Family
1981 / 83 minutes
Rating: 8/10

This one begins with an emotional punch to the gut – we watch a fox mother, holding her cub in her mouth, running frantically through the woods, the sound of shotgun blasts and baying hounds driving her even faster. In a moment of desperation, she hides her cub beside a fence post, then takes off, leading the hunters and the hounds away. And that is the last we see of her.

But the fence post belongs to a farm. And the farm belongs to the kindly Widow Tweed. When she discovers the cub, she adopts the orphan and names him Tod.

Next door lives a crusty old hunter, Amos, and his faithful and fierce and huge hunting dog Chief. They’ve got a new addition, too, a hound pup named Copper.

Soon enough, Copper and Tod meet and become the best of friends.

But as they grow older, they are told by nearly everyone that they shouldn’t be friends – that foxes and hounds should be enemies! Peer pressure and circumstances convince the hound to turn his back on Tod. That drives Tod into the forest, where he makes a new friend, a female fox Vixey. Tod’s steadfastness eventually wins back Copper, and even the crusty old Amos.

Cautions

Language concerns are limited to a “golly,” a “gee,” and a couple “gosh”s. The other cautions here are all for the under-10 set. Kids older than that should be able to deal with the emotional rollercoaster.

As mentioned – and like many a Disney film in which parents don’t fare well – the mother fox meets her demise right at the start. Thankfully it happens offscreen. There are other frantic scenes. About a half-hour in, Tod is running from Amos and his giant old hunting dog Chief, but the tension gets relieved when Tod gets away. Then, twenty minutes later, there’s a scene in which the tension isn’t really relieved, with Chief getting seriously injured after chasing Todd, and Copper vowing revenge. Then, in the finale, a giant bear makes a frightful appearance.

Worth a mention is how kids will get hit right in the heartstrings when the Widow Tweed decides she has to let Tod go on his lonesome.

Finally, like Bambi did before it, hunting is shown to be the domain of trigger-happy lunatics, so parents will have to explain that Christians can hunt, though they’ll do it a lot differently than Amos.

Conclusion

While some reviewers seem to miss it, this is a morality tale about racism – Copper and Tod are told their kind aren’t supposed to be friends, but thankfully, in the end, they don’t listen – and that’s what makes it worth watching and discussing as a family.

But using a fox and hound as a metaphor for racial differences does lead to a problematic portrayal of hunters who, if we were to extend the metaphor, would be the racists of the film and basically the equivalent of the “Ku Klux Klan.” So that’d be worth a discussion too.

Because it involves a lot of frantic action, with Amos and Chief trying to kill Tod, this would only be appropriate for 10 and up.