The Aristocats (1970)

Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman. Starring (voices) Phil Harris, Eva Gabor, Roddy Maude-Roxby, Sterling Holloway, Gary Dubin, Liz English, Dean Clark, Pat Buttram, George Lindsey, Hermione Baddeley, Charles Lane, Monica Evans, Carole Shelley, Scatman Crothers, Nancy Kulp, Bill Thompson. [G]

The lives of a wealthy old lady’s pampered cat and her kittens are put in danger when the woman’s butler learns she’s going to be leaving her fortune to the felines, so he conspires to get rid of them and be granted the inheritance instead. Based on an unproduced screenplay for “The Wonderful World of Disney”, it took seven credited screenwriters (plus the two who hammered out the original inspiration) to give us more of the same. So many plot elements and character types are recycled from the studio’s earlier films (One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Lady and the Tramp, The Jungle Book, Cinderella, and on and on), it just resembles stale leftovers…with a swinging hepcat rhythm. There are too many side characters, and it suffers from one of the feeblest villains Disney ever gave us, but the results are middling and forgettable, not painful. There’s a fun in-joke for fans of The Odd Couple, and the voice of Tigger plays up moldy Chinese stereotypes for fans of racism. Title tune sung by Maurice Chevalier. If looking for a fun movie to share with the whole family, please don’t confuse this for The Aristocrats, a documentary about the history of the world’s dirtiest joke.

50/100