Sleeping Beauty (1989, VHS)

Disclaimer
I am about to do something I have never done here before - well, at least not on purpose. I am about to make a complete fool of myself. But it is for a good cause.

This review is part of the Hard_to_Please Love Fest, organized by diverpam, for our friend Mark (Hard_to_Please) who was recently diagnosed with advanced cancer. All funds raised this write- off will be donated to Mark to help defray some of his expenses.

Although Mark has his own wonderfully unique style we are each attempting to honor him by writing in our best Hard_to_Please fashion. We hope you will enjoy the entries.
Diverpam had a few requirements for this write-off. We must include at least one reference to urination - does that count? - an embarrassing story, or a hilarious story. We just have to include one of those three things. I never thought I write anything with a reference to urination in it.

I certainly can't come close to his wonderful style of writing review, but I will do my best. And yes, this review will cover Sleeping Beauty.

I also have a quick warning. I am working on this review very late at night, after having only about four hours of sleep last night. So if I am babbling incoherently by the time I get done with this, that is why. I didn't set out to do this on purpose, though, now that I think about it, doing this may help me write like Mark did on the review he wrote while drunk. I just saw a report on 20/20, Dateline, one of those shows, that said driving while very tired is just as bad as driving while drunk. So maybe writing while very tired will have the same results as writing while drunk. I guess we'll see. I will also be going a bit off topic a little later in this review, but I have a reason for that, which I will explain then. Also, I think this is going to end up being a long review.

Ok. Well, I'll get this out of the way now, and then get on to the movie. I can't believe I am about to tell the world - the Epinions world anyway - this embarrassing incident. Everyone, please wait until I have left the room to laugh at me. =) I love to read and have since I was very young. I have also enjoyed going to the bookstore since I was young. One day, I was in the bookstore with my mom and step dad. I don't remember how old I was. I was thrilled to find a storybook based on the Disney animated movie Sleeping Beauty. This wasn't too long after the movie had been in the theaters. I had seen the movie and loved it. So I was happily looking through the book. My step dad was a short distance off looking at some other books, and I think my mom was with him. There I was, looking at the book - reading it really - when, suddenly I had to go to the bathroom. Badly. That can sneak up on a child you know. I'm not sure why I didn't get my mother and make a trip to the bathroom. I guess I wanted to finish the book - even though I knew how the story ends. And I thought I could hold it for a little longer. Wrong. Yes, that's right, right there in the middle of the bookstore, I, well, had an accident. I then had to stand around in there waiting for my step dad to finish, and then walk through the mall to the car like that. It was very uncomfortable and very embarrassing. I can't believe I just admitted to this. Oh well. That was my embarrassing story and reference to urination, all in one. Feel free to laugh now. On to the movie. By the way, I did later get a copy of that book. I still have it somewhere, but I have no idea where it is, otherwise I would be doing this review on that book. Instead, I am doing it on the movie version of Sleeping Beauty. I knew right where my copy of the movie was.

Sleeping Beauty is a classic animated Disney movie. It was the third animated feature by Disney to be based on a fairytale. The first two were Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Cinderella. Sleeping Beauty was the first animated movie to be filmed in the widescreen format. The movie took six years, and cost six million dollars to make. It was released in 1959, and has gone on to become the second highest grossing film released that year. I think I have a short circuit in my brain because I can't remember the movie that grossed the most from that year. I own a copy of this movie on VHS. My copy is digitally remasted, has a special commemorative booklet, and include a documentary on the making of the movie.

CAST
I will list the people that provided voices for the characters, but I only know for sure who actually did the voice for two characters. In the credits of the movie, which ran at the beginning, just listed the names of the voice talent. It didn't tell what character they did the voice for.

Mary Costa - Princess Aurora
Eleanor Audley - Maleficent - she also did the voice of Cinderella's step-mother
Barbara Luddry
Taylor Holmes
Bill Shirley
Verna Felton
Barbara Jo Allen
Bill Thompson

Clyde Geronimi - Supervising Director
Eric Larson - Sequence Director
Wolfgang keitherman - Sequence Director
Les Clark - Sequence Director

This movie is rated G.
The running time is 75 minutes.

