disney music thoughts
my kids are growing into prime animated movie ages, so we're been listening to a lot of the disney and related animated musicals, as well as watching other animated movies too. because of who i am as a person, i spend a lot of time deeply thinking about this stuff because it's omnipresent. i could write up whole posts about them individually but i'm just gonna put down a couple thoughts to purge them.
coco was my favorite for multiple years and is still a beautiful and poignant depiction of death and remembering those who died. however, only one of the many songs have lyrics that are about the story (proud corazon) and one that's related to the story (remember me), while the rest are short and sweet but disconnected from the themes of the movie. un poco loco is wonderful and fun and playful but it's so out of place in a story about a child searching for his father. the world es mi familia is the same and sadly cut short.
i see on wikipedia (now that i'm looking it up) that there were plans to have it be a much fuller musical (like the rest of the disney animated films) but decided against it, which is heartbreaking to me. "Plans for the film to be a full musical film were scrapped following early test screenings." i hope none of the haters get a full nights sleep ever again.
the princess and the frog is an all-timer but it's a real fuckin shame that tiana and naveen get married before they do the finale montage. i know that one of the themes of the movie is "don't be so focused on achieving your goals that you miss out on human connection" but like did they really have to get married as frogs in the swamp? i know that the whole magic thing is "kiss a princess" and only once they're married does she become a princess and then they're humans again, but that's dumb as shit and means that their work to defeat dr facilier didn't have a satisfying conclusion.
how about they defeat dr facilier and become human and lawrence is arrested and ray dies. naveen is sad because he thinks tiana's leaving and she's like "no dude we're in this together" so he proposes and she's like "yes, but i want to get married in my restaurant". this leads to them the finale montage where they buy the property, fix it up, and then have them open the restaurant in their wedding outfits, and then the finale song happens as they dance together. a simple rearrangement.