There is a difference between an old animated movie and an animated classic – I realized that last night while rewatching ‘The Fox and the Hound’.

The movie just celebrated it’s 30th Anniversary release, making it the same age as me, so I had fond memories of watching this as a child and listening to the book-on-cassette read-along.  I was actually very surprised by how much of the dialogue I remembered from listening to that recording over and over.  I was also surprised by how there really wasn’t much else to that movie.

Watching something like ‘Fox and the Hound’ after enjoying a movie like ‘Tangled’ or even, dare I say it, ‘Lion King’ (one of Disney’s most overrated, IMHO), you can see how far the studio has come in those 30 years.  It feels like more of a fable than a story, the characters are just skin and bones and you hardly get to know them in the 80 minute run time.  Also, I doubt anyone would make a movie targeted towards children today that featured scenes where the main character is shot at and where he is threatened with having his food sliced off with a trap. 

I’m happy I just rented this from the library and didn’t buy it on blu-ray.  I doubt I will want to go back to it.  Like ‘Black Cauldron’, this is one of those movies I should have left behind and not rewatched because my childhood memories had filtered out it’s flaws.  Tod and Copper are cute, the story does not hold up by today’s standards.