Song of the South (1945)

IMDb plot summary: The kindly story-teller Uncle Remus tells a young boy stories about trickster Br'er Rabbit, who outwits Br'er Fox and slow-witted Br'er Bear.
Directed by Wilfred Jackson and Harve Foster. Starring James Baskett, Bobby Driscoll, Ruth Warrick, and Luana Patten.

I didn't know very much about this film aside from the controversy over its racist portrayal of African-Americans in the south. I definitely see those elements in here. While the film purportedly takes place after the Civil War and the characters here are not plantation slaves, there is a definite air of subservience and passivity to the African-American characters -- Uncle Remus's entire purpose is to tell encouraging stories to the young white boy -- and it is uncomfortable to watch.

Fortunately, there's not much of a conflict here between my discomfort with the negative stereotypes and my enjoyment of the film, because I didn't think it was terribly good to begin with. The animated sequences are well done and many of the songs are enjoyable (incidentally, I suppose I'm glad that the animated characters were played by actual African-American actors, not white actors adopting a dialect? I think?) but the story framing them is thin, awkward, and doesn't allow time for the miraculous changes supposedy wrought by Uncle Remus' stories. The final scene is particularly silly, when the father abruptly reappears, no explanations, no indications of whether what took him away in the first place was resolved, apparently hinting that they're going to live with Grandmother forever now and not return to Atlanta.

I'm glad I've seen it to help cross off my Disney list but I certainly don't have any reason to watch it again.

1 star.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Song of the South < George of the Jungle
Song of the South < Rio Bravo
Song of the South > The Great Train Robbery
Song of the South < Doctor Zhivago
Song of the South < Bedknobs and Broomsticks
Song of the South > Stalker
Song of the South < Frankenstein
Song of the South > Mamma Mia!
Song of the South < Fame (2009)
Song of the South > David Copperfield (1935)
Song of the South > Me Before You

Final spot: #2280 out of 2670.