Hello, fish. You're going to be sushi in about five minutes.Have you watched that movie anytime recently? It actually holds up really well, and it's just FULL of delightful little treasures! For example, Rene Auberjonois (best known, to me anyway, as Paul Lewiston from Boston Legal) is the voice of the homicidal chef that flies into a rage when he realizes that he did not actually kill that crab.
Look how happy he is! It's a crying shame that the prince went off and married some bleeding-heart fish liberal and had his catering business shut down for good, leaving poor Chef Louis to invent robotic feet and shake his finger at Bill Shatner for the next twenty years.
LISTEN HERE, YOU. I CARED ABOUT THAT SAUTERNE.
I noticed something else, too. I know I'm hardly the first person to point it out, but. . . do people in the Disney world not know what dating is?
Let's take a look.
THE LITTLE MERMAID
Ariel rescues the handsome and vaguely ethnic Prince Eric from a flaming ship. She then sings to him and disappears. Fast forward to. . . a couple hours later, and she's shouting at her daddy that she loves this guy, and signing away her voice (and presumably her immortal soul, because really, just look at Ursula) so she can sprout legs and marry the prince.
Ursula must have also given her a great ass, because Eric, not having the foggiest idea that this little mute cutie has been going around telling all her gal-pals about her human boyfriend and writing MRS. PRINCE ERIC on all her notebooks, decides then and there that he is in love with her.
Some other stuff happens, like the ridiculous crab rampage seen above, and Ursula getting pissed off that her plan to extort Ariel's teenage naivete isn't exactly working out to her advantage and turning into Evil Brunette Ariel. . .
Who Prince Eric then decides he wants to marry.
Men.
Now, bear in mind that all of this takes place over about a week, maybe less. They don't actually know anything about each other.
Granted, Ariel is sixteen and a princess, and we can assume that her social life is, shall we say, hampered by the fact that her father is a NORSE GOD WITH A PITCHFORK THAT SHOOTS LIGHTNING. Any relationship idiocy on her part can be chalked up to the fact that she doesn't get out much, except to that weird little cave with the forks in it, and to hang out with a wimpy fish and a bird with Down's Syndrome.
Eric, on the other hand, is a human prince. He has women falling over him left and right, women with wealth and fame and a good deal of intelligence, and he decides to marry this mute chick who washed up naked on a beach. After five minutes.
While we're on Disney's idolization of questionable men, let's move on to. . .
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
Belle, daughter of the village weirdo (read: inventor), really doesn't want to settle down and marry the town meathead. She's deep, because she likes books, and the idea of rubbing hunter feet for the rest of her life doesn't exactly strike her fancy. Conveniently, on the way to the annual science festival, her daddy gets accosted by wolves and has to bunk down in a creepy old castle, which NO ONE IN FRANCE KNOWS IS THERE, for the night. He then is thrown into the dungeon by the film's titular romantic male lead.
How is he still single?!
When Dad doesn't shoot her a Facebook message upon his arrival (or maybe it was just his horse freaking out?), Belle gets worried and goes looking for him. She finds the creepy old castle and Dad's abandoned cart, and just kind of goes inside to get him.
Upon realizing there's a hot girl in his castle in addition the admittedly succulent fat guy in his dungeon, the Beast swoops downstairs in a suitably terrifying fashion and totally flips his shit on Belle, who decides that hanging out in the castle under the watchful eye of a cursed prince is totally more exciting than having her books knocked into mud puddles at home, and offers to stay in her father's place.
Following a similar train of thought, where:
hanging out in a castle under the watchful eye of a cursed prince=hot girl, and
having her books knocked into mud puddles=weird old fat guy,
the Beast takes her up on this offer. He runs upstairs, looks at his flower, and decides to try and make her fall in love with him. Which she does, over the course of about a week.
This is what's known as Stockholm Syndrome. Yeah, you know what's there that wasn't there before, Belle? Blind desperation. And as Jon pointed out, this isn't even romantic on the Beast's part; it's entirely a marriage of convenience.
