I'm willing to wager that most of you remember Bambi as a different film than it really is. It is incidentally the first movie I can recall seeing (though that memory's gone haywire), during some early-1970s reissue.

Bambi is a simple, simple story: 70 minutes digesting the life of a deer in the forest, primarily through song. Bambi (voiced by five different actors through her (her, right?) various stages of life, learns to walk, befriends a rabbit and a skunk, survives a forest fire, and loses mom to hunters (off camera, but we know what happened). And that's about it.

Bambi's lessons are simple and speak to our desire to return to a state of innocence -- and even oblivion about the changing world around us. Frolic in the flowers and sing songs with a mischievous bunny? You bet. After Fantasia, Bambi is one of the few true examples of children's escapist fare we have. (If you don't catch my meaning, consider the heavy-duty messages of a film like Pinocchio.)

It's puzzling then why Bambi has such a treasured place in our collective hearts, given that it's really not about anything except -- maybe -- when it tries to tell us that hunting is, you know, bad and stuff. Shrug. Bambi has an ace up its sleeve that guarantees a permanent spot on the classic animation shelf: People just really like cuddly animals, and there's not a dang thing you can do about it.

Catch Bambi on a two-disc DVD, with storyboard versions of a pair of deleted scenes, archival material, and a bunch of kiddie stuff.



Skunk: It's what's for dinner.