Fantasia 2000

Originally published on April 14th, 2022

Fantasia 2000 holds so many memories for me and has always brought me peace and joy! Outside of nostalgic value, what is there not to love about it? They took the original Fantasia and made it better by adding an array of fun hosts, sharing better stories with the animations, and sharing a greater variety of classical pieces. Overall, Fantasia 2000 is dreamier, funnier, and more engaging than the original. However, as I said in my previous review, without Fantasia we wouldn’t have Fantasia 2000.

What is your favorite segment in Fantasia 2000? My favorites are Rhapsody in Blue and Pines of Rome.

Also because this film is perfect it gets

Here are fun facts provided by IMDB:

- The Firebird sequence depicts the eruption of the volcano Mount Saint Helens in 1980.

- When Eric Goldberg first approached cartoonist Al Hirschfeld about adopting his visual style for the "Rhapsody in Blue" segment, Hirschfeld told him that if he was 50 years younger he would have been on a train the next day to come work on the project. Eric Goldberg showed "Rhapsody in Blue" to Al Hirschfeld shortly before the artist's 96th birthday. Hirschfeld's wife called it the best birthday present he could have received.

- Although never mentioned, the characters in "Rhapsody in Blue" all have names. The construction worker is named Duke after Duke Ellington. The man who needs a job is named Jobless Joe. The portly fellow is named John who is named after animation historian John Culhane, the inspiration Mr. Snoops in The Rescuers. The little girl is named Rachel, named and modeled after Eric Goldberg’s youngest daughter.

- The use of "Pomp and Circumstance" was mandated by Disney CEO Michael Eisner after he heard it at his son's graduation. Eisner's original idea for the segment was to have all the Disney princesses and princes in a wedding procession, where the princesses were all pregnant. The animators refused to work on this idea.

- Roy E Disney studied "Pines of Rome" in a Music Appreciation course he took at Pomona College in California. He brought a score to one of the first meetings and told they animators he wanted it in the final film