Disney on the Warpath

About a week ago, I received the following message from Bryant:  "Hey, have you seen Tangled? We saw it and it was great. It made me think of when we were talking about Disney stepping up their game."

Well, this afternoon Star and I went to see it and boy was he right.  Disney's got its groove back.

Now, the argument could be made that Disney never really left, because Pixar has been pumping out quality films since 1995, and Disney has been able to ride that wave (Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Wall-E, Up, etc.)  But really, for the entire past decade the Disney Animation Studio has been all but dead.  Since Tarzan's moderate success in 1999, here is the complete list of underwhelming movies:

• Fantasia 2000
• Dinosaur
• The Emperor's New Groove
• Atlantis: The Lost Empire
• Lilo & Stitch
• Treasure Planet
• Brother Bear
• Home on the Range
• Chicken Little
• Meet the Robinsons
• Bolt

Not too much to really admire in there, with the notable exceptions of The Emperor's New Groove and Stitch's evil-meter.  Completely, totally blah.

In the last two years, however, that's all changed.  Disney Animation studio has had two blockbusters with The Princess and the Frog and Tangled (gotta respect anything that can go toe-to-toe with Harry Potter 7 box office-wise), with a new Winnie the Pooh movie on its way.  Let's hope they can keep the magic going.

In addition to the movies, Disney just released a new video game that gets my gamer heart all a-flutter: Epic Mickey.  Word is that they are trying to resurrect Mickey's personality by allowing a certain element of mischievousness and guile that has hitherto been sucked out or white-washed over.  The trailers look...well, epic.

Throw into the mix the fact that Disney owns ESPN and ABC Family (with their 25 Nights of Christmas) and I can pretty much thank them for my entire weekend's entertainment.