Reviews of Peter Pan (1953) and related work
- Same source material: Hook (1991)
Peter Pan (1953
)
Seen in 2018.
The final Disney film in which all the Nine Old Men worked together as directing animators, including Ward Kimball, who would never work on another Disney animated feature. The character designs, animation and backgrounds (mast damage! cloud parallax!) are a joy to behold, a mature plateau where the usual anthropomorphism has been marginalized and xerography has not yet taken over. Even the animal characters—Nana and the crocodile—are relatively good, being literally muted. Though the script is bowdlerized, some of Pan’s coldness made it through. The portrayal of (native) Americans is stereotypical and trivializing in a racist manner—they sing a song about the ”red man” being red because he’s blushing—but not hateful. I just can’t figure out why they kept doing lullaby scenes.
moving picture Disney animation fiction