My Review of "The Fox And The Hound"

The Fox And The Hound is a classic Disney animated movie that came out back in 1981. I grew up in the 80's and surprisingly I have never seen this movie. My girlfriend had recently subscribed to Disney plus and told me that I had to have a huge lesson in classic Disney movies. Up until now I haven't really watched any of them except for The Aristocats. After seeing that movie I knew I was in for an experience.

This movie starts off with a bang, literally. A mother fox is running from hound dogs and some hunters with an infant fox in her mouth. She hides the little fox and the hunters eventually catch up to her. We then have an orphan baby fox named Tod. A loving owl by the name of big mama hatches a plan to save the Tod. Her and her bird colleagues get the attention of a loving older lady who eventually adopts Tod.

Meanwhile the older lady's neighbor comes home with this new baby hound dog named Copper to help him out with his hunting. His old dog named Chief is obviously jealous but takes the little pup under his wing. Now Chief is an older dog so he sleeps a lot. This leaves little time for him to watch over Copper. Being a young pup Copper obviously has tons of energy to play so he goes off and meets up with Tod.

The two instantly become friends. They have a grand old time until Copper's owner and Chief force Copper to stay at home. Being in an a very liberal household, Tod doesn't understand why Copper can't play with him. They continue being friends until a huge fiasco has Copper's owner confronting Tod's owner.

Eventually the two are separated and they become adults. Tod is still Tod but Copper has changed into a hunting dog. One of the things that he has to hunt for is unfortunately foxes.

The story is very simple but has many layers to it. It's about the power of friendship and the bonds that we have with one another despite the circumstances that we fall into. I thought it was way deeper than I had anticipated it to be.

Obviously the animation was extremely good. I think this is one of the best times at Disney for animated movies. If you look at the characters you barely see any stroke marks within the drawings and the backgrounds look like gorgeous paintings. There are some scenes that seem a little out of focus. We would never catch those details back in the VHS days but now with high definition streaming little mistakes look way bigger. Still that doesn't detract from the overall beauty and craftsmanship involved in this animated piece.

I also expected a lot more songs in this movie. There weren't too many songs in this movie. At least nothing too notable that I can remember. It's barely noticeable and the songs that they placed in the movie were kind of hidden in there.

Voice acting was really well done. You can tell that they use a usual cast of voice actors for this movie. I recognized some voices that sounded like they belonged to a Winnie the Pooh film. It is after all a Disney movie so I wouldn't be shocked if they were the same voice actors.

Overall, I thought this movie was a really well made movie. I was happy to watch it from start to finish. There really were no lulls in the film. It also passes the test of time. There is nothing extremely offensive in this movie. It remains good wholesome fun. I have to give this movie an 8 out of 10. It is very much the classic movie that everyone says it is. If you haven't seen this movie you should definitely check it out.