The Aristocats

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Catching Up

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Closing the chapter of the Silver Age with 'The Jungle Book', we now begin the Bronze Age (and 4th age) of Disney animation. We begin with a title I haven't watched since I was a little kid, so this may as well be a first time for me. In fact, just about everything from the Bronze Age falls under that category except for 'The Black Cauldron', which I haven't seen at all. So this should make for an interesting era of review... when it resumes in April.

Back to the film at hand, however, this is one of those titles that starts off kind of lame and dull, and from the get-go, I wasn't expecting to be very entertained. Taking place in Paris, 1910, a retired opera singer named Madame Adelaide Bonfamille (Hermione Baddeley) lives with her butler, Edgar (Roddy Maude-Roxby​), and her precious cat, Dutchess (Eva Gabor) along with her three kittens, Berlioz (Dean Clark), Marie (Liz English) and Toulouse (Gary Dubin). One day, Madame declares in her will that her entire fortune is to go to her cats. Overhearing this, Edgar plots to catnap (not in a good way) the cats and abandon them somewhere. We hate Edgar and his ideas, which include drugging three cute, innocent kittens. You'd take Jasper and Horace over this guy any day.

Edgar's plan is (somewhat) foiled, however, by two hounds named Napoleon (Pat Buttram... poor guy) and Lafayette (George Lindsey). In ambushing Edgar as just a couple of hounds chasing some guy on a vehicle, Edgar loses track of the cats who all wake up only to find themselves lost. The next morning, they meet the... almost Bruce Campbell-esque Thomas O'Malley (Phil Harris) who offers to help Dutchess and her kittens get back to their home in Paris. The lot of the movie is pretty much these cats having a homeward bound adventure, and running into interesting characters along the way. Meanwhile Edgar and the two hounds have a sort of ongoing thing, as the dogs now possess whatever evidence could convict him of the crime of stealing the cats.

Much as I expected, a lot of the film ended up being about two things - overall cuteness involving the kittens, and the clashing of society. When the main story involves the wealthy and comfortable cat meeting the street smart alley cat, it only brings to mind 'Lady & The Tramp', and in a way, we've kind of done this story already - at least a very similar one. Hell, this title even comes with its own dash of racism in the form of a Siamese cat, just like 'Lady & The Tramp'! Once again, Disney Plus has the forewarning about certain depictions of society before the film gets going, and once again, I credit them for that. I think it's better to get an idea of a time when certain things seemed acceptable so we can learn from our mistakes, moving forward. This may be extreme, but it's not unlike why we learn about WWII in history class.

By the end of the film, I consider this movie just sort of "there". I was certainly mildly entertained by several parts of it, but so much of it hasn't aged particularly well. The primary example is when O'Malley, Dutchess and the kittens visit O'Malley's swinging cat friends. The musical number they do is a lot of fun, and well-animated, but at the cost of portraying a racial stereotype or two. Beyond that, O'Malley's constant use of the word "baby" as a term of endearment along with Dutchess being entirely uninteresting in her female role can be somewhat cringe-worthy. Their dynamic would be criticized immensely if this was released today. However, it was 1970, and a lot of this was just the way it was.

I guess if I were to recommend this, it would be the same as recommending 'The Jungle Book'. Kids could check this out and have a good time with it, but it might be important to let them know things like... don't ever call a woman "baby" if you don't know already know her AND have her consent to do so. Nowadays, that's the sort of thing that can earn you a kick to the nuts, a slap to the face, or your face to your nuts because she'll find a way to make it happen. As far as this one goes, it just sort of lingers as "okay" at best. There were moments I liked, but they were few and far between, and this is only mildly entertaining at best. The hounds are probably the best part, and they're simple comic relief, so I wouldn't approach this one with super high expectations.

​3/5

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