The Aristocats (1970) Review

After Walt

The Aristocats is the first Disney animated feature completed after Walt Disney’s death. He had approved the project before he died in December 1966, and the studio’s animators finished it without him, working in the relaxed, jazzy style of The Jungle Book. It came out in December 1970, and it’s a gentle, charming, very enjoyable film, and also a slighter one than the studio’s best.

Wolfgang Reitherman directed it, as he did most of Disney’s animated features of that era. It was a big success, and it has become a favourite with families, especially for its music. I give it an 8. It’s not one of Disney’s masterpieces, but it’s warm, funny and stylish, and its best musical number ranks with anything the studio ever produced.

It’s also a film with a particular place in Disney history. The studio had lost its founder, its guiding creative force for more than forty years, and there were real questions about whether it could continue. The Aristocats proved it could, at least for a while, and its success kept the animation department going through a difficult decade.

Paris, 1910

The film takes place in Paris in 1910. Duchess, an elegant white cat, lives in luxury with her three kittens, Toulouse, Berlioz and Marie, in the grand house of their owner, Madame Adelaide Bonfamille, a retired opera singer. Madame adores her cats, and she decides to leave her fortune to them, with the house passing to her butler, Edgar, only after they die.

Edgar overhears, and he does the arithmetic. Cats have many lives, and he doesn’t want to wait. So he drugs the cats’ cream, carries them into the countryside at night and abandons them. Duchess and her kittens wake up far from home, lost and frightened, with no idea how to get back.

It’s a simple setup, and the film treats it lightly. Edgar is less a villain than a bumbling crook, and the danger is never very great. The film is more interested in the trip home, with its barns, rivers, trains and rooftops, than in the peril, and in the characters the cats meet along the way. It’s closer to a gentle road trip than a thriller, and it’s all the more relaxing for it.

Duchess

Eva Gabor voices Duchess, and she gives her an elegant, warm, faintly Hungarian charm that suits a cat who has spent her life in luxury. Duchess is refined, graceful and kind, and she’s determined to raise her kittens properly, teaching them music, painting and manners even while they’re lost in the wilderness, and her calm under pressure is quietly funny.

She’s also braver than she looks. She has never fended for herself, and she’s out of her depth in the countryside, and she keeps her head and protects her kittens throughout. It’s a gentle, dignified character, and Gabor’s voice makes her one of Disney’s most appealing heroines, and she’s one of the few Disney mothers who survives the whole film.

Duchess is also a mother first, and the film never forgets it. Every decision she makes is about her kittens, and her gradual willingness to trust O’Malley comes from seeing how kind he is to them. It gives the romance a gentle, grown-up logic that most animated love stories lack, and it makes O’Malley’s final decision to join the family feel earned.

O’Malley

Duchess and the kittens are rescued by Thomas O’Malley, a streetwise, charming alley cat who wanders through life with no home and no responsibilities. Phil Harris voices him, just as he voiced Baloo in The Jungle Book, and O’Malley is Baloo as a cat: relaxed, funny, warm-hearted and a little lazy, a charmer who has avoided responsibility all his life.

O’Malley falls for Duchess and offers to guide her and the kittens back to Paris. Their relationship, between the refined aristocrat and the scruffy vagabond, is the heart of the film, and it’s a gentle, grown-up romance. The kittens adore him, and by the end, O’Malley, who never wanted a family, has found one.

His introductory song, in which he explains his carefree philosophy of life, is charming, and Harris’s easy, growling delivery makes it one of the film’s highlights. It’s a sign of how much the studio relied on his warmth that they built another lead around him so soon after Baloo, and he went on to voice Little John in Robin Hood three years later.

The Kittens

Toulouse, Berlioz and Marie are the film’s comic energy. Toulouse wants to be a painter and a tough alley cat like O’Malley. Berlioz is a pianist. Marie is a prim, bossy little girl who insists she’s a lady and is constantly annoyed by her brothers. The three of them squabble exactly like real siblings, and it’s one of the film’s most accurate and affectionate touches.

They’re adorable, mischievous and full of personality, and their bickering and play give the film much of its humour. Marie in particular has become one of Disney’s most popular characters, decades later, with a huge following in merchandise and fan culture, especially in Japan, where her image appears on everything from stationery to cafés. She’s a small character who has taken on a life of her own far beyond the film.

