When you are pressed for time and you review movies, never underestimate classic Disney animated films.  At the same time, I have done many of them.  When you think of this select group of movies, titles like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Bambi (1942), or Cinderella (1950) might come to mind.  Done, done, and done.  I have even looked what some might consider the second tier of the Mouse’s offerings, like The Jungle Book (1967) or Robin Hood (1973).  These are examples of Disney works that you would have trouble finding direct references to throughout the parks.  Does that make today’s entry, The Aristocats (1970), scraping the bottom of the Mouse’s movie barrel?  Probably not.  After all, Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World (1998) exists.  Still, it seems like Disney would rather forget that they made The Aristocats.  To this end, if you watch it on Disney+, you will find the disclaimer they put at the beginning of films or shows that contain elements that are not politically correct.  It was not until three-quarters of the way through this nonsense that I understood the need for the legalese.  Read the whole review for a complete judgement.

Though the felines are why this is called The Aristocats, this is not some kind of Planet of the Apes (1968) scenario where cats are the dominant species.  Instead, they have an owner, Madame Adelaide Bonfamille (voiced by Hermione Baddeley), who dotes on Duchess (voiced by Eva Gabor) and her three kittens, Toulouse (voiced by Gary Dubin), Marie (voiced by Liz English), and Berlioz (voiced by Dean Clark), in her swanky Parisian mansion.  Madame Adelaide keeps her cats in the lap of luxury.  In turn, Duchess tries to ensure that her kittens obtain some refinement.  Toulouse paints, Berlioz plays the piano, and Marie sings.  So, yeah, talking cats with artistic flare, though only fellow animals can understand them.  This is not total madness.  Madame Adelaide is so smitten with her pets that she decides to summon her lawyer, Georges Hautecourt (voiced by Charles Lane), in order to draw up her will.  In the document, she has decided to leave everything to her felines.  Actually, you know what?  Maybe this is total madness?  There is a character in the film that would agree with the notion of bequeathing an entire estate to cats, and that is Edgar Balthazar (voiced by Roddy Maude-Roxby), the butler.  There is a stipulation in Madame Adelaide’s will which Edgar overhears as it is being written, namely that the wealth will transfer to him once the cats pass away.  He could be sensible and just lead a life of riches but with a few cats, unless the insanity is real and somehow these animals can squander all the money on, I do not know, daily truckloads of tuna fish to be delivered.  Rather than that, he slips the cats a sleeping potion, gathers them in a basket, and takes them to dump them in the countryside.  Because Edgar is an idiot, he lets his motorcycle be overtaken by a two hound dogs, Lafayette (voiced by George Lindsey) and Napoleon (voiced by Pat Buttram).  These canines apparently attack everything that comes down the road, and they do so when Edgar approaches.  The basket carrying Duchess and her kittens is ejected in the melee.  They awaken the next morning to the approach of Abraham de Lacy Giuseppe Casey Thomas O’Malley (voiced by Phil Harris).  He is from everywhere, and we will call him just O’Malley for the sake of brevity.  The first one O’Malley spots is Duchess, and he is immediately smitten.  He is surprised to learn shortly after this meeting that she has three kittens.  Though Duchess is thankful for the company, she is eager to return to Madame Adelaide, about whom Duchess is worried.  O’Malley offers to get them back to Paris, at first doing so on the back of a dairy lorry.  When the driver discovers them, they are chased off.  They walk along for a little while on some railroad tracks until they are forced to find shelter when a train passes over the bridge on which they had just been.  In the process, Marie falls into the water and O’Malley jumps in to save her.  This brings our group into contact with Abigail (voiced by Monica Evans) and Amelia Gabble (voiced by Carole Shelley), a pair of geese on their way to Paris to meet up with their Uncle Waldo (voiced by Bill Thompson).  Once there, they part company.  Though Duchess is eager to get back to Madame Adelaide, she allows O’Malley to convince her that it is too late in the evening to be showing up at the residence.  Instead, they spend the night at what I will refer to as O’Malley’s Parisian flat, and have what I can only describe as a psychedelic jazz night.  No drugs are involved.  This is Disney, after all.  But the colors are wild, and at one point Duchess sings the invitation, “If you want to turn me on.”  In the morning, they finally make it to Madame Adelaide’s front door, only to find their special cat entrance locked.  Inside, Edgar is basking in his supposed newfound wealth, having destroyed the last of the evidence linking himself to his crime.  Nonetheless, the cats get in and he immediately pounces, locking them in a steamer trunk and intending to send them to Timbuktu.  Luckily, their mouse friend (which is a contradiction of terms), Roquefort (voiced by Sterling Holloway), manages to catch up with O’Malley and warns the alley cat of the danger to Duchess and the kittens.  O’Malley orders Roquefort to go for more help.  Meanwhile, O’Malley charges into the stable and is able to distract Edgar long enough for the arrival of reinforcements.  Edgar is thwarted, and O’Malley is added to Madame Adelaide’s cat family.  The end.

The reason for the disclaimer at the beginning of The Aristocats is because of the Siamese drummer in the jazz band, Shun Gon (voiced by Paul Winchell).  It is a stereotypical (read as unflattering, to say the least) portrayal of Asians.  Still, this is the only truly evil moment in the film.  The rest is pretty standard Disney fare.  The one point I could think of worth talking about from a Catholic perspective is when O’Malley makes the claim that humans do not think too much about their pets.  This makes sense coming from a feral cat that has spent his life far from the kind of love that we give our animals.  For us Catholics, we have the example of St. Francis of Assisi to follow.  He is the patron of animals.  Indeed, if you were to Goggle “patron saint . . .” the second line that populates is St. Francis of Assisi.  He is a Catholic holy person that seems to transcend the Faith.  People love their pets, and Madame Adelaide is a good example of such feelings, if a bit excessive.  Nonetheless, her and St. Francis point the way to how all living things deserve to be treated.  I am not suggesting that we all become vegans.  I love a good steak as much as the next person, and I look at those animals as being raised for this purpose, not unlike a plant.  Besides, pets fulfill a different role in our lives.  Again, with Madame Adelaide you can see the companionship given by Duchess and her kittens.  In the Catholic world, I love seeing monasteries that have a cat or dog.  Overall, it is just good to see animals cared for in this matter.

As for my overall impressions of The Aristocats, I have to confess to almost falling asleep a couple times during my viewing.  As I said previously, there is nothing really new here by Disney.  The ending is pretty predictable, too.  All the same, if you can get around the portrayal of Shun Gon, then you have yet another decent offering by the Mouse.  So, whatever.