Lights, camera, draw.

I miss animated movies.

I miss the old Disney animated movies.

CGI is fine and all, but there's something about those moving drawings that's just...magic.

A lot of the CGI ones also seem to live or die on pop culture references.

If you get them, they're funny.

If you don't, they're not and you might just feel stupid or confused.

Sometimes I wonder if anyone will get them in the future.

I miss some of those timeless stories.

Those stories that didn't depend on pop culture references, but that might have thrown in something just for a laugh.

But only if it made sense in the story.

And most of the time, those things were more like timeless truths than references.

Most of all, I miss the stories.

The stories that looked just fine drawn out.

That will still look just fine drawn out, even if the technology improves because it gives them a new flavor and doesn't just make them look choppy.

I miss the songs too.

The songs actually sung by the characters.

The songs were fun.

Now there just don't seem to be any.

Some people have said that the hand drawn animation is the problem because the CGI is often seen as being so much better because it looks so real, but I don't think so.

I think that often the problem lies in the story itself.

Because a bad story cannot be saved by good animation, but a good story can survive bad animation.

Because it's all about the story, and if the story isn't there, neither is the movie, no matter how it's animated.

But I still miss the ones that look like they were drawn by hand.

In a lot of ways, those ones seemed more real.

Those ones had magic.

Maybe they'll come back someday.

I hope so.