Bambi

What the FUCK?

First and foremost, this review is dedicated to Cat, and I would not be doing it at all if it were not for her because Bambi is neither funny nor of an era that makes it very easy to shoehorn in tired jokes about September 11, the Day That Changed Everything. 

Anyway, Bambi was first played to audiences in 1942, so for context, this movie is being unleashed on a world that is little more than a generation away from a catastrophic World War that saw the introduction of brutal trench warfare and mustard gas, and is now in the midst of what will become the deadliest conflict in world history. And the people at Walt Disney Corporation were like, “let's give these kids a little movie about a baby deer!” Let’s see how that works out for them. 

We are going to put this adorable baby through the most harrowing 70 minutes you can possibly imagine. Nick via Flickr

Right from the opening credits we’re off to a bad start. The music, which I would be able to describe better if I knew anything about music and hadn’t been playing the same 10 songs on repeat since the pandemic started, gives us the lyrics “hope may die” literally 25 seconds into this thing. Like what the actual fuck? Still, when you realize that each of these frames was illustrated by hand, it’s pretty profound. It makes the artwork really deeply meaningful and you can imagine every brushstroke made by an artist on a panel, no computer middleman, just a person and their brush. I want this for Bambi. I want this for all of us, but unfortunately now everything looks like Bee Movie, a movie where a mom has weird sexual tension with a bee.

Animals are slowly introduced and you’re kind of like, “yeah okay, that’s a squirrel, that’s a mouse washing his face like he was out last night clubbing, whatever, where’s the deer?” and then you see Thumper the rabbit and you’re like “that’s THUMPER. THE. THUMPER. Holy shit.” You’re seeing Thumper before anyone ever knew him as Thumper and it’s like watching an old recording of someone’s school play and seeing a nine-year-old Daniel Day Lewis get up on stage and really knock your socks off as the Wise Man with the myrrh. 

Listen, none of us want to be here. Joe Dawson via Flickr.

When we finally get to Bambi and his mom the literal entire forest is there (something his mom is SURPRISINGLY cool with). Bambi starts walking right away, which is pretty neat and I wonder if new parents have considered showing this movie to their infants, because it’s like, “why can’t you do this yet Jessica? Bambi was doing it within HOURS.” Anyway I just see it as a sign of decadence that we allow babies to go around for so long just laying there and maybe dragging themselves around a bit when Bambi was up on his feet (hooves?) just like that.

Thumper observes pretty quickly that Bambi can’t walk for shit, and he says so, which I respect. His mom is all “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” and I write Thumper’s mom’s name (Mrs. Hare) in a little notebook I keep for such purposes and then right next to it I write “toxic positivity” in all caps and then cancel her in my heart.

The Owl in this movie seems to have a weird pact with the little creatures, where if he sees them during the day time, he won’t eat them. Like basically this is a Sundown Town, but everyone is too afraid to say it. All the animals in this forest speak the same language, which seems fake to me, but whatever.

Eats babies. Steve Wellock via Flickr.

Bambi’s dad is the Great Prince of the Forest and he’s sort of in and out of the picture, which is pretty relatable for me because my dad was also kind of in and out of the picture and, like Bambi’s parents, I have never witnessed him having a conversation with my mother in my life. 

The dialogue is pretty clunky and expositional, which makes sense when you think “this is a movie about a deer who was literally just born and probably he would have some questions.” At one point Thumper thumps his foot repeatedly and then says “I’m thumping, that’s why they call me Thumper,” just to make sure to the three people who were like “wondered why he’s named Thumper?” know that it’s because he thumps things. It’s a great scene because on the one hand you’re like, “yeah okay, we didn’t need this origin story about your silly name you little freak” and on the other hand it’s hard to convey the beauty of the absolutely chaotic energy of this rabbit-child.

Bambi and Thumper make friends with a little skunk that Bambi calls Flower and they kill a bunch of time going on walks where usually there’s some kind of obstacle Bambi has to overcome (like a literal physical obstacle. One thing you will learn watching Bambi is that this movie has absolutely no interest in processing emotions or developing a healthy psychology or ever acknowledging in any way any thing that might be Unpleasant). He’s made friends incredibly easily with the rest of the forest child-creatures, which is profoundly unrelatable to me, but maybe it’s just because he’s the literal prince of the forest. 

Discomforting. alexalgara via Flickr.

Thumper’s mom is constantly saying shit like, “what did your father tell you about doing X thing?” which really evokes that mid-century, “I’m essentially a single mother but also I need your father’s signature to get my tubes tied” parenting dynamic. Basically imagining Thumper’s dad as a Don Draper type. We’ll never know because this movie makes it pretty clear that parenting is for girls. 

The first other deer Bambi meets is Faline. Faline is the kind of person (deer), who, when her parents go to parent-teacher conferences, the teacher is like “Faline has been distracting the other students. She will not stay put at her own salt lick and talks incessantly to her neighbours despite frequent alterations in the seating plan.” Faline is obviously going to be the love interest in this film, but we’ll just bookmark that for later because now we get to the part I know everyone wants to talk about.

