Well, kiddies......... those horrific visions I had of Bambi, Thumper and Flower line-dancing in their ghetto-rap outfits with some knuckle-headed "Poptart" caterwauling in the background were all for naught. I'm not gonna give away all the goodies-would'nt be fair to all my fellow "Mousies" to spew out any spoilers- but I can tell you this......aside from a few issues that sorta chapped my inner child, this is simply the best DTV that "The House of Mouse" has ever released. The animation is every bit as good as a lot of the recent theatrical films , with beautifully rendered background art and an overall "Technicolor" look that was for the most part quite dazzling .........and how about them voices? I gotta admit the casting is excellent.
Story-wise, well....that's one of the things that I still ain't all that thrilled about . Despite having been "kiddiefied" from a book that was essentially written for adults, the original "Bambi" was still a wonderful film that catered to both ends of the age spectrum, a talent that Uncle Walt had in spades. This midquel is squarely aimed at the lunchbox-tetherball set to the point that unless you're a complete animation nut like yours truly, you might find one or two scenes a bit too cloyingly ooky to your liking. Still, it's heads and tail above any of the previous DTV "Twosies" and even a few of the "Feature" flicks released over the past 15 years, and I honestly think it's gonna do quite well.
One other bone of contention I have however, are the songs.Granted, they used a few snippets from the original's score, but all the stuff produced exclusively for the current film was your typically weak, formula-laden "contemporary" numbers that are so cookie-cutter bland that you can't even distinguish one from the other. That was one of the most wonderful things about the first movie ...even more than sixty years after it's release, the songs were so well written that they sound just as good now as they did then. Sad to say, it's gonna "date" the film in a most unflattering way. Second b.o.c. I have is in regards to some of the character animation ie: Ronno, the porcupine and the groundhog, especially Ronno. Pretty average design that clashes terribly with the rest of the animation and the exactly the sort of quality you come to expect from a DTV.As said, the rendering of "Bullyboy"Ronno was the worst...at times his looked like they'd been lifted straight from "Balto III".....not impressive in the least. On the other side of the coin, The Great Prince looked gorgeous as did the other deer.......Friend Owl was drawn absolutely spot on, though Thumper and Flower did look nice they still did'nt look quite enough like their original incarnations to retain all their charms. As for Bambi himself, well.......let's just say that 90% was beautifully done, but unfortunately the animators' attempts to "modernize" his facial expressions in a lot of his scenes failed quite miserably and were very disappointing. Despite it's flaws, it's still better than all the previous Disneytoon releases and well worth at least one watch.
