A Mommy Story

It’s hard for me not to love Sleeping Beauty. It was the first princess movie that Cordy really liked, and Aurora was the first princess she dressed as for Halloween.

I remember seeing the movie sometime during my childhood, too, and while the details are fuzzy, I do recall the slower pace, the beauty of the animation, and the songs that often had a soothing quality to them.

The story of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty is a simple one. Unlike Cinderella, with the mice serving as almost a sub-plot of the movie, Sleeping Beauty instead chooses to intensely focus on the classic tale itself, spending more time on character nuance and the moments that drive the action of the story.

If you’ve never seen Sleeping Beauty, now is the time to do so. Disney just brought it back out of the vault to join other classic films in the Diamond Edition on Blu-ray, Digital HD, and the new Disney Movies Anywhere service. The film has been polished and remastered, and several new bonus features have been bundled with it.

So why should you check out the new Diamond Edition of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty? Here are my top five reasons:

1. The restoration of the animation results in a film you can’t take your eyes off of. This is the first time Sleeping Beauty has been released in Digital HD quality, and every square inch of the screen is filled with a tapestry of colors and patterns that delight the eye. It proves that animation can be art, and indeed, you can pause at almost any moment in the movie and the frame looks like it could be a piece of art on your wall.

It’s one of the few animated films where the background is just as interesting to look at as the characters. It reminds me of medieval tapestries and paintings, in style and in color.

I’d love to have this as a print in my living room.

2. If you think the visuals are better, wait until you hear the music. The audio track of this film has also been digitally remastered to bring out the intended clarity of the music and vocals that simply couldn’t be accomplished with recording technology from 1959.

3. You’ll be reminded why Maleficent is one of the most chilling Disney villains ever. She’s stunning, and she’s unapologetically evil. Watching the movie again, I marveled at Maleficent’s cool, confident demeanor. When she taunts the imprisoned Prince Philip, you can tell she’s enjoying his torment. Every move is calculated, and yet ever-so-graceful.

She really is the mistress of evil. With style.

Having watched the live-action movie Maleficent recently, I was reminded again that Angelina Jolie had some large horns to fill in taking on this role. The original voice of Maleficent, Eleanor Audley, has a richness in her voice that is unmatched. When Maleficent threatens, you feel it on the other side of the screen. I’ve always felt Maleficent was the character to watch in this movie. Aurora is beautiful, innocent, and a joy to listen to, but not nearly as interesting as Maleficent.

4. The deleted and extended scenes show a peek at how the story could have gone. Additional all-new bonus features include never-before-seen deleted scenes “The Fair” (with Deleted Character The Vulture,) “The Curse is Fulfilled” and “Arrival Of Maleficent.”

I really enjoyed watching “The Fair,” where Aurora switches clothing with a servant to sneak out of the castle to see what life is like outside the castle walls. (Sounds like another daring princess we know – Jasmine.) While out, she finds a small town fair and meets Maleficent in disguise as a fortune teller, as well as Prince Philip.

It’s definitely a different version of the story, but I think it could have worked out just as well as having Aurora meet Philip in the woods, and would have provided a chance for Aurora to have contact with Maleficent before her spinning wheel accident.

5. The bonus features are great for Disney geeks. Some of the new features include “Once Upon A Parade,” in which “Modern Family” star Sarah Hyland tells us the tale of Walt Disney World’s new Festival Of Fantasy Parade, “Art of Evil: Generations Of Disney Villains,” a legacy piece spotlighting Disney’s favorite villain animator and Maleficent creator Marc Davis, and “@DisneyAnimation: Artists in Motion,” in which Walt Disney Animation Visual Development artist Brittney Lee goes through the process of creating a three dimensional sculpture of Maleficent, completely out of paper.

If you’re a recent visitor to Walt Disney World, you’ll especially love the “Once Upon A Parade” short, where the creation of the Festival of Fantasy Parade is given the fairytale treatment.

Disney’s Sleeping Beauty is the sixteenth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon and was the last animated feature produced by Walt Disney to be based upon a fairy tale. It is the tenth film released as part of Disney’s Blu-ray Diamond Collection – and with the Disney Movies Anywhere program, you can use the code to take the movie with you on your mobile devices.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this movie to facilitate my review. (And will now be retiring our old DVD copy of Sleeping Beauty.) All opinions are my own.