It's rare for me to take a movie suggestion from an anonymous online stranger, especially when I'm sure I won't have the same opinion. In this case, someone claimed that ANT is even better than Fantasia, which it openly mimics. I discovered that it's not available on Netflix but can be watched in its entirety for free on YouTube. And it's only 85 minutes.
To be honest, I didn't even watch all 85 minutes, because I skipped most of the live-action sequences, which run longer than in F. These sequences, depicting the filmmakers before and after the animations, are typically comedic, but they're certainly not the main draw (no pun intended). Just try finding those clips separate from the rest.
As for the musical parts, well, they vary in mood as well as value. I'll review each in order of presentation.
The illustration of Claude Debussy's "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun," aptly enough, focuses a senior faun, still hoping to attract one of the many nymphs around. Perhaps it's for the best that this came first, because it features constant female nudity, which would have been an unwelcome surprise after the more family-friendly segments. Even half the birds have womanly breasts and visible nipples. Either the makers thought this was funny, or they could think of no better way to indicate what the males were thinking about. Leave it to a '70s European film to get a PG rating in spite of this. Anyway, if you can get past this aspect, you might sympathize with the faun, or you might think he's just a creep.
Antonín Dvořák's "Slavonic Dance No. 7, Op. 46," gets the briefest and fastest sequence, making it good for a breather between long ones. Here the cartoony art style is put to better use in the service of silly humor as a formerly primitive innovator gets annoyed at everyone copying his moves. There might be a political message herein, but it gets diluted by our difficulty relating to the main guy.
Speaking of former primitiveness, the part with Maurice Ravel's "Boléro" is about evolution and biosphere competition, albeit with a surreal take. This is widely considered the highlight of the picture, with Disney animators being encouraged to study it. It does get impressively artistic, but the pacing requires more patience than usual. And while there's no bad music in the whole movie, this was the only piece I already knew quite well, for better and worse.
Jean Sibelius's "Sad Waltz" accompanies a fittingly poignant story: A homeless cat looks at a broken-down house and imagines it full of pretty furniture and living humans. It's not entirely clear whether the cat used to live in that particular house, but the nostalgia is palpable. I appreciate a turn for the fully serious in an otherwise sardonic parody.
Antonio Vivaldi's "Concerto in C Major, RV 559" gets the only sequence I'd consider showing to little kids: A bee preparing a humanlike picnic on a flower gets literally overshadowed by two humans, who are likely to crush her setup without meaning to. The only thing that gives me pause is that the couple is getting romantic, but there doesn't seem to be anything that would have garnered a PG rating by itself.
The last complete piece, Igor Stravinsky's "The Firebird Suite," matches the ending of Fantasia 2000, leading me to wonder whether Disney took a little too much inspiration from its own sendup. In a mildly irreverent retelling of Genesis, a serpent can't get Adam or Eve (both anatomically correct if unusually hairless) interested in the apple, so he swallows it himself and plunges into a sort of hell. This is more amusing than scary, so I don't feel too sorry for the snek. Between this and the "Boléro" ending, I detect an anti-consumerist attitude, which may explain why I could watch for free.
Most of the remaining animation is in a drawn-out finale with snippets of classical pieces overlaying some of the edgiest humor yet. Not very unified, but if you've sat this long, you probably won't care.
In short, it doesn't hold a candle to F in my mind, and even the hit-and-miss F2K comes out ahead if only in taste and visual quality. Nevertheless, ANT is worth watching at least in fragments. You just have to know which are best suited to you.
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