Snow White. The fact that Sleepy can understand animal talk and acts like he couldn’t care less has me nonplussed.

            











The Dwarfs begin to panic, but it was Grumpy of all people who leads the charge. Mounting deer like horses they take off to the cottage. They get there just in time to see the Witch leave (which begs the question how did they know she was the Queen in disguise?). They chase her up the side of a hill where she gets trapped. She decides to roll a boulder on them, but fortunately for our minute heroes a random bolt of lightning strikes the cliff she is standing on and she falls to her doom.

            Unfortunately it was too late for Snow White. She ate the apple and fell into a coma. The Dwarfs apparently could not tell the difference between someone that was sleeping and a dead person (looks like Doc better change his name to Quack) so they build her a coffin. They find her too beautiful to bury so they let her lay in the woods. One thing that I find a little disturbing is that they were okay with watching her rot (assuming she was actually dead). That’s a little grody. Prince Charming shows up (hey remember him) and can’t help but to kiss her. Unbeknownst to him, this actually breaks the curse. She comes to life and everyone rejoices. She waves and kisses her little friends good-bye as her Prince takes her away to his castle.

The End

The Pros:

• The Dwarfs are excellent sidekick characters. As previously mentioned, I used to love Dopey.
• The soundtrack is great. Many of the songs are catchy and the score is great. The piece at the end gave me a little tear in my eye, it was so beautiful.
• The animation (for the most) part still holds up.
• Very memorable.

The Cons:

• Snow White’s voice is so obnoxious. She sings like Betty Boop.
• The rotoscoping of the human characters (other than the Dwarfs and the Witch) doesn’t age too well. They are also so stiff and wooden.
• The first act of this movie is dull. I mean duller than dishwater dull.

Overall I give in ****1/2 out of *****.