The last great one before the decades long slump

Rating: 9/10 (24 July 2012)

Cinderella is a wonderful film that makes you smile the whole way through. It has a lot of similarities to another Disney masterpiece, Snow White, but it holds its own. By this point, Disney fairy tales were starting to fall into formula, but Cinderella showed that the studio was still trying hard to pay attention to the details. The animation is perfectly smooth (yes, they rotoscoped most of the humans, but it still looks great!), the songs are uniformly excellent (Sing Sweet Nightingale being one of the best), the characters are developed enough to be interesting, and the business the animators give them to do is fun to watch. A critical choice the storytellers made was to give the animals voices (though the mice are hard to understand at times). Snow White's animals were all silent. Yes, the animals in Bambi could talk, but the story was about the animals. In Cinderella, the story is focused on the humans, but the animals still talk. By doing this, the animals become more distinct and their personalities shine more clearly. Disney would change that for their next princess story (Sleeping Beauty) and the animals would be silent again. Pity, because that was one of many reasons why that film was so dull. There is never a dull moment in Cinderella. We are enchanted, we are filled happiness. Disney would begin to cut corners in both story and especially animation after this film. They would turn out competent films that would make some money, but not really show the world what a great studio they were, at least not until 1989's The Little Mermaid and the start of the Disney Renaissance. But Cinderella reminds us why we love Disney films in the first place. Not quite as good as the masterworks of Snow White, Pinocchio, and Fantasia, but fabulous nonetheless.