They have their tear jerking moments, but they always put the fluff in. I hate Disney songs, even if the lyrics might be good with their need to have singing rats and chairs and whatever else they make them dumb. Part of it too is the era I grew up in, when your childhood is in the 70s Disney is Apple Dumpling Gang and Cat From Outer Space. You learn very quickly that the mouse logo = crappy movie coming. Which then makes you start looking at the classics differently. When I look at those I see fantastic animation (it really is amazing) in the service of bad stories that insult their audience. Then I took German and we started translating Brothers Grimm and I found out that many of these stories were once good, and that was it. Disney is an Ugh for me now, and I’m always waiting for them to Disney-ify their properties. Like they’ve already done to Pixar, remember when Pixar meant awesome, now it means yet another freaking Cars movie.
The Brothers Grimm didn’t write anything. They collected German folk tales. Nor did they intend them for children. That was the way they packaged later on.
‘Inside Out’ was great recent Pixar no?
There’s no need to think of them as ‘Disney songs’. They would function in other contexts as well. Before being hired by Disney, Menken and Ashman wrote ‘Little Shop of Horrors’. Who else would write a couplet like ‘I thrill when I drill a bicuspid. It’s swell though they tell me I’m maladjusted’
Three of their songs made it into Aladdin. This is much funnier as a demo than anything in the film. The lyrics are hilarious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R2yyr7atrA