The Aristocats

Wolfgang Reitherman’s 1970 feature started as live action: Harry Tytle and Tom McGowan found a children’s book about a mother cat and kittens and moved it to Paris, and the project was by turns a television two-parter and a feature until Walt Disney, who had approved it live, agreed to animate it. By Disney’s own account on D23 it was the last animated feature Walt was involved in making and the first produced entirely after his death. The best-known sequence is an impersonation. Scat Cat was designed for Louis Armstrong, down to the trumpet grip and tooth gap; illness kept him from the booth and Scatman Crothers took over, directed to sound like him. Phil Harris, the voice of Thomas O’Malley, voiced Baloo three years before and Little John three years after. Maurice Chevalier left retirement for the title song. Disney attached its own advisory in 2020: the programme includes negative depictions or mistreatment of people or cultures, and those stereotypes were wrong then and wrong now. In 2021 it was closed to under-sevens on Disney+ because the Siamese cat Shun Gon is an East Asian stereotype. A good fit if you want the film to stop the kidnapping plot for the jazz number. Not for anyone who cannot sit through the Siamese cat scene the advisory names.