Metacritic Film

Fantasia 2000

Starring Steve Martin, Itzhak Perlman, Quincy Jones, Bette Midler, and James Earl Jones

MPAA RATING: G for General Audiences

Buena Vista Pictures
Musical
75 minutes | Color
USA
Released In Theaters January 1, 2000

Walt Disney's dream of creating a "concert film" with a perpetually changing musical repertoire is at last realized with the debut of the animated extravaganza, Fantasia/2000. (Walt Disney Pictures)

WRITTEN BY
Hans Christian Andersen
Carl Fallberg
Irene Mecchi
Perce Pearce

DIRECTED BY
James Algar
Gaƫtan Brizzi
Paul Brizzi
Hendel Butoy

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

59 / 100

Critic Reviews

100 Miami Herald
It's so rare to be swept away by a presentation of this magnitude. By all means, go.
90 TNT RoughCut
Walt would be proud.
88 New York Post
More than lives up to its clever positioning as the first movie of the new millennium.
88 USA Today
Still a one-of-a-kind mind-blower.
75 Chicago Sun-Times
Movies like this renew my faith that the future of the cinema lies not in the compromises of digital projection, but by leaping over the limitations of digital into the next generation of film technology.
75 San Francisco Chronicle
A millennial medley to the max.
75 Chicago Tribune
Though not as good or as massively innovative as its predecessor, is still a mountainous undertaking.
75 Christian Science Monitor
Although it's less novel and feisty than the original "Fantasia" of 1940, this collection of music-filled animations is highly entertaining at times.
75 Charlotte Observer
State-of-the-art.
75 Boston Globe
A solid two-bagger, not a home run.
75 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Lacks the cohesive flow of "Fantasia" and suffers from an attention deficit that seems to mark and flaw our current fast-paced technological era.
70 Film.com
Expertly done, and a real joy to watch.
70 TV Guide
Like the original "Fantasia's" eight segments, the results are a mixed bag.
67 Austin Chronicle
Better in theory than in practice.
67 Entertainment Weekly
Oh well, back to the drawing board.
67 Mr. Showbiz
The good news is that they've resurrected a franchise with wonderful potential and may eventually grow bored enough of recapping past triumphs to take it in more daring directions.
63 New York Daily News
Whether it's any good depends on your expectations.
60 Film.com
For all its flaws, Fantasia 2000 is certainly something to see.
60 Los Angeles Times
Grainy as it looks in its massive Imax blowup, Mickey's misadventures with water and a broom still have the kind of magic even modern technology can't always manage.
50 Washington Post
Then as now, visually pleasant and (of course) musically wonderful but, all-in-all, a mixed bag.
50 LA Weekly
What's missing from Fantasia 2000 is the shamelessly pandering Disney cutesy that made the original such a full-blooded nostalgic memory.
50 Philadelphia Inquirer
It musters both the merits and the drawbacks of the landmark original.
50 The New York Times
Not especially innovative in its look or subject matter.
50 Variety
Like a light buffet of tasty morsels rather than a full and satisfying meal; all the episodes are more or less agreeable, but as a whole it lacks a knockout punch, one dynamite sequence that will galvanize viewers.
40 Chicago Reader
The rest of these animated sequences...depend on gimmickry, cuteness, or facile ideology, and don't come close to demonstrating the complex relationship between sound and image found in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice."
40 Village Voice
Arriving just after the best year for animated film in recent memory, Fantasia 2000 doesn't play like a celebration. In its sentimental yearning for a golden age when another one's upon us, it feels a little like a rebuke.
30 Salon.com
There's some sort of gross egotism involved in linking great music to visuals that are so unabashedly kitschy.

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