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Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) 7/10. If loads of the best and cleverest horses clubbed together and hired Matt Damon to be their voice, and made an animated film for other horses, it couldn't be much better or more horsey than Spirit. It's more horsey than Seabiscuit, The Black Stallion, National Velvet and Black Beauty - by which I mean it made me want to be a horse much more than those films did - until the film ended at least. Horses on screen have always always ALWAYS been noble and loyal but dull-witted compliant animals that exist to serve and submit to mankind. The best part by far of The Black Stallion was when it and the boy ran about on the beach after the shipwreck without any cares. Then they got rescued and taken to America and Mickey Rooney showed up and spoiled everything. In some ways Spirit is Disney than Disney but quite a lot less fun than that suggests, and executed with a lot less imagination. Some exilerating chases and highly preposterous setpieces make it worth a look.
The Three Caballeros (1944) 6/10, Fun and Fancy Free (1947) 6/10 and Melody Time (1948) 7/10 are all follow-ups to Saludos Amigos (1942) in which several short and mostly musical stories are told in the space of about an hour. During WWII a lot of Disney's creative staff were comandeered by the US government to produce propaganda films; ideas that would otherwise have been left as shorts were stitched together to make these compilation films rather than producing feature-length stories from scratch, which would have taken more man-hours than they had available. There are ups and downs in all of them but highlights include Pedro, Little Tug, Bongo, The Cold-Blooded Penguin Johnny Appleseed and Pecos Bill.
Casey Bats Again (1954) 6/10, Donald Applecore (1954) 7/10, Lambert the Sheepish Lion (1952) 6/10 were all Disney shorts included on the Melody Time DVD and were all pretty forgettable. Donald Applecore is worth a look because Donald shoots nuclear bullets (that cause proper nuclear explosions) from a helicopter at the chipmunks who rob his apples. A chicken eats one thinking it food and lays a nuclear egg. Donald picks it up then gets blasted into a crater so deep you can't even see or hear him from the bottom of it. HA!
Toy Story 3 (2010) ?/10 - this should probably be a 9 but I can't properly assess it because of a bawling baby who was sitting behind me in the cinema, making me miss some lines, and the fact that I completely missed about five minutes for a toilet break.
Aladdin (1992) 8/10
Man of the Year (2006) 5/10
Network (1976) 7/10
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