More than any self-declared masterpiece in the Disney catalog, Bambi has earned the right to be called timeless, because its concerns are transcendent and universal.
Bambi is short, but I don't care, because so was Dumbo, which is also very sad but beautiful, however I have always preferred Bambi despite the fact I could really empathise with Dumbo. Bambi is a gem, and overshadowed slightly by the flawless Beauty and the Beast and the stunning Lion King. This classic is right up there with the greats, and was coincidentally Walt Disney's personal favourite. The animation is unparallelled. Those shots of the forest at the beginning were just extraordinary, and it was so colourful and stylised. Another plus was the orchestral score which was so beautiful, that alone reduced me to tears. It matched the animation beautifully, which seldom happens in animation. The characters were both funny and touching, and the story simple and timeless. I laughed so much at Thumper, when he was teaching Bambi to speak. Bambi was great to watch too and so adorable, and I was among the majority who cried when his mother died, because this film was so educational thanks to her. The animals as adolescents aren't quite as appealing as when they were children, but Bambi and Faline's romance was one of the character highlights. The best aspect for me, was that they made the enemy so mysterious. We hear about them, and see what they do, but we don't see them face to face. That is what made the characters so appealing to the audience. This is one of the few films, where you care for everybody you are introduced to. In conclusion, a funny and ever-touching underrated classic. 10/10. Bethany Cox
It’s beautiful, powerful stuff. The Disney animators evoke a naturalism of such depth and detail that you feel shrouded by the forest. Then, just when it seems as if you’re watching a nature documentary, bursts of artistry arrive in the form of choreographed raindrops or a wildly impressionistic forest fire.
In his search for perfection Mr. Disney has come perilously close to tossing away his whole world of cartoon fantasy. Meanwhile, of course, Bambi is going to please a great many people, for all our churlish exceptions.
Edward Plumb's background music is expertly keyed into the production, but none of Bambi's four songs is notable. Some innovations are. For the first time, Disney has done his backgrounds in oils instead of watercolors. The result is striking. The russet reds, browns, bright yellows, make autumn look like autumn. Each season has a special color impact.
Bambi is not a great film. The film has a few memorably winning sequences which have become part of Disney pantheon. But in between these sequences are fairly dullish stretches of Disney kitsch, with too-cuddly animals in extreme states of too-cute behavior; there’s also a song score which is among Disney’s least interesting.
Bambi is an allegory on life. From birth to Adult hood. It so perfectly captures the personalities of newborns and their interaction with those of similar age and the beauty and evil that the world will throw at you. From kids saying almost rude stuff and their parents teaching them how to be civil, even though to them its not rude and coming from a place far from malicious. The film even cutely captures the first breath of life and how such young babies perceive the world. It beautifully makes the audience scared of what Bambi the doe is scared of too, even though its nothing to be afraid of. It wonderfully shows how Bambi comes to accept the world and learn danger from friend, love from rival, and so on. This coming of age tale has many tropes as such aiming at the subtle lessons of growing up. The film also excellently achieves a naturalistic feel of the wild animals. It brilliantly makes you empathize with the fauna. Nothing more highlights this than the fear of danger and the movements of the Deer. Thunder roars and everyone is quiet and nonchalant but Bambi, Bambi is frantic. You could almost imagine a real doe hiding under their mother, or perhaps even your dog cowering under the couch. You get a glimpse at their perspective and empathize through Bambi. This fundamentally is what makes a good child's movie. The ability to empathize and learn. A child too learns with Bambi to not be afraid. A child learns through Bambi what perhaps their dog might be feeling. A child learns through Bambi loss, love and loyalty. The deers also perk up and twizzle their ears to the faint sounds of danger while, with the audience, trying to decide if indeed it is danger. A common thing deers do yes but brilliantly makes you see why, and ultimately empathize. This is why the movie is a fantastic kids movie ultimately. It is great at making you empathize. Almost too much. The only downfall of this, and this is totally just me maybe seeing too much with a political lens. Is its anti hunting propaganda. The antagonist is "man". the faceless evil behind the fear of all animals. Whilst i wish perhaps man was just one danger instead of the sole reason of danger i can respect its decision to push the moral enigma of poaching. Its also worth noting the film is NEARLY 100 years old. So context may blur the lines of relate-ability as hunting laws today are in fact quite moral.
