It’s a stunning departure from, say, Pocahontas painting with all the colors of the wind, and has a more adult sense of psychology than, say, Scar the evil lion. Judge Frollo’s obsession with crushing the city’s gypsy population intertwines with an obsessive crush on the comely Esmerelda, and his tormented anger reaches a fever pitch with “Hellfire”, a musical number powered by his all-consuming lust and self-loathing. It might sound ridiculous that Disney rendered The Hunchback of Notre Dame as colorful family fun, but to be fair, it almost certainly sets the record for talk of hell, damnation, and murder in a G-rated movie. Quasimodo gets a taste of human kindness and real living when he sneaks out for Paris’s Festival of Fools and meets Esmerelda (Demi Moore), a free-spirited gypsy. Quasimodo (voiced by Tom Hulce) is a meek, lonely creature imprisoned in a bell tower by his cruel father figure, Judge Frollo (Tony Jay). The Hunchback of Notre Dame is unusually ambitious even for a lush ’90s Disney production, adapting a Victor Hugo novel rather than a fairy or folk tale. Yet both films are worth greater consideration than their slight also-ran reputations may imply, especially for fans of mainstream feature animation produced in the waning but still artistically vital years of the hand-drawn, 2D style.
Two of those movies, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) and Mulan (1998) make their Blu-ray debuts without quite the same fanfare as the biggest movies in the Disney vault no designations of platinum, diamond, enchanted crystal, etc., need apply here. After the escalating financial and critical triumphs of Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and The Lion King (1994), Disney’s release slate in the second half of the decade couldn’t help but succeed and disappoint all at once, as their annual releases were buoyed into hit status by the Disney brand while failing to hit the peaks of popularity or acclaim of the company’s just-designated new golden age. The late-’90s output of Walt Disney Feature Animation occupies an odd place in the company’s legacy.
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