The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
There's a moment in "Topsy Turvy" where the animation just explodes off the screen: crowds swirling, colours colliding, the whole frame crackling with a kind of joyful, controlled chaos. It's one of the most technically dazzling sequences Disney has ever produced, and it's enough to make you forget, briefly, that the film surrounding it has some serious problems. That's the strange experience of watching The Hunchback of Notre Dame. You spend half your time absolutely gobsmacked by what you're seeing, and the other half quietly frustrated, or in my case, genuinely hurt by what the film is actually doing beneath all that gorgeous imagery.
Let's start with what works, because it works spectacularly. The animation is among the richest the studio has ever put on screen. Paris feels lived in, layered, real in a way that Disney's medieval backdrops often don't. The cathedral itself is an extraordinary piece of visual design, all looming stone and fractured light, and the filmmakers clearly understood that they had an iconic setting and leaned into it without restraint. There's an ambition here, a willingness to go gothic and grand, that sets this apart from almost anything else in the studio's catalogue.
The songs are a genuinely mixed bag, though. Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz clearly reached for something more operatic, more weighty than the studio's usual fare, and occasionally they get there. "The Bells of Notre Dame" is a powerful piece of storytelling, and "Out There" is moving in the way a good Broadway number should be. But some of the others feel tonally adrift, caught between the film's darker ambitions and its need to keep things broadly accessible. The comedy relief, which arrives on the shoulders of three gargoyles, is a particular problem. Not because comedy is unwelcome, but because these sequences belong to a completely different film, a lighter, breezier one, and every time they intrude, you feel the tonal seams pulling apart.
At just under ninety minutes, it's a film that still manages to feel overstuffed. Subplots wander, the pace lurches, and the central love story never quite earns its emotional weight. There's a version of this material that could have been a genuinely great film, one that took its mature themes and followed them through with real courage. What we get instead is something that keeps pulling back from the edge.
And then there's the issue I can't set aside. The film positions itself as a story about tolerance, about the cruelty of judging people by their appearance, and it makes that argument sincerely. But at the same time, the Romani characters are portrayed through a collection of reductive, exoticised stereotypes: mystical, thieving, hypersexualised outsiders, defined by their difference rather than their humanity. For me, this isn't an abstract critique. I have Romani family. Watching those portrayals land inside a film that's simultaneously preaching about the wickedness of prejudice is a strange, uncomfortable experience. It doesn't just undercut the message. It makes the message feel hollow, even dishonest.
Good intentions, and I do think there were good intentions here, don't automatically produce thoughtful results. That's a lesson the film itself is almost trying to teach, and somehow misses in its own execution. It's the kind of contradiction that's worth talking about, worth sitting with, especially if you're watching it with younger viewers who are going to absorb both the sermon about kindness and the stereotypes alongside it.
Three stars.
What Hunchback ultimately leaves you with (and I use that word deliberately, not as a crutch but as a conclusion) is the image of a film straining against itself. The visuals are breathtaking enough that I'd recommend watching it for those alone. It's worth your time, and it's absolutely worth the conversation it sparks. But it's not the great film it so clearly wanted to be, and the gap between its ambitions and its execution is wide enough to walk through.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 1996 | Watched: 2026-05-20
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Disney Plus
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Sky Store
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Disney Plus
Rent: Amazon Video · Google Play Movies · YouTube · Fandango At Home
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.
