I
have never been what you’d call a huge fan of World of Color. For
all the massive promotion when it first debuted, it has always struck
me as distinctly inferior to Fantasmic!
The reasons for this are numerous, but among them is that World of
Color has always seemed so very commercial. From the very
first iteration, it has come across as having the primary purpose of
waving popular characters and recent or upcoming films in guests’
faces, spurring the purchase of merchandise and movie tickets. The
previous holiday version, World of Color: Winter Dreams, was
especially blatant about this, betraying its own theme—you know,
winter—with the use
of the song “In Summer” from Frozen.* They tried to pass
it off as an ironic juxtaposition, but not many people were fooled.
They knew a shameless advertisement when they saw one.
Thus
it is with delight that I inform you that the new holiday
version—World of Color: Season of Light—does not give me this
impression at all. Instead of using the show to promote the
characters, it uses characters to illustrate the themes
of the show. There are no Disney songs in this one—just
well-known Christmas tunes as performed by equally well-known singers
(and one absolutely marvelous surprise, about which more later). Each
song is accompanied by appropriate footage from Disney films
and shorts, and the hey-look-at-our-new-movie vibe is kept to a
minimum.
That
said, it’s still fairly one-dimensional as a presentation.
World of Color is by its very nature something of a one-trick pony,
lacking the multiple facets of something like Fantasmic! or even a
parade. So this is gonna be a pretty short post, focusing on some of
the highlights that really stood out to me as making this one
special.
- “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”: The obligatory Princess/romance sequence uses this fairly infamous song, but there’s a twist—it’s the Idina Menzel/Michael Bublé cover, which swaps out some of the dodgier lyrics for more family-friendly ones. Combined with the footage of Princesses pulling away from their love interests (when we all know these stories have fully consensual, mutually fulfilling happy endings), it does a lot to redeem the song for modern sensibilities.
- “Mele Kalikamaka”: This segment starts with clips from Lilo & Stitch. Then it continues with clips from Lilo & Stitch, before concluding with clips from Lilo & Stitch. I fully expected it to tease Moana at some point, since that film comes out in just a few days. But it didn’t. That alone speaks well for its sincerity—it would have been so easy to throw in a promotional clip or two, but they resisted the urge.
- “Wizards in Winter”: This was the big surprise I mentioned earlier. Everyone knows who Trans-Siberian Orchestra is these days, but I don’t think many people are familiar with their work beyond the rock remixes of “The Nutcracker” and “Carol of the Bells.”** However, if just one of their original Christmas compositions has achieved any sort of penetration into public recognition, it surely must be “Wizards in Winter,” thanks to a YouTube video of someone’s elaborately synchronized home exterior Christmas lights that went viral some years back. Accordingly, this segment—the most over-the-top part of the whole show, making ample use of the laser grid as well as the fire jets—purports to be someone’s elaborately synchronized home exterior Christmas lights. The someone in question is Goofy, who is probably the only character in the Disney lineup who might believably use fire jets at Christmas.
Is
there anything I would do differently? Absolutely. Well, maybe.
For
example, there's a segment featuring music from “The Nutcracker”
as sung, a cappella, by the Pentatonix...and illustrated with the
dancing hippos and ostriches from Fantasia.
Except...Fantasia has
a “Nutcracker” segment, and it's not the one with hippos. (It's
the one with dancing mushrooms and thistles that makes you wonder
what the animators were on when they created it.) I'm being
charitable and assuming they went that route in order to keep the
tone light and portray explicit ballet dancers, but it still creates
the impression that they missed an obvious target at close range.
Another
aspect that seemed kind of odd was the complete absence of any
acknowledgement of Hannukah. The Disneyland Resort's holiday shows
can normally be counted upon to provide at least a token round of
“Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel,” making the lack of such this time
around a pretty glaring omission. I would rather they leave it out
than force it if they couldn't find a natural place for it in the
lineup, and anyway California Adventure has no shortage
of diversity celebration this season, for which I have nothing but
praise.
So
it's not perfect. But it still stands head and shoulders above any
other iteration of World of Color, and I highly recommend it as the
perfect way to cap off a day enjoying California Adventure's Festival
of Holidays.
* Among other songs from
said movie.
** Which are actually
entitled, respectively, “A Mad Russian’s Christmas” and
“Christmas Eve – Sarajevo 12/24.” People don't pay attention.
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