'Sleeping Beauty' Reawakens on DVD
Sept. 9 -- Now in stores: Sleeping Beauty, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, The Core, 24: The Second Season, The Simpsons: Season Three and Bulletproof Monk
Sleeping Beauty Having trouble keeping Disney royalty straight? Cinderella's the blonde, Snow White's the brunette … and Sleeping Beauty is the one who gets overlooked.
Princess Aurora, famously awakened by love's first kiss, has always had a case of little sister's complex. Disney's other blonde star of the 1950s gets her prince and lives happily ever after. But she never quite hit it as big as the Magic Kingdom's other animated leading ladies.
Now, Disney awakens Sleeping Beauty with a digital makeover, restoring 108,000 hand-drawn frames with a Dolby 5.1 remix of the Tchaikovsky-inspired soundtrack.
Two years ago, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs got a similar treatment, and the special edition DVD sold more than a million copies on its first day, proving she's still the fairest one of all.
Though frequently overlooked, Sleeping Beauty, is still a milestone. Originally released in 1959, nine years after Cinderella, it was a massive six-year, $6 million project — the last animated fairy tale produced by Walt Disney himself. Princess Aurora may not have hit the initial box-office success of earlier Disney films, but like Fantasia, it's gone on to be one of the most influential animations of its time.
The film also serves as a historical nod to feminism. Unlike the Disney women who came before her, Aurora's more independent, refusing to marry the prince her parents chose for her. She wants the man she danced with in the woods on her 16th birthday.
Ok, it's the same guy. But this is a fairy tale. Everyone is supposed to live happily ever after. Even the in-laws.
As Aurora's lover, the suitably tall, dark and handsome Prince Philip says, "You're living in the past, Father, this is the 14th century!"
If it all seems a little date, you can test your feminist sensibilities in the "Princess Personality Profile," one of the children's games included in this package. If you don't mind sweeping floors and keeping house for a bunch of short guys, you might be a Snow White.
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