The film follows Bambi's first year of life in the forest, from his initial awkward steps to the birth of his own fawns. Comical at times, tragic at others, the film is typical of the highly anthropomorphic vision of nature common in animated features. Bambi himself is not a particularly interesting or memorable character, so the real draw of the film is the sumptuous animation, especially the fabulous multi-plane images of the forest. Apparently animating the deer was challenging but the artists struck a good balance between realism and fantasy (Bambi's body is more deer-like than his face). The style of animation varies throughout the film (e.g. Almost surreal in 'fight scene' between Bambi and Ronno, impressionistic in the meadow, etc,) but the imagery is beautiful throughout. The voices are fairly typical for a Disney film (although, unusually, the young animals were voiced by children) and fans will instantly recognise the voice of Flower the skunk (as an adult) as being Sterling Holloway, who voiced Winnie the Pooh in 1966's "Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree". The film's score is good (although not in the same league as those in the studio's preceding animated features (Snow White, 1937; Pinocchio, 1940; Dumbo, 1941 (or Fantasia, 1940, which was not original music)). I found it amusing that when the young male animals met flirtatious females, they would go rigid with excitement, a gag usually assumed to be somewhat Freudian in the more adult Warner Brother's cartoons (as an example, "Red Hot Riding Hood" (1943) stands out). I enjoyed "Bambi" but admittedly I'm only a couple decades younger than the film and far removed from the target audience. I don't know what young eyes not tinged with nostalgia will make of this generally sweet and gentle tale of soft-spoken, polite, and cute forest animals. I hope that they enjoy it.
Review of Bambi
