The Fox and the Hound Review: Disney Marathon

Spoilers

The Fox and the Hound has made me realise how much Disney hates seeming too original. This movie is based on the novel of the same name, but really doesn’t share that much in common with it. The novel and the movie are so different I almost think Disney made an original film and thought “oh shit what if someone thinks we are being creative” so they brought the rights to some random book, changed the characters names and called it an adaption. It’s like me buying the rights to Harry Potter and making a movie about a kid called Harry Potter who joined the war. But what do I think of this movie? Well I think it’s one of the Disney movies with the most wasted potential. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, it simply means it could have been a whole lot better.

We start with an effective scene of a mother fox running away from some hunters whilst holding her baby in her mouth. She hides her baby behind a fence and gets Bambis Mumed (killed). This scene is great, it sets up the conflict between the foxes and the fox hunters perfectly. Foxes are the hunted and hunters are, well the hunter.

An owl called Big Mama finds the baby fox and with help from her friends Dinky and Boomer (whatever you say Boomer) they get him adopted by a kind old lady, Widow Tweed. She names him Tod.

We now get to see the other side of the conflict. Her neighbour Amos Slade is a hunter who brings home a hound puppy and calls him Cooper. He introduces Cooper to the older hunting dog Chief. Chief is a professional hunting dog and is Coopers mentor throughout.

Cooper and Tod of course become friends when they meet one another. This is the perfect set up for conflict. A fox, and a dog who will grow up to hunt foxes becoming friends. Perfect. The problem is they don’t really establish their friendship as well as they could have. We spend about five minutes with them playing with each other before they declare one another best friends. There’s a ton of scenes of Dinky and Boomer trying to eat a caterpillar, remove those and give us more scenes of Tod and Cooper being friends. When Tod and Cooper are playing Big Mama sings the song “Best of Friends”, look, you can sing about how they are best friends as much as you want but it’ll still be better to actually show us that they are best friends.

One day when coming to meet up with Cooper, Tod accidently awakens Chief. Chief and Amos chase Tod until Tod gets to safety. Amos is confident that Tod was trying to attack his chickens which as I’ll bring up later is great, the man isn’t pure evil, he actually has motives. Yes, that’s the bare minimum for a villain normally but try telling that to pre-renaissance Disney. Amos tells Widow that he’ll kill Tod if he catches him on his property again but luckily before that can happen hunting season starts.

Cooper, Amos, and Chief go off to hunt and train Cooper to be a hunting dog. During this time Cooper becomes an actual hunting dog, eventually being better than his mentor Chief. He also gets the voice of Kurt Russell. It’s cool seeing actors that I actually recognise start to show up in these movies. It was uncommon for popular actors to voice animated characters until much later, but you’ll occasionally still spot a recognisable face on the IMDb page. We’re also getting to the point now where only half of the voice actors have died from old age instead of all of them. Yippie. I can’t wait for the day in this marathon where I can look back and know that all the main characters are still alive.

During this time Tod is confident that Cooper won’t change. Big Mama sings the song “Lack of Education” which is alright. It’s just Big Mama teaching Tod a lesson, that lesson being that Cooper might come back a different dog than he was before.

Cooper comes back and Amos sings “A Huntin’ Man” it’s just him singing to himself but I thought I’d mention it. Tod meets up with Cooper but Cooper warns him that things are different now and that Tod needs to stop talking to him. This would have been effective if they spent more time together. Chief wakes up and a chase ensues. Cooper catches a hiding Tod but lets him go but tells him he won’t be so friendly next time. Chief notices Tod and chases him on railroad bridge. A train comes, Tod ducks but Chief has to jump, this leads to him falling a large distance that really should have killed him. Cooper blames Tod for this and vows revenge. This would have been so much better if three things happened.

1. Cooper and Tod’s friendship was better established.
2. Tod had a more direct impact on Chief falling maybe he could have had a chance to have rescued him but was too scared to do so. Yeah, I don’t want Tod directly attacking Chief or anything, we are meant to like Tod after all, but in this scenario it’s weird that Cooper can realistically blame Tod, it was Chief that was chasing Tod, Tod simply ducked under a train.
3. Chief should have died. He’s only in the movie later to confirm he’s still alive. If he was dead it would further justify Cooper getting angry at Tod. Apparently, he was originally going to die but they thought that would have been too intense. We survived Bambi’s Mums death; we’d have been fine.

