Psycho's Movie Reviews #376: The Aristocats (1970)

The Aristocats is a 1970 American animated romantic musical comedy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and directed by Wolfgang Reitherman. The 20th Disney animated feature film, the film is based on a story by Tom McGowan and Tom Rowe, and revolves around a family of aristocratic cats, and how an alley cat acquaintance helps them after a butler has kidnapped them to gain his mistress's fortune which was intended to go to them. The film features the voices of Phil Harris, Eva Gabor, Hermione Baddeley, Dean Clark, Sterling Holloway, Scatman Crothers, and Roddy Maude-Roxby.

In 1962, The Aristocats project began as an original script for a two-part live-action episode for Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Colour, developed by writers Tom McGowan and Tom Rowe and producer Harry Tytle. Following two years of re-writes, Walt Disney suggested the project would be more suitable for an animated film, and placed the project in turnaround as The Jungle Book advanced into production. When The Jungle Book was nearly complete, Disney appointed Ken Anderson to develop preliminary work on The Aristocats, making it the last film project to be approved by Disney personally before his death in December 1966. Longtime Disney collaborators Robert and Richard Sherman composed multiple songs for the film, though only two made it in the finished product.

The Aristocats was released on December 24, 1970, becoming a critical and commercial success. A live-action remake is currently in development.

Plot

In 1910, mother cat Duchess and her three kittens (Berlioz, Marie, and Toulouse) live in Paris with retired opera diva Madame Adelaide Bonfamille, and her English butler, Edgar. The cats are pampered pets that live a luxurious lifestyle, and are very cultured in art and music like their owner.

One day, while preparing her will with lawyer Georges Hautecourt, Madame declares that her vast fortune will be first left to her cats, then revert to Edgar once they all pass away. Edgar overhears this through a speaking tube and, after erroneously calculating that he will die before he can inherit, plots to eliminate the cats. He sedates them by putting sleeping pills in a dish of cream, then drives them on his motorcycle out to the countryside in a basket. There, he is ambushed by two hounds named Napoleon and Lafayette, losing his hat, sidecar, umbrella, shoes, and the basket before escaping. The cats are left stranded in the countryside, while Madame Adelaide, Roquefort the mouse, and Frou-Frou the horse discover their absence.

In the morning, Duchess meets an alley cat named Thomas O'Malley, who offers to guide her and the kittens to Paris. The group briefly hitchhikes in a milk truck before being chased out by the driver. Later, while crossing a railroad trestle, the cats narrowly avoid an oncoming train, and Marie falls into a river. O'Malley immediately dives in and rescues her, and is himself rescued by Amelia and Abigail Gabble, two British geese on holiday. The geese lead the cats to the outskirts of Paris, then depart to deal with their inebriated Uncle Waldo. Meanwhile, Edgar returns to the countryside to retrieve his possessions - the only evidence that can incriminate him - from Napoleon and Lafayette and, after some difficulty, ultimately succeeds.

Traveling across the rooftops of the city, the cats meet up with O'Malley's friend Scat Cat and his musicians, who perform the song "Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat". After the band has departed, O'Malley and Duchess converse on a nearby rooftop while the kittens listen at a windowsill. Duchess' loyalty to Madame prompts her to decline O'Malley's marriage proposal. The next day, Duchess and the kittens return to Madame's mansion. Edgar finds them before Madame does, and places them in a sack, deciding to ship them to Timbuktu.

Roquefort catches up with O'Malley at Duchess’ instruction, and O'Malley returns to the mansion, sending Roquefort to find Scat Cat and his gang. Though he struggles to explain the situation to the alley cats, Roquefort successfully brings them to O'Malley's aid. O'Malley, the alley cats, and Frou-Frou fight Edgar, while Roquefort frees Duchess and the kittens. At the end of the fight, Edgar is locked in his own packing-case and sent to Timbuktu himself, never to be seen again.

The Aristocats return to Madame Adelaide, who, ignorant of the real reason for Edgar's departure, rewrites her will to exclude him. After adopting O'Malley into the family, Madame establishes a charity foundation, housing Paris' stray cats in the mansion. Scat Cat and his gang are the first to move in, and reprise their song so loudly that the two hound dogs can hear it out in the countryside.

