Waking Sleeping Beauty is a documentary about the "Disney Renaissance," where starting with The Little Mermaid, the animation studio had a great comeback in artistic, critical, and boxoffice responses. Well, being a documentary on animation, especially hitting with the nostalgic stuff from my childhood, this is basically a movie made specifically for me. It's very well made and while it stops in 1995 and doesn't explore the post-Lion King studio closings and all the flops and CGI misfires, it delves deeply into the tense rivalry between Michael Eisner, Roy E. Disney (Walt's nephew), and Jeffery Katzenberg (who would go on to co-found Dreamworks). Pretty surprising since it was produced by Disney and released by them.
It's also very revealing about lyricist Howard Ashman's contributions to the movies he worked on. It may just be the directors and interviewees fondness for him affecting their memories, but it really seems as though he was the key auteur behind Little Mermaid and Beauty & the Beast. The segment of the documentary focusing on his death from AIDS before the release of Beauty & the Beast is incredibly moving.
However, the greatest part of the film features archived video of somebody going around the studios and taping the animators goofing about (the guy behind the camera turns out to be John Lasseter). Then they come across this one guy all alone in his office working at his desk. He looks at the camera unamused, like he's spent the last two night in his office, hasn't had his coffee yet, and really wants the camera out of his face. Like that creepy, unsociable kid at college who's spent the last twelve hours on World of Warcraft and really just wants you to leave him alone.
It's Tim Burton.
P.S. If you watch the trailer in the link, you might think that Beauty & the Beast won Best Film at the Oscars. While it was nominated and won in several other categories, it lost... to The Silence of the Lambs.
Mwahahahaha.
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