The Aristocats
The Aristocats is a 1970 American animated romantic musical comedy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and directed by Wolfgang Reitherman. It is the final Disney animated film made with the involvement of Walt Disney Productions' co-founder Roy O. Disney before his death on December 20, 1971. The film is based on a story by Tom McGowan and Tom Rowe, and revolves around a family of aristocratic cats, and how an alley cat acquaintance helps them after a butler has kidnapped them to gain his mistress's fortune which was intended to go to them. The film features the voices of Phil Harris, Eva Gabor, Hermione Baddeley, Dean Clark, Sterling Holloway, Scatman Crothers, and Roddy Maude-Roxby.
Not to be confused with The Aristocrats.The Aristocats
- Ken Anderson
- Larry Clemmons
- Eric Cleworth
- Vance Gerry
- Julius Svendsen
- Frank Thomas
- Ralph Wright
by
- Tom McGowan
- Tom Rowe
Winston Hibler
Wolfgang Reitherman
- Phil Harris
- Eva Gabor
- Sterling Holloway
- Scatman Crothers
- Paul Winchell
- Lord Tim Hudson
- Thurl Ravenscroft
- Dean Clark
- Liz English
- Gary Dubin
Tom Acosta
- December 11, 1970 (premiere)
- December 24, 1970 (United States)
79 minutes
United States
English
$4 million[1]
$191 million[2]
In 1962, The Aristocats project began as an original script for a two-part live-action episode for Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, developed by writers Tom McGowan and Tom Rowe and producer Harry Tytle. Following two years of rewrites, Tytle suggested the project would be more suitable for an animated film, in which Disney temporarily shelved the project while The Jungle Book (1967) advanced into production. When The Jungle Book was nearly complete, Disney appointed Ken Anderson to develop preliminary work on The Aristocats, making it the last film project to be personally approved by Disney before his death. Longtime Disney collaborators Robert and Richard Sherman composed multiple songs for the film, though only two made it in the finished product.
The Aristocats was released on December 24, 1970, to generally positive reviews from film critics. It was also a commercial success. A live-action remake is currently in development, with Questlove attached to direct.
Plot
In 1910, mother cat Duchess and her three kittens, Berlioz, Marie, and Toulouse, live in Paris with retired opera diva Madame Adelaide Bonfamille, and her English butler, Edgar. The cats are pampered pets that live a luxurious lifestyle and are very cultured in art and music, like their owner.
While preparing her will with elderly lawyer Georges Hautecourt, Madame declares that her vast fortune will be first left to her cats, then revert to Edgar once they all pass away. Edgar overhears this through a speaking tube and, after erroneously calculating that he will die before he can claim his inheritance, plots to eliminate the cats. He sedates them by putting sleeping pills in a dish of cream, then drives them on his motorcycle out to the countryside in a basket. There, he is ambushed by two hounds named Napoleon and Lafayette, losing his hat, sidecar, umbrella, shoes, and the basket before escaping. The cats are left stranded in the countryside, while Madame Adelaide, Roquefort the mouse, and Frou-Frou the horse discover their absence.
The next morning, Duchess meets an alley cat named Thomas O'Malley, who offers to guide her and the kittens to Paris. The group briefly hitchhikes in a milk truck before being chased out by the driver. Later, while crossing a railroad trestle, the cats narrowly avoid an oncoming train, and Marie falls into a river. O'Malley immediately dives in and rescues her, and is himself rescued by Amelia and Abigail Gabble, two English geese on holiday. The geese lead the cats to the outskirts of Paris, then depart to reunite with their inebriated Uncle Waldo. Meanwhile, Edgar returns to the countryside to retrieve his possessions (the only evidence that can incriminate him) from Napoleon and Lafayette and, after some difficulty, ultimately succeeds.
Traveling across the rooftops of the city, the cats meet up with O'Malley's friend Scat Cat who performs the song "Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat" with several other cat musicians. After the band has departed, O'Malley and Duchess converse on a nearby rooftop while the kittens listen at a windowsill. Duchess' loyalty to Madame prompts her to decline O'Malley's marriage proposal. The next day, Duchess and the kittens return to Madame's mansion. Edgar finds them before Madame does, and places them in a sack, deciding to ship them to Timbuktu.
Roquefort catches up with O'Malley at Duchess’ instruction, and O'Malley returns to the mansion, sending Roquefort to find Scat Cat and his gang. Though he struggles to explain the situation to the alley cats, Roquefort successfully brings them to O'Malley's aid. O'Malley, the alley cats, and Frou-Frou fight Edgar, while Roquefort frees Duchess and the kittens. At the end of the fight, Edgar is locked in his own packing-case and sent to Timbuktu himself.
The Aristocats return to Madame Adelaide, who, unaware of the reason for Edgar's departure, rewrites her will to exclude him. After adopting O'Malley into the family, Madame establishes a charity foundation, housing Paris' stray cats in the mansion. Scat Cat and his gang are the first to move in, and reprise their song so loudly that the two hound dogs can hear it out in the countryside.
