The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Hunchback of MTV?
The musical score also helps support this respectful treatment of Victor
Hugo's historical romance, with an almost operatic tone to the serious numbers
(including real chants, and use of a hundred-year-old organ and a professional
choir recorded in London). The orchestrator, Michael Starobin, also employed
some genuine instruments of the late medieval period (such as hammered-dulcimer,
gittern and shawm) to give the profane scenes an added sense of authenticity.
The computer-generated crowd scenes with an active cast of hundreds are
duly impressive, the Feast of Fools full of lively whimsy, and the action-adventure
scenes with chases and fights very exciting. The quite effective voice talents
include Demi Moore as Esmeralda (in the animated visuals, by the way, a
genuine woman of color, intelligent and capable), Kevin Kline as the blond-bearded
soldier Phoebus, and Tom Hulse as Quasimodo. Hulse himself sings quite well
his operatic aria "Out There", but Esmeralda's heart-rending aria
"Outcasts" is supplied by a professional singer, Heidi Mollenhauer,
whose voice timbre blends seamlessly with Demi Moore's speaking voice.
Compounding the Kitsch
What a waste, what a shame, then, to find in the middle of a magnificent,
splendid film a set of characters and a musical number so vulgar, so tasteless
and so far removed from the medieval period that it completely spoils all
the spellbinding adventure in this special atmosphere. I refer to the introduction
of three gargoyle "comics," and their song "A Guy like You,"
which attempts to lure Quasimodo out of the cathedral by depicting a gambling
casino (poker chips and roulette wheel) and a low-cut gowned torch-singer
splayed across a bar piano. All of this takes place in the cathedral of
Notre Dame. If I were a good Catholic, I think I would be offended-- indeed,
if I were a good pagan, I would be offended, since the genuine historical
gargoyles actually represent the spirits of the old pre-christian religions,
and are much more imaginative character. One of the gargoyles, Hugo, is
particularly offensive, compounding the kitsch of Phil Silvers and the camp
of Jim Carrey-- totally obnoxious. In the official The Making of The
Hunchback of Notre Dame documentary, producer Don Hahn calls Hugo "a
crazy frat boy," but what is Animal House doing in medieval
Paris? Where was Dave Fleischer when they needed him?
The official Disney press release calls these gargoyles "kind of the
Disney mortar that holds the whole story together," but the effect
is quite the opposite-- it makes the carefully built magic of the bygone
era crumble. Other official statements identify this gargoyle episode as
a link with the Disney tradition, and compare it to the pink elephant sequence
in Dumbo. Certainly not the Walt Disney tradition, for there
are no jalopy races (nor obnoxious creeps) in Snow White, nor telephone
calls or airplanes in Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty. And the
pink elephants are wholly integral to Dumbo's contemporary circus
ambience and the particular plot point of the accidentally inebriated heroes.
I can see no real excuse for the "gargoylettes" in Hunchback,
except as a bid for Broadway. Much of this same team was responsible for
creating Beauty and the Beast, which is still running in its hit
stage version. And the press release describes this "showstopping tune"
as "in grand boulevardier style with a touch of Broadway panache."
If that was the case, it seems quite misguided to me, since the audience
for Broadway shows is vastly different and more sophisticated than the very
much younger audiences for Disney movies. The number should be cut from
the film and saved for the Broadway version of Hunchback, when it
would be eligible for a Tony as an original song.
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