Sleeping Beauty 1959 Review

Disney right now is becoming more and more creatively bankrupt even more so since they've just announced remakes for Home Alone , Night At The Museum , Cheaper By The Dozen and Diary Of A Wimpy Kid. So I thought that for this i've go back in time and find a film from when the company was at it's creative peak and while Disney has indeed been known for adapting things they've always moulded the story to fit their mould and so here is my review of Sleeping Beauty.

The plot of the movie is a young princess is cursed from birth to prick her finger and fall into a deep sleep with the only thing that can revive her is true love's kiss. Yeah the story is kind of cliched because you know right from when they mention that true loves kiss can break the curse that a prince is going to come in and kiss her but at the same time it's a story devise that works and it works for a reason.

Starring in the film was Mary Costa as Princess Aurora / Briar Rose , Bill Shirley as Prince Phillip , Eleanor Audley as Maleficent , Disney Legend Verna Felton as Flora and Queen Leah , Barbara Jo Allen as Fauna , Barbara Luddy as Merryweather , Taylor Holmes as King Stefan , Bill Thompson as King Hubert and Narration is supplied by Marvin Miller. It took me a shockingly long time to find out who did the narration for the film just due to the fact that it's hard to find on Wikipedia like you would have thought that it would have been where the rest of the cast are listed but nope it's in the column under the poster.

In terms of what I thought of the acting it's honestly alot better then what I thought it would be and bare in mind i've never seen this movie. I'd say that in least in terms of the classic era Disney films this one is perhaps one of the best acted as well as best cast since every actor in this film is perfectly cast and it really does help sell the film at least in my opinion and it's something that I don't see in modern Disney films where even tho the actors and the acting is solid the characters aren't always perfectly cast.

This is the sixteenth animated film from Walt Disney and as was the standerd for the studio at the time the animation in this film is truly top notch. Given all of the detail that's in every single frame of this film i'm shocked that the animators didn't just quit because it would have been very painful to animate but it was worth it because the animation in this film is truly something to behold and out of the classic Disney films this has the best animation in my opinion.

Now incase your wondering why I put up a picture of animation and Looney Tunes legend Chuck Jones. Well that's because he did actually do some work on this film granted he only worked at the studio for a few months so he wouldn't have done that much work but apparently he hated working at the studio because every piece of animation he did was criticised and dictated on and went either back to or joined Warner Bros.

Until I watched the movie I had no idea why the fairies in Maleficent were hated by alot of people now after seeing this movie I fully get it. The fairies in this movie aren't just dumb comedy relief characters they actually stand up to Maleficent several times and even Merryweather who is perhaps the most comedy relief character out of three has a few scenes where she shows acts of bravery and like I said the same thing is also true for all three fairies.

One of the things that i wasn't expecting to be a thing in this film is that the Prince and Aurora actually do have alot of time together. That to me is a very good thing because it makes the romance seem more believable while it is still a bit of a stretch that they would fall in love with each other after spending an afternoon together you can kind of buy it since he technically has known her since she was a kid.

I had no idea how cool and bada*s the main villain of the film Maleficent actually is i'm not even kidding she is so bada*s in this. She's also pretty freaking creepy so much so that the live action film didn't do her any justice what so ever. She's also a pretty smart villain like in a short amount of time she discovers where the fairies are hiding the princess and makes up a plan to make sure the curse happens.

Adding to the fact that she's a bada*s is the fact that she can transform into a freaking dragon and actually tries to kill the prince.I don't think i've seen a villain in a Disney film actually try and kill the love interest i've seen a few where they try and kill the princess but none that have tried to kill the prince and the fact that she does it in a dragon form to me is just pure awesome it's just a shame that she doesn't use that form more often.

It's not all doom and gloom in this film tho since there is a lot of comedy all of it comes from the character of Merryweather. I have to say I liked some of the jokes in this film the film found a great balance between drama and comedy and for me the best joke is also the films only running joke basically Flora and Merryweather argue over what colour Aurora's dress and it's great joke that they bring back at just the right times and if you watch the ending closely as the film is ending you'll see Aurora's dress changing colours which is great little add on to the joke.

Overall this is a cute little film but at the same time I can kind of see why it's not in the public eye that often since it's the stereotypical Disney Princess film and nothing more and so it gets a 7.5 out of 10 from me.