Which Disney cartoon works best as a musical and why - Essay Example

Which Disney cartoon works best as a musical – and why? No: Which Disney cartoon works best as a musical – and why? Cartoons inspire not only youngsters but also adults because of their eye-catching and entertainment giving quality. Many such cartoon movies are made historically that are quite inspiring for the viewers and Disney can be categorized as the most influential production company for making quality cartoon movies for the viewers. Walt Disney has created many such cartoon movies that have taken fairy tales as their stories. The cartoon movies, which take inspiration from fairy tales and use that content, are very liked because of their dream like qualities. In addition to the dream like quality, the cartoon movies also make use of songs that are quite stimulating for the audience. Walt Disney has produced many musical cartoon movies, which has gained appreciation from audience on the basis of their quality production and musical songs. Sleeping Beauty is one such musical cartoon movie produced by Walt Disney Pictures, which contains all the qualities of being the best among many other cartoon movies. According to my opinion, Sleeping Beauty is the best Disney cartoon movie and works best as a musical. In this paper, the cartoon movie Sleeping Beauty will be analyzed as to why it works as the best musical movie. Sleeping Beauty was shown on screen in the year 1959 and it was an animated movie produced with the technology of Super Technirama 70. The movie was based on a fairy tale originally composed by Charles Perrault while its music was given by Jack Lawrence. A lot of effort was made to produce and make this movie as it took a decade for its making. The movie’s music and songs were taken from Sleeping Beauty Ballet written in 1890. Its music and songs are still famous for their inspirational qualities and it is categorized among the best musical and animated cartoon movies produced by Disney (Zipes 1999). The story starts when a princess is born in a kingdom after many years of waiting. She is bestowed with gifts of beauty and singing by two fairies but a witch gets agitated at King’s not inviting her to the ceremony and curses the princess to die when she is sixteen. The king asks the friendly fairies to remove the curse but they are only able to weaken the curse due to which, princess remains cursed to sleep and not to die at the age of sixteen. The princess is betrothed with a prince of another kingdom in her childhood. They both fall in love with each other meeting accidently. At reaching sixteen years of age, the princess falls asleep and is only able to get up when the prince kisses her with love. The prince is abducted by the witch so that the spell cannot be broken but he reaches the princess by fighting and killing the witch with the help of the friendly fairies. He is able to make the princess come out of her sleep by kissing her after which, they live happily with their parents (Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty 2011). The story is rich with many songs that are still famous such as “Once upon a Dream”, “Hail to the Princess Aurora”, “A Secret Revealed”, “A Fairy Tale Come True”, “I Wonder” and so on. The cartoon movie was nominated and awarded because of its musical features. In the year 1960, it was nominated in Academy Awards for “Best Scoring of a Musical Picture” and in Grammy Awards for “Best Soundtrack Album, Original Cast - Motion Picture or Television”. In the year 1980, the cartoon movie got Young Artist Award for “Best Musical Entertainment Featuring Youth - TV or Motion Picture” (Zipes 1999). These nominations and rewards indicate the quality of Sleeping Beauty as the best Musical cartoon movie. In terms of being musical, the cartoon movie got a lot of appreciation from viewers as the songs that are incorporated in the movie gain attention because of their being melodious. The movie is categorized as a classic because of its innate qualities. There are various songs in the cartoon movie that have the capacity of moving the listeners with their words and melodiousness. The story of the cartoon movie, Sleeping Beauty is originally a ballet, which can be considered as a new form under the category of ballet writing. It is called a classical ballet and Tchaikovsky, the writer of this ballet has quite successfully composed it. This ballet is regarded as the most influential ballet among many others because of its being all time favourite. Because of its being a ballet, it originally contained the quality of being a musical; therefore after being converted into a cartoon movie, the ballet did not lose its quality of music and appeared more beautifully before the audience (Zipes 1999). The songs were sung with the support of stereophonic soundtrack. The songs are taken from the original ballet composed by Tchaikovsky and they are sung with excellence and pleasantness due to which, the viewers had appreciative comments for them. Stereophonic soundtrack made the cartoon movie effective enough to deliver all its musical quality with optimization. The songs in the cartoon movie are many in number and come on every spot with a changing incident. With different themes, we can see different songs. For example, the first song that is “Hail to the Princess Aurora” is for welcoming the princess, the second one that is “The Gifts of Beauty and Song” is for the gifts that are given to the princess for her beauty and singing quality, “A Fairy Tale Come True” is on the situation when the princess falls asleep under the spell of the witch, “Battle with the Evil Forces” is when the prince fights against the witch and her evil powers to reach the princess and so on. It is quite clear that any person after listening to all the songs can understand the full story and can categorize Sleeping Beauty as a movie that is fully melodious and musical. Therefore, the fact that Sleeping Beauty is the most likable musical cartoon movie presented by Disney cannot be negated (Zipes 1999). There are many cartoon movies created and produced by Disney and all of them have gained positive reputation because Disney is not a negligible company in terms of movies’ making. However, the qualities that can be seen in Sleeping Beauty cannot be found in other cartoon movies. The song, which is liked among many other songs in the movie, is “Once upon a Dream”. The lines of the song contain all the qualities that enable the movie to become a melodious one and to gain the award of the best musical cartoon movie. Some of the lines of the song are given below, “I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream. I know you, the gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam Yet I know its true that visions are seldom all they seem But if I know you, I know what youll do Youll love me at once the way you did once Upon a dream” (Disney - Once upon a dream) These lines of the song show that the movie contains such songs that are creditable and keep the capacity of enabling the movie to get the title of best musical cartoon movie. We can find here repetition, rhyming pattern, softness and pleasantness, all such qualities that must be there in a song to allow the listeners to categorize it as good. We have seen many cartoon movies by Disney such as Peter Pan, Snow White and Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Fantasia, Cinderella, Robin Hood and so on; but the movie that had gained maximum appreciation because of its being melodious and harmonious is Sleeping Beauty because all the songs of the movie are beautifully composed. Along with their sweet musical quality, the animation qualities with the music make the cartoon movie a credible movie that is a movie of all times. From its initial production that is in 1959, it has got elevated fame because of its being a musical. The cartoon movie Sleeping Beauty that was originally written as a ballet already contained melodious quality as it was a ballet. Nevertheless after its production into an animated movie, the movie was very much liked because the ballet known as classical ballet still holds the reputation of a ballet that was very finely written with musical excellence. The reasons of categorization of the cartoon movie Sleeping Beauty as the best musical movie are that it was originally a ballet, it has all the qualities of being a highest quality musical, mush efforts are done to make it a hit movie, it got many nominations and rewards for its being a musical hit, it has many songs that describe each and every situation of the characters involved and the type of technology used for its production. References Disney - Once upon a dream (from Disney’s sleeping beauty) Lyrics, Album: Disney’s Love Songs, Retrieved on June 19, 2011 from http://www.stlyrics.com/songs/d/disney6472/onceuponadreamfromdisneyssleepingbeauty1156111.html Sleeping Beauty: Background Information, Retrieved on June 19, 2011 from http://www.fpx.de/fp/Disney/Scripts/SleepingBeauty/Background.html Walt Disneys Sleeping Beauty, Retrieved on June 19, 2011 from http://corky.net/scripts/SleepingBeauty.html Zipes, Jack 1999, When Dreams Came True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their Tradition, Routledge, London. Read More