destruction/2023-06-02_2%20Make%20Mine%20Music.txt

I could have sworn this was on Disney+ before. As I have hinted at previously, I have a principled position against Disney picking and choosing which parts of their history they are going to make available, acknowledge, or claim to hold themselves accountable for. But I don't get why this one seems to have been forgotten in comparison to some of their other anthology films from that era. There's nothing, as far as I noticed, that would even require their cultural insensitivty disclaimer. So it's odd that it's yet another bit of forbidden Disney fruit. One of my friends suspected its lack of inclusion was due to the implied nudity at the beginning. I disagreed; I seem to remember worse things being present in previous or later Disney films that *have* been brought back. So I'm not sure, beats me.

There are many animation bits, as I've discussed in my reviews of similar films from this era, that make me and my friends laugh. Some of these are because they were intended to be funny. Some of them are because the film has aged, and our sense of humor has evolved to find some things funnier than they were intended to be given contexts we have that they did not. For example, in the segment where these characters dance to upbeat Jazz music, a woman is drawn with a large butt. She gets mad at the pencil/animator for doing this, so the pencil obliges her by erasing the extra mass from her body. We didn't find this amusing in the same way I'd imagine the culture of its period did, because our generation is very appreciative of larger women, while theirs found those body types unattractive and possibly shameful. We found it funny because we riffed on it in protest of the joke, while their generation found it funny because back then, it was more common for women to want to be thinner and to have smaller butts. Another animation bit that may not have even been a joke, we found very funny. A boy spins a girl into a shapeless blur that he twirls around his entire body like a lasso. We thoguht this was ridiculous to the point of hilarity. I'm not sure this was supposed to make audiences laugh as hard as we did but I'm not sure why. It's just kind of interesting.

The baseball section made a lot of sense, for the most part. If I'm not mistaken, the characters get very angry at the umpire's decisions and they shout *twice* that either the umpire or certain players should be killed, and they use the word "kill", verbatim. I speculated this may possibly be another reason why Disney opted not to stream it on their platform. This sequence is pretty enjoyable. We likened the large, cocky character's design similarity to later characters Gaston and King Louie; Gaston due to the large chin and cocky nature, Louie due to the extremely top heavy stature, large arms, and orange sideburns. We were all quite confused by the transition that happens right as the final pitch is made. We found it jarring and funny, and this was likely unintentional. We joked that he hit the ball so hard, he caused reality to malfunction. "He didn't break the sound barrier, he broke the *space* barrier." The calm intercut is beautifully painted and animated, but very bizarrely placed. Why did they need a 30 second unrelated intercut to explain that he struck out? It distracts and takes away from the reveal. I appreciate their storytelling; I could absolutely believe that he was going to hit it out of the park, but it was also just as plausible to think he'd miss, losing his team the game. It just would have made far more sense to fade to the rain rather than the park. I wonder why they made this decision. Perhaps it was because they didn't want the audience feeling bad for him. Because I'd imagine that seeing him sadly standing in the rain immediately after would endear him significantly to the audience and thus take away from the humor of him frustratedly trying to hit the ball as he dropped it. There's a lack of catharsis there. It would be a much more emotionally satisfying story if it was done differently, though perhaps that's not as objective as I'd like it to be. Hear me out. What if we saw this cocky player go from thinking so highly of himself, being surrounded by the adoration of women and fans of his team alike, thinking he's entitled to a certain kind of pitch, thinking he's so good, then losing his team the game. Standing sadly in the rain, alone, after the entire disappointed audience, team, coaches, and enemy team alike left him there with his guilt and shame. He could take this guilt and frustration he exibits right at the end to fuel him to actually be as good as he thought he was, to make it up to his team and fans for letting them all down. He could train and try again and again, failing many times along the way, but learning lessons. Perhaps he's booted from the team or they don't accept him for his mistake. Perhaps he has to prove himself to them. Perhaps he struggles immensely to achieve this. But perhaps he finally succeeds, winning them the game, but with a realization that even though he's succeeded in being as good as he thought he was, that now he has been humbled by his struggle and his mistake. So he goes forward with the knowledge that he isn't entitled to the admiration of his peers, but in doing so is far more deserving of the respect he once had. Perhaps he ensures it doesn't go to his head again and becomes a real baseball legend rather than a charlatan with an ego unbecoming of his skill. Would that be a better story? It could very well be, if executed well. But it likely wouldn't have fit in the confines of this format. I just enjoy presenting rewrites and exploring the possibilities on how a story could be improved.

