For a long time I've been researching art in order to improve my skills. Being a cartoonist, it makes sense that many of the books I've looked into have been written by well-known animators. Learning the techniques of these masters has rekindled my interest in their work, and over the past few months I've been watching as many traditionally animated films as I can get a hold of. These include films from my childhood as well as animation I haven't previously had a chance to view. Studying the technical aspects of the animation is very enjoyable, but I also find myself fascinated by how I now perceive films from my childhood. I can look at myself now and see why a certain film affected me a certain way. I can also observe how a different reaction to a film shows how I've changed over the years. Re-watching the Fox and the Hound I saw how many of the events in the film mirrored things that had gone on in my own childhood and reflected my fears and insecurities. When I saw the Little Mermaid again I was shocked to find I now hated the film. I didn't realize it as a child, but Ariel is a spoiled brat who puts everyone around her through hell just to get what she wants! Tonight I watched Bambi, a film I never really cared for in my youth. Upon revisiting it I found I liked it more, but I still wasn't crazy about it. Now I knew why.

Throughout Bambi I found myself making comparisons to The Lion King, which isn't surprising since the latter film is essentially a fusion of Bambi and Hamlet (mixed with some elements of Kimba the White Lion.) I found that Bambi lacked many elements that the Lion King would later add to the story.

While Bambi unquestionably has superior animation on a technical level, I found most of the characters were far too cutesy in both design and characterization. I love cartoon animals just as much as the next guy, but it got to the point where Bambi and Flower could easily be mistaken for girls. I understand that they were intended to appear as sweet, innocent little boys, which I think is great. A stereotypically male attitude wouldn't have suited the characters, but can't Flower be cute, innocent, while still appearing masculine? They managed to give us that impression with Thumper while still having him behave in a boyish manner. However, the real problem here is that aside from being cute, neither Bambi nor Flower have any real personalities. In fact, the only characters in the entire film that seem to have something going on in their heads are Thumper and the Owl. You know a movie is in trouble when the minor characters are more appealing and interesting than the leads. In the Lion King, Simba looked behaved like a real little boy; The supporting cast was great too, but they never upstaged the stars because they were fully realized characters as well.

I personally find it hard to care about a character if he/she has no personality. Therefore while all the dramatic parts like the death of Bambi's mother were superbly animated, they still fell flat on me. In the Lion King we got to know Simba and his father and care about them. Bambi and his mother are nothing more than just that, a faceless mother and son, nothing more. Many children were confronted with the reality of death for the first time in this scene, so it's power relies upon whether or not a child will go; what if my parents die? They don't feel sad for Bambi's mother, they feel scared that they could lose their parents as well. It's a shame since the scene is perfectly executed. Watching Bambi search in vain for his mother and receiving the grim news from his father would have been heart-wrenching if they had devoted less time to Bambi playing and more time to character development.

The film then misses another chance to tell an interesting story by skipping directly to Bambi's adulthood. It completely misses the chance to develop Bambi's relationship with his father, follow him as he learns to live on his own and adapts to life without his mother. Think of what a great story that could have been! The film's barely over an hour long, it's not like they didn't have the time.

Both Bambi and the Lion King deal with the organic life cycle. We watch Simba and Bambi as they are born into royalty, lose a parent, find a lover, assume the role of king, and have kids. Over time, they both learn that we're all part of the Circle of Life; We're born to eat, reproduce, and eventually die and be eaten ourselves . Bambi approaches this from a very materialistic point of view, while the Lion King takes a more spiritual route. Simba makes friends with Nala as a young cub and their friendship gradually grows into love. Bambi just meets his mate once as a kid, and then as soon as he sees her as an adult a biological switch goes off and he becomes her partner. Flower and Thumper go into a similar zombie-like state upon seeing females of their species for the first time. I always found the "Twitterpaited" sequence extremely disturbing as a child and now I know why: It reduces love to a biological impulse and nothing more. The Lion King approaches love as something greater than sex, and provides us with a universe where everything is significant. Bambi approaches life as eating, sleeping, fucking, and dieing.

You might say that Bambi is intended to portray animals as they are in the real world, so I shouldn't expect them to approach things like love, death and sex from a human perspective. You'd be right (to and entent at least, considering these are anthropomorphic animals.) But I'd remind you this isn’t a review of the film. I’m just writing down why I reacted the way I did to it, and I prefer The Lion King's worldview. That might sound a little weird coming from a David Cronenberg fan, but you need to remember Cronenberg makes horror films so I want them to scare me. I don't watch a Disney movie to be disturbed by it's attitude towards organic life.

On the plus side, Bambi had some incredible animation. It’s amazing to think it was all done with just ink and paint. I also loved the portrayal of Man as a kind of force of nature. It was neat seeing the animals react to us the way we'd react to a tornado or earthquake. However, I was a little annoyed at how Man was portrayed as the sole predator in the forest, especially when a horned owl is portrayed as palling around with a rabbit and a skunk. And I'd just like to end this journal by saying that Flower is a God-damn hippy and I wanna kick him square in the nuts!