Bambi (1942)

Written by Perce Pierce & Larry Morey
Directed by David Hand

Well, I hope there aren’t many Bambi fans reading this review, because...yeah.

Don’t get me wrong: I liked it. It’s been over 20 years since I’ve seen it, but I thought it was a good film. I just also don’t feel the desire to watch it again.

Welcome back, dad…about time!

I think my blasé feeling towards the movie stems from the plot. In the grand scheme of the film, not much actually happens. It’s a coming-of-age story, but the main action consists of Bambi being born, Bambi being orphaned (except not really, because then his father magically reappears into his life), and Bambi becoming prince of the forest. It almost feels as if the first 15 minutes and last 5 minutes of The Lion King were edited together and stretched out to 70 minutes. It’s good stuff, but there still isn’t enough to keep a viewer engaged.

The visuals are wonderful, more so than I originally thought when the film started. At first, the backgrounds felt less refined, almost abstract. It felt like a budget cut. As the film played out, however, I realized it was intentional. The backgrounds are designed to mimic a storybook, almost as if the storybook was coming to life and inviting the audience inside. It also gave the added bonus of really making the characters pop off the screen, so they drew your attention every time. The characters are beautifully drawn, and some of the elements, particularly the antlers, are painstakingly drawn, by hand!

RIP

To be quite honest, the main issue I had were with the characters. I found nearly all of them to be a bit grating, especially during the first half of the movie. The only one I really didn’t get that sense from was Bambi’s mother...and we all know how that ends. For me, the worst offender was Thumper, who spends his first part of the film continually mocking Bambi and being scolded by his own mother. It made Thumper seem rude, so much so that I genuinely don’t see why people like him as a character.

The twitterpatted sequence was actually quite charming, so I was saddened that it only lasted a few minutes. From my research, 12 minutes were cut from the film before animation to help keep costs low (this was being produced in the midst of WW2, after all); I hope those lost minutes helped flesh out that sequence.

So, it’s not a bad film. It just didn’t hold my interest. There’s many worse things a film could do. Bambi is short, sweet, very lovely to look at, and in my humble opinion, boring. Sorry about that.

FINAL GRADE: C+