Sleeping Beauty (1959)

Movieline's Hollywood Life
"...Arguably the most important film in the formidable Disney oeuvre..." 09/01/2003 p.118

Variety
"...Walt Disney's cornerstone opus. If you think you know it too well to bother taking another look, this presentation will give you Technicolor pause..." 09/15/2003 p.33

Reel.com 9 of 10
Set in the 14th century and adapted from Charles Perrault's version of the tale (Perrault also wrote the ballet that Tchaikovsky scored), Sleeping Beauty is closer in structure to the version related by the Brothers Grimm, who inspired Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs...Sleeping Beauty was the final entry in Disney's original fairytale-princess trilogy, which also included Snow White (1937) and Cinderella. A milestone in animation, it had the largest budget ($6 million) of any previous full-length animated feature, and it was the first animated feature filmed in widescreen. It was also the first time that Disney used a single artist's vision for a film, and Earle's elongated, one-dimensional pre-Renaissance style marked the first time that highly detailed backgrounds were used in an animated feature. Sleeping Beauty was also the last of the Disney films to use hand-inked cells, and the last film that Disney personally supervised. Which is to say, Sleeping Beauty was both the last great film from the classic era of Disney animation, and a herald of even greater things to come. - James Plath
 
The Onion A.V. Club 9 of 10
The Pocahontas of its day when originally released in 1959, Sleeping Beauty was Disney's most lavish (and expensive) film, as well as something of a financial and critical disappointment. But time has been kind to it, as this much-hyped video re-release shows. The elaborate, gothic-inspired designs look great, and the supporting characters--most notably the three good fairies and the Joan Crawford-like villain Maleficent--liven up the proceedings despite the bland hero and heroine. The repackaging itself should serve as an example for future Disney reissues: The documentary featurette is slightly less self-congratulatory than most of Disney's, but by making a widescreen version available, the company has every reason to be proud. Sleeping Beauty is one of only a handful of animated Disney features to be produced in widescreen format, in this case a process using the same dimensions as those used to film The Wild Bunch. Consequently, if it had been formatted to fit your television screen, much of the carefully crafted, intricately detailed design would have disappeared. If Disney is going to go to the trouble of making each carefully timed re-release seem like a historic event, it should make a point of adhering to historical accuracy, as it has on this release. - Keith Phipps