Jesper Brun
Let me just start off by saying WOW! This is easily the most mature work by Disney ever to be put to the big screen. Where do I start! Frollo is simply one of the most cruel and frightening Disney villains ever. And his motivations are still so painfully realistic! A personal experience of mine was early in the movie when the interaction between Frollo and Quasimodo really scared me. It does not happen that often, but here it was intense. Just like, let's say, when Mufasa was found by Simba. Esmeralda, voiced by the feisty Demi Moore, is also a really underrated female character in the Disney catalog. She is truly an independent woman with a great heart and a mission to complete and she perfectly teams up with Quasimodo who is also a great character with a great and tender voice performance by Tom Hulce from Amadeus. The music is also a wonderful mix of bombastic orchestral musical numbers with immense choirs and fine sensitive ballads. Nothing more to say than just fantastic (exept one, but more of that later). The visual aspect of the movie is also astonishing to watch. Especially the Cathedral of Notre Dame, both inside and outside and during most of the majestic climax with swooping angles and gigantic epic scope. And the one major problem I have with this movie: those gargoyles are a pain in the butt throughout the whole movie. They could be justified and even add a little bit to the overall tone of the movie if they were truly a figment of Quasimodo's imagination. It could be a great addition to his tragic backstory of being isolated in the belltower for so long. But several times during the movie they reveal themselves as living creatures which ruins the otherwise justifiable perspective of them. Their musical number is not of equal greatness of the musical numbers and was awkwardly placed in the movie. But there is enough great stuff in Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame to make up for those annoying attempts at comic sidekicks. I simply can't give less than 10/10 for Disney to make such a dark and serious movie adressing such heavy subject matters.
joshuafagan-64214
Our main hero is Quasimodo, a supposedly hideous man who has been locked up in the castle by Frollo, whom we'll get to later. One of my problems with this movie is that Quasi is not nearly as hideous as he is portrayed. He's more of an ugly-cute. He's not attractive, especially compared to his costars, but 'the most hideous man in all of France' he is not. But my main problem is that this film professes a moral that it doesn't matter what you look like, yet what's Quasi's reward for being the hero. You and I both know that if he'd been more handsome, he would have gotten the girl (honestly a sexist concept in of itself, but that's for another day), the beautiful Esmeralda. But he doesn't. He merely gets to be accepted by the public and treated like a normal human being. What kind of a reward is that? Esmeralda ends up with the traditional blond, handsome prince, Phoebus, who is so forgettable I had to look up his name before I wrote this review. That's garbage. For all his hardships, Quasi basically gets the 'reward' of being the third wheel.The one bright spot among our cast of heroes is Esmeralda. Besides having a gorgeous name, she's entertaining, energetic, flirty, and cunning. I'm not really sure if she's that different from the other Disney Princesses (yes, I know she's not actually a princess, but Disney plays it fast and loose with the branding; if this movie had been more successful, you bet she would have been there), but she definitely feels different. She feels more experienced, more mature.Honestly, I wouldn't have minded if they took out the Hunchback and her prince and instead made it about her and Frollo, It really wouldn't have been an adaptation of the Hunchback of Notre Dame anymore, but it would have been a more interesting, better-told story than the one we ended up getting.Frollo himself is far and away the highlight of the movie. He's the kind of Disney villain that's scary when you're a kid and downright disturbing when you're an adult. Before I rewatched this one, I thought Scar was far and away the best Disney villain ever. Now I'm not so sure. If you asked me right now, I'd give the edge to Frollo. He may not have killed Mufasa, but he is wondrously, gloriously, terrifyingly insane.In fact, at the moment of writing, I'd even go so far as to call him arguably the best straight-up villain in film. That voice, that outfit, that authoritative, slimy charisma; it's impossible to look away when he's on screen. He steals every scene. He, plus the many, many wonderful shots in the film (including one in which the pattern on the main stained glass window of the Notre Dame is projected onto the ground on which Esmeralda is standing) are what elevate this film above its contemporaries and make it a truly great film and underrated in the massive Disney animated canon. I hope there comes a day when this film is fully able to come out from the shadow of The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast and really, truly stand on its own.For the first act or so, Frollo is just a captivating, impressive villain. Then comes Hellfire. Other than being the best song in the film and one of the best songs in the entire Disney renaissance, other than being partnered with a beautiful visual sequence that, like real destructive fire, is as painful as it is unignorable, it completely reveals Frollo's state of mind. This is his one moment of weakness, and it disgusts him. And what does a man like Frollo do when confronted with his weakness? He wants to destroy it and bring back the stony façade he regularly projects, for that is all a withered, black soul like himself has left.What is his weakness? He wants Esmeralda. And I don't mean he wants her to lock up in his castle or tie up on the train tracks. He wants her in a lustful, sexual, carnal sense. Of course, the film doesn't use those words, but it's as clear as the water on a bright sunny day. To see emotions like this expressed with the lush Disney bigness is as surreal as it is terrifying. Yet there's a certain current of reality to all this that immerses you in his crazy, twisted world.He refuses to accept this thoughts, and thus they go more twisted and perverted. He seeks to snuff them out and so wants to kill her or burn the city down trying. And that's exactly what he does. He burns half of Paris to the ground. We see him torch an individual home with his own hands. He tries to chop off Phoebus' head. And it's fairly clear that if he got Esmeralda alone to do whatever he wanted with her, he'd kill her, but not before raping her first.Yes, this is a G-rated kid's movie.And because of the nature of animation and Disney animation in particular to shape the environments around the emotions of the characters, you feel every bit of what I just described. It's well-done, evocative, and kind of unbelievable.While a mess of a film in some parts, the parts that are good are so good they more than make up for it. This is one of the great Disney Renaissance movies, and I hope Disney gets around to the live-action adaptation. It's truly unique.