The kittens also carry the film’s lessons. They learn that the world outside their comfortable home is bigger and rougher than they imagined and that kindness can come from unexpected places. Toulouse, in particular, idolises O’Malley, and his delight when the alley cat finally joins the family is one of the film’s sweetest moments.

Everybody Wants to Be a Cat

The film’s best sequence takes place in a crumbling Paris attic, where O’Malley’s friend Scat Cat and his band of alley cats play jazz. The number, Everybody Wants to Be a Cat, is one of the great Disney songs: a swinging, joyful jam session that builds and builds until the whole attic is shaking and the floor falls through.

The animation is wonderful, full of colour and movement, and the song’s celebration of jazz and freedom is irresistible. Duchess sings along, the kittens join in, and for a few minutes the film becomes pure joy. It’s the scene everyone remembers, and it’s worth the whole film on its own. Scatman Crothers, as Scat Cat, leads the band with gravelly delight.

The band includes a Siamese cat, Shun Gon, drawn and voiced as a crude caricature, playing the piano with chopsticks and singing in broken English. It’s a stereotype that was unacceptable even at the time and is now painful to watch, and Disney has since added a content warning to the film on its streaming service. It’s a real blemish on the best sequence in the film.

The Supporting Cast

The film is full of charming minor characters. Roquefort, a timid, helpful mouse voiced by Sterling Holloway, is the cats’ friend at home and helps rescue them. Two English geese, Amelia and Abigail Gabble, walking to Paris, adopt the cats for a stretch of the trip, and their drunken Uncle Waldo, who has escaped from being cooked in white wine, provides one of the funniest scenes.

Two farm dogs, Napoleon and Lafayette, who attack Edgar in the countryside, get a running comedy routine as they argue over who’s in charge. Their bickering is some of the funniest material in the film, and it’s reprised when Edgar returns to the farm to retrieve his belongings and the dogs recognise him instantly, with predictably painful results.

None of these characters is essential to the plot. That’s part of the film’s charm. It’s in no hurry, and it’s happy to wander off with a pair of geese or a pair of dogs for a few minutes, simply because they’re funny. It’s the kind of leisurely storytelling that Disney would largely abandon in later decades.

The Music

The Sherman brothers, who wrote the songs for Mary Poppins and The Jungle Book, wrote the title song, and it’s sung by Maurice Chevalier, the great French entertainer, who came out of retirement to record it. It was one of his final recordings, and his voice gives the film an instant Parisian elegance.

The film’s score, by George Bruns, is light, jazzy and lively, and the songs, including the scale-singing Scales and Arpeggios and O’Malley’s introduction, are charming. Everybody Wants to Be a Cat, written by Floyd Huddleston and Al Rinker, is the standout, and it has become one of the studio’s most popular songs.

The music gives the film its identity. The Aristocats is a film about the meeting of high culture and street culture, opera and jazz, the grand house and the attic, and its songs dramatise that meeting perfectly. By the end, the refined cats have learned to swing, and the alley cats have been welcomed into the grand house.

The Look

The film uses the xerography technique that gave 101 Dalmatians and The Jungle Book their sketchy, visible lines, and it has the same loose, modern look. The backgrounds of Paris, the countryside and the attic are beautifully painted, and the animation of the cats, especially Duchess’s graceful movements and O’Malley’s swagger, is superb.

It’s also a film made on a tighter budget than the studio’s classics, and you can see it in places. The backgrounds are simpler than in earlier films, and some sequences feel economical. The studio was in a period of transition, and The Aristocats has the ease and charm of a team working confidently and the modesty of one that had lost its leader.

Where The Aristocats Falls Short

It’s slight. The story is thin, the villain is barely threatening, and the film doesn’t have the emotional depth of the studio’s great films. It’s a gentle, pleasant ride, and it’s easy to forget how it ends. The Siamese cat caricature in its best sequence is a real stain, and it’s impossible to watch that scene now without noticing it.

On the other side: Everybody Wants to Be a Cat, O’Malley and Duchess, the kittens, the geese and Uncle Waldo, and a warmth that makes it a pleasure to watch. It’s an 8. It’s one of the most purely charming Disney films, and it’s a lovely one to watch with young children.

Craft Note

The Verdict on The Aristocats

Yes. It’s an 8, a warm, jazzy, charming Disney film that’s perfect for young children and enjoyable for adults. Watch it for Everybody Wants to Be a Cat, O’Malley and Duchess, and be aware of the Siamese cat caricature. It hasn’t aged well.

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