Sleeping Beauty

Disney produced this lavish animated fairy tale, the most expensive cartoon ever made up to its release with a budget of $6 million. When the young princess Aurora is cursed at birth by the evil fairy Maleficent, the baby is kidnapped by a trio of good fairies who raise the girl themselves, hoping ...more

The lavish, expensive Sleeping Beauty was something of a throwback for the Walt Disney Company, which had been churning out popular, if slight, live-action films throughout the 1950s. The musical's painstakingly rich animation and the timeless fairy-tale material place it in the same league as other, earlier beloved Disney titles such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937), Pinocchio (1940), or Cinderella (1950). The animation is the most notable aspect of the film: it combines the lush ...more