Waking Sleeping Beauty (2009) Review

So many documentaries fail to actually do what the genre's name implies. Documentation. The filmmakers bring in their own preconceived notions and political beliefs and disguise them as facts. Waking Sleeping Beauty manages to document the truth in an enormously bittersweet style. A truth that can only be told by the people who were there. The truth was that, although it seemed like a paradise, from 1984-1994 the Disney Animation Studios was a difficult time. Management changes and egos nearly spelled the end of the studio but strangely enough it was also the most successful point in the history of the studio.

One thing I loved was the complete lack of talking heads. What do I mean by that? There is no new footage of people sitting in a chair talking to the camera. It's all archival footage and voiceovers. It's an immensely refreshing alternative style of documentaries. The director, Don Hahn succeeds in what he set out to do. Wonderfully the film is not about him. Besides the narration he appears briefly throughout the film. This is only to show the audience that he was there and is qualified to tell this story. You can tell that it's a very personal film for him.

There is a lot of great archive footage that the filmmakers managed to put together coherently. One of the best moments is a shot of executive Jeffrey Katzenberg waving off interviews on the red carpet premiere of The Lion King following an article that, much to Roy Disney's annoyance, proclaimed Katzenberg the guy who was saving Disney Animation. Another great point is during a game of Jeopardy where a minor revolt at the studio became a category after Peter Schneider decided to change the title of Basil of Baker Street to The Great Mouse Detective (Someone sent around a fake memo saying all the film titles would be changed).

As a major Disney animation fan who thought he knew a lot about the films and how they were made I was surprised by how much of the reality I didn't know. It was quite nice to see the people involved with that decade shown at times broken and others joyous. This documentary shows the miracle of creation. Certain points of the film are absolutely heartbreaking. One such moment is the discussion of Howard Ashman's death. Don Hahn's narration is brilliant and conveys just the right amount of emotion without being overly sappy.

★★★★