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With a story as well known and popular as Victor Hugo’s novel titled The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, it only makes perfect sense for the book to be adapted into an animated major motion picture in 1996 by none other than Walt Disney Animation Studios, and while this particular adaptation makes a lot changes from the source material of the same name (although that’s the case with any other adaptation to be completely reasonable & fair), Disney’s The Hunchback Of Notre Dame manages to still have a dark tone to it with themes such as religion, lust, genocide, and discrimination, which is what Victor Hugo’s original story had despite it not being too extreme in Disney’s version of it on contrast to how it was written by Victor Hugo back in 1883 (even though the film still attracted a lot of controversy back when it first got released because of such).
But regardless of whenever or it this movie qualifies as the best adaptation of The Hunchback Of Notre by Victor Hugo, the cinematic animated adaptation of the same name from 1996 by Walt Disney Animation Studios is still in my honest & humble opinion, one of my absolute favorite animated films of all-time, and the best animated movie Disney made and put out during the 1990s, for it is also a truly good example of a film that I am unable to find any flaws in because of how spectacular it is.
The most obvious (and important) aspect when reviewing an animated movie is to always mention the overall general quality of the animation regardless of it is hand-drawn animation, or computer animation, and even though it originally came out in the year 1996 hand-drawn animated by Disney, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame still even to this day has absolutely beautiful animation that holds up extremely well as the character movements and expressions are very believable, the backgrounds are very gorgeous to look at and help make the film’s setting match the year it’s trying to represent, and many of the sound effects used throughout the movie manage to it fit well because of how much effort the the animators put into the making of it concerning its production & process. Also, the minor use of computer animation for some background stuff does look nice, and isn’t actually too noticeable (at least for me anyways respectfully-speaking).
While having many obvious plot & character differences from Victor Hugo’s book, the story for this adaptation of the novel is still a very well-written one all in thanks to it being able to convey a ton of good messages in it without them being forced whatsoever, and all of the characters are memorable as they are very well-developed, and are voiced by truly talented actors & actresses.
One thing I totally forgot to mention the beginning of this review is that Disney’s The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1996) is also a musical, and a great one at that too I might add. Every scene that is a musical number does a great job to help the songs flow well with the overall plot, and each and every one of them fits well into the story even if each song has a different tone from that of another one. Now when it truly comes to musicals in general, there will always be songs people really like, and songs people really dislike. In my opinion though however, all the songs in 1996’s The Hunchback Of Notre Dame are wonderful to always listen to, making it a very rare example in which every song in a musical is fantastic (at least in my opinion anyways).
The Hunchback Of Notre Dame from Walt Disney Animation Studios may not be the most faithful & accurate film adaptation of the story of the same name by Victor Hugo out there ever made, but it’s clear that a lot of effort was put into making it still be a good movie that is one of the most ambitious works of animation to bear the Disney logo considering the subject matters and dark tone it has, and simply a true masterpiece in animation worth checking out if you haven’t already that achieves in being an excellent viewing experience.
I give Disney’s The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1996) 5/5 Stars, and Two Thumbs Up!
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