- by Jerry Rice
[Friday, December 6, 2002]

Animation certainly isn't what it used to be. Whether it's creating a cyborg pirate for Treasure Planet or the green ogre in Shrek, computer programs now do a lot that used to be hand-drawn.

Even Planet animator/mentor Glen Keane admits that much. "If I had to do that mechanical arm, I would still be drawing it 30 years from now and not doing half as good a job," he says.

What the classics lack in technology, they make up in other areas. There's a certain je ne sais quoi about them that makes them, well, classics.

That becomes abundantly clear after viewing the latest round of "Walt Disney Treasures," a set of three two-disc DVDs available from Walt Disney Home Entertainment. The new releases come in a collectible tin and have self-explanatory titles: "Mickey Mouse" in "Black and White, The Complete Goofy" and "Behind the Scenes at the Walt Disney Studio."

"An awful lot of care and skill went into them," says film critic and historian Leonard Maltin. "Nothing Walt (Disney) ever did at his studio was done carelessly or thoughtlessly. So much was put into these films the shorts and the features."

Maltin is speaking from a position of authority on the subject. He's the resident film critic on TV's "Entertainment Tonight" and has written "Of Mice and Magic: A History of Animated Cartoons."

He helped select the titles for the collection which include "Steamboat Willie" (1928), "Touchdown Mickey (1932), "Mickey's Service Station" (1935) and several How to shorts from the 1940s featuring Goofy and offers an introduction on each DVD.

Maltin also uses clips from the old Walt Disney television shows that outline changes on the studio lot from 1954 through today.

And speaking of today, Maltin believes those who embrace current favorites like "SpongeBob SquarePants" and "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius" should find plenty to enjoy about the Treasures collection.

"I'm a fan of 'The Simpsons' and 'King of the Hill,' but that doesn't mean I don't also enjoy Mickey Mouse and Minnie," Maltin says. "Of course, for a lot of today's kids who have been raised on a diet of nothing but contemporary cartoons, it might take them a little time to get into the rhythms of the earlier, simpler, more innocent ones."

Still, there are plenty of parallels that go into the making of SpongeBob and the classic Mickey Mouse 'toons. Both play well on two different levels one that kids understand and another that adults can enjoy.

"They had their share of inside jokes," Maltin says of the Treasures selections.

Not surprisingly, Maltin is already at work on an encore four of them, actually; new DVDs that will be available next year. Fans will have to wait to learn the themes of the upcoming releases because the titles included in them have not yet been finalized.

"The Disney library is so vast," Maltin says. "When you think about the (number of) shorts and the features and the TV shows, we could be doing this for many years to come and never scrape the bottom of any barrel."

ON VIDEO

What: 'Walt Disney Treasures,' a second batch of DVDs featuring classic Disney works and 'behind-the-scenes' films of the studio.
Titles: 'Mickey Mouse in Black and White,' 'The Complete Goofy' and 'Behind the Scenes at the Walt Disney Studio'
Distributor: Walt Disney Home Entertainment Price: $32.99 for each two-disc DVD set