Whose Age Is Golden?

Here's the first paragraph of David Denby's review of Up:

The recent animated features by the Pixar division of Disney—“The Incredibles,” “Ratatouille,” “WALL-E,” and now “Up”—have amounted to a run of creative success that has few parallels in American popular culture. Yes, there was the classic Disney group of animated features, released between 1937 and 1942, which included “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “Pinocchio,” “Bambi,” and “Dumbo.” Children still love them, though this aging child doesn’t, really. The old Disney dispensation went roughly as follows: The material was largely based on fairy tales, with princes and queens and wicked stepmothers. Animals with long eyelashes engaged in gentle woodland conversation. There was much anthropomorphic charm, much sweet melodiousness, and, running through the sugar, a vinegary taste of fear, separation, punishment. The entire Bruno Bettelheim catalogue of psychological terrors churned below the surface. By now (for me, at least), the cloyingness, with its malevolent undertones, seems too calculated and heavy-spirited. But the recent Pixar films are something else. These movies are fashioned as much for adults as for kids. Set in the modern world, they are built around an exhilarating drive for achievement. A family of libertarian superheroes refuses to accept enforced mediocrity (“The Incredibles”). A talented rat wants to practice the art of cooking (“Ratatouille”). A robot saves the aesthetic remnants of a civilization ruined by excess and pollution (“WALL-E”). Some of the characters are isolated; they are all intelligent and strongly motivated. We’ve gone from psychological fable to moral fable, from fate to something like self-willed, even civic, passion.

I think Denby underrates the Disney films and overrates the Pixar. I'd say those four Disney features have never been topped as a group. I don't care so much about the themes (which are basic to so many stories, including those from Pixar) and the milieu, and I'm not sure why Denby cares so much. What counts here is good storytelling and technique. (Though it'll be interesting to see if the gruff Mr. Frederikson from Up ever greets kids at Disneyland like Snow White and Dopey do.)

I'm not putting down Pixar, which is easily the class of the computer animation field. I like all those four films, especially The Incredibles. But they have flaws, too, and perhaps aging children of the future won't look back as fondly at them as Denby thinks they will.