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The marvelous villainess Ursula is one of Disney's classics. She has the gross unsubtlety of Ratigan from "The Great Mouse Detective" but substantially more brio. Although facially somewhat similar to "The Rescuers'" Madame Medusa, Ursula's screen impact dwarfs that of her predecessor. Bejewelled and lip-pouting like an overweight, over-rich, over-pampered, over-the-top society hostess gone mad, she is all flair, flamboyance, and theatricality mixed with a touch of con-artistry. Except when her wrath -- the only genuine emotion she seems capable of expressing -- bursts through, her every movement is a deceitful artifice, as if she's performing for an audience. Her vile hobby of collecting souls so that they can suffer humiliation in her morbid garden is utterly in keeping with her society-hostess-from-hell persona. |
