Bambi
Composite Score: 83.86
Starring: Hardie Albright, Stan Alexander, Peter Behn, Sam Edwards, Donnie Dunagan, Ann Gillis, Sterling Holloway, Cammie King Conlon, Paula Winslowe, and Fred Shields
Director: David Hand
Writers: Perce Pearce and Larry Morey
Genres: Animation, Adventure, Drama, Family, Coming of Age
MPAA Rating: G
Box Office: $267.45 million worldwide
Why should you Watch This Film?
Bambi is the animated film adaptation of Felix Salten’s novel Bambi, a Life in the Woods about a fawn growing up in the forest. The film follows the story of the newborn “Young Prince” Bambi as he meets other woodland creatures, learns from his mother, interacts with other deer, and eventually learns the dangers of “Man” in the forest. The film serves equally as an environmental tale about the negative impact of hunting and carelessness with fires and as a coming-of-age story about maturing and taking one’s place in society. The film was nominated for three Oscars – Best Sound, Best Original Song, and Best Original Score – and has been celebrated as one of the greatest animated films of all time.
Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?
I’m sure there’s a version of Bambi that tells a more resonant and impactful story than this film does (I hear the novel serves as a representation of the treatment of Jews in Europe in the early 1900s, for example), but to take much home from this film besides “don’t shoot mother deer”, you’d have to do some pretty intense explaining. For example, this could be a film about single mothers and/or absentee fathers, but the many mothers on-screen and fathers off-screen never really take on a life of their own enough to warrant taking that as the film’s focus. Even the environmental advocacy of the film feels a bit dated now. Smokey Bear has been talking about preventing forest/wildfires since 1944, two years after Bambi released (that’s nearly eighty years ago, for those of you keeping track). Plus, the don’t hunt deer thing gets a bit dicey when you consider the levels of overpopulation that often occurs in deer societies where hunting is outlawed. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautifully animated piece of film, but I just don’t see a lot of value beyond that and historical significance in Bambi.
So wait, why should you Watch This Film?
As I just mentioned, Bambi is a gorgeously animated film, still holding up surprisingly well for a film made more than eighty years ago. The rain scene, animal animations, and the water sequences all look really good – arguably better even than some of the 2-D films of the late-90s and early 2000s – in terms of its realism. It’s clear that the Disney animators did solid research of the creatures and other natural elements that they were tasked with animating because of how well-executed the movements are.
Bambi also happens to have a classic film score attached to it, maybe not with the recognizable individual songs of Cinderella, Lady and the Tramp, or One Hundred and One Dalmatians, but the music that does play over Bambi’s many adventures manages to give the film a feeling similar to that of Fantasia – that the animation and music work in harmony to create a piece of art on the screen. Perhaps it is that beautiful blend of music and animation that has kept Bambi toward the top of many critics’ all-time animated film rankings, elevating it above where its story could otherwise take it.
Bambi is an all time classic of animated films, taking a more dramatic approach to its story and executing it well thanks to the support of quality animation and a moving score, which helps it reach this place on the list of Greatest Films of All Time. For a film with such a simple story and understated themes to work, it needs to be artistically excellent, and Bambi certainly accomplishes that. It is currently streaming on Disney+ for anyone interested in watching it some time soon.
