The Aristocats
The Aristocats
G | 24 December 1970 (USA)
The Aristocats Trailers

When Madame Adelaide Bonfamille leaves her fortune to Duchess and her children—Bonfamille’s beloved family of cats—the butler plots to steal the money and kidnaps the legatees, leaving them out on a country road. All seems lost until the wily Thomas O’Malley Cat and his jazz-playing alley cats come to the aristocats’ rescue.

Reviews
Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.
ChampDavSlim The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.
Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.
Isbel A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.
jonconnormustlive-46298 The AristoCats follows a rich feline and her three kittens, after their elderly owner willed all of her belongings to the cats, her butler Edgar plots to get rid of the felines.This movie is hilarious. The characters are loveable, the dialogue is great and there some fun slapstick action scenes. The music is great! The song "Everybody Wants to be a Cat" will be stuck in your head for days!The plot isn't very realistic (Is Disney ever "Realistic"?) But it's a lot if fun. The kids will definitely enjoy it!The voice-acting is good too. You may recognize Sterling Holloway, known for voicing Winnie the Pooh and the Cheshire Cat. Here he lends his voice to the cats' mouse friend.The AristoCats definitely deserves it's place among the Walt Disney Animated Studios canon.
SnoopyStyle It's pre-war Paris. Duchess is a well groomed cat with three kittens; Marie, Berlioz, and Toulouse. Man servant Edgar overhears their loving elderly owner Madame Adelaide Bonfamille changing her will. She plans to leave her estate to the cats with Edgar as her heir after the cats' death. He decides to abandon the cats in the country. Stray cat Thomas O'Malley falls for Duchess and leads the family back to Paris.The song and music is big band and jazzy. It's the waning years of old school Disney animation. It is fun and light but lacks any long-lasting drama. The old school feel fits the time period and setting of the story. It doesn't have the big iconic tune although a couple of them are pretty catchy. The cats are cute. Edgar is a functional villain but the movie needs a more immediate villain in the middle while he is separated from the cats. There should be an animal villain hunting the family to heighten the drama. There is a stretch between being abandoned and returning to face Edgar where the movie lacks any tension. In any case, the movie has a good nature light fluffiness that is quite appealing.
datautisticgamer-74853 The AristoCats is just another movie that offers a mix of charm, entertainment, and some dull, boring moments. Officially the first film of the Dark Age, there is plenty to go around for music, characters (interesting to see Duchess have a Hungarian accent, courtesy of Eva Gabor), and a workable, understandable amount of intentionally cute scenes. Despite that, there are still plenty of flaws in the story execution, in a way that my interest was swiftly dropping as a casual movie attender (I had to force myself to go through all of it as a critic). I personally found the timing of the re-engagement moments to be quite precise, with the sometimes hilarious antics of Lafayette and Napoleon hitting at the moment that I was about to get up. I might consider it a style, featuring several ups and downs to initially make the audience want to leave, but then transforming into psychological captivation. I was somewhat annoyed by this, though the movie is overall worth a viewing. It might not be suitable for those who despise cats (like Angry Grandpa), so be warned.
Steve Pulaski NOTE: This film was recommended to me by Lizz Rutter for "Steve Pulaski Sees It." Disney's The Aristocats is such a charming, almost compelling story that I wished the narrative didn't need to interrupt itself so sporadically with jazz-fueled musical numbers amongst not only cats, but dogs and a variety of other animals. The musical interjections, that push this Disney film over the edge into being a full-blown musical like most of their films in this respective era, unfortunately disrupts the magic these feline characters manage to conjure up when they are just trying to sift their way through their poor circumstance.The result, as one can expect, is a film that you say "aww" to over a dozen times and a film that has you either tapping your foot or rocking your legs in melodic harmony with the music. The Aristocats is a simplistic story, concerning a wealthy woman named Madame Adelaide (voiced by Hermione Baddeley) in 1910 Paris that has just signed a will granting her lavish estate to her cat Dutchess (Eva Gabor) and her three kittens. This move greatly upsets her jealous, hot-headed English butler Edgar (Roddy Maude-Roxby), who has slaved away at serving Madame Adelaide for years and has ostensibly gotten nothing in return. As a result, Edgar conjures up a plan to get rid of the cats so when Adelaide dies, he can inherit the estate. He rounds up the four cats and throws them into the street, where the four homebody felines must learn to survive in order to be reconnected with their Madame.On the long, rainy, and uncertain road back home, Duchess meets a gentle feral cat named Thomas O'Malley (Phil Harris), who has been living off the land for many years. O'Malley is kind to Duchess, as he recognizes their predicament, but most important to note is how well he responds to her kittens, playing with them and assisting them whenever they need it. Both him and Duchess strike up an affable relationship as the gang tries to get back home, but not without a few musical numbers slowing them down along the way.The Aristocats, in a strange way, could almost be seen as a parable for single parent-dating or "getting back out there," especially for a woman who has children, which is no easy process. The film showcases such a challenge with admirable conviction and a willingness to have long stretches without musical numbers or any kind of distractions in order to allow this relationship to build. For an animated film in the modern day, even some of the best ones stamped with the Disney or Disney Pixar approval can't help but feel a bit scatterbrained in some sense, stepping over their toes to try and cover all the bases in subplots, character relations, and cause-and-effect relationships that are questionably worthy of being a focus in said film.The Aristocats was birthed in a time when animation took a more relaxed and reserved approach, which is why we could see Duchess, O'Malley, and Duchess's kittens do everything from hop aboard a train to meet two snobby swans in a river below a bridge. This kind of fluid, real-time focus on the characters makes the process and narrative development all the more natural. Of course, the film cuts back to Madame Adelaide desperately trying to find her cats, along with Edgar's conniving plan to make sure the furry beasts will never come home, and the jazzy musical numbers occasionally get in the way of a film that's already extremely short (a mere seventy-eight minutes). However, nothing truly distracts from The Aristocats being simple, effervescent entertainment with a plethora of fun characters, a timely moral, and, okay, some pretty catchy jazz numbers as well.Voiced by: Edna Gabor, Phil Harris, Hermione Baddeley, and Roddy Maude-Roxby. Directed by: Wolfgang Reitherman.