Production

Story Development

On December 9, 1961, Walt Disney suggested that Harry Tytle and Tom McGowan find some animal stories to adapt as a two-part live-action episode for the Wonderful World of Color television program. By New Year's 1962, McGowan had found several stories including a children's book about a mother cat and her kittens set in New York City. However, Tytle felt that the London setting had added a significant element to One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) and suggested setting the story of the cats in Paris. Following a rough storyline, the story became about two servants—a butler and a maid—who were in line to inherit a fortune of an eccentric mistress after the pet cats died and focused on their feeble and foolish attempts to eliminate the felines. Boris Karloff and Françoise Rosay were in mind to portray the butler and the distressed Madame. A subplot centred around a mother cat hiding her kittens to keep them out of danger in a variety of different homes and locales around Paris, France. During the filming of Escapade in Florence (1962), McGowan brought him the story that had been written by Tom Rowe, an American writer who was living in Paris.

By August 1962, they sent the completed script to Burbank, where it was returned as "rejected" by an unknown executive at the Disney studios. Nevertheless, Tytle brought the script to Disney staying at the Connaught in London. Disney approved for the draft, but recommended additional cuts which were made by February 1963. Before filming was to commence, Rowe wrote a letter to Disney addressing his displeasure of the script revisions, in which Tytle responded to Rowe that the changes Disney approved of would be kept. However, by summer 1963, the project was shelved, where Tytle, in a discussion with Walt, recommended to produce The Aristocats as an animated feature. For that reason, Disney temporarily shelved the project as the animation department was occupied with The Jungle Book (1967). Meanwhile, director Wolfgang Reitherman learned of the project and suggested it as a follow-up project to The Jungle Book. Because of the production delays, Tytle was advised to centralize his efforts on live action projects and was replaced by Winston Hibler.

In 1966, Disney assigned Ken Anderson to determine whether The Aristocats would be suitable for an animated feature. With occasional guidance from Reitherman, Anderson worked from scratch and simplified the two stories into a story that focused more on the cats. Disney saw the preliminary sketches and approved the project shortly before his death. After The Jungle Book was completed, the animation department began work on The Aristocats. Hibler was eventually replaced by Reitherman as producer, who would toss out the more emotional story of Duchess's obsession to find human adopters befitting of her kittens' talents. Instead, the film would be retooled as an adventure comedy in the vein of One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Furthermore, the character Elmira, the maid, who was intended to be voiced by Elsa Lanchester, was removed from the story placing Edgar as the central villain in order to better simplify the storyline.

Casting

As with The Jungle Book, the characters were patterned on the personalities of the voice actors. In 1966, Disney contacted Phil Harris to improvise the script, and shortly after, he was cast to voice Thomas O'Malley. To differentiate the character from Baloo, Reitherman noted O'Malley was "more based on Clark Gable than Wallace Beery, who was partly the model for Baloo". Furthermore, Reitherman cast Eva Gabor as Duchess, remarking she had "the freshest femme voice we've ever had", and Sterling Holloway as Roquefort. Louis Armstrong was initially reported to voice Scat Cat, but he had to back out of the project due to illness. Out of desperation, Scatman Crothers was hired to voice the character under the direction to imitate Armstrong. Pat Buttram and George Lindsey were cast as the farm dogs, which proved to be popular with the filmmakers that another scene was included to have the dogs when Edgar returns to the farm to retrieve his displaced hat and umbrella.

Animation

Ken Anderson spent eighteen months developing the design of the characters. Five of Disney's legendary "Nine Old Men" worked on it, including the Disney crew that had been working 25 years on average. Originally, O'Malley was going to be drawn with stripes to have him resemble a tabby cat, but this was dropped after Reitherman remembered the difficulty in animating Shere Khan in The Jungle Book.

Music

The Aristocats was the last Disney animated feature Robert and Richard Sherman worked on as staff songwriters, growing frustrated by the management of the studio following Walt Disney's death. For the Disney studios, the Sherman Brothers completed their work before the release of Bedknobs and Broomsticks, but would return to the studio to compose songs for The Tigger Movie.

