Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
By the mid-1980s, the fabled animation studios of Walt Disney had fallen on hard times. The artists were polarized between newcomers hungry to innovate and old timers not yet ready to relinquish control. These conditions produced a series of box-office flops and pessimistic forecasts: maybe the best days of animation were over. Maybe the public didn't care. Only a miracle or a magic spell could produce a happy ending. Waking Sleeping Beauty is no fairy tale. It's the true story of how Disney regained its magic with a staggering output of hits - "Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast ," "Aladdin," "The Lion King," and more - over a 10-year period.
Waking Sleeping Beauty is a solid, well-crafted documentary about the Disney Renaissance of the late 1980s and 1990s, distinguished by remarkable access to archival home video footage, candid behind-the-scenes material, and insider perspectives. The storytelling is engaging and the subject matter is inherently compelling, though the narrative leans heavily on its archival treasure trove rather than any particularly daring documentary structure. Acting is not applicable in the traditional sense, but the subjects' personalities come through naturally in the footage. The film is a respectable entry in the animation documentary subgenre without dramatically reinventing it. Its ending — the bittersweet note of creative triumph shadowed by corporate upheaval — is satisfying but not revelatory. A well-above-average documentary for Disney fans and animation enthusiasts, though it stays comfortably within conventional documentary filmmaking conventions.