They forgot how to tell a good story, which Walt was always good at. In The Rescuers Down Under there is a scene in the middle of the film where the mouse hero is captured by a hunter and put in a room full of caged critters that he is planning to sell to zoos, medical experiments and God knows what else. The mouse hero escapes, but leaves all the other animals to their doom. That movie must have sent a generation of kids into therapy. At the end of the movie the mouse is wed to his girlfriend. Then they cut back to an albatross supporting actor trying to hatch an egg on a cliff. They could have cut back to show the animals free and safe. Or if they didn't have the budget to animate that, just show them in the background at the wedding.
The Little Mermaid was a terrible role model for little girls. It's the ultimate tale of cultural assimilation. Some girls get a nose job or a boob job to please her man. Ariel got a fin job. His side of the family was eating her side of the family and that was okay with her. That kind of thinking justifies the holocaust.
There was a kind of Renaissance after The Lion King. But it was heavily influenced in story and visual style by anime. Then Disney seemed to forget their core audience of small kids and grandparents who remembered the great Disney animated features when they were small kids. The studio seemed to be after teenagers with sexy heroines of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Pocahontas. That left the door open for Spielberg to produce An American Tail aimed at kids and forever opened the animated feature market that Diseny had once dominated to other studios.
Beauty and the Beast was a very good love story. The problem was trying to incorporate 2D animation on top of 3D backgrounds. The characters didn't look like they lived in the same world as the backgrounds.
Lilo and Stitch was entertaining and seemed to be trying to recapture the early childhood market, but it too was heavily influenced by anime and looked like an Americanized Pokemon.
Tarzan was stunning visually with the problem of 3D backgrounds and 2D characters. They looked like they lived in the same world. The problem was the love story. It wasn't as if Jane were such a perfect match for Tarzan. She was the ONLY WOMAN in the whole jungle. I'm sure as soon as Tarzan made it to London and saw all the other women there, he would drop her like a boiled potato.
The best example of a committee trying to figure out what Walt would do, was Fantasia 2000. Nearly every segment was an imitation of a segment of the original Fantasia. Donald Duck as Noah and the Ark, was a rehash of The Sorcerer's Apprentice. The whale sequence was a rehash of The Rite of Spring. The management was so reverential, they were afraid to experiment. But the anthology films were where Walt did his experimenting and he had made sequels to Fantasia before. He just called them Make Mine Music, Melody Time, The Reluctant Dragon etc. Only two segments were original, the flamingoes with the yo yo's and the Rhapsody in Blue segment based on Hirschfield caricatures. Those two segments were directed by an individual Eric Goldberg. He was the only one who truly was working in the spirit of Walt himself.
But with Princess and the Frog, Disney finally got it right. It is a pivotal film for Disney. Once before in the 50's, UPA had risen up to challenge them with their new modern graphic style. They tried to counter it with Alice in Wonderland, but it had classic animation with Fred Flintstone mouths. With Sleeping Beauty, they successfully absorbed the modern look into a revamped fully animated style.
Princess and the Frog has taken anime, 3D, and Flash Internet style and thrown it into a gumbo so it comes back totally absorbed to the point where the sources are hidden inside the newly metamorphosized Disney style. (Some reviewers say the black heroine reflects our black president and first lady. But Disney Studios was working on this long before the election, so the social shift on our screens and in the Oval Office must have just been in the air).
Tiana is a good role model for girls. She is independent and works hard. The story is compelling. I laughed several times at great slapstick animation that was as good as a Warner Brothers short. I was pulling for the characters and had a lump in my throat a couple times. The songs were catchy. You can see little homages throughout to older Disney animated features, but it builds on the tradition of the past and points to a bright future for 2D animation.
