This is lighter weight fare added to our list by my wife. I’ve never watched this before but even the original 1940 Fantasia doesn’t hold much prominence in my mind. It was just too far before my time and the only thing I remember of it is the one that everyone knows: the Sorceror’s Apprentice segment. Fantasia never did make much money for Disney but it was apparently very important for many people in the company as an early showcase of what animation can achieve. Fantasia 2000 was therefore a sequel that was in germination for a very long time and this time, as is appropriate, it brings computer generated graphics to the table.

The film consists of separate pieces, though the first one is so short and so abstract as to barely be recognizable as a distinct sequence. It retains the Sorceror’s Apprentice segment from the original version but the rest are newly made ones. They vary quite a bit in length, with the shortest one being less than two minutes long, but as the film as a whole only comes to a little over an hour, even the longest ones aren’t exactly substantial. My favorite piece is probably the one that uses George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. It has an idiosyncratic art style and tells a story of four individuals who grant each other’s wish yet never know each other. By contrast, the segment about a family of flying whales is technically impressive and features the most overt use of computer graphics, yet I found it boring because it rouses no emotions. I liked the music of Pomp and Circumstance and it was used to tell a pretty dumb story starring Donald Duck.

On the whole, it’s a fine collection of short films. They have the characteristic Disney wholesomeness that is pleasantly nostalgic but isn’t terribly innovative. One thing that amuses me that the presentation, with celebrity hosts introducing each segment, feels a little too extravagant. This raises expectations unreasonably high and gives the collection a kind of institutional arrogance. They’re fun and entertaining but with the high quality of the animated shorts these days, they’re not anything to get too excited about.