We found the Peter and the Wolf section to be confusing; them seemingly killing a couple characters and then bringing them back was confusing but I didn't think of it much deeper than that. The hat love story was weird and I expected the ending to be more along the lines of Disney's short film Paperman (2012), but it was coherent enough. The opera whale section was utterly bizarre from beginning to end. The transition from Willy's final performance to instantly being harpooned at sea was jarring. Cool transition, but it takes a second to realize that there's a time skip. It is also not explained how a single harpooning lead to his death, though one of my friends argued that, in real life, the blood in the water can cause sharks to have a feeding frenzy on whales. While I can imagine why they wouldn't put that in this movie, that doesn't help the issue of us missing the information to help us understand why he died. "He got harpooned, but he's still fine. See? He tore away from the boat, he's getting away. Never mind, he died." I think the writers were unaware of that not being a death sentence. Like if in Finding Nemo, the fishers cast their nets, but the nets break and all we see is their perspective of the nets disapperaing, we're going to assume Nemo got away. If we then cut immediately to Dory, Marlin, and other characters mourning his loss, we'd be confused and potentially insulted. Anyway, we found him singing in heaven to be quite jarring as well. Putting a sign that said "Sold Out" on the gates of heaven as the final thing we see in the entire film was something we found to be ironically funny in a way I'm sure they didn't intend it to be back then.

Overall, it's along the lines of Fantasia, definitely funnier, less budget, but subjectively I found it to be more engaging. But perhaps that's more because of the slow pacing of that film and overall due to my frustrations with its format and manner of storytelling. But that's a review for another day. I plan to go back and leave some thoughts on previous films, some of them in the Disney animation chronology and some not. I want to say a couple words on almost every film I see just for fun. Thanks to @drvey117 for logging his films consistently so I at least have the dates of when we watched them.
init commit 2025-04-19 15:05:49 -06:00			I could have sworn this was on Disney+ before. As I have hinted at previously, I have a principled position against Disney picking and choosing which parts of their history they are going to make available, acknowledge, or claim to hold themselves accountable for. But I don't get why this one seems to have been forgotten in comparison to some of their other anthology films from that era. There's nothing, as far as I noticed, that would even require their cultural insensitivty disclaimer. So it's odd that it's yet another bit of forbidden Disney fruit. One of my friends suspected its lack of inclusion was due to the implied nudity at the beginning. I disagreed; I seem to remember worse things being present in previous or later Disney films that have been brought back. So I'm not sure, beats me.

			There are many animation bits, as I've discussed in my reviews of similar films from this era, that make me and my friends laugh. Some of these are because they were intended to be funny. Some of them are because the film has aged, and our sense of humor has evolved to find some things funnier than they were intended to be given contexts we have that they did not. For example, in the segment where these characters dance to upbeat Jazz music, a woman is drawn with a large butt. She gets mad at the pencil/animator for doing this, so the pencil obliges her by erasing the extra mass from her body. We didn't find this amusing in the same way I'd imagine the culture of its period did, because our generation is very appreciative of larger women, while theirs found those body types unattractive and possibly shameful. We found it funny because we riffed on it in protest of the joke, while their generation found it funny because back then, it was more common for women to want to be thinner and to have smaller butts. Another animation bit that may not have even been a joke, we found very funny. A boy spins a girl into a shapeless blur that he twirls around his entire body like a lasso. We thoguht this was ridiculous to the point of hilarity. I'm not sure this was supposed to make audiences laugh as hard as we did but I'm not sure why. It's just kind of interesting.

