By the mid-1980s, the fabled animation studios of Walt Disney had fallen on hard times. The artists were polarized between newcomers hungry to innovate and old timers not yet ready to relinquish control. These conditions produced a series of box-office flops and pessimistic forecasts: maybe the best days of animation were over. Maybe the public didn't care. Only a miracle or a magic spell could produce a happy ending. Waking Sleeping Beauty is no fairy tale. It's the true story of how Disney regained its magic with a staggering output of hits - "Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast ," "Aladdin," "The Lion King," and more - over a 10-year period.
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sah reviewed Waking Sleeping Beauty (2009)
Waking Sleeping Beauty
Documents Disney's changing of the old guard and the arrival of the new with Eisner and Katzenberg. It opens with the description of the failure of the Black Cauldron and how that led to revamping the system and the eventual production of the Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and the Lion KIng. Its mostly archival footage shot between 1984 and 1994 with contemporary interviews. It feels a bit superficial, but does show the animators in their working environment. It shows Eisner and Katzenberg marketing the company as well as themselves; It doesn't really show Roy Disney's role in the company. It doesn't shed light on their relationship---only showing that there was some tension and jealousy.
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