Production
Story development
On December 9, 1961, Walt Disney suggested that Harry Tytle and Tom McGowan find some animal stories to adapt as a two-part live-action episode for the Wonderful World of Color television program. By New Year's 1962, McGowan had found several stories including a children's book about a mother cat and her kittens set in New York City.[4] However, Tytle felt that the London setting had added a significant element to One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) and suggested setting the story of the cats in Paris. Following a rough storyline, the story became about two servants—a butler and a maid—who were in line to inherit a fortune of an eccentric mistress after the pet cats died and focused on their feeble and foolish attempts to eliminate the felines.[4] Boris Karloff and Françoise Rosay were in mind to portray the butler and the distressed Madame.[5] A subplot centered around a mother cat hiding her kittens to keep them out of danger in a variety of different homes and locales around Paris. During the filming of Escapade in Florence (1962), McGowan brought Tytle the story that had been written by Tom Rowe, an American writer who was living in Paris.[4]
Reception
Box office
By January 1972, The Aristocats had earned $10.1 million in box office rentals from the United States and Canada.[34] Overseas, the film became the most popular "general release" movie at the British box office in 1971 with rentals of $2.6 million.[35][36]
The Aristocats was the most widely-attended film in France in 1971, with 12.7 million in ticket admissions. It is currently the 20th highest-grossing film of all-time in France, earning $3.6 million in box office rentals.[37][36][38] That same year, the film was the most widely-attended film released in Germany with ticket admissions of 11.3 million. It is currently Germany's 11th highest-grossing film of all-time.[39] By the end of its initial theatrical run, the film had earned domestic rentals of $11 million and $17 million in international countries,[40] for a worldwide rental of $28 million.[41]
The film was re-released to theaters in the United States on December 19, 1980, where it grossed an additional $18 million and again on April 10, 1987, where it grossed $17 million.[42] The film grossed $32 million worldwide from an international re-release in 1994, including $11 million in France.[43][44] The Aristocats has had a lifetime gross of $55.7 million in the United States and Canada,[45] and its total lifetime worldwide box office gross is $191 million.[2]
Critical reaction
Howard Thompson of The New York Times praised the film as "grand fun all the way, nicely flavored with tunes, and topped with one of the funniest jam sessions ever by a bunch of scraggly Bohemians headed by one Scat Cat."[46] Roger Ebert, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, awarded the film three stars out of four, summarizing The Aristocats as "light and pleasant and funny, the characterization is strong, and the voices of Phil Harris (O'Malley the Alley Cat) and Eva Gabor (Duchess, the mother cat) are charming in their absolute rightness."[47] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film "has a gentle good-natured charm which will delight the small-fry and their elders alike." He praised the animation, but remarked that the film "lacks a certain kind of vigor, boldness and dash, a kind of a hard-focused emphasis which you would say was a Disney trademark."[48] Arthur D. Murphy of Variety praised the film writing the film is "[h]elped immeasurably by the voices of Phil Harris, Eva Gabor, Sterling Holloway, Scatman Crothers and others, plus some outstanding animation, songs, sentiment, some excellent dialog and even a touch of psychedelia."[49] Stefan Kanfer, reviewing for Time magazine, noted that "[t]he melodies in Disney's earlier efforts have been richer. But for integration of music, comedy and plot, The Aristocats has no rivals."[50]
Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune felt the film's "artwork and story do not compare to the truly great Disney films Snow White, Pinocchio, Bambi and Dumbo but there is enough juvenile humor to keep the children in their seats for the 78 minutes."[51] For its 1987 re-release, animation historian Charles Solomon expressed criticism for its episodic plot, anachronisms, and borrowed plot elements from earlier Disney animated features, but nevertheless wrote "[b]ut even at their least original, the Disney artists provide better animation--and more entertainment--than the recent animated features hawking The Care Bears, Rainbow Brite and Transformers."[52] Writing in his book The Disney Films, Disney historian and film critic Leonard Maltin wrote that "[t]he worst that one could say of The AristoCats is that it is unmemorable. It's smoothly executed, of course, and enjoyable, but neither its superficial story nor its characters have any resonance."[53] Additionally, in his book Of Mice and Magic, Maltin criticized the film for re-using Phil Harris to replicate The Jungle Book's Baloo, dismissing the character Thomas O'Malley as "essentially the same character, dictated by the same voice personality."[54]
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 64% of 33 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 5.8/10, earning it a score of "Fresh". The website's consensus states, "Though The Aristocats is a mostly middling effort for Disney, it is redeemed by terrific work from its voice cast and some jazzy tunes."[55] On Metacritic, the film holds a weighted average score of 66 out of 100, based on 12 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[56]
Other media
Cancelled sequel
In 2005, Disneytoon Studios originally planned to make a follow-up to the film, along with sequels to Chicken Little (2005) and Meet the Robinsons (2007).[59] Originally intended to be a 2D animated feature, Disney executives decided to produce the film in computer animation in order to garner more interest.[60] Additionally, the story was meant to center around Marie, Duchess's daughter, who becomes smitten by another kitten aboard a luxury cruise ship. However, she and her family must soon take on a jewel thief on the open seas.[61] The project was cancelled when John Lasseter was named Disney's new chief creative officer, in which he called off all future sequels Disneytoon had planned and instead make original productions or spin-offs.[59]
Cancelled TV series
In 2000, a television series, titled The Aristocats: The Animated Series, was commissioned by Disney Television Animation. The series would follow Marie, Toulouse, and Berlioz (now teenagers and also anthropomorphic), along with a new character named Delancey. The series was scheduled to be released sometime in 2002, but production was put on hold in 2001. It would restart production in 2003, with a release scheduled for late 2006 or 2007, only for it to be scrapped after Disney's acquisition of Pixar.
Live-action adaptation
In January 2022, it was announced that a live-action remake is in development with Will Gluck producing under his Olive Bridge Entertainment banner and Keith Bunin writing the script with Gluck.[62] Questlove was attached to direct the film in March 2023.[63]
Video games
Thomas O'Malley, Duchess, Berlioz, Marie, and Toulouse were added to the kingdom builder mobile game Disney Magic Kingdoms in September 2023.[64]