What. The Actual. Fuck? There’s a moment after we hear the gunshot where I’m like, 90% sure that we are about to witness this baby deer discover the dead body of his mother. We don’t, but don’t relax yet because this movie is about to become more disturbing than you can possibly imagine. The first time I watched it, I completely blocked this out of my mind and didn’t realize Bambi’s mother had died until 20 years later when I read about it in a Gary Larson comic. I can be forgiven for this because the only acknowledgement that we get that Bambi’s mother was actually killed is when his dad (the Great Prince) pops up briefly to say “your mother can’t be with you anymore” and you really start to understand the whole vibe of this generation, where people would rather set themselves on fire than admit an unpleasant truth.

#InMemoriam. melroska via Flickr.

Anyway, a bunch of time passes very quickly and now Bambi is a four point buck. Both he and Thumper have deep man voices which is oddly unsettling since their faces are still stylized to be extremely babyish. Literally no one says ANYTHING about Bambi’s mom, or asks who has been taking care of him for the entire winter. There’s no “how you holding up, Bambi? You, uh, been staying with your grandma, or what?” Listen kids, people die, and you just accept that, and stuff it all down, and never think about it again until you yourself die of a heart attack at 57. That’s the American way.

Neither Thumper nor Bambi are awkward AT ALL even though they have clearly gone through puberty and frankly it’s the most unrealistic thing about this entire movie. Anyway, one of the most important aspects of puberty is that no matter when you go through it, you are going through it way earlier or way later than your friends. The only truly universal aspects of puberty are that it is mortifying and isolating. Still, this tracks with the pre-Boomer/Boomer vibe of never talking about The Unpleasantness.

I haven’t spent a lot of time hanging out with deer, but all of grown-up Bambi’s mannerisms indicate pretty strongly to me that his behaviour is modelled off of one of the animator’s cats. Anyway this is where we get the famous “twitterpated” scene where all these animals that were children minutes ago are now extremely DTF. Bambi is reunited with Faline and there’s an incredible surreal scene where they just frolic around in the clouds. There are about ten straight minutes without any dialogue, just Bambi and Faline dancing around, and I don’t really know what to say about this except I guess children used to sit still for longer without dialogue, watching what are pretty blatantly visual metaphors about fucking?

We’re deer, we’re queer, get used to it. Sun Drop’s via Flickr.

Anyway, another buck comes along and challenges Bambi to a fight over Faline, and the whole thing is visually pretty impressive and you can tell why these animators were allowed to keep making movies in 1942 instead of being shipped to the Pacific Theatre or recruited to make shells for anti aircraft guns in Wisconsin. Anyway, Bambi wins the fight, and Faline. If there’s one thing you can say about children’s movies these days is that there’s not enough rutting bucks locking horns over girls the spring after they went through puberty.

We finally get some conversation again when Bambi spots fire and the Great Prince comes back to be like “it’s man! We must go deep into the forest right the fuck now,” without saying “how have you been, son?” or “do you want to go grab your girlfriend?” Anyway, Bambi is a better deer than his father and he goes back for Faline, but by this time she’s gone looking for him. It’s one of those classic film plotlines that has been absolutely destroyed by the invention of the cell phone. 

Now if you thought that the emotionally devastating part of Bambi is when the wide-eyed little prince of the forest realizes that his mother has been shot dead, you would be WRONG to think that. Because ACTUALLY, it’s hunting season again, and this time, the animals who are shot are killed on screen, in front of all their friends. It’s spring, so there are babies everywhere (assuming these are poachers?). They have packs of dogs that they send after Faline, who is still searching for Bambi. He finds her and fights off the dogs, only to be FUCKING SHOT. Meanwhile, the humans have started a truly demonic forest fire that has sent all the animals running for cover, their adorable eyes and mouths wide with incomprehensible terror.  It is impossible to express enough how horrifying this is, and the next time you’re tempted to argue with an elderly person about whether recycling is bullshit, you should imagine them watching this as a very small child and then not seeing a therapist even once in 70 years. 

This is where I would put a frame from Bambi if I wasn’t scared of getting sued.

The Great Prince finds his wounded son (this guy is all over the place) and we’re treated to a tough love scene where he growls at his kid, who, again, has just been shot with a shotgun, to get up, and it really makes you think of that whole genre of Boomers who are like “yeah my dad strapped me and I turned out fine!” even though they have very obviously not turned out fine? 

There’s an extremely tense (and gorgeously animated) scene where the Great Prince leads them both out of the fire. Bambi and Faline are reunited, the animals all gather together on a hillock in the river to lick their wounds as the fire passes through, and then it is spring again and moss and new flowers grow on the burned remains of the old forest (there is, once again, no acknowledgement of The Unpleasantness or mourning rituals for the dead). Thumper and his babies come to wake Friend Owl by (you guessed it) thumping, and all of the animals of the woods (including Flower the Skunk, who has named one of his babies Bambi) rush to the meadow where Faline has had two adorable little fawns. Bambi watches over them all from afar, presumably because he is also going to be an absent father.

I give this movie one and a half stars for being gorgeously animated and also one of the single most upsetting things I have ever seen in my life.