Disney

The Simpsons may be genius – but it’s also evil

5 July 2025 9:00 am

Marge Simpson is dead. But does anyone care? I’ve written loads of pieces over the years about the genius of…

Who wants a ‘girl boss’ Snow White?

22 March 2025 9:00 am

Disney’s new Snow White is a live-action remake of the beloved 1937 classic that was cinema’s first full-length animated feature…

What Donald Trump told me about Keir Starmer

22 March 2025 9:00 am

Two months into President Donald Trump’s second term, the habitual liberal hysteria about his rollercoaster presidential style is reaching shrieking…

The curse of Disney’s Snow White

22 March 2025 9:00 am

One of the early decisions David Zaslav made after becoming the CEO of Warner Bros Discovery in 2022 was to…

I’m warming to Meghan Markle – only joking

15 March 2025 9:00 am

You know that urge when you’ve got friends coming for the weekend and you just have to spend the previous…

A hit – but please don’t pretend it’s feminist: Disney+’s Rivals reviewed

19 October 2024 9:00 am

For most of my adult life, clever, well-read, feminist women have told me how much they love Jilly Cooper. It…

If you can stand the stress, The Bear is still possibly the best thing on TV

6 July 2024 9:00 am

The Bear has been called ‘the most stressful thing on TV’ and I think that’s probably a fair description. It’s…

Nowhere near as miserable as I remember it: The Beatles – Let It Be reviewed

18 May 2024 9:00 am

Beatles lore has long held that the film Let It Be was a depressing portrait of the band falling apart.…

Why did C.J. Sansom ok this moronic Disney+ Shardlake adaptation?

11 May 2024 9:00 am

What would C.J. Sansom have made of the Disney+ version of his novel series about 16th-century crookback lawyer Matthew Shardlake?…

Why intellectuals love Disney

21 October 2023 9:00 am

This month marks the 100th anniversary of Walt Disney’s company. The first cartoons it was founded to produce – the…

Poor Prince Charming is on the scrap heap

19 August 2023 9:00 am

The only strikes I really enjoy are actors’ strikes. Teachers’ strikes leave me cold. Train strikes get me into a…

False notes

10 June 2023 9:00 am

Chevalier is a biopic of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, whom you’ve probably never heard of, as I hadn’t. He…

Senior moment

15 October 2022 9:00 am

We men all think we’ve still got it, even when we’re well past 50 and young women look straight through…

What’s the matter with Disney?

23 July 2022 5:07 pm

If there’s one thing that gives a bad name to gender stereotyping it’s the Disney princess: a combination of hideous…

Taking the Mickey

30 April 2022 9:00 am

How Disney fell foul of Florida’s governor

Thrills, frills and folderols

23 April 2022 9:00 am

A clever, original exhibition at the Wallace Collection has Laura Freeman twirling her way through the West End

Into the woods

22 January 2022 9:00 am

The extent of Walt Disney’s grasp of the natural world remains unclear. After the Austrian author Felix Salten sold the…

The kids are not alright

6 March 2021 9:00 am

Raya and the Last Dragon has everything you might want nowadays from a major Disney film — feisty kick-ass heroine,…

Lost and found

13 February 2021 9:00 am

These rediscovered drawings by Hokusai point to him as the father of photography and modern animation, says Laura Gascoigne

disneyfication

The Disneyfication of the moral universe

27 October 2020 8:29 am

‘I’m sitting here struggling for words and my friend nailed it: “She was our Princess Leia.”’ With those words, Dr…

Hundrum

5 September 2020 9:00 am

Mulan is Disney’s latest live-action remake, coming in at 120 minutes, compared with the 1998 animation, which ran to 80.…

Tim Rice at the cricket stump surrounded by Disney characters, by Michael Heath

Tim Rice: I left Lord’s during that cricket final… to see The Lion King

27 July 2019 9:00 am

As I left Lord’s at around 3 o’clock in the afternoon to go to The Lion King European premiere I…

Animal magnetism: you’ll want to reach into the screen, pluck Simba out and take him on to your lap for a cuddle

Completely and utterly and entirely blown away: the Lion King reviewed

20 July 2019 9:00 am

The Lion King is Disney’s photorealistic CGI remake of the beloved, hand-drawn 1994 original that, for many children, offered a…

donald trump orlando

Trumpworld Orlando, where dreams come true

20 June 2019 3:36 am

Why did Donald Trump choose Orlando, near Disney World, for his campaign kickoff Tuesday night? Because he appears to be…

Bring me my arrow of desire: the original Italian film poster for Pasolini’s 1974 Il Fiore delle Mille e Una Notte

How film fell for caliphs and slave girls

11 May 2019 9:00 am

Most of Hollywood’s Arabian Nights fantasies are, of course, unadulterated tosh. The Middle East, wrote the American film critic William…