Movie Review: 'Fantasia 2000'
Pros: Seven new segments and The Sorcerer's Apprentice, nice mix of music Cons: Would one host have been better than many? Jury is still out on that one In the late 1930s, Walt Disney and his team of animators decided to revive interest in Mickey Mouse - whose popularity was being eroded by his fellow Disney stable mate Donald Duck - by featuring the beloved rodent in a fully animated version of the Goethe-Dukas fantasy The Sorcerer's Apprentice . Envisioned originally as a stand-alone "upgrade" of the then-popular "Silly Symphonies" shorts, this project grew in ambition and scale once the eminent conductor Leopold Stokowski got involved (he volunteered his services as conductor for The Sorcerer's Apprentice ); from one relatively short (nine minutes or so) cartoon to a feature-length animated film featuring eight different visual interpretations of classical music pieces from at least three different eras: Baroque, Romantic and Moder...