Tarzan (1999)

One of my film watching goals for this year has been to a see a dozen movies I haven't seen before featuring Oscar winning songs. Disney's 1999 animated film Tarzan won an Academy Award for "You'll Be in My Heart", which is a nice, hooky but kind moving ditty. I must say I did not expect much from this film, late 90's Disney animated fair has a reputation as being a significant quality fall off vis-a-vie their early 90's brethren. You have Phil Collins doing the soundtrack, who I like but acknowledge isn't for everybody, Rosie O'Donnell doing the voice of a somewhat sexually ambiguous gorilla, and the whole idea of doing Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan of the Apes as a Disney cartoon didn't seem like a natural fit. This film started somewhat in the red for me, so I was surprised how much I liked it and that it completely won me over. This is tight little film, no fat, and everything here works, a finally balanced film of near clock work precision in its structure, not too self serious, but not too heavy on the comedy. Roger Ebert gave the film four stars. To me the movie doesn't have the level of gravities I normally associate with a four star film but its so perfectly satisfying as what it is, that it's part of an odd sub rating I call 4 star 3 star films, perfect as a satisfying self contained film experience, but not ' a great movie', beatified not sainted. This is the rare kids movie that I genuinely want to see again. ***