Animation Celebration Saturday - The Aristocats

Disney, 1970
Voices of Eva Gabor, Phil Harris, Liz English, and Sterling Holloway
Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman
Music and Lyrics by various

This movie came out at a time of great turmoil for the Disney Studios. Walt Disney died in 1966, and no one was really sure how to continue without him. It would be the last film he personally approved before he passed on. How does the story of a mother cat and her kittens who are cat-napped by a jealous butler look today? Let's head to Paris around 1910, as Madame Adelaide (Hermoine Baddley) is preparing to make her will, and find out...

The Story: Madame is a retired opera singer who lives alone with her cat Duchess (Gabor) and Duchess' kittens Toulouse (Gary Dubin), Berlioz (Dean Clark), and Marie (Liz English). Madame adores her talented feline companions and intends to leave them her fortune. Her butler Edgar (Roddy Maude-Roxby) is incensed that he didn't get the money first. He drugs the cats' milk and takes them out to the countryside to dump them...at least until he's attacked by a pair of hound dogs with a taste for tires, Napoleon (Pat Buttram) and Lafayette (George Lindsay).

The cats end up stranded in the nearest river. An alley cat, Thomas O'Malley (Harris), helps them back to Paris and introduces them to his jazz-loving international cat buddies. Duchess, however, can't bring herself to leave Madame and insists on going home. Edgar, however, hasn't given up on eliminating the cats. It'll take a combined effort from every animal in Madame's household to stop Edgar from sending the cats on a one-way ticket across the globe.

The Animation: Typical of Disney's sketchy style of the time, it's at least colorful and cute, with some nifty designs for the animals and decent effects on the rainstorm Dutchess and the kittens are stranded in and in "Evry'body Wants to Be a Cat."

The Song and Dance:  Not bad, considering all the trouble they ran into making it. Though there's some good songs, it's primarily a comedy, with Buttram and Lindsay standing out as the hounds determined to catch anything on four wheels. Gabor and Harris are adorable as the mother cat and gallant tomcat, and the three kids are hilarious as the talented sibling kittens. There's also some good bits from Holloway as sweet mouse detective Roquefort, who is the one who ends up seeking his lost cat friends.

Favorite Number:  "Scales and Arpeggios" and the bouncy title song were the last songs written by the Sherman Brothers before they left Disney. "Scales" is a charming duet for Duchess and Marie as they practice their singing, while the very French Maurice Chevalier performs "Aristocats" over the credits. Terry Gillkyson did "Thomas O'Malley Cat," Thomas' smooth and laid-back introductory number as he strolls down the road in the countryside and finds Duchess and the kittens in distress. Madame and her doddering lawyer Georges (Charles Lane) get an adorable tango to an instrumental "Habenera" from the opera Carmen in the opening.

By far the best known song from this one is the big jazz number in Paris, "Evr'body Wants to Be a Cat." Harris, Scatman Crothers, and a group of international stereotype cats throw their all into a big jazz dance routine that literally brings down the house. It's by far the best and catchiest song in the film.

Trivia: Louis Armstrong was originally going to play the second-in-command of the alley cats, but had to bow out for health reasons.

The film began development in 1961. It was originally going to be more of a mystery, but was reworked to get closer to adventure-rescue aspect of 101 Dalmatians. In early drafts of the script, a maid played by Elsa Lanchester helped Edgar get rid of the cats and had a comic love duet with him, but she was dropped to simplify the plot.

There was to have been a direct-to-home-media sequel in the mid-2000's that had Marie and her brothers foiling a jewel heist on an ocean liner, but John Lasseter canceled all sequels after taking over the animation studio to focus more on other projects.

What I Don't Like: Edgar is definitely not one of the better Disney villains. While he does manage a little bit of menace towards the end when he captures Duchess and her kittens, he's mostly a bungling idiot who can't even get past a pair of hound dogs. The story is a mess of cliches mainly taken from Lady & the Tramp and 101 Dalmatians, the slapstick with the dogs and animals towards the end can come off as a little too juvenile, and those international stereotypes in "Evry'body Wants to Be a Cat" may offend some audiences today.

The Big Finale: Cute enough time-passer for younger kids who'll enjoy the animal antics and those who grew up watching it on cable or video.

Home Media: This one was a late arrival to video, but it's now easily found on all formats, often for under 10 dollars.

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