Just Films & That is a podcast that celebrates underrated and underseen films. In this episode, Josh chose Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame. He reckons this one might be underrated AND underseen, and thinks it deserves to be lumped in with some of the more popular Disney classics like The Lion King and Beauty & The Beast. You can listen to all episode of Just Films and That now wherever you get your podcasts.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00 Up there, high, high in the dark bell tower, lives the mysterious Bellringer.
00:06 The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a Disney film from 1996 and it tells the story of Quasimodo,
00:12 the hunchback who lives in Notre Dame, lives/has been isolated there for his whole life,
00:18 but he starts to want more. So Josh, you picked this one, so tell us a bit about why you picked it.
00:23 Yes, why I picked this one because I think it's underseen and underrated. What I mean is I don't
00:29 think it's grouped together with the big Disney classics. On Rotten Tomatoes, it's really even
00:34 on this one, it's one of the most even ones we've done. On Rotten Tomatoes, the audience give it 71%,
00:38 the critics on Rotten Tomatoes give it 70%, and the IMDb score is 7 out of 10,
00:43 so it's more or less bang on 70% or 7 out of 10 across the board. Had you seen this one before?
00:49 I hadn't seen this one, which is a bit strange for me because I had seen a lot of Disney films
00:54 when I was a kid. I do think there was a lot to like in there, but I probably don't like it as
00:58 much as you did. I really enjoyed some of the themes that are explored in this film. I think
01:03 visually it looks really impressive as well, but the main thing that I loved about this film was
01:08 Esmeralda as a character. She is a completely different type of Disney princess. She's so
01:14 confident, so sure of herself, so charismatic, and a little bit sensual as well. And all these
01:19 strengths in her femininity that she showed off during the film just aren't really things that
01:23 we've explored in Disney films before. So I really enjoyed her as a character, and I'd love to see
01:28 more Disney princesses like her. Come back here, Gypsy! What a woman. I think it's got a really
01:36 good look and sound to this film. I think what Disney does really well, and we touched on this
01:39 when we did Hercules, is they take... Obviously it's a historical story based on a historical
01:44 fictional story by Victor Hugo, and they take ideas of the time, you know, the art and the way
01:49 things looked, and they incorporate that into the look and the sound of the film. So this is...
01:53 It's very big, it's very bold, it's very dramatic, it's very emotive in the way it looks and the way
01:57 it sounds. So is there anything that you didn't like about it or that you'd change?
02:01 So the main issue for me with this film is that the songs just didn't hit me where I wanted them
02:06 to. They all kind of felt a bit clunky and a bit clumsy, and that they weren't really ones that you
02:11 could sing along to after one listen, like you would get in The Lion King or in Frozen, for
02:15 example. And I think this left me unable to really emotionally connect with the film. So by the end
02:21 of it, I just didn't feel a great deal, which isn't like me at all when watching Disney films,
02:26 so that was a bit of a shame. I mean, I'm the complete opposite with the music, it really
02:29 pulls at my heartstrings. So what do you think then, seven out of ten overall, is it underrated
02:33 and is it underseen based on the argument I put forward? So I definitely think you made some valid
02:38 points about why this film would be underseen, and I do agree with you in that regard. In terms
02:42 of underrated, for me it isn't really. In fact, it might just be a little bit overrated, but I do
02:48 think that if I'd seen this when I was a kid, when I was the age of the target audience, that I might
02:54 be saying something completely different now. Yeah, I would say it is underseen or underrated
02:57 in the sense that I think people should revisit it, but we'll see. I think it might get a new
03:02 lease of life in the next ten years or so.