Is this girl a girl?
Yes.
Okay, good. Could I potentially get her to make out with me?
Yes.
Then I get to not be hairy anymore?
Yes.
AWESOME.
The one thing they have in common is that they're both stuck in this dumb castle with all these dumb talking appliances, and they both agree that chicks should read. You know who else thinks girls should read, is this guy.
You want to marry him? He's hairy too! And the great news is, he's likely to stay that way.
The Beast hasn't even tried to make nice with other girls in the castle. In fact, it's implied that either there has been no one else there ever, or he killed them all. He decides to marry this girl within five minutes of knowing her, and THREATENING TO KILL HER, so that she can cure him of his terminal hairiness.
And Belle? She gets to not marry Gaston, and also be a princess. What a sweetheart deal.
And last but not least, we move on to. . .
HERCULES
Hercules is born in, and then consequently stolen from, Mount Olympus by the Lord of the Underworld's creepy sluglike companions, Pain and Panic (read: Bobcat Goldthwait), and made to drink a bottle full of tasty mortalizing juice. He doesn't drink every drop of it though, and for the next seventeen years or so he is a clumsy douchebag who ruins everything for everyone with his mutant strength.
On one particularly bad day, after destroying the entire city's livelihood with his stumbly shenanigans, his foster parents fess up to having found him in a mountain when he was a baby, and give him his god necklace. Hercules goes off to find the temple of Zeus, where the statue of Zeus comes to life in what has to be the most terrifying thing Hercules has ever seen.
(Unless you really want to watch him sing that Michael Bolton song, you can skip ahead to about 3:27.)
Yes, that is Rip Torn. And he appears to be hosting an intergalactic kegger!
Zeus tells him that if he wants to come back to Mount Olympus, he has to prove himself a hero. Herc goes off to find Danny Devito, who is supposed to be the best trainer in all of Greece, and over the course of the next musical number, Hercules goes from being a shrimpy, dorky man-child to being a big, shiny, buff (what can only be described as a) PALOOKA. All this from singing with a goat and rescuing rag dolls? Somebody let Jenny Craig in on that secret.
On his first assignment, Hercules goes to fight a river-god (that's what it's called, right? I haven't seen this in a while) monster-type thing, and meets Meg, its sultry, sarcastic prey. He saves her, she gives him a nickname and some terrible 90's hipster-talk and slinks off.
"WAZZAAAAAP."
(Just curious, did that river thing remind anyone else of King JellyJam, from the Goosebumps book The Horror at Camp JellyJam? Just curious.)
Oh, and here's something you might want to note: she's in league with Hades. He owns her soul. She has literally sold her soul to the devil. What a winner.
Over the course of the movie (read: the next couple weeks), Hercules beats down every monster in Thebes (read: the world?), much to Hades's dismay. He's on fire! He can't do anything wrong!
On a quest from Hades to find Hercules's weakness, Meg decides she's in love with him, and he decides she's in love with her, because they each have found what they wanted in another human being. Meg's found a big, stupid hero who likes kids and is part god, and Herc's found a soulless, sarcastic shrew who keeps him on his toes by being a magnet for every terrible beastie in the world. They don't know anything else about each other.
The rest of the movie takes place over the course of about a week. Here is the sped-up synopsis of events:
Hades gets, like, SO pissed that Herc and Meg are together.
He informs Herc that Meg is working for him, has no soul, and that he'll let her soul go if Herc can go 24 hours without being a, ahem, PALOOKA.
Herc is hurt but says, and i quote, "Durrr, okay."
Look at that face. That is the face of honesty.
All hell breaks out on Mount Olympus when Hades releases his horrible beasties.
Meg dies.
Hades shows Herc where Meg's soul is (SWIMMING IN A RIVER FULL OF OTHER SWIMMING DEAD PEOPLE) and tells him to go jump in and get her.
He does it.
He almost dies, but doesn't, because this is a heroic thing to do, and now he's not only a real hero, but part god again.
