Favorite disney movie??

^ Not unpopular by me. Toy Story has oodles done right from the ground up. Tim Allen as the arrogant imbecile works, as does Tom Hanks as the golly-shucks sheriff suddenly marginalized by the new kid in town. We are given a toy's view of hell early on: the wanton destructiveness of Sid. Later, the story takes both Woody and Buzz into Sid's clutches through believable circumstances. Add to that, Woody's jealousy has made him a sullied turncoat among the toys, while Buzz's self-confidence gets shattered when he discovers that he is, in truth, a toy. A tarnished lawman and a broken hero must somehow dig themselves out of deepest pit of doom imaginable. Somebody at Pixar really knew what they were doing. I can also see why Walt Disney Pictures was so glad to pipeline this film through their huge theater distributorship network. At the time, Pixar could produce the films, but had no system for getting their films into movie theaters. That's why Disney gets their vanity plate on Pixar productions: Pixar makes them, Disney delivers them.

Okay, it has taken a rerun through my animated library, but I can finally single out favorites. However, since I'm drawing from the lineup of Walt Disney Pictures and from Pixar, these are narrow favorites, just barely ahead of the rest.

Fave Disney production: Oliver & Company. Robert Loggia really brought the nasty and the menace to the Sykes villain, and development of the unwanted kitten who goes through Fate's wringer a few times and emerges in a loving home works for me. Yes, I'm a big softie for happy endings. I also very much like the aesop taught in this one: real friends will never hold you down, instead they will always pick you up. It's worth noting that when Jenny fell once more into Syke's clutches, Oliver was the very first one of Fagan's troop to make the insane leap between speeding vehicles to effect a rescue. That is some kinda kitten.

Fave Pixar production: WALL●E. In theory, this premise shouldn't work: Earth has become uninhabitable, and can only be saved by two robots in love. Don Bluth's Titan A.E. had the Earth get blown up in the first act, which is major misstep for any feature that's not trying to be moribund. Its box office draw was equally dismal. And "robots in love" has shades of those ridiculously humanoid chromium-and-latex sex dolls from Japan going at it. Yet, WALL●E is this grungy, boxy trash compactor that develops a crush on a sleek, mag-lev ovoid probe dubbed EVE. And I was hooked; somehow, Pixar made this preposterous premise work.

Well, that's a matter of semantics. Technically, yes, Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation are two different production entities that share a theater distribution network. However, the two companies merged years ago, and now share administrators as well. By the same token, the early Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies were produced by Leon Schesinger's studios, which was its own entity, but with a contract to Warner Brothers Pictures. When Leon retired, his studios and talented staff were absorbed by Warner Brothers under Eddie Selzer. From that point on, those were "Warner Brothers" cartoons. Likewise for Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising having their own studios for making cartoons, with a contract to supply them to MGM Studios. When Harman-Ising couldn't meet demand, MGM set up their own animation department under Fred Quimby, who hired many of Harman-Ising's staffers and well as some from Van Beuren studios. This is how Bill Hanna came to meet Joe Barbera, and cartoon history would be made.

New favorite: Zootopia. The world-building as a whole is magnificent, the characters are both surrogate humans and civilized animals homogenized. It's a trope storm, certainly, but well-crafted nonetheless. The whole think tank sessions by the directors and the production staff really does hammer out the rough spots and raise the film-making game. Go, Disney!