Disney Musical May 25 - Once Upon a Dream

I know you
I walked with you once upon a dream
I know you
That gleam in your eyes
Is so familiar a gleam

Yet I know it's true
That visions are seldom all they seem
But if I know you,
I know what you'll do
You'll love me at once
The way you did once upon a dream

My family practically worships this movie, although my older sister was scared to death of Maleficent for years. I think that had something to do with the way Dad told us the story once at bedtime, and he made Maleficent sound a little too scary.

Then there was the movie itself, where Maleficent definitely came off as unsettlingly creepy. That scene in the darkened fireplace still gives me the shivers to this day.

But overall, we all adore this movie, myself included. I got a ton of inspiration for Terence's story from Sleeping Beauty by itself.

Aurora's relationship with Philip was fair for its day, as TV Tropes would say. They take a little more time to get to know each other than Cinderella and Snow White do with their princes, although all three of them are still quite superior to the original fairy tales. In the fairy tales, Prince Charming shows up out of the pure blue, doing nothing more than standing there and looking pretty, and Cupid's arrow scores a solid bull's-eye then and there.

At the very least, the Disney movies give all the Princes a little more to do, which is nice. It makes sense that Philip gets more screentime, because the animation department was a lot more fine-tuned by then. They say it was around the 1950s that Disney "could animate anything, and beautifully."

On top of that, Sleeping Beauty was one of the first major movies driven almost purely by women. Yeah, Aurora doesn't do much (she's not called "Sleeping Beauty" for nothing) but there's still the Three Good Fairies, who easily carry the lion's share of the story by themselves, and even the villain is female. While we get a good chunk of action from Philip, he wouldn't have got that far without the Fairies' help. So, it's women who both save the day and provide the primary conflict.

You can tell they went the extra mile with the animation, too. They took the time and money to make everything look extra nice, and it shows. Despite being a financial failure, it's now heralded as one of the Disney movies. Almost everybody can find something to say in its favor.

If I had a list of top 10 favorite Disney films, this one will be on it for sure. It might even make the top 5.