Sixty years after the original Fantasia, Disney carries on the inevitable and obvious and not necessarily good idea of animated flights of fancy taking off from well-known excerpts of classical music. The idea of a followup was itself inevitable and obvious and not necessarily good. (What took so long?) The only remaining avenues for imagination, now that the main access road has been paved and signposted, are the individual segments. And these without exception are bumpy rides. The overfamiliar opening of Beethoven's Fifth gives rise to a lyrical abstraction of liquid sunshine and confetti-colored butterflies, done in a retro-Sixties style on the level of The Flintstones and The Jetsons. Respighi's Pines of Rome yields the greeting-card surrealism of airborne weightless whales. Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue is pictured in the manner of Al Hirschfeld, if, that is, Hirschfeld were to draw in the simpler manner of Little Lulu. The last movement of Shostakovich's Second Piano Concerto (his strenuous humorous mode) accompanies blocky computer-generated imagery in illustration of Hans Christian Andersen's "Steadfast Tin Soldier." The finale of Saint-Saens's Carnival of the Animals conjures up a flock of flamingos and a yoyo, a rough substitute for the hippos in tutus of the 1940 forerunner. A truly criminal medley of four of Elgar's five Pomp and Circumstance marches, augmented by an alien wordless chorus, backs up a Bible story starring Donald Duck as Noah. And for a big finish, Stravinsky's Firebird, a short easy step from the Rite of Spring sequence of sixty years ago, yanks us back to the realm of greeting-card surrealism, with a sort of nymphet Mother Nature (or would-be spokesmodel for Clairol Herbal Essences) and a Rodan-like ecological ravager. The tag-team of celebrity hosts -- Steve Martin, Bette Midler, Angela Lansbury, Quincy Jones, James Earl Jones, et al. -- fail to convince us, by their mere presence, that this is a gala occasion. With James Levine and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. (2000) — Duncan Shepherd
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