PLOT

The movie begins showing a storybook. The cover is opened to show illustrations of the story. A narrator begins to tell the story of a King and Queen who wanted a child. After several years they had a daughter, Princess Aurora. King Stefan and the Queen - her name was never said - and their subjects were very happy. They had a huge celebration. People came from all around to see the Princess and bring her gifts. King Hubert, the ruler of a neighboring kingdom, came with his son Prince Philip. The two Kings have been friends for years and they make an agreement that their children will be married when they grow up.

Three good fairies, Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather arrive. They each have a special gift for Aurora. Flora gives the Princess the gift of beauty. Fauna gives her the gift of song. Merryweather is about to give her gift, when a party crasher arrives. Maleficent - can you believe my spell checker did underline that name? - is one of the scariest Disney villains. She is evil. Her hat - at least I think it is a hat - has horns. Maleficent was not invited to the celebration. She says she has a gift for Aurora too, but it was a curse. Maleficent says that by sunset on her sixteenth birthday, Aurora would prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die. Maleficent then vanished in a puff of smoke. Merryweater still had her gift to give. She couldn't completely undo the curse, but she could change it a bit. Instead of dying, Aurora would fall into a deep sleep. A kiss from her true love would wake her up.

King Stefan and the Queen were very worried about Aurora's safety. King Stefan ordered all the spinning wheels in the kingdom destroyed. The three fairies are also worried. Flora comes up with a plan to keep Aurora safe until after sunset on her sixteenth birthday. The three of them will pose as peasant women and raise Aurora. They will live in a wood cutter's cottage in the woods. Flora also says that they can't use any magic during those sixteen years - if they used magic, there was a chance Maleficent would find them. The King and Queen agree. Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather head off to their new home with Aurora.

Sixteen years pass very quickly. The narrator talks again for a minute or two. Maleficent is at her home in the Forbidden Mountains. She is furious because she has not been able to find Aurora. She has had her henchmen, or henchanimals (yes I made that word up) - some of them were pigs - looking for Aurora for years. They have not been able to find her, partly because they are bumbling fools. Maleficent then sends her bird out to look for Aurora.

Aurora - the fairies call her Briar Rose - is all grown up. She is very beautiful. It is her birthday. The fairies have plans for a small party for her, with a new dress and cake. They send Aurora out to pick berries so they can get to work on the dress and cake. Flora was making the dress, something she had never done before, and Fauna was making the cake, something she had never done before. Those two were clueless about what they were doing. Flora just started cutting the material. She cut a big hole in the material - the dress has to have a hole in the bottom for the feet to come out. The finished dress and cake were disasters. You have to see them to believe what Flora and Fauna made. And poor Merryweather. She was the model, so she was stuck in the mess of a dress. They end up getting their wands out for the first time in sixteen years to fix the dress, cake, and huge mess they made. Flora and Merryweather argue over the color of the dress. Flora wants it pink, and Merryweather wants it blue. They keep changing the color of the dress with their wands.

Aurora has many cute animal friends that show up when she is picking berries. None of them talk though. She started to sing and dance around - she had a beautiful voice. She was singing Once Upon A Dream. A young man is riding through the woods and hears her singing. He is drawn to her. When he finds her, he starts to sing and dance with her. Aurora then has to leave. She refuses to tell him her name - she has been taught by the fairies not to tell her name to any strangers - but she tells him to come see her that night at the cottage. Both of them fell in love - yes it happened in a short time, but this is a fairytale you know. When Aurora returned to the cottage, she was thrilled with her dress and cake. Then the fairies told her the truth - that she was really a Princess. She was going on that night. She was to marry Prince Philip. I don't think she was told about Maleficent and the curse - if she was, that wasn't shown in the movie.

