ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, June 22, 1996 TAG: 9606240115
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B-10 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: MOVIE REVIEW
SOURCE: MIKE MAYO CORRESPONDENT
Recently, the Southern Baptist Convention denounced the Walt Disney organization for all sorts of "anti-family" activities, from granting health care benefits to employees in same-sex relationships to releasing the film "Priest."
The company's newest animated feature, "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," is going to add fuel to the fire. It has a simple, preachy message of tolerance for differences and distrust of dogmatic religious authority, not to mention a villain who's the very model of a disapproving blue-nosed deacon.
Those matters won't mean much to the youthful target audience or to most parents. They're going to love the movie. It's one of Disney's finest achievements in animation - colorful, exciting and engrossing.
Still, enjoyable as the film is, it's not meant for very young children. Its G rating probably should have been PG for one nightmarish vision and the heroine's innate sexiness. Kids who are easily frightened ought to see the film with their folks.
In terms of plot, a team of writers has done the usual "Disneyfication" on Victor Hugo's famous novel. It has been streamlined into a conventional melodrama, and the hero has been turned into a cute little stuffed toy. This Quasimodo bears little resemblance to the disfigured hero who has been played so memorably on screen by Lon Chaney, Charles Laughton and Anthony Hopkins.
Directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise also made "Beauty and the Beast," and they've used the same structure with the same soaring success here. The film is a Broadway musical with an introduction that sets the stage, and fine musical numbers by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz at key emotional moments.
The animation surpasses the studio's high standards with detailed computer-generated sets and backgrounds, and acrobatic camera work that makes full use of the towering cathedral.
In 15th-century Paris, Judge Claude Frollo (voice by Tony Jay) hates gypsies and tries to drive them all from the city. He causes the death of a young gypsy woman and is forced by the Archdeacon (David Ogden Stiers) to care for her infant son. The boy grows up to be the misshapen hunchback Quasimodo (Tom Hulce) who lives in the bell towers of Notre Dame and follows Frollo's strict rules.
Quasi's only friends are the gregarious gargoyles Hugo (Jason Alexander), Victor (Charles Kimbrough) and Laverne (Mary Wickes). They urge him to leave the cathedral during the Feast of Fools, to get out for the first time and have some fun. That's where he sees the dancing gypsy Esmeralda (spoken by Demi Moore, sung by Heidi Mollenhauer). Frollo sees her too and finds himself surrendering to irresistible temptations of the flesh.
Phoebus (Kevin Kline), the newly arrived captain of the guards, is similarly smitten. Everybody loves Esmeralda, and why not? She's bright, exotic and sexy.
Too sexy for a G rating? Doubtless, some will think so. They may use the film for their own political purposes, but a little controversy never hurt ticket sales, and that's really of no concern to moviegoers either.
On its own merits, "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" is first-rate animated entertainment. Kids younger than, say, 6 may not be able to understand everything that's going on in it, and they may be scared by some scenes, but for the older ones, it's the best thing in theaters right now.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame *** 1/2
A Walt Disney Pictures release playing at Salem Valley 8 and Tanglewood Mall Theatre. 95 min. Rated G.
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Our hero is a cuddly Quasimodo, whose best friends areby CNBthe lively gargoyles of the cathedral. color.