WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY
Directed & Narrated by Don Hahn
Produced by Peter Schneider & Hahn
Written by Patrick Pacheco
Released by Stone Circle Pictures and Red Shoes Productions.
USA. 86 min. Rated PG
 

Director Don Hahn, formerly a producer on some of the most successful Disney animated films of the past 20 years, bookends this retrospective documentary with never-before-seen clips from a 1994 corporate event. That year, the speeches of CEO Michael Eisner, chairman of Disney animation Roy E. Disney, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, head of the film production division, were brief and to the point. One can sense the tension among the three men—Katzenberg was soon on his way out of the company. Going backwards from this pressure point (ironically when the three men had their greatest hit on their hands, The Lion King), Hahn takes a no-hold-barred look at the Disney animation studio from the early 1980s to 1994.

It’s not a film done with the sharpest of style in regards to editing or even so much its direction. Hahn opts for archival interviews and a host of interviews with the likes of John Lasseter of Pixar, producer Peter Schneider, and Aladdin helmers Ron Clements and John Musker. We’re given, however, a real sense of this time and place, and of an off-screen story that is not cluttered with as much of the sanitized Disney sheen as one might expect, and certainly not from one of its own.

Hahn looks into the down-and-dirty machinations of a major Hollywood studio having to deal with its own pedigree. By 1984, Disney animated movies had hit a slump, accentuated by The Black Cauldron, one of its biggest flops. The old guard was dying out (Disney’s original animators, the “Nine Old Men”), and new animators were being pumped in to bring new ideas. As Hahn shows us clearly, Jeffrey Katzenberg, formerly at Paramount Pictures, just wanted to get right to making the hits, but knew very little about producing a solid animated movie.

Waking Sleeping Beauty is touching in its nostalgic remembrance of a creative group being put on the spot and, more often than not, stepping up to the plate and hitting it out of the park. The film’s accentuated by the footage Hahn has assembled, much of it shot by himself back in the ’80’s. For all of the drama between the head honchos, there’s real levity here, too. One of the brightest points is when Hahn includes caricatures the animators drew of their bosses and a hilarious anecdote about how, when pressure was at its peak to finish Aladdin, the animators indulged in a margarita party.

The film may carry more interest to those who have a passionate interest in the Disney movies expounded upon here (there are also juicy tidbits on underrated films like The Great Mouse Detective and The Rescuers Down Under). However, the film has a multi-layered appeal, where if one is not a particularly big fan of Disney’s output in the ’80’s and ’90’s, it still has merit and fascination as a story of power and control, both in the crafting of films and in the executive battles. It’s a loving but not slavishly adulatory look at a Hollywood studio from someone with intimate knowledge—and great access to material and the players involved. Jack Gattanella
March 26, 2010