More Dead Than Live
Live-action musicals were rare in the 1990s -- 

• Shock/schlock filmmaker John Waters concocted Cry Baby (1990), an uneven comedy about 1950s Baltimore teenagers (rockers vrs. squares, of course) that featured Johnny Depp and others mouthing a mixed bag of dubbed musical set pieces. 

• Woody Allen recycled some classic Tin Pan Alley hits for the charming Everyone Says I Love You (1996).

• The long-delayed screen version of Evita (1996) was stolen from Madonna by the steamy Antonio Banderas.

None of these films caused any critical or commercial sensation, and Hollywood remained convinced that live-action musical film was not worth the effort. But big-screen musicals remained a multi-million dollar business in the 1990s thanks to the efforts of one studio.

Disney's New Golden Age
The Disney team's Beauty and the Beast (1991) was one of the best musical films ever made, and proved a worldwide sensation. The screenplay by Linda Woolverton made Belle Disney's gutsiest animated heroine, and the Beast became more touching than in any previous version of the classic tale. The Howard Ashman and Alan Menken score was worthy of Broadway, performed by a cast of voices that included Angela Lansbury as a teapot and Jerry Orbach as a Chevalier-esque candelabra. Standout numbers included the hilarious spoof of masculinity "Gaston," the Busby Berkley-style "Be Our Guest" and the endearing title tune.

When the unfinished Beauty and the Beast was previewed at the New York Film Festival, the audience responded with a wild standing ovation. I was there, overwhelmed to see my long-lost friend the musical film looking as big and lovable as ever – and heartbroken that lyricist Howard Ashman had not lived to see it happen. His death from AIDS weeks before silenced a genius just reaching his creative peak. If anyone could have guaranteed that musicals would thrive into the 21st Century, it was Ashman. Without him, the art form will never be what it could have been.

Beauty and the Beast won the musical Oscars (Best Song went to the title tune), and was the first animated film ever nominated for Best Picture. It earned hundreds of millions of dollars in worldwide box office sales, a figure that skyrocketed when the film became available on home video. It went even further when the film was adapted into a smash hit Broadway show, running well into the next century and recreating its success in productions all over the world. At a time when Broadway musicals were in a serious decline, Beauty and the Beast proved that the musical could live on profitably in animated films. The movie musical, in animated form, was once more box office gold.

"A Whole New (Animated) World"
Ashman had partially completed one more project with Menken. Lyricist Tim Rice helped to finish Aladdin (1992), which was even more of a box office sensation than Beauty. Robin Williams gave an inspired performance as the voice of the Genie, singing the Ashman & Menken showstoppers "Friend Like Me" and "Prince Ali." In what was becoming a tradition, the Rice/Menken ballad "A Whole New World" received the Academy Award for Best Song.

Newsies (1992), an awkward live action musical based on an 1899 newsboy strike in New York, was such a disaster that it guaranteed Disney would stick to animated musicals.

Disney's next effort was The Lion King (1994), with a pop-style score by Tim Rice and Elton John and a story that mixed Hamlet with a dash of Bambi. Broadway clowns Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella sang the lighthearted "Hakuna Matata," and many loved the chorale "Circle of Life," but the Oscar winning score was otherwise mediocre. Even so, The Lion King became the highest grossing musical film ever, and its 1997 stage adaptation became one of the biggest Broadway hits of the decade.

After Jeffrey Katzenberg left the company, Disney executives decided to follow Lion King's formula and emphasize action and animation rather than music in future projects. As if the music didn't matter? Alan Menken teamed up with Broadway lyricist Stephen Schwartz for the score to Pocahontas (1995). It won Academy Awards for Best Original Score and "Colors of the Wind" won for Best Song, but many felt that the film took itself too seriously. 

Menken & Schwartz followed this with The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) which did not receive any Oscars but damn well should have. "Out There" and "God Help the Outcasts" were first rate songs, and the opening sequence was a masterpiece of musical narrative. Although the dark Victor Hugo story seemed a questionable choice for a musical, Hunchback was the most mature animated musical yet. Parents who thought nothing of letting their children see blood-drenched action films complained that Hunchback was "too intense." (Go figure!) Despite limited domestic attendance in the US, Hunchback brought in over a hundred million dollars in worldwide box office and video sales – proving that America is not always the most perceptive audience for great animated musicals.

Without Katzenberg, Disney's animated division wandered off in new directions, and the scores for their feature cartoons became something of an afterthought. Alan Menken worked with Broadway lyricist David Zippel on Hercules (1997), an action comedy with a few songs that did poorly at the box office. Mulan (1998) had even less of a score and was even more of a box-office disappointment. By the end of the decade, Disney's popular action cartoon Tarzan (1999) offered a few pop songs noticed by no one. After eight years, the Oscar-winning lessons of Beauty and the Beast had been forgotten.

Beyond Disney
Other studios tried to get on the animated musical bandwagon, but most one-shot projects could not compete with Disney's well-established animation division. Few efforts were as misguided as the animated remake of Rodgers & Hammerstein's The King and I (1999), which dumped more than half of the score and "dumbed-down" the story -- turning the Kralahome into an evil sorcerer and the King into an action hero. Soupy orchestrations drowned the remnants of the still-glorious score, making this project altogether pointless.

The last big-screen musical of the 20th century was South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut (1999) – an independent animated feature that would have left Walt Disney's ghost quivering in disbelief. Based on a popular cable television series, this foul-mouthed, artistically primitive and altogether brilliant satire spoofed obscene pop lyrics, overprotective parents, and the contemporary obsession with blaming others for one's problems. The score (with song titles so explicit that several cannot be mentioned on this family-friendly site) was one of the funniest ever used in a feature film. Some found the film offensive, but it proved that screen musicals could still entertain. It also proved that animated musicals are not just for tots.