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Poster for Waking Sleeping Beauty

Waking Sleeping Beauty

From 1984 to 1994 a perfect storm of people and circumstances changed the face of animation forever.

2009 · 1h 26m · PG Documentary
Directed by Don Hahn

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Overview

By the mid-1980s, the fabled animation studios of Walt Disney had fallen on hard times. The artists were polarized between newcomers hungry to innovate and old timers not yet ready to relinquish control. These conditions produced a series of box-office flops and pessimistic forecasts: maybe the best days of animation were over. Maybe the public didn't care. Only a miracle or a magic spell could produce a happy ending. Waking Sleeping Beauty is no fairy tale. It's the true story of how Disney regained its magic with a staggering output of hits - "Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast ," "Aladdin," "The Lion King," and more - over a 10-year period.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
71%
Tomatometer
Rotten

More Belle, more Ariel, more Simba -- and less of Eisner and Co. -- would have made a more interesting movie.

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post
Rotten

It's a not-so-great movie about some great movies.

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times
Fresh

A few too many industry asides, but filled with behind-the-scenes moments.

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News
Rotten

Sly retrospective exercise in corporate self-congratulation masquerading as an insider's tell-all.

Stephen Holden, New York Times
Fresh

Even in its sanitized state, this movie about the generational revolt that reinvigorated Disney's animation department in the 1980s and '90s is fascinating

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader

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