			The baseball section made a lot of sense, for the most part. If I'm not mistaken, the characters get very angry at the umpire's decisions and they shout twice that either the umpire or certain players should be killed, and they use the word "kill", verbatim. I speculated this may possibly be another reason why Disney opted not to stream it on their platform. This sequence is pretty enjoyable. We likened the large, cocky character's design similarity to later characters Gaston and King Louie; Gaston due to the large chin and cocky nature, Louie due to the extremely top heavy stature, large arms, and orange sideburns. We were all quite confused by the transition that happens right as the final pitch is made. We found it jarring and funny, and this was likely unintentional. We joked that he hit the ball so hard, he caused reality to malfunction. "He didn't break the sound barrier, he broke the space barrier." The calm intercut is beautifully painted and animated, but very bizarrely placed. Why did they need a 30 second unrelated intercut to explain that he struck out? It distracts and takes away from the reveal. I appreciate their storytelling; I could absolutely believe that he was going to hit it out of the park, but it was also just as plausible to think he'd miss, losing his team the game. It just would have made far more sense to fade to the rain rather than the park. I wonder why they made this decision. Perhaps it was because they didn't want the audience feeling bad for him. Because I'd imagine that seeing him sadly standing in the rain immediately after would endear him significantly to the audience and thus take away from the humor of him frustratedly trying to hit the ball as he dropped it. There's a lack of catharsis there. It would be a much more emotionally satisfying story if it was done differently, though perhaps that's not as objective as I'd like it to be. Hear me out. What if we saw this cocky player go from thinking so highly of himself, being surrounded by the adoration of women and fans of his team alike, thinking he's entitled to a certain kind of pitch, thinking he's so good, then losing his team the game. Standing sadly in the rain, alone, after the entire disappointed audience, team, coaches, and enemy team alike left him there with his guilt and shame. He could take this guilt and frustration he exibits right at the end to fuel him to actually be as good as he thought he was, to make it up to his team and fans for letting them all down. He could train and try again and again, failing many times along the way, but learning lessons. Perhaps he's booted from the team or they don't accept him for his mistake. Perhaps he has to prove himself to them. Perhaps he struggles immensely to achieve this. But perhaps he finally succeeds, winning them the game, but with a realization that even though he's succeeded in being as good as he thought he was, that now he has been humbled by his struggle and his mistake. So he goes forward with the knowledge that he isn't entitled to the admiration of his peers, but in doing so is far more deserving of the respect he once had. Perhaps he ensures it doesn't go to his head again and becomes a real baseball legend rather than a charlatan with an ego unbecoming of his skill. Would that be a better story? It could very well be, if executed well. But it likely wouldn't have fit in the confines of this format. I just enjoy presenting rewrites and exploring the possibilities on how a story could be improved.

			We found the Peter and the Wolf section to be confusing; them seemingly killing a couple characters and then bringing them back was confusing but I didn't think of it much deeper than that. The hat love story was weird and I expected the ending to be more along the lines of Disney's short film Paperman (2012), but it was coherent enough. The opera whale section was utterly bizarre from beginning to end. The transition from Willy's final performance to instantly being harpooned at sea was jarring. Cool transition, but it takes a second to realize that there's a time skip. It is also not explained how a single harpooning lead to his death, though one of my friends argued that, in real life, the blood in the water can cause sharks to have a feeding frenzy on whales. While I can imagine why they wouldn't put that in this movie, that doesn't help the issue of us missing the information to help us understand why he died. "He got harpooned, but he's still fine. See? He tore away from the boat, he's getting away. Never mind, he died." I think the writers were unaware of that not being a death sentence. Like if in Finding Nemo, the fishers cast their nets, but the nets break and all we see is their perspective of the nets disapperaing, we're going to assume Nemo got away. If we then cut immediately to Dory, Marlin, and other characters mourning his loss, we'd be confused and potentially insulted. Anyway, we found him singing in heaven to be quite jarring as well. Putting a sign that said "Sold Out" on the gates of heaven as the final thing we see in the entire film was something we found to be ironically funny in a way I'm sure they didn't intend it to be back then.

			Overall, it's along the lines of Fantasia, definitely funnier, less budget, but subjectively I found it to be more engaging. But perhaps that's more because of the slow pacing of that film and overall due to my frustrations with its format and manner of storytelling. But that's a review for another day. I plan to go back and leave some thoughts on previous films, some of them in the Disney animation chronology and some not. I want to say a couple words on almost every film I see just for fun. Thanks to @drvey117 for logging his films consistently so I at least have the dates of when we watched them.