MovieChat Forums > Fantasia (1941) Discussion > I Don't get It.......

I Don't get It.......

posted 13 years ago by ejc15
19 replies | jump to latest

I know I will be called a troll, but I don't get this. Feel free to check out my other posts, I am not a troll and I apologize if people find me to be one. Is there some secret rule against disliking this movie, even a little?

I watched it because it was the only movie in the AFI top 100 I had not seen. Everyone I talked to about this told me it was terrible. I have never heard an actual person say anything good about this. I looked at the threads and really don't see anyone ripping the movie (ALL OTHER MOVIES DO). I have never heard a negative review online, by a critic or anyone who I don't actually know. So I had hopes, as I have liked many movies my friends and family have hated.

I watched it thinking my friends and family were wrong, but I found them to be correct. I can't put in to context what was bad, except I just felt like it was nothing more than a series of meaningless cartoons meant for someone on heavy drugs.

The closest I can compare to anything I have ever seen is some psychedelic (spelling is wrong) hippee movies that I would never have forced my self to sit through. It was like a bad Pink Floyd album like Atom Heart Mother Suite, Saucerful of Secrets or Ummagumma or the Beatles song Revolution Number 9. Only this lasted 2 painful hours.

It seems to be pretentious tripe that everyone who is "anyone" has to say is good. But it seems average people hate it. I truly want to find an actual person who likes this so they can explain to me why.

Maybe I lack class. Always a possibility. Maybe I am not smart enough. Always a possibility.

Out of over 3200 movies ranked I have only given 10 other rankings of 1. I feel I am being unfair to the other 1's by giving this a 1. It is so much worse

[–] Pogo_76 12 years ago

I never bothered to ever watch it. I tried but it's too boring for me and I work in animation.
I don't get how Fantasia gets a 7.8 rating while one of the best animated features of all time(if not the best), Pinocchio, only gets a 7.6 rating.

[–] jimmyderzko 11 years ago

"It seems to be pretentious tripe that everyone who is "anyone" has to say is good. But it seems average people hate it."

You hit the nail on the head there.

[–] thechadmer25 9 years ago

I just watched this movie for this first time since I was very young and I was completely captivated. Since the beginning of movies, filmmakers have been working to balance beautiful images with an interesting plot. Some people call this substance vs. style. Because movies are literally moving pictures, and pictures are often considered art, the artistic possibility of motion pictures was incredible. Often, however, beautiful images came at the expense of the plot. Call me a lover of style over substance, but many of my favorite films have spectacular visuals and non-traditional plots (2001: A Space Odyssey, The Tree of Life, Koyaanisqatsi). With Fantasia, I think, Disney completely threw out the storytelling aspect of film in order to focus on simply having gorgeous images.

Fantasia is a completely different film. It is not a story, but more like a painting that movies, more like a symphony. These art forms don't require a story in order for people to appreciate them,and people ought to go into Fantasia with the mindset that it is art rather than a story. This doesn't mean everyone will enjoy it, because Fantasia is very different than any other animated movie, but it also triumphs as art more than almost any other film.

[–] louiseculmer 9 years ago

well, i think the film wAs meant to introduce kids to classical music. i personally liked the pastoral symphony bit with the cnetaurs etc very much, and the tchaikowsky with the fairies, but didn't care much for the rest of it. i still like the. Pastoral symphony sequence.

[–] friendoffilm 8 years ago

I thought that the Pastoral symphony and the Dance of the Hours were kind of the weakest parts of this film, which kept me from giving the film Fantasia a "ten" rating.

Night on Bald Mountain and Rite of Spring, however, were my two favorite parts of this film.

[–] litcity 9 years ago

Some people "get" Fantasia, some people "get" Dude, Where's My Car? That's okay. Not everyone has to have great taste in cinema.

[–] dabukaba 8 years ago

It's important to remember that classical music (and the similar baroque music that preceded it as early as the late-1600's) was thought of since its very beginnings as a genuine art form, alongside things like paintings, so it was meant to be listened to with an open mind, bringing out emotions and allowing the imagination to wander, which in 1940 people would have still understood well in spite of the coexistence (a coexistence that had been going on for decades already) of that music being present alongside pop music in many different (diverse) genres (I'm a collector btw). This movie, as Deems Taylor states in his introduction, was the Walt Disney Studio's animators artistic interpretations, so what the music made them envision and they put their imaginations there in cartoon form, so it'd be a multisensory experience for the audience as they heard these (modified) pieces.