Sleeping Beauty (1959)

“Now, father, you’re living in the past. This is the fourteenth century!”

I’ve seen many, many Disney Princess films; I’m the father of a little girl who will be Four in a couple of days and it comes with the territory. Mrs Llamastrangler and I are now resigned to living in a house festooned with Disney princesses and the toys thereof. And yet, Cinderella aside, I haven’t blogged them. This is mainly because I haven’t so much sat down and watched them all the way through but had them on in the background for Little Miss Llamastrangler while I do various parenting and hoist things. However, there comes a point where you’ve seen them so many bloody tones that you can justify a blog post.

Sleeping Beauty is one of Little Miss Llamastrangler’s absolute favourites, right up there with The Little Mermaid and the distressingly ubiquitous Frozen. To my forty-one year old eyes it’s a much better structured and plotted film than Cinderella, not needing to pad out the airtime with cat and mouse hi-jinks, and features a splendid baddie in Maleficent and a splendid set of comic foils with the three Good fairies. There is still, of course, a heroine who talks to animals and some very 1950s show tunes about dreams and all that, but it tells the fairytale well and seems to be perfectly designed for its little target audience.

There are only so many bloody times a dad should have to see it, mind...!