Cartoon Committee

When it premiered in 1940, “Fantasia” offered viewers the best and worst of Walt Disney’s vision of the art of animation; six decades later, “Fantasia/2000” embodies the very different strengths and weaknesses of contemporary studio animation.

Although he had nearly a thousand artists working in his studio, every aspect of “Fantasia,” from the musical selections to the movements of each character, was subject to Walt Disney’s approval. Its best moments--”The Nutcracker Suite,” “The Dance of the Hours,” “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and “Night on Bald Mountain”--showcased Disney’s passion for polished movement, visual experimentation, beautiful effects and dramatic action, as well as his ability to create stories and characters.

The weaker sections--”Toccata and Fugue,” “Pastoral Symphony” and “Ave Maria”--were burdened with his distrust of abstract art, his love of excessive cuteness, his weakness for fanny jokes and his reluctance to send an audience out on anything but a high note.

“Fantasia/2000,” now playing at local Imax theaters, boasts elaborate visuals, state-of-the-technology computer effects, and sophisticated camera work and editing. Much of it, though, suffers from a timid approach to the material and second-rate animation. But its greatest weakness is the lack of the individual vision that marked the first film.

Like many studio features, “Fantasia/2000” feels like it’s been calculated, analyzed, test-marketed and homogenized. Any rough edges have been filed off until the results look safe and tame, rather than daring and imaginative. In recent years, the films of the Japanese director Hiyao Miyazaki and Warner Bros.’ “The Iron Giant” have been closer to the innovative spirit of the early Disney features--even if they lacked the opulent visuals and polished animation--than the big-budget features of Disney, DreamWorks and even Fox.

When “Fantasia” premiered, the only serious attempts to illustrate music had been done by avant-garde artists in Europe, who sought to add movement to abstract painting. The work of Viking Eggling, Walter Ruttmann and Oskar Fischinger was virtually unknown in the U.S, where animation was synonymous with cartoons. Although Disney’s “Silly Symphonies” had begun as an attempt to illustrate musical selections, the series had quickly turned into a string of fairy tales and comic stories. For Disney to link animation with classical music and the fine arts was considered daring, if not sacrilegious, and he was severely criticized for it.

Sixty years later, illustrating music is no longer a revolutionary idea. Even before MTV saturated a generation of viewers with rock videos, animators in Europe and Canada had blended music and visuals. The results ranged from Zbigneiw Rybczynski’s bitterly satirical “Tango” (Poland) and Zdenko Gasparovic’s sensual “Satiemania” (Yugoslavia) to Norman McLaren’s breathtaking “Pas de Deux” (Canada) and the song sequences in “Yellow Submarine” (England).

Competing Visual Styles in Computer Animation

Avant-garde artists have attempted to integrate computer animation into musical performances with varying degrees of success, from Twyla Tharp’s “The Catherine Wheel” to the clunky visuals in the Robert Wilson-Philip Glass “Monsters of Grace.”

When “Fantasia” opened, it represented the cutting edge of both animation art and technology. Fantasound was an important precursor of stereo: audiences were amazed when the drumroll seemed to follow the tail of the dying stegosaurus as it fell across the screen in “The Rite of Spring.” The different visual styles of the sequences, the use of color and the sheer beauty of the animation were all breakthroughs. The superbly observed and caricatured ballet steps in “Dance of the Hours,” the feral power of Tchernobog, the evil god in “Night on Bald Mountain,” and the flawless grace of the dancing figures in the “Nutcracker” would inspire generations of animators.

Sadly, “Fantasia/2000” does not represent the state of the art of drawn or computer animation. Studio animation has grown increasingly expensive over the last decade, and executives are reluctant to include the innovations and experiments that put a film at the cutting edge. A major animated feature may cost $100 million or more: Studios are loath to risk that much money on a film that might alienate part of its potential audience with an offbeat story or an unfamiliar visual style.

In recent years, a split has widened within computer animation. Some studios and artists have focused on special effects for live-action features so realistic it’s impossible to tell where the artificial elements begin. Other artists have concentrated on trying to eliminate the mechanical bias from their work and create characters with the warmth and believability of drawn animation. They’ve explored visual styles that suggest watercolor, pen and ink, and other traditional media. Some of the experiments have been used in Oscar-winning and nominated shorts, and others have appeared in full-length films.

The character animation in “Toy Story 2” is far more sophisticated and engaging than the prosaic retelling of “The Steadfast Tin Soldier,” set to part of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2, in “Fantasia/2000.” When Woody’s horse, Bullseye, performs an action, the audience understands his thoughts and emotions. In contrast, the Soldier appears more stolid than steadfast, and his romance with the plastic-looking ballerina seems unconvincing.

The original “Fantasia” was shot on cruder film stock, and blowing up “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” for the Imax screen brings out so much grain, it’s like watching Mickey Mouse in a sandstorm. But the 60-year-old animation of Mickey capering in his crimson robes retains its charm and vivacity. Mickey’s lively, nuanced movements contrast sharply with the wooden animation of Donald and Daisy in the “Pomp and Circumstance” segment of “Fantasia/2000”--a fact the lavish use of shadows and tone mattes can’t disguise.

In recent years, young animators have proved they can create performances on the screen worthy of the pioneers of animation. The title characters in “Tarzan” and “Beauty and the Beast,” Shan Yu in “Mulan,” Scar and Rafiki in “The Lion King,” Meeko in “Pocahontas,” the Queen and some of Moses in “The Prince of Egypt,” and Hogarth and the Giant in “The Iron Giant” came alive on the screen the way Jiminy Cricket, Bambi, Pinocchio and Grumpy did decades ago. The current generation of animators is clearly capable of far better work than Donald and the nondescript animals who shuffle through “Pomp and Circumstance.”

Independent Vision on the International Scene

Audiences looking for cutting-edge animation are more likely to find it at the international festivals, on the Web or on Channel 4 in London, than in big-budget studio features. These less-expensive shorts sometimes lack the polished movements of studio films. But the better ones are clearly the work of individual artists with a vision, who are in touch with trends in the other visual arts, and who are eager to experiment with new media--or use old media in new ways.

Independent animators even beat “Fantasia/2000” to the Imax format. Mark Osborne earned an Oscar nomination for his stop-motion Imax short “More” (1998). The brilliant Russian artist Alexander Petrov recently completed his paint-on-glass adaptation of “The Old Man and the Sea,” which has screened at Imax theaters on the East Coast, but not in Southern California.

If Disney is seriously considering a third edition of “Fantasia,” executives should think about giving their most creative artists a free hand on the new sequences. (It’s not surprising that the most imaginative sequence in “Fantasia/2000” is the “Rhapsody in Blue” that director and art director Eric and Susan Goldberg developed as a free-standing short: It was added to the feature at the last minute.) The results might surprise the studio as well as the viewers, and recapture some of the elusive magic Walt Disney brought to his grand experiment 60 years ago.