I feel to resist, what with overfamiliarity and over-rating. But you can see that there are reasons for all the attention and even acclaim that the film gets. Some structure! This isn’t a linear story—unless you were to reverse it, and approach things from the wolf’s perspective—but rather a symmetrical didactic fable. It’s really nicely blocked out. Straw, sticks and brick in the building, and all revisited when the wolf (an impressive, even dangerous rag-tag creature) shows up. The point is really made! The point to which I refer is maybe not fully, or at least exclusively, the trite Depression one that habitually gets assigned to the film. The connection is apt, and the times were the times, but this basic dramatic situation is also pretty generic. This is as much the lesson we get out of the grasshopper and the ant. (Which also always gets assigned Depression significance. I’m not winning my point here!)
The music is catchy, when it’s not really getting on your nerves. “Father.” An afterthought, or buried in the decor, but it’s still one of Disney’s funniest ever jokes.