I'll reiterate:
Stupidly diving into a pool of death to save the only girl he has ever met, who has sold her soul to the devil over something really stupid, who has admitted to following him around trying to find out his weakness so her and her boss can KILL HIM, and who is, by the way, ALREADY DEAD, makes Hercules a hero.
Not saving children or helping old people cross the street. Saving this dumb broad is what gets him his ticket back into heaven.
After punching Hades into his own river of death-goo, Herc gets Meg's soul back to her body. They make out (gross, right?) and Herc goes to heaven, where he is now allowed to live out the rest of his crazy long life. He then tells Dad that he'd rather stay on Earth with his girlfriend.
His girlfriend who only started being his girlfriend five minutes ago.
Can you imagine the fights they have?
"Megara, I am exhausted. You're always talking about slices, is it really so much to ask for, I dunno, a meat pie or something when I get home from rescuing the world?"
"My feet hurt."
"Yeah, your feet always hurt. Which is hilarious, because all you do is sit on the couch all day".
"Look, I crossed the devil for you, okay? I got you back into the Pantheon of Gods. What more do you want?"
"No, I got me back into the Pantheon of Gods when I killed the devil and brought you back to life. And then I turned them down so I could live with SOME DUMB BROAD WHO DOESN'T EVEN MAKE ME DINNER. FOREVER. I CANNOT GO BACK THERE. THAT WAS A ONE-TIME OFFER. WHAT A GREAT BARGAIN."
". . . I'm going to stay at Phil's."
"YEAH, YOU'RE ALWAYS STAYING AT PHIL'S. You know he's half-GOAT, right? Your babies are gonna be an abomination which I will then be forced to kill."
"YOU'RE A MONSTER!"
Yeah. I hate Disney relationships.
Look how happy he is! It's a crying shame that the prince went off and married some bleeding-heart fish liberal and had his catering business shut down for good, leaving poor Chef Louis to invent robotic feet and shake his finger at Bill Shatner for the next twenty years.
LISTEN HERE, YOU. I CARED ABOUT THAT SAUTERNE.I noticed something else, too. I know I'm hardly the first person to point it out, but. . . do people in the Disney world not know what dating is?
Let's take a look.
THE LITTLE MERMAID
Ariel rescues the handsome and vaguely ethnic Prince Eric from a flaming ship. She then sings to him and disappears. Fast forward to. . . a couple hours later, and she's shouting at her daddy that she loves this guy, and signing away her voice (and presumably her immortal soul, because really, just look at Ursula) so she can sprout legs and marry the prince.
Ursula must have also given her a great ass, because Eric, not having the foggiest idea that this little mute cutie has been going around telling all her gal-pals about her human boyfriend and writing MRS. PRINCE ERIC on all her notebooks, decides then and there that he is in love with her.
Some other stuff happens, like the ridiculous crab rampage seen above, and Ursula getting pissed off that her plan to extort Ariel's teenage naivete isn't exactly working out to her advantage and turning into Evil Brunette Ariel. . .
Who Prince Eric then decides he wants to marry.
Men.Now, bear in mind that all of this takes place over about a week, maybe less. They don't actually know anything about each other.
Granted, Ariel is sixteen and a princess, and we can assume that her social life is, shall we say, hampered by the fact that her father is a NORSE GOD WITH A PITCHFORK THAT SHOOTS LIGHTNING. Any relationship idiocy on her part can be chalked up to the fact that she doesn't get out much, except to that weird little cave with the forks in it, and to hang out with a wimpy fish and a bird with Down's Syndrome.
Eric, on the other hand, is a human prince. He has women falling over him left and right, women with wealth and fame and a good deal of intelligence, and he decides to marry this mute chick who washed up naked on a beach. After five minutes.
While we're on Disney's idolization of questionable men, let's move on to. . .