Ultimately however, no film of recent times has made me cry as much, empathize as much, and hate man as much. Whilst the latter isn't particularly a convincing reason for a good kids movie you've got to admire its achievement in artistically representing such an evil. I may have under sold the over all mood of the film however by focusing on my only issue with it. The film is happy, and as a 19 year old male i haven't seen any movie teach me as much about growing up than this movie. In my eyes this movie is a fantastic coming of age film with clear cut chapters, great character writing and interaction, and teaches easy to understand lessons for kids and even some subtle underlying ones that even the mature audience can learn from.
*was tempted to rate 9 because of the anti-man/anti-hunting propaganda but decided to give benefit of the doubt considering its from a different Era in the middle of WW2. Also whilst it may have distracted me a bit, the villain of "Man", altough faceless was much more well written than most villains. It makes me almost hate man which is more than most villains achieve. You fear them. You loathe them. But even worse, you don't know them. When they're going to come. How they do hunt. They're an enigma. I've written a lot about this for such a very small portion of the movie, but theirs definitely a beautiful horror element i wish some films would learn from. But don't let my over analysis of a 5 minute villain distract you from not watching this. I thus give it a 10 as a "contextual" masterpiece.
Throughout my childhood, I never had the opportunity to see this film, partly because it was never my first choice among the films I could choose. Now, as an adult, I decided to see it. The story is very lightly based on a tale about Bambi, a deer who will go through several adventures until he manages to become Prince of the Forest, like his father. The original narrative is, it must be said, much more adult, with betrayals, murders and violence. Of course, Walt Disney stripped it of all that content and turned it into a heartwarming children's story of growth and maturation. It is undoubtedly a good movie, but for its characteristics and sensibility it has been neglected by parents when the task is to find a good movie for their boy children. There is some prejudice here to be fought.
There is no way to deny this film the status of a classic. It has been a companion to more than a generation of kids, one of those movies that kids can see but that parents, grandparents and great-grandparents also saw when they were kids too. It is also one of the films that marks the golden age of Disney Studios and the advent of animated, colorful and brilliantly executed cinema. I think most people will agree that, even so, the movie loses favors for other films, like "Snow White", "Pinocchio" or the much more recent "Lion King". This happens, in my perspective, because of the lack of a story to tell: the film has such a sparse and simplistic narrative that it is difficult to handle a feature film, and there are several sequences and scenes that seem to be there simply to occupy spaces and length, and looking cute.
The film features a series of characters, overwhelmingly friendly to the audience and children, starting with the trio of friends Bambi, Tumper and Flower. The biggest problem I felt with these characters is Flower's more than clear sexual ambivalence, being one of the Disney characters where this is most evident: it's clearly a male who has a female name and behaves like a girl, in addition to seem to have a romantic interest in Bambi. Consequences, perhaps, of a time when accepting **** was something that was absolutely out of the question. Bambi's father is a dark, distant figure, and the mother is caring and touching, his death being - I'm not spoiling, everyone knows this is one of the most intense and dramatic moments in the film - perhaps one of the moments in that Disney turned out to be more adult in its early days. The villain, the human, is left out, but we see what he does to nature.
Technically, the film is masterful. The animation is wonderfully well done and is even more praiseworthy when we think that everything was hand drawn and colored, without any digital resources or gimmicks. The safe line, the smooth way in which the scenes follow each other, the confidence with which Disney prepared this film of his are lessons to learn for anyone who wants to make an animated film. The soundtrack also suits the film very well, with the use of off-camera singers, that is, songs that are not sung by the film's characters, something new and refreshing for the films the studio made at this time.