On June 2nd 2014, Walt Disney’s classic Sleeping Beauty is released on DVD, Blu-Ray and download. We have been sent a copy to watch, so had one of our ‘moovy nites’ (according to H).

Sleeping Beauty needs no introduction – the Walt Disney film is 55 years old. I know I’ve seen it, and remembered parts when we watched it, and it was a lovely opportunity to revisit childhood memories.

So, the story. The princess is born and named Aurora, three good fairires Flora, Fauna and Merryweather cast magical gifts to her, though before the third can be done Maleficent the evil sorceress places a curse on her – that she will die before sunset on her sixteenth birthday by touching the poisoned spindle of a spinning wheel. Fortunately Merryweather casts a spell – Aurora will fall into a deep sleep and just has to be kissed by her one true love to wake up.

The film is easy to follow, the memories came back (the changing colour of her dress mainly!), and the ending is a happy one. H liked it best when “the mean lady was dead, and when the colours changed on the dress as that was very funny listening to their argument!”

This Sleeping Beauty release is perfectly timed with the new Angelina Jolie film Maleficent. It’s a film I’d like to see but as it’s rated PG it’ll be one we watch at home I suspect. Maleficent isn’t cast as an evil sorceress, she’s a badly treated one – something which the Disney film doesn’t portray. Both stories are based on the Brothers Grimm story ‘Little Briar Rose’.

Sleeping Beauty took most of the 1950’s to produce – and was Disney’s last animation which was hand-crafted using ink before they moved onto xerography – though it did feature in this film in the dragon sequences before being re-drawn in pen and ink. The music throughout the film is taken from Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty ballet, which earned the film an Academy Award.

There are bonus features on the DVD and Blu-Ray too – we enjoyed watching a short about the Grand Canyon which was shown in cinemas at the original theatrical release of Sleeping Beauty.

We have some lovely activity sheets for you to download and print out – have fun! We’re going to have a go at them all – right click on the image to download the pdf please!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sleeping Beauty is released on DVD, Blu-Ray and download tomorrow, Monday 2nd June 2014. (affiliate link)

We were sent a copy of Sleeping Beauty for the purpose of review – all opinions are our own!