The brothers composed multiple songs, but only the title song and "Scales and Arpeggios" were included in the film. Desiring to capture the essence of France, the Sherman Brothers composed the song "The Aristocats". Disney film producer Bill Anderson would ask Maurice Chevalier to participate in the film. Following the suggestion, Richard Sherman imitated Chevalier's voice as he performed a demo for the song. Chevalier received the demo and was brought out of retirement to sing the song. Deleted songs that were intended for the film included "Pourquoi?" sung by Hermione Baddeley as Madame Bonfamille, its reprise, and "She Never Felt Alone" sung by Robie Lester as Marie. For the show-stopping number, the Sherman Brothers composed "Le Jazz Hot", but "Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat", composed by Floyd Huddleston and Al Rinker, was used instead. Lastly, a villainous song was envisioned to be sung by Edgar and his assistant Elmira as a romantic duet, but the song was dropped when Elmira was removed from the story.

Another deleted song was for Thomas O'Malley titled "My Way's The Highway", but the filmmakers had Terry Gilkyson compose the eponymous song "Thomas O'Malley Cat". Gilkyson explained "It was the same song, but they orchestrated it twice. They used the simpler one, because they may have thought the other too elaborate or too hot. It was a jazz version with a full orchestra."

The instrumental music was composed by George Bruns, who drew from his background with jazz bands in the 1940s and decided to feature the accordion-like musette for French flavour.

On Classic Disney: 60 Years of Musical Magic, this includes "Thomas O'Malley Cat" on the purple disc and "Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat" on the orange disc. On Disney's Greatest Hits, this includes "Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat" on the red disc.

On August 21, 2015, in honour of the 45th anniversary of the film, a new soundtrack was released as part of Walt Disney Records: The Legacy Collection. The release includes the songs and score as used in the film, along with The Lost Chords of the Aristocats (featuring songs written for the film but not used), and previously released album versions of the songs as bonus tracks.

{I'm sorry but Everybody Wants To Be A Cat, is the best song in the film - heck one of the best Disney songs in general and very underrated if I do say so myself}

Release/Reception/Box Office

The Aristocats was originally released to theaters on December 24, 1970. It was re-released in theaters in 1980 and 1987.

Howard Thompson of The New York Times praised the film as "grand fun all the way, nicely flavour, red with tunes, and topped with one of the funniest jam sessions ever by a bunch of scraggly Bohemians headed by one Scat Cat." Roger Ebert, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, awarded the film three stars out of four summarizing The Aristocats as "light and pleasant and funny, the characterization is strong, and the voices of Phil Harris (O'Malley the Alley Cat) and Eva Gabor (Duchess, the mother cat) are charming in their absolute rightness." Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film "has a gentle good-natured charm which will delight the small-fry and their elders alike." He praised the animation, but remarked that the film "lacks a certain kind of vigour, boldness and dash, a kind of a hard-focused emphasis which you would say was a Disney trademark." Arthur D. Murphy of Variety praised the film writing the film is "helped immeasurably by the voices of Phil Harris, Eva Gabor, Sterling Holloway, Scatman Crothers and others, plus some outstanding animation, songs, sentiment, some excellent dialog and even a touch of psychedelia." Stefan Kanfer, reviewing for Time magazine, noted that "The melodies in Disney's earlier efforts have been richer. But for integration of music, comedy and plot, The Aristocats has no rivals."

For its 1987 re-release, animation historian Charles Solomon expressed criticism for its episodic plot, anachronisms, and borrowed plot elements from earlier Disney animated features, but nevertheless wrote "but even at their least original, the Disney artists provide better animation--and more entertainment--than the recent animated features hawking The Care Bears, Rainbow Brite and Transformers." Writing in his book The Disney Films, Disney historian and film critic Leonard Maltin wrote that "the worst that one could say of The AristoCats is that it is unmemorable. It's smoothly executed, of course, and enjoyable, but neither its superficial story nor its characters have any resonance." Additionally, in his book Of Mice and Magic, Maltin criticized the film for re-using Phil Harris to replicate The Jungle Book's Baloo, dismissing the character Thomas O'Malley as "essentially the same character, dictated by the same voice personality."

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that the film received a 64% approval rating, with an average rating of 5.90/10 based on 33 reviews. Its consensus states: "Though The Aristocats is a mostly middling effort for Disney, it is redeemed by terrific work from its voice cast and some jazzy tunes."

