The supremacy of Disney’s ‘90s Renaissance is an uncontested fact, but for many a Zillennial, the films that came after that era were just as formative. The 2000s were hard for the House of Ideas: by the time Tarzan swung to zeigeist in 1999, the world was moving on from the hand-drawn, Broadway-inspired juggernauts that’d saved Disney from another bankruptcy. The hopeful kids who’d gone all moony-eyed over “A Whole New World” and Beauty and the Beast were aging into disaffected teens: soon, films like Shrek would put a torch to all that Disney held dear, and its audience would be dancing in the flames.
It’s into this quiet crisis that Disney’s “Experimental Era” was born. This period, and the projects that gave it life, gets the worst rap out of any in the company’s history — and sometimes for good reason. Disney hadn’t yet figured out how to reconcile its once-foolproof formula with the rising tide of cynicism. It’d worked so hard to make fairytales and musicals into unmissable events, so its search for a new niche led to some awkward trial-and-error. On the other hand, though, it did not deserve the dismissal it ultimately got. Sure, there were stinkers within this 10-year period (mostly towards the tail end), but Disney’s initial pivot out of its comfort zone was something to be celebrated. Unfortunately, no one seemed to get what the company was going for, making one of its most charming risks the least understood.
