The original Fantasia has long been considered one of Walt Disney's crowning achievements. Many of the images from that movie have burned themselves into the public's consciousness: The demon of Bald Mountain, the sprites from "The Nutcracker," Mickey Mouse as "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." Disney always intended to add to Fantasia over time and actually completed several new segments ("Peter and the Wolf", "Claire de Lune," and "The Flight of The Bumblebee eventually wound up being released as Make Mine Music). Unfortunately, Fantasia was one of Disney's few failures (failure being a relative thing--it was still the second biggest box office draw of 1940 behind Pinocchio, but it's cost had been exhorbitant) and he never got around to adding to it later.

Roy Disney finally got around to fullfilling his brother's dream some thirty-four years after Walt's death. The new Fantasia retains "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," while adding Beethoven's Fifth, Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," Respighi's "Pines of Rome," Shostakovich's "Piano Concerto #2," Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance," Saint-Saen's "Carnival of the Animals," and Stravinsky's "The Firebird." The results are uneven, but never less than engaging. Donald Duck gets his own starring role in "Pomp and Circumstances," envisioned as the story of Noah's Ark. Beethoven's Fifth is pure abstraction in the manner of Bach's Tocatta and Fugue in the first Fantasia. Shostakovich is paired with Hans Christian Anderson's "The Steadfast Tin Soldier." "The Pines of Rome" is paired with flying whales. Saint-Saens gets the most entertaining segment with a flock of flamingoes and a yo yo--a segment worthy of the Warner Brothers cartoons at their zenith. "Rhapsody in Blue," with its portrait of city life based on the cartoons of Al Hirshfeld (I didn't spot any Ninas, unfortunately) seems out of place here--it isn't bad, but it just seems like an odd man out. The film concludes with a terrifying version of "The Firebird" which recalls the original film's pairing of "A Night on Bald Mountain" with "Ave Maria." The best part about this format is that this film is mercifully free from the conventions of the last ten years of Disney movies. No showstopping show tunes, no light feminist rhetoric, no comic sidekicks. Just animation.

Well, not JUST animation, unfortunately. The intertextual material is festooned with annoying celebrities. This is a grave miscalculation. All of these segments fall flat and jar the viewer out of the movie. Walt was onto something when he only showed his musicians in silhouette and had the music introduced by a faceless narrator. Alas...