After the ceremony there was a special premiere screening of the latest Disney direct-to-video release, The Three Musketeers, the first animated feature starring Mickey, Donald and Goofy together.

It was a treat as always to go the the El Capitan, that marvelously restored old theater on Hollywood Boulevard. When we entered they had free popcorn, sodas, and birthday cupcakes for all. And everyone got a duck caller when they entered. It was funny when every kid in the theatre, us included, went honking away.

Sad to say, the picture is not very good. Some of the character animation was good, and the Mickey and Minnie gags worked well, but hell, they've been working well for 75 years.

My biggest problem with it, as with Shrek and other animated efforts, is the glib, ironically self-aware style of humor used to get laughs -- as opposed to Pixar's efforts, for example. In Pixar's films, story drives character and the laughs come from within the character, as they once did in Disney films -- rather than the story being a lame framing device for cheap puns and obvious wah-wah-wah humor.

Which is not to say that ironic self-awareness can't be hilarious. The best Warner Brothers efforts, for example, live and die on that style of humor. Recent Disney efforts in this vein create an uneasy melding of Disney's old-school, character-driven storytelling and subtle gags and the somewhat broader, ironic, in-your-face wisecrackery of Looney Tunes and ultimately satisfy on neither score.

Which would be OK if the animation was particularly good, but sadly this release is from ToonDisney Studios, the TV animation folks at Disney -- the last holdout of traditional animation at the once-great House of Mouse. And alas, as with all the direct-to-video spew (Jungle Book 2, etc.) emanating from that wretched place, it looks as if it was made on the cheap. The backgrounds, which once looked so real and tactile in a Disney film you felt you could reach up to the screen and touch them, are rather slapdash, watercolory, and sketched in, supremely lacking in detail . . . take a look at Snow White, for example, and look at what real artists, given real time and a real budget, can accomplish.

The character work is broad and utterly lacking in subtlety. There were, as I say, a few bits that worked, and worked well. And some of the gags and one-liners were amusing. But Disney aims far too low, and that is a real shame.

Before the feature, Donald's first appearance, in the Silly Symphony The Wise Little Hen, was screened. A genuine treat to see this old gem from 1934 and to see how much more subtle wit and appealing character it held.