Well, I’m not updating these as quickly as I would like…because I watched these films almost a month ago and still haven’t written about them…but I’m trying to catch up today! Hopefully I’ll remember my thoughts on these two films, The Reluctant Dragon and Dumbo, since I watched them a while ago. (Right now we’re all the way to the 1950s haha).
Bella and I watched both of these movies in one sitting, and let me tell you it’s starting to get difficult watching multiple of these 1940s Disney movies in a row (more detail and ranting to come in part 3…). Now, on with my thoughts!
The Reluctant Dragon (1941)
This film was….wow. First of all, I had never seen it before (or if I had then I was very young and don’t remember it) so I didn’t know what to expect with this film. Which is a first for me because I’ve seen nearly every Disney movie so it was strange watching a Disney movie where I didn’t know what the plot was about. The Reluctant Dragon follows one man, Robert Benchley, through the Walt Disney Studios on a quest to pitch his idea of a “reluctant dragon” story to Walt Disney himself. What I LOVED about this film was it was basically a behind-the-scenes look into how Disney movies were made back in 1941. As a film minor, the technical aspects of filmmaking are very interesting to me so getting to see how they colorized each frame, how the multi-plane camera worked, and many other aspects of the animated filmmaking process was exciting to me. They even showed how Casey Junior got his voice! I think this part, which showed the foley artistry, was my favorite part of the film because it fascinates me how they were able to sync all the sounds at once so well to the action of the film (read Part 1 for more of my fascination with this).
However…the animated part, “The Reluctant Dragon” (from which the film gets its name even thought it was a small part of the overall film), was very boring to me. It was about a dragon who was reluctant to fight a knight, and a boy who (inexplicably) wanted the dragon to fight so he tried making the dragon fight even though he was “reluctant.” It was all very contrived and predictable, but, honestly, it was a twenty minute short at the end of a behind-the-scenes tour of the Disney Studios so of course it wasn’t going to be phenomenal. If you’re interested at all in filmmaking or animation then I definitely recommend this film so that you can see how Disney’s process works. If you just want to watch this film for the animated dragon sequence, I’d skip it.
Dumbo (1941)
Dumbo is one of those films that I know I’m supposed to appreciate as a Disney fan, but when I sit down to watch it I usually end up falling asleep or checking my phone every five minutes. It pains me to say this because Dumbo is such a classic, but these films from the 1940s just had a lower quality (which I’ll get into the reasons why in Part 3) so Dumbo just wasn’t very entertaining or exciting. Honestly, I think I missed some of it because I was on Pinterest while I was watching it because I got so bored.
My favorite parts, though, are the Casey Junior sequence (it used to be my FAVORITE ride at Disneyland when I was little) and the “Baby Mine” sequence. Which, I know, is supposed to be depressing, but to me it’s cute seeing all the animals and their little babies snuggling up together while they sleep. So Dumbo DOES have some redeeming qualities (namely, just a few scenes) but it’s a bit of a snooze-fest for me. Maybe since I didn’t really grow up with it I don’t really have any sort of childhood nostalgia tied to it to make me like it. Or it could just be a boring movie…Who knows.
I don’t really have much else to say about Dumbo…It’s an okay film and if you like Disney movies then you should watch it, but seeing it once was enough for me.
I’m going to write Part 3 soon, so watch for it!
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