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
Belle, daughter of the village weirdo (read: inventor), really doesn't want to settle down and marry the town meathead. She's deep, because she likes books, and the idea of rubbing hunter feet for the rest of her life doesn't exactly strike her fancy. Conveniently, on the way to the annual science festival, her daddy gets accosted by wolves and has to bunk down in a creepy old castle, which NO ONE IN FRANCE KNOWS IS THERE, for the night. He then is thrown into the dungeon by the film's titular romantic male lead.
How is he still single?!When Dad doesn't shoot her a Facebook message upon his arrival (or maybe it was just his horse freaking out?), Belle gets worried and goes looking for him. She finds the creepy old castle and Dad's abandoned cart, and just kind of goes inside to get him.
Upon realizing there's a hot girl in his castle in addition the admittedly succulent fat guy in his dungeon, the Beast swoops downstairs in a suitably terrifying fashion and totally flips his shit on Belle, who decides that hanging out in the castle under the watchful eye of a cursed prince is totally more exciting than having her books knocked into mud puddles at home, and offers to stay in her father's place.
Following a similar train of thought, where:
hanging out in a castle under the watchful eye of a cursed prince=hot girl, and
having her books knocked into mud puddles=weird old fat guy,
the Beast takes her up on this offer. He runs upstairs, looks at his flower, and decides to try and make her fall in love with him. Which she does, over the course of about a week.
This is what's known as Stockholm Syndrome. Yeah, you know what's there that wasn't there before, Belle? Blind desperation. And as Jon pointed out, this isn't even romantic on the Beast's part; it's entirely a marriage of convenience.
Is this girl a girl?
Yes.
Okay, good. Could I potentially get her to make out with me?
Yes.
Then I get to not be hairy anymore?
Yes.
AWESOME.
The one thing they have in common is that they're both stuck in this dumb castle with all these dumb talking appliances, and they both agree that chicks should read. You know who else thinks girls should read, is this guy.
You want to marry him? He's hairy too! And the great news is, he's likely to stay that way.The Beast hasn't even tried to make nice with other girls in the castle. In fact, it's implied that either there has been no one else there ever, or he killed them all. He decides to marry this girl within five minutes of knowing her, and THREATENING TO KILL HER, so that she can cure him of his terminal hairiness.
And Belle? She gets to not marry Gaston, and also be a princess. What a sweetheart deal.
And last but not least, we move on to. . .
HERCULES
Hercules is born in, and then consequently stolen from, Mount Olympus by the Lord of the Underworld's creepy sluglike companions, Pain and Panic (read: Bobcat Goldthwait), and made to drink a bottle full of tasty mortalizing juice. He doesn't drink every drop of it though, and for the next seventeen years or so he is a clumsy douchebag who ruins everything for everyone with his mutant strength.
On one particularly bad day, after destroying the entire city's livelihood with his stumbly shenanigans, his foster parents fess up to having found him in a mountain when he was a baby, and give him his god necklace. Hercules goes off to find the temple of Zeus, where the statue of Zeus comes to life in what has to be the most terrifying thing Hercules has ever seen.
(Unless you really want to watch him sing that Michael Bolton song, you can skip ahead to about 3:27.)
Yes, that is Rip Torn. And he appears to be hosting an intergalactic kegger!
Zeus tells him that if he wants to come back to Mount Olympus, he has to prove himself a hero. Herc goes off to find Danny Devito, who is supposed to be the best trainer in all of Greece, and over the course of the next musical number, Hercules goes from being a shrimpy, dorky man-child to being a big, shiny, buff (what can only be described as a) PALOOKA. All this from singing with a goat and rescuing rag dolls? Somebody let Jenny Craig in on that secret.
On his first assignment, Hercules goes to fight a river-god (that's what it's called, right? I haven't seen this in a while) monster-type thing, and meets Meg, its sultry, sarcastic prey. He saves her, she gives him a nickname and some terrible 90's hipster-talk and slinks off.
"WAZZAAAAAP."(Just curious, did that river thing remind anyone else of King JellyJam, from the Goosebumps book The Horror at Camp JellyJam? Just curious.)