Amos’s anger is justified, in his eyes this fox came out to get his chickens which resulted in his dog getting injured. Amos goes to Widow and claims that he will kill Tod. Widow takes Tod to a game preserve so he can be safe from Amos as she knows she can’t do shit against a gun. This is where the song “Goodbye May Seem Forever” plays and it’s clearly meant to tug at your heartstrings, it didn’t work but the songs alright.

Tod hates it in the woods until he meets a lady fox named Vixey. Haha it’s because female foxes are called vixens, very smart Disney. Vixey and Tod quickly fall in love with one another because that’s the Disney rule, a man and a woman will fall in love if they ever meet one another and neither are fat. I’m pretty sure that’s etched into the walls at the Disney HQ. There is a mild scuffle where Tod calls her “a silly, empty-headed female” which is a very neckbeard thing to say Tod. This is where Big Mama sings the song “Appreciate the Lady” which is just as fine as all the other songs in this movie.

Amos and Cooper go to the game preserve to murder. They set a ton of traps which Tod almost gets caught in. He runs away and hides in his home with Vixey where they are smoked out by Amos and Cooper. A battle between Cooper and Tod ensues. Cooper and Amos get attacked by a bear but Tod decides to rescue them. This is when Cooper decides not to murder his former “best friend” I guess and stops Amos from doing so.

After all of this Tod lives a happy life with his fox wife and Cooper continues murdering innocent animals. We’re meant to like both of them by the way.

Tod is a bit bland as a main character but I did like him, his “best friend” tries to murder him for something that wasn’t his fault, his Mum died and his adopted Mum leaves him. I felt bad for him and did like him, but I wouldn’t exactly call him compelling. I really don’t like Cooper, his motives for trying to kill Tod are weak and its only when Tod eventually rescues him from a bear that he forgives him. If Tod wasn’t the better man (or better animal) then Cooper would have straight up killed him and his girlfriend. They present him as a good guy by the end though which I disagree with. Foxes and dogs are just as intelligent as one another in this universe, it’s like a human hunting other humans but we’re meant to sympathise with his because he doesn’t want to kill a specific human he used to know. Coopers an asshole.

The films actual stand on the act of fox hunting is strange. I would expect a studio that was so anti-hunting in Bambi to feel the same here but they paint things as being grey, not black and white. I’m of course anti-fox hunting because I’m not one to hunt innocent animals especially for no reason (although I’m a vegetarian so there isn’t exactly any reason I would hunt). I can guarantee if I actually got a lot of views, I’d have some people in the comments complaining that I’m getting political. The film does lean more on the fox’s side. The main hunter Amos Slade is presented as an idiot and the antagonist of the movie, yet ends up redeeming himself in the movie without actually giving up fox hunting. I don’t mind this, yeah, I’m going to ignore my own beliefs for a second to acknowledge an actual well-crafted Disney villain. He isn’t motivated by pure evil or envy at someone prettier than him but instead just likes hunting and when Cooper protects Tod, he doesn’t shoot Tod as he has a genuine love for his dogs which goes beyond his hatred for Tod. He also has a reason to hate Tod. In his eyes Tod is after his chickens, and resulted in his dog almost dying. He’s a person (who I disagree with) with flaws and desires, not an evil monster who wants to kill everything good in this world. We do of course see how fox hunting tears apart a couple of friends with Tod and Cooper but that’s a movie exclusive conflict and isn’t really something that happens in the real world. We do see the murder of Tod’s mother at the beginning which does show the evil of fox hunting. But it also presents I guess “the victory of the hunt” as being positive. Cooper is still presented as one of the good guys but will continue to hunt after the credits roll, it isn’t the act of fox hunting that’s being presented as bad, just the idea of Cooper attacking one specific fox. Yes, at first look The Fox and the Hound seems anti-fox-hunting, but the more you look at it, the less that’s the case. I don’t believe there’s much of a grey area in reality, don’t go around murdering innocent animals is still my standpoint, I just think it’s interesting how Disney presents it.

I do enjoy The Fox and the Hound. It is the first time Disney has painted something grey. It’s also the first time they’ve tackled a real-life debate in any way. Living in Somerset (basically the Texas of England) I meet people who support both sides of the argument. Fox hunting is illegal in England but it is still prevalent, it’s a disgusting act where dogs rip foxes apart which I’m not a fan of but the fact that I know so much people who support it made the movie an interesting watch. Anyway, next up we have The Black Cauldron.

6 / 10