King Stefan and the Queen are anxious to see Aurora again. King Hubert is also there, and he has already started planning the wedding between Aurora and Philip. Aurora and the fairies return to the castle, but no one else sees Aurora at this time. Maleficent discovers where Aurora is and she shows up with a spinning wheel - the woman appeared and disappeared in a puff of smoke, so it is really impossible to keep her away from anywhere. She put Aurora in some kind of trance, and Aurora pricked her finger on the spindle and fell into a deep sleep. I don't think that is a spoiler because the movie is called Sleeping Beauty after all. The fairies find Aurora, and then try to figure out what to do. Flora finds out who the man Aurora met in the woods - that I am not saying - and they go to find him. Maleficent does everything she can to make sure that Aurora remains asleep. To find out how everything works out, who is the man Aurora loves, do the fairies find him, will Aurora wake up, you have to watch the movie.

This is a wonderful, delightful movie. It is a classic example of Disney's animation. It is a beautiful masterpiece. The animation was considered cutting edge when the movie was released in 1959. It broke new ground for what could be done in animated movies. Eylvand Earle, the production designer of the movie, studied medieval architecture and paintings for inspiration in creating the artwork for the movie. The drawings for this movie are full of details. The style of this movie was different from all other Disney animated movies released to that time. The animation in the movie is absolutely beautiful. It is better than a lot of new animation being made today - I mean from some cartoons I have seen recently.

The story of this movie is about good triumphing over evil. There is also a hint of romance in the movie with Aurora and the man she loves. The movie is predictable since it is a fairytale, but it is still very good and worth watching. There is one swear word used in the movie. I don't remember noticing that when I saw the movie before. The movie is based on the classic fairytale. Music from Tchaikovshy's Sleeping Beauty ballet was adapted for the movie. The characters were fairly well developed.

For most of the movie, the artwork was bright and beautiful depicting the settings. When Maleficent was in a scene, it was dark and gloomy, the colors looking washed out. If Maleficent appeared in a scene, like she did at the beginning of the movie, the colors changed, becoming washed out, dark, and gloomy. The mood of the scenes Maleficent is in is dark. After she leaves, the colors returned to being bright, beautiful, and cheerful looking. The colors helped to set the mood throughout the movie.

CHARACTERS

Princess Aurora - Daughter of King Stefan and the Queen. She is raised in the woods by the three fairies. This was done to protect her from the curse. She grew up in a wood cutter's cottage. She grew into a beautiful young woman with a beautiful singing voice. Mary Costa, the woman that provided the voice for Aurora, went on to have a successful career as an opera singer.

Prince Philip - Son of King Hubert. He is to marry Aurora when they both are older.

The Fairies - Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather - They are kind and love Aurora. They give up magic for sixteen years to raise Aurora in the safety of the woods. They do this to protect her from the curse. Flora seems to be the leader of the group. She comes up with a few plans. Merryweather is feisty and has a bit of a temper. She and Flora have some disagreements. Fauna acts as the peacekeeper between the other two.

Maleficent - The villain of the movie. She lives in the Forbidden Mountains. She was not invited to the celebration for Aurora's birth. She then placed a curse on Aurora. She spent sixteen years looking for Aurora so she could make sure her curse would be carried out.

My copy of the movie has a making of documentary after the movie that lasts about fifteen minutes. It contains interviews with some of the animators that worked on the movie. Mary Costa is interviewed too. There is even some footage showing Walt Disney talking about the movie and how it was made.

This is a wonderful movie worth watching. Anyone who hasn't seen it should rent it as soon as possible.

Now I am going to go a bit off topic. For several days I thought about this review, what I would write about, and how I would meet the requirements for the write-off. I started getting ideas and making notes. Then the other night - again late at night - I had this idea, revelation, whatever. I tend to get my best ideas late at night. Of course some people may think that I have lost my mind for talking about this. I happen to think it fits for this write-off, and it is a Hard_To_Please type topic. I did consider doing the whole review on this - I'll tell in just a minute - but after searching and searching, I couldn't find a place on Epinions where I could post it, so I am adding it in to this review. And, I would have needed a lot more time to do some research for more examples and information for a full length review on this.