Oh, and here's something you might want to note: she's in league with Hades. He owns her soul. She has literally sold her soul to the devil. What a winner.
Over the course of the movie (read: the next couple weeks), Hercules beats down every monster in Thebes (read: the world?), much to Hades's dismay. He's on fire! He can't do anything wrong!
On a quest from Hades to find Hercules's weakness, Meg decides she's in love with him, and he decides she's in love with her, because they each have found what they wanted in another human being. Meg's found a big, stupid hero who likes kids and is part god, and Herc's found a soulless, sarcastic shrew who keeps him on his toes by being a magnet for every terrible beastie in the world. They don't know anything else about each other.
The rest of the movie takes place over the course of about a week. Here is the sped-up synopsis of events:
Hades gets, like, SO pissed that Herc and Meg are together.
He informs Herc that Meg is working for him, has no soul, and that he'll let her soul go if Herc can go 24 hours without being a, ahem, PALOOKA.
Herc is hurt but says, and i quote, "Durrr, okay."
Look at that face. That is the face of honesty.All hell breaks out on Mount Olympus when Hades releases his horrible beasties.
Meg dies.
Hades shows Herc where Meg's soul is (SWIMMING IN A RIVER FULL OF OTHER SWIMMING DEAD PEOPLE) and tells him to go jump in and get her.
He does it.
He almost dies, but doesn't, because this is a heroic thing to do, and now he's not only a real hero, but part god again.
I'll reiterate:
Stupidly diving into a pool of death to save the only girl he has ever met, who has sold her soul to the devil over something really stupid, who has admitted to following him around trying to find out his weakness so her and her boss can KILL HIM, and who is, by the way, ALREADY DEAD, makes Hercules a hero.
Not saving children or helping old people cross the street. Saving this dumb broad is what gets him his ticket back into heaven.
After punching Hades into his own river of death-goo, Herc gets Meg's soul back to her body. They make out (gross, right?) and Herc goes to heaven, where he is now allowed to live out the rest of his crazy long life. He then tells Dad that he'd rather stay on Earth with his girlfriend.
His girlfriend who only started being his girlfriend five minutes ago.
Can you imagine the fights they have?
"Megara, I am exhausted. You're always talking about slices, is it really so much to ask for, I dunno, a meat pie or something when I get home from rescuing the world?"
"My feet hurt."
"Yeah, your feet always hurt. Which is hilarious, because all you do is sit on the couch all day".
"Look, I crossed the devil for you, okay? I got you back into the Pantheon of Gods. What more do you want?"
"No, I got me back into the Pantheon of Gods when I killed the devil and brought you back to life. And then I turned them down so I could live with SOME DUMB BROAD WHO DOESN'T EVEN MAKE ME DINNER. FOREVER. I CANNOT GO BACK THERE. THAT WAS A ONE-TIME OFFER. WHAT A GREAT BARGAIN."
". . . I'm going to stay at Phil's."
"YEAH, YOU'RE ALWAYS STAYING AT PHIL'S. You know he's half-GOAT, right? Your babies are gonna be an abomination which I will then be forced to kill."
"YOU'RE A MONSTER!"
Yeah. I hate Disney relationships.
AHAHAHA wow, I never considered Hercules bringing out that card anytime Meg is being a bitch. Oh MAN I'm sure he hated himself for that choice many a time.
ReplyDeleteAlways figured it was a heroic thing because he did it selflessly, and all that other stuff was trying to prove himself. Still dubm!
THE FIRST PICTURE IS AWESOME.
In the uh, what do you call it, the actual myths that Disney messed with to make this, Herc eventually murders Meg and their children whilst under a spell of confusion. This has made me sort of wonder if that whole "spell of confusion" thing was a little... convenient.
ReplyDeletei'm sure that entire treatises could be written about Disney's poor handling of love relationships (& women in general).
ReplyDeletebut your analysis is way more succinct & hilarious!