Disney was careful to avoid the existing Hollywood queens of song of the period, Judy Garland and Deanna Durbin, the latter, whose prodigious vocal talent actually saved Universal Pictures from going belly up a short time later. Indeed, he used the voice of a complete unknown for Snow White, Adriana Caselotti, (who passed away in 1997). Walt Disney knew this quite well and avoided it.
This practice is known to conflict the viewer psychologically as the drawn images begin to do battle with the ones in the audience memory with the cerebral bridge of highly recognizable photo images of known voices. The other criticism is in the highly questionable use of "name" voices for casting, a puzzling development since there is no meaningful box office data supporting it. At the bottom line the overall work is so extraordinary any possible lack in literacy is more than made up for in the visual mounting and production of the film, something which is nothing less than inspiring. This opinion is debatable, a very minor aspect and only my view as a story teller. Although the studio made an effort to flesh out the story with the Ramses/Moses relationship there is simply not enough meat to go around. The story is based on Exodus from the Old Testament (and other Scripture) which is scanty, to say the least. Two brief critiques: First, the choice of story. I applaud DreamWorks for this triumph in graphic excellence. If you aspire to art in any form, and/or specifically love line art and graphics as I do, you must not miss seeing this film on the big screen.
animated feature since, perhaps, FANTASIA, created for mature audiences while remaining child-friendly. With THE PRINCE OF EGYPT, the DreamWorks animation team has finally taken us full circle and helped the United States join the rest of the world in offering us the first U.S. animation industry to remember that Walt Disney, nor any of the pioneers of animation limited their art to children's audiences. As the author of THE WORLD OF ANIMATION, an Eastman Kodak book which won three international book festival awards and as an animation writer-director, I have for many years longed for the U.S.
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