The Disney movie marathon

Cover of The Warrior Maiden bu Melanie DickersonMovie Marathons have been a regular event in the Beecrafty household for a while now. I'm sure in the not too distant future, Miss Missy will be too old to want to spend Saturday nights watching movies with Mum, but for now, we are loving it! Our latest marathon actually began without her. She was off babysitting, and I thought why not watch a movie with the Young Lad instead? So at tea time, I suggested he and I watch Mulan. To my surprise, Mr K shot back with "What would he want to watch that for?! It's a princess movie!" to which I, of course said, "Have you even seen Mulan?! It is not a princess movie! And even if it was, that's no reason for him not to watch it!" 

Mr K then decides to show the Young Lad a preview so he can "make an informed decision" but this preview turns out to be nothing but a song and dance number. The Young Lad hates singing in general, and musicals in particular, so now I'm trying to convince him that not only is Mulan NOT a girly Princess movie, it is also NOT a musical. I managed to convince him to give the movie a shot by promising that we'd count the songs and if there were more than ten, he could stop watching it (of course I'd googled the soundtrack and checked how many songs there were first!) 

I had faith that he would like the movie once we got started, and of course I was right!  Mulan has a good action to musical-number ratio for someone who's not that into musicals—we only counted up to five songs, so that was a bonus. Maybe we got so into the movie that we forgot to count! It is also funny, and exciting, and has far more fight scenes than kissy scenes!  In actual fact when it finished, the Young Lad said

"That was inspiring! I think everyone should watch Mulan" 

Mulan

When Miss Missy came home, she was very disappointed to find out that we'd watched Mulan with out her! Of course I said we could we watch it together next week, but then we started talking about all the Disney princesses, and which movies we'd seen and which we hadn't. Neither of us had seen Pocahontas (who isn't really a princess, but sort of gets thrown in with them) Miss Missy had never seen Cinderella or Snow White, I couldn't remember if I'd ever seen Sleeping Beauty... and of course a Disney Princess Movie Marathon quickly became a must!

Then we realised we'd neither of us seen Pinocchio or Bambi, and if we were going to watch those, then we'd have to watch Lady and the Tramp (Miss Missy's favourite) and One Hundred and One Dalmatians too, and so we launched ourselves into a Disney Classic Animated Movie Marathon. Us being us, we had to watch in Chronological Order, and so the very next Saturday saw us watching Snow White together while munching on popcorn, wondering why there was no voiceover of the story at the start since this is a kids' movie, quizzing each other on the Dwarfs names, and debating who was the worst Disney Villain (or the best villain, depending on how you look at it). 

SCover of Disney Villains by Jen Darcyince then we have pondered over the weird donkey scenes in Pinocchio, wondered who thought up the tipsy bubble scene in Dumbo (they'd never get away with that these days, would they?) exclaimed when we recognised songs from Miss Missy's music box toy she'd had as a toddler, crowed over the Easter eggs in 101 Dalmatians (did you know that the dogs from Lady and the Tramp have a wee cameo?) and started when we heard Tigger's and Pooh's voices coming from the mouths of other characters.

We've just watched Beauty and the Beast, and we'll have caught ourselves back up to Mulan in a few more weeks. Next up, we're thinking Pixar Marathon!

Keen for your own Disney movie marathon? Find more Disney films in our catalogue.