Seventeen years ago, musicals were dead save for Disney.
We recall how a generation growing up on animation helped save a genre.
This feat likely could never have happened without the Disney Renaissance that proceeded it in the 1990s.
(2001) and MarshallsChicago(2002), are hardly Disney.
Not unless they were Disney musicals.
By the 1970s, singing and dancing animated characters were as dead as Bambis mother.
Many have attributed this to a company malaise that set in following the death of Walt Disney in 1966.
However, at least on the singing side of things, it was par for the course.
The first talkie sound-enhanced movie,The Jazz Singer(1927), was a musical.
With movies likeSingin in the RainandShowboat, who needed Brando or Lee Strassbergs brand of method acting, anyway?
As it turned out, all of Hollywood.
There simply wasnt a big enough audience for live-action musicals.
At least that is what studio logic dictated, especially when the suits took over in the 80s.
Ironically, it was that transition that permitted new ambitious thinking at Disney.
Like most art-forms, the musical medium must be introduced early to develop an appreciation for it.
HetoldThe LA Times, There is nothing wrong with watchingTransformers.
You should watch everything.
But you should get a bigger view.
I dont want these movies to go away and be unnoticed.
You want a generation of people to appreciate it and also know they are good.
For over 20 years, a cultural divide ended the popularity of movie musicals.
The Disney Renaissance is widely considered to have ended by 1999 withTarzan(for avariety of reasons).
Two years afterTarzancameMoulin Rouge!, a kinetic only-in-the-movies absinthe trip devised by madcap maestro Baz Luhrmann.
The movie musical is more than alive now; its thriving.
But as a star-studded event with a medium-budget?
Or a remake of a beloved animated classic?
Its been here in that form longer than the modern superhero age.
Ever since the words were first uttered, it really has been part of our world.
***The original version of this article ran on Nov. 11, 2014.
