movie thoughts: The Fox and the Hound (1981)
There is a difference between an old animated movie and an animated classic - I realized that last night while rewatching 'The Fox and the Hound'.
The movie just celebrated it's 30th Anniversary release, making it the same age as me, so I had fond memories of watching this as a child and listening to the book-on-cassette read-along. I was actually very surprised by how much of the dialogue I remembered from listening to that recording over and over. I was also surprised by how there really wasn't much else to that movie.
Watching something like 'Fox and the Hound' after enjoying a movie like 'Tangled' or even, dare I say it, 'Lion King' (one of Disney's most overrated, IMHO), you can see how far the studio has come in those 30 years. It feels like more of a fable than a story, the characters are just skin and bones and you hardly get to know them in the 80 minute run time. Also, I doubt anyone would make a movie targeted towards children today that featured scenes where the main character is shot at and where he is threatened with having his food sliced off with a trap.
I'm happy I just rented this from the library and didn't buy it on blu-ray. I doubt I will want to go back to it. Like 'Black Cauldron', this is one of those movies I should have left behind and not rewatched because my childhood memories had filtered out it's flaws. Tod and Copper are cute, the story does not hold up by today's standards.
originally posted to readwatchblog