4. Bambi- 1942

Rating: 👌🏼 ok

The prince of the forest, sweet Bambi, is born in the forest and must learn the ways of the world and how to survive from his mother. We follow Bambi’s life through the seasons and watch him grow up as he learns the challenges that come from each season of life.

First of all, the animation in Bambi is breathtaking. It almost looks like each frame is a hand painted, museum worthy, piece of art that belongs on the wall of a gallery. But this is where my praise for Bambi ends. The movie is essentially an hour and ten minutes of animated b-roll, accentuated by a few punches to the gut from some truly tragic events. I had never seen Bambi before, but I have enough friends who’ve been traumatized by the tragedy in Bambi that I was not looking forward to watching it. I didn’t want to feel too sad! But whereas Dumbo made me feel physically ill from my desire to intervene on Dumbo’s behalf, Bambi didn’t make me feel much of anything. For sure it was sad, but it was sad in the way that I sat on my couch and said “hmm, that’s sad. When is this movie going to be over?”. I didn’t burst into tears like I was expecting to. The moment that garnered my biggest reaction was when spring season begins, and all the adolescent animals receive the sex talk from the owl who describes sexual attraction as “twitterpation”. It’s a weird scene from start to finish as it begins by owl (who is clearly supposed to be an old man) commenting on Bambi’s changing body. This is always a weird thing to do, and I’m not sure why that was necessary in a kid’s movie. Overall, I thought Bambi was ok and if you want to put something on in the background while you scroll Instagram I would recommend streaming Bambi now on Disney+