The Lion King

Things have been a little rough around the Magic Kingdom lately. Walt Disney Studios - and their numerous subsidiary companies - have spent the past year releasing a ton of bad movies to well-deserved critical beatings and lackluster box office. EuroDisney has taken a financial bath in a sea of red ink and has virtually provoked the French into declaring war on Mickey Mouse. Then Nancy Kerrigan showed up with a crappy attitude and blurted out how silly she felt taking their money.

But you know what they say: when the going gets tough, the tough get back to animation. The Lion King is the sort of film that the Disney empire was built on, and it's still the kind of movie that Disney does best. Sure, it's a typical production that you can just about write in your sleep. But on technical points alone, The Lion King ends up being one of the more impressive movies of the summer.

The story is a mix of The Jungle Book and The Sword in the Stone, with a good lion king squared off against his evil brother. Mufasa (voice of James Earl Jones) has just produced a son, and his sneaky sibling, Scar (voice of Jeremy Irons), can't stand the thought of being passed over by his new nephew. Scar joins forces with a pack of hyenas (voice of Whoopi Goldberg, Cheech Martin and Jim Cummings) and plots a little regicide. But prince Simba (as an adult, the voice of Matthew Broderick) survives, and once he reaches maturity, he finds himself forced to return to his father's now crumbling kingdom.

The animation work in The Lion King is one of the most masterful jobs done by Disney's artists, as they successfully create a visual design that's more realistic and slightly less sentimental than the mouse that roars usually produces. Only the musical score comes close to a few false steps. For once, the empire gets it right.

Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho, It's to the Bank We Go

Once upon a time, there were no such things as feature-length animated films. They were just cartoons. And there was no such place as the Magic Kingdom. Just an office occupied by a man named Walt Disney.

But that all changed in December 1937, with the premiere of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Disney had taken a major gamble – and won. Audiences proved themselves willing to sit through an 83-minute cartoon. In fact, they were enchanted by it.

They still are. That's why Snow White is returning to theater screens this Friday (re-released in 1993).

Sure, it will eventually be released on video. But why wait? You want your kids to like you, don't you?

Besides, it's more than a classic. It's a cinematic milestone.

In the early 1930s, Walt Disney had a reasonably successful career as the producer of Mickey Mouse cartoons and Silly Symphonies. These films were short, fast and funny. But Disney wanted more. He wanted to do a full-blown movie.

The popular wisdom of the era was that no sane person would sit through an hour-and-a-half of animation. When Uncle Walt announced his plans to challenge that idea, the film was immediately dubbed “Disney's Folly.” During the four years it took to create Snow White, it seemed like a fiasco in the making.

The production required the services of an army of animators. Its original budget of $250,000 shot through the roof. Disney had invested his own fortune into the film, then had to borrow. And borrow. The bankers were ready to start swigging whiskey with their Maalox.

The film ended up costing nearly $1.5 million, a phenomenal amount for the time.

The movie's jittery backers were not reassured by Disney's attitude. He wasn't a good businessman, and dumped most of the financial problems into the lap of his brother Roy. Walt was more concerned with the technical problems presented by the film. Meetings between the Disney brothers grew increasingly acrimonious.

But the expensive and protracted process was worth it. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a richly textured film with a sense of movement and visual depth that is still rare in animated productions.

It's also a lot of fun. (Though very small children are still easily scared by the evil Queen.)

The story of Snow White's creation and release is dramatic, but there is another, truly ironic aspect to it. In the '30s, Disney didn't have his own distribution company, so he released his cartoons through United Artists. But for Snow White, he switched to RKO Pictures. UA was fascinated by a new thing called television, and was demanding the TV rights to all of Disney's films. Walt never heard of TV and wanted nothing to do with it.

Keep that in mind the next time you turn on the Disney Channel.