I'm watching The Aristocats on widescreen right now and I hate to agree with you on the animation. Throughout the movie, especially the scenes with humans there is virtually NO cleanup animation. Lines and rough animation are everywhere, especially if the characters are doing sudden movements. The worse animation occurs in an early scene where the lawyer and Lady Bonfamile have their meeting. The cats are off model and the eyes arent even colored in at some points. If you were to watch this movie frame-by-frame you can tell the film phases in an out as far as clean animation goes.King Louis 2010 wrote:I've seen The Aristocats twice now and both times I had the same reaction. It's a hugely entertaining movie but probably one of Disney's lesser cartoons [though not in the bottom five!]. It seems to imitate both The Lady And The Tramp and 101 Dalmations, and while I'm very fond of the rough, xerox-using animation of the films of this era, at times I think the animation is a little poor-I'm especially talking about the old lady's hair! And doesn't she look just like an older version of the Wicked Stepmother in Cinderella? I'm sure they used the same template. The Parisian backgrounds are great though and I do like the slapstick [which some people are not too keen on]-the sequence when the butler tries to drown the cats is superbly inventive, there's so much that happens in a couple of minutes. Great characters throughout and good [if not great] songs. Just like Robin Hood and The Rescuers, I don't consider it any sort of masterpeice but it's an easy going watch that cannot fail to please!
The only explanation I can assume for this is the production of this film was probably staggered or rushed due to the recent passing of Walt and perhaps there was no time to finish cleaning up the animation.
Another interesting thing I've noticed: it looks like Edgar's motorbike was animated using rotoscope. It's hard to tell if you're not noticing though.