Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site ucla-cs.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!genrad!decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!trwrb!trwrba!cepu!ucla-cs!reiher From: reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP Newsgroups: net.movies Subject: Re: Baby - short review Message-ID: <4956@ucla-cs.ARPA> Date: Tue, 23-Apr-85 02:22:57 EST Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.4956 Posted: Tue Apr 23 02:22:57 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 25-Apr-85 03:53:19 EST References: <8742@microsoft.UUCP> <5258@tekecs.UUCP> Reply-To: reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (Peter Reiher) Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department Lines: 77 Summary: In article <5258@tekecs.UUCP> waltt@tekecs.UUCP (Walt Tucker) writes: >My Gawd!!! Weren't you ever a child! While I agree with some of your >comments concerning your perception of Walt Disney movies from an adult >point of view, you have to remember what Walt Disney movies are -- wholesome >family entertainment. As such, the good and bad characters and plot >episodes are often exagerated, much the same as "Classic" Disney movies >such as Absent Minded Professor, Snow White, etc. Disney movies really have four periods, as far as I can tell. In the early period, Disney made nothing but animation. There's hardly a one of these, feature length or short, that isn't well worth seeing. In the late Forties, Disney started making live action films, as well. By and large, these were quality action-adventure films eminently suitable for the entire family. A couple were mediocre, most were OK, and a few were great. There were also a few moderately funny comedies, more appealing to children than adults, but that was OK. In the mid-Sixties, Disney began to get old and eventually died. In this period and through the Seventies, Disney's company made a bunch of increasingly feeble comedy-adventure movies, with an occasional cheesy action-adventure film thrown in and a few Godawful musicals. (Join in with me on the chorus of "Detroit" from that undying classic, "The Happiest Millionaire", and who can forget that immortal standard, "Let's Put it Over With Grover", a Grover Cleveland election song from "The One, the Only, Genuine, Original Family Band".) One or two of these films are watchable, the rest are trash. Finally, in the Eighties, the company started groping towards a new style of filmmaking. Groping is the word, as they came up with "Tron", "Something Wicked This Way Comes", and some other less than spectacular successes. (Lost in the shuffle was "Tex", an excellent film and a true pointer towards the way Disney should be heading.) While these films were failures, they were at least interesting failures. "Baby" is a dull failure, a throwback to the worst style of the Seventies with a few touchs to smut it up to a PG rating. Many children are undiscriminating, but they deserve better from the self-proclaimed champion of children's films, which so astutely passed on "E.T." and "Star Wars". >If the Disney people >wanted "Baby" to be taken as anything other than family movie (read heavily >oriented towards children), they would have released the movie under the >"Touchstone" label rather than the "Disney" label. They did. "Baby" is a Touchstone film, not Disney. Apparently everyone in the world knows that Disney is the backer of Touchstone films, though, since the Disney crowd was out in force when I went to see it. >There are very few "family" movies produced these days. ... >I am glad to see a movie such >as "Baby" produced as an alternative for children to such movies as >"E.T.", "Gremlins", and "Star Wars." I appreciate the dilemma faced by >many of my friends with children who have trouble finding movies that >won't either scare them or fill them with a lot of questions they don't >particularly feel like answering that day. The dearth of children's films is indeed disturbing. I find it incredible that trash like the Smurf movie and the Carebears movie can rake in the bucks because no one else is interested in providing quality children's films. One of the great mysteries of American films (for me, at least) is how we forget how to make enjoyable films for children without sex or bloody violence. I personally would find "Baby" far too likely to raise undesirable questions ("Daddy, what are those pills the woman is taking?") and far too violent to serve as a good children's film. I find the very thought that "Gremlins" was a children's film quite disturbing. >However, some of my fondest >childhood memories are of Walt Disney movies of the 1960's. I hope the >Walt Disney genre of film never disappears. If you mean the good old stuff like "The Absent Minded Professor" and "Darby O'Gill and the Little People" (with Sean Connery as the vapid young hero; who'd have thought it?) and "Toby Tyler" and "The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh", I sort of agree, but rather than wish they'd never disappear, I wish they'd come back. If you mean "One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing" and "Herby Goes to Monte Carlo" and "The Apple Dumpling Gang", I only wish they'd go away. -- Peter Reiher reiher@ucla-cs.arpa {...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher