Happily Never After: The Hunchback of Notre Dame 2

Your physical appearance doesn’t matter to Disney, only the contents of your wallet.

Back in may when passing indictment on discussing “Pocahontas II,” I brought up the Disney Renaissance’s odd taste in subject matter to take to feature film development.

While the films that have resulted from these questionable choices have run the gamut from mediocre to legendary, the only faire more head scratching then the uncomfortable display of insensitive historical revisionism that led to the creation of that particular film however, is the egregious selection of an adult 1833 Victor Hugo novel about the decay of religious sanctity towards the human welfare and the rumblings of revolution by the hopelessly downtrodden in a culturally rich territory amidst a gilded age focused on gypsy woman named La Esmeralda and a physically deformed man named Quasimodo.

Released in 1996, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” is often touted amongst animation enthusiasts as one of the darkest entries of the Disney Animated Cannon yet.

The story of bell tower resident and ringer Quasimodo, moved to action by the beautiful and benevolent gypsy Esmeralda to rebel against his corrupt guardian, Judge Frollo, sees its protagonist venturing beyond his shell to save a town of people that fear and reject him for his grotesque appearance, forcing him to be the better man and win them over through the worth of his actions and the nature of his heart.

Pulling from the darker nature of its source material, the movie is often lauded by the public for lightly touching on themes of institutional corruption and sexual repression in manners that are highly subversive for a Disney film, while still being a generally solid animated fearure for children that is heralded as the height of the company’s respectable ambitions in storytelling of the 90’s.

I could not disagree further.

While I’m not oblivious to where the praises of the film are coming from, nor am I above acquiescing that the film has several undeniable qualities to its craftsmanship, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” is one of my most detested films of the entire “Disney Animated Cannon.”

A thought process that looked at the work of Victor Hugo and though ‘this will make a rousing family feature with a simple morality message that everybody can get behind and children will love’ is one that I personally hope to never understand but the final product has created a bizarre Frankensteinian abomination of morals, storytelling style, and demographic content that defaults to a loose formula failing to benefit any of the production, much less the final product’s reflection upon the brand name producing it.

It would be easy to turn this critique into something as simples as ‘the movie went off path from the book,’ but not only does that not entirely cover the depths of its problems, it doesn’t inherently explain how jamming a square peg into a round hole fails to bear worthwhile fruit.

The failings of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” stem not only from a fundamental misunderstanding of its source material but also in a lack of viable direction to take the altered product in.

The setting, characters, and dynamics comprising the overall concept of the story were obviously chosen to achieve the specific effect that Hugo had in mind with his original novel; a novel exploring the positive and negative extremes of human spirit and its ability to be shaped by the institutions raising them as well as the ability to pervert their intentions, only to be kept in check by revolution as a force of nature that can correct such social wrongs if allowed to build momentum.

Although this is a mere fraction of what the novel executes, it’s nonetheless obvious exactly how the story’s numerous elements all play into these themes and their interconnectivity; Quasimodo’s guilt riddled upbringing by an arrogant religious leader whose self loathing over repressing basic human urge manifest themselves in authoritarian displays and genocidal obsessions over the nonconforming Gypsy people, in a city featuring dilapidated religious architecture.

It’s a toolset that lends itself to a feel good animated family feature poorly on every level and no moment of impressive animation can make up for that failure to coalesce into a fully realized story on that level.

From the disposable talking gargoyle comedic sidekicks that feel out of place, to the backward execution of shallow morals about how all that matters is how Quasimodo is beautiful on the inside while being about his subservient story role in hooking up 2 beautiful people at the expense of his own feelings, to an insultingly oversimplistic happy ending that feels narratively disconnected to even the most basic themes that the movie had been trying to carry out, everything in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” feels ill conceived and horrendously pulled off at worst and lousy and derivative at best, save for a few scenes here and there that are solid in isolation but don’t redeem the rest of the product.

I acknowledge that this is far from a popular opinion of the film but I am far from alone in believing this. But where exactly does that leave the sequel?

In defense of the original, the movie at least manages to be different combinations of bad that can only be born from a problematic concept not treated in the appropriate capacity.

Following the mold of the other direct to video sequels, especially the aforementioned misguided “Pocahontas II,” “The Hunchback of Notre Dame II’s” only worthwhile success is somehow managing to lower the bar even further by being a trite, disposable, and creatively bankrupt sequel to a film that wasn’t particularly good to begin with.

I can only imagine that the production staff shares somewhat similar sentiments, as this is easily the most half-assed sequel that I have come across yet. The voice acting is pedestrian at best, the visual design that made for an admittedly lively Paris in the theatrical installment is dragged down by a drab color palette that sucks any life clean out of the picture and the animation isn’t merely embarrassingly poor, at times, it’s flat out incomplete.

Worst of all, unlike other films of dubious production standards in the sequel line, this one was not a backdoor pilot for any sort of serialized television production to see release over the horizon, making its lack of any apparent passion or talent even more noteworthy.

As a traveling circus rolls through the city, using the spectacle of their show as a sleight of hand to plan varying heists, Quasimodo becomes smitten by Madeline, one of the performers, who finds herself struggling with her conscience as she dupes him to steal a rare bell from the bell tower.

Where the first film essentially came to be a mediocre morality tale of not judging a book by their cover undercut by Quasimodo’s lack of true reward, in comes this film to pander under the belief that a whole film was necessary just to set him up for a romance less compelling then a senior citizen center bingo game.

Although to give credit where credit is due, a substantial portion of what makes this romance so pathetic beyond the poor direction and production of the film in general is that Madeline is fairly locked into the realm of unlikeability by her first meeting with Quasimodo in a scene so wrong and cruel that it almost wraps around into being darkly comedic based primarily on how depressingly realistic it probably is. I almost applaud the filmmakers for including it but there was just know way one of your major romantic leads was going to bounce back from an action like this.

Given the nature of some of the films that I am bound to see, I can’t say for sure whether or not “The Hunchback of Notre Dame II” will be the sequel that I despise most but it is most definitely the worst that I have come across on an objective level.

It’s only redeeming quality is that at 65 minutes in length, it is mercifully short. Just as well, as a certain other European adventure involving a family of 101 demands my attention.