So, I was thinking and planning for this review when I was struck by something. There are no bathrooms, in any shape or form, shown in Sleeping Beauty. No indoor bathrooms - it was a bit too early in history for those since the movie takes place in the fourteenth century - no outhouses, no chamber pots. Nothing. For that matter, there are no bathrooms in other animated Disney movies too. In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, first seven, and then eight people lived in a small cottage with no bathroom or outhouse around. It is the same in Cinderella. No bathrooms shown or mentioned. Since a bathroom is never mentioned in that movie, I am assuming there was no bathroom around. After all, if there was any form of a bathroom in that castle, the step-mother and step-sisters would have had Cinderella scrubbing it down with a toothbrush. I could just see her step mother yelling at her for not having the chamber pots polished yet. Mulan did take a bath before she went to see the matchmaker in Mulan. Later in the movie, she also takes a bath in a river. That is the only time I remembering seeing any character in a Disney animated movie doing anything related to a bathroom. I may be wrong since I didn't have a chance to rewatch all the Disney movies in my collection after I got this thought in my head.

There are other movies where bathrooms never show up too, and these movies are set in modern times. I don't mean I want to see the characters go in there and do their business - I don't need or want to see that - but I'm just pointing out that bathrooms aren't shown that often in movies. They don't show up to often in books either. I read a lot, and it is rare that there is any mention of a bathroom, let alone a mention of someone needing to go to the bathroom - again, I'm not saying I need the details, just pointing out the lack of bathrooms. Evidently the characters in all these books and movies are super beings that don't need to bother with going to the bathroom. People related to the making of movies, and authors of books, want their creations to be perceived as being realistic. It just seems to me that if they want their work to be realistic, bathrooms and the need for bathrooms should show up. Movies don't need to show the characters doing their business in there, but they could show character going in the bathroom and closing the door every once in a while. Or even just show a bathroom occasionally - the character could be in there brushing their teeth. Books don't need to describe in great detail why a character needs a bathroom. I have a few books by the same author that do actually mention characters needing to use the bathroom every so often. She - the author - doesn't describe what the characters are doing. In one of the books, she said the character had a pressing need to take care of. Ok. I am done rambling on about the lack of bathrooms in movies and books now. I couldn't get this thought out of my head, so I decided to add it in. I didn't mean to offend anyone by talking about this. If I did, I am sorry. You see what kind of ideas a person who has not had enough sleep gets after reading all of Hard_To_Please's reviews in a short period of time?

I just want to say a few quick things here and then I will shut up. =)
I haven't been a member of this site for that long, but I came across Hard_To_Please's wonderful reviews. His reviews have made me laugh until my sides hurts, and cry. I never knew that grocery shopping could be so funny. The review he wrote about losing his two best friends was so touching it had me crying, even though I knew from a review of diverpam's that I had read that his missing cat had returned home. I know just what he went through because my cat was missing once - it was only a day and a half, but it was horrible. I was so glad to read that Zeuss - I hope I spelled that name right - found his way back home. So when I found out about this write-off, I wanted to take part to do a little something to help him. I did my best to write like him. Thank you all for reading. Sorry it was so long. I got a bit wordy again. =) In case anyone is wondering, I have no idea how many words this has, I didn't count.

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jankp, jkkelley,29th Candidate, Sunkah, Dr_Steph, bwyckoff1, jo.com, AinsleyJo, Lady Cynic, frazzledspice, mcmaster, roxymarie, LordAngel, sherrylee, brendametcalf, pambo, NoMattrWht, Sordid-1, nwinston, SLOW, Suzer, Biggs219, melissasrn, MattJoe, ifif1938, DiverPam, GinaHill, grandgram, Hikini, pogomom, bops_mom, purplewiz, movielover123, repulsemonkey, Redhotleigh, gonow, hypotenuse, blackcat2, mkp51, Kevlog, flamepillar, PSobel, Taurusmoon, nathsmom, daddieo, Zenhues, cldoss, 2buzy, Lizf, gransurfer1, Deaser26, Auldbawl1, Michiman1, prfstars, BARNZ, fransbebe, Granniemose, ggrimes1221, ginzo, eplovejoy, michealhead, Arthur.Rubin, lisa_j, cripper, Hadassahchana, teddiec, mtbat, momsworkinlate, viper1963, dragonfire88, Linda1527,jgibson2, Pamelita3099, MaryTara, msnorvay

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