REVIEW: Little Shop of Horrors [1986]

I’m just a mean green mother from outer space and I’m bad. Know which version of Little Shop of Horrors you’re watching before sitting down because you might be in for a surprise if you don’t. Having grown up with the theatrical cut often finding its way onto my television, I have a clear picture of how the story is supposed to end. There’s a visual reprise of the “Somewhere That’s Green” sequence with bright lights, mowed grass, and an outrageously strange bud popping out from the middle of a…

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REVIEW: Aladdin [1992]

We’ve all got swords. I forgot how refreshingly simple Aladdin is. Disney and Pixar utilize such elaborate narrative set-ups today that their films don’t rely on charm and fun alone anymore. That’s not to say this one does since its ability to put its hero and heroine on equal footing rather than blindly relegating the latter into mere “love interest” status is very effective for this era. But you wouldn’t be blamed for having a good time with Robin Williams‘ manic impressions regardless of the plot his larger-than-life presence augments…

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REVIEW: Beauty and the Beast [1991]

“There may be something there that wasn’t there before” The fairy tale Beauty and the Beast is so perfectly suited for the Disney princess treatment that it’s shocking they didn’t do one until 1991. Crafted to provide young girls a metaphor for the arranged marriages many of them would inevitably be a part of in 18th century France (Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve wrote the first version with Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont soon streamlining it into what we know today), its trajectory became one of the idyllic fantasy of raising one’s…

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REVIEW: Frozen [2013]

“Conceal it. Don’t feel it.” Over half a century in the making, Disney’s adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen has finally made it to the big screen. It was 1943 when Walt Disney and Samuel Goldwyn decided to co-create a live-action/animation hybridized biography of the Danish author—an idea that stalled due to their inability to bring the aforementioned fairy tale and The Little Mermaid to life. While Disney of course figured out the latter in 1989, the former continuously proved troublesome as it failed to come together in…

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