The Aristocats was released in December 1970 where it earned $10.1 million in United States and Canadian box office rentals by the end of 1971. The film was the most popular "general release" movie at the British box office in 1971. The film was the most popular film in France in 1971 and had total admissions of 12.7 million. It is also ranked as the eighteenth highest-grossing of all time in France. The film is the most popular film released in Germany in 1971 with admissions of 11.3 million being the country's eleventh highest-grossing film. By the end of its initial theatrical run, the film had earned domestic rentals of $11 million and $17 million in foreign countries, for a worldwide rental of $28 million.

The film was re-released to theaters in the United States on December 19, 1980 where it grossed an additional $18 million and again on April 10, 1987 where it grossed $17 million. The film grossed $32 million worldwide from an international re-release in 1994, including $11 million in France. The Aristocats has had a lifetime gross of $55.7 million in the United States and Canada, and its total lifetime worldwide box office gross is $191 million.

Budget $4 million

Box office $191 million

My Review

Animated version about a family of beloved Aristocats filled with humour, action, musical numbers, entertainment and fun. 1910 Paris, retired opera star Adelaide Bonfamille enjoys her wealthy life in her Paris villa with cat Duchess (voice by Eva Gabor) and three kitten : pianist Berlioz (Dean Clark voice) , painter Toulouse (Gary Dubin) sanctimonious Marie . When the loyal butler learns that Madame is planning to give her entire fortune to them he attempts to take them . As the butler Edgar overhears her will leaves everything to the cats until their death, he abducts to eliminate them . However, his plans are ruined when a pair of dogs named Lafayette and Napoleon give chase . Edgar abandons the cats in a field before heading back to Paris. With the help of a smooth talking tomcat (voice by Phil Harris) felines set to inherit a fortune from their owner try to make it back home after a jealous butler kidnaps them and leaves them in the country .

This amusing cartoon has great animated sequences well staged with stylish and vitality , adventure, romance , outstanding final and results to be pretty entertaining. There are great songs, enjoyable action sequences in countryside , including amusing ending confrontation at the climax of the film . An imaginative and jolly Disney adaptation being inspired by the true story of a Parisian family of cats, circa 1910, that inherited a fabulous fortune , including brilliant drawings and catching score by George Bruns .This was originally intended as a two-part, live-action instalment of the TV series Disneyland (1954). Originally there was meant to be a direct-to-video sequel titled AristoCats II, it was intended for a 2007 release, but production got cancelled back in 2006. The funny characters fascinating Visual Style and Humour in one of Disney's best of the 70s . This was the last animated feature to be approved by Walt Disney and the studio's first animated feature to be entirely completed after his death. It should be noted, however, that Disney had spent time working on the story for The Rescuers (1977) , released seven years later , around the time Jungle Book (1967) entered production. This agreeable animation movie contains a lively and enjoyable musical score by George Bruns .

The motion picture was well directed by Wolfgang Reitherman helped by Eric Larson , in fact this was the last film in which Larson worked as a supervising animator ; from then on he concentrated on training the younger animators that came to the studio during the seventies and eighties a good craftsman from Disney factory . Director Reitherman often animated fast action sequences or dances , and known for "re-using" animation from older films and placing them in newer films . He co-directed several Disney movies such as Aristocats, Jungle Book , 101 Dalmatians, Peter Pan, Cinderella, Dumbo, among others .

The Aristocats is really quite charming, and is rated far too low on IMDb. The songs aren't as memorable as the ones in the Jungle Book, but they weren't bad at all, 'Everybody wants to be a Cat' is a classic and the title song is brilliantly sung by Gigi's Maurice Chavelier. The animation is really lovely, the best sequence being the landscape of Paris in general. It looked beautiful. This is probably Disney's most relaxing animation I think, and as another reviewer quite rightly said, who doesn't love cats? Another great piece of animation was O' Malley looking into Duchess's eyes, as their romance was so believable while not obvious.(a good thing). The plot (about a greedy butler and a fortune, reminds me of Bailey's Billions) was a little unoriginal, but worked very well, and the script was really funny, especially the fights between the kittens. They remind me of me and my brother and 3 sisters, always fighting. My favourite scene was the chase of Edgar with the two dogs, who were always fighting about who was the leader. The voice talents were a delight, most notably Phil Harris, whom I recognised from the Jungle Book, and Eva Gabor, from the Rescuers. The supporting characters, namely Scat Cat, were also well done. In conclusion, a really pleasant film, that is definitely underrated. 8.5/10