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Disney's "Hunchback" might not please Victor Hugo, but he's got plenty of tragic stature By MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." Directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise. the hype started long before the first sticky breezes of summer blockbuster season ever wafted in. On billboards, in bus shelters, in magazine ads, the message from Disney was the same: "The party starts June 21st!" Party? The word "party" is not perhaps the first that leaps to mind when one thinks of a Victor Hugo novel, particularly one even darker and more tragic than the aptly named "Les Miserables." What fresh blasphemy from the Magic Kingdom was this? Singing gargoyles? Cuddly plush hunchback merchandise? Demi Moore as Esmeralda? Across the land, literature lovers reflexively bit their lips and spewed Pepsi out of their noses every time the trailer for "Hunchback" appeared. But then Disney went and did a funny thing: It made a great film. Make no mistake -- this "Hunchback" is substantially different from Hugo's masterful and heartbreaking "Notre Dame de Paris." Characters have been cleaned up, events altered. You can't make a musical movie for kids in which the star is deaf and barely articulate. You can't sell a line of toy characters who die gruesomely. But by sticking faithfully to the broader themes of Hugo's story -- those of desolation and desire, of trust and betrayals thereof -- the creators have fashioned the most poignant and deeply moral story to roll off the Disney storyboards in decades. Quasimodo is no Sleeping Beauty, no handsome prince locked under a spell that makes him seem a beast. An unloved, horribly misshapen young man, his circumstances stem not from the caprices of enchantment but from the cruelty of nature. No touch of a magic wand, no kiss, no potion will ever release him from the prison of his own body. In the world of children's entertainment, in which beauty is equated with virtue and ugliness with vice, to have a story which asks, in the very first song, "Who is the monster and who is the man?" is in itself amazing. And it just gets deeper from there. Alone in the tower of the cathedral, carving little figures of the townspeople, assigning names and personalities to his beloved bells, and finding companionship in the hideous stone figures, Disney's Quasimodo is very much Hugo's hero -- horrible but human. And while his wisecracking gargoyle pals mostly provide comic relief, they also serve to echo the heartache at the center of Hugo's novel, reminding Quasimodo again and again that while they may be made of stone, he, in his loneliness and longing, most assuredly is not. He's more on the ball here, less touched in the head than in the book, but he's still presented as painfully awkward and blatantly ugly, and when he's scampering around the walls of the cathedral, his animal-like movements have a brutal finesse that's haunting. Social ostracism is something that any kid who has ever had gym class can probably relate to; what's trickier to translate from Hugo's original is the lust and hypocrisy of Quasimodo's guardian and protector, Frollo. In the novel, Frollo is a priest of Notre Dame, an egotist and control-freak who struggles hopelessly against his unrequited passion for Esmeralda. That the woman he desires is a member of that reviled and outcast social group, the gypsies, is all the more galling for the pious Frollo, and it's his battle with himself that is the catalyst for the plot. The Disney version turns him into a judge (Disney apparently got a little squirrely about taking on the clergy), and his moral agony exists in such an already bitter and cruel soul it's difficult to pity it. Still, whether he's lasciviously sniffing the gypsy girl's hair, bullying the naively docile Quasimodo, or singing to the lord of his "burning desire," Frollo provides as honest and unsparing a depiction of the tormented abuse of power as a kid's movie can offer. He's not the big bad wolf or the wicked witch; he's Jimmy Swaggart and Richard Nixon. He's a guy who really needs to work through his god complex. The romantic lead, Phoebus, has been radically transformed from a vile seducer to an ardent hero, and Esmeralda is no mere lovestruck babe in the woods but a feisty, athletic champion of the downtrodden. Both changes, of course, pave the way for the requisite happy ending. But for all her beauty, as a gypsy street performer, Esmeralda remains nearly as tragically outside of society as Quasimodo. It's that shared furtive alienation that makes hers and Quasimodo's such inevitable destinies, and their relationship so complex and touching. When early on, he's crowned king of the fools, tied up, mocked, and pelted with garbage, that well-tread scene of Esmeralda's act of kindness to him is so gently, subtly rendered it transcends its cartoon format and becomes simply one of pure magic. Later, in the cathedral, Esmeralda wanders among the icy statues and the spiritually vacant who pray for fame and wealth, asking God, "What do they have against people who are different?" while above, Quasimodo pines in solitude. It's a thunderbolt of raw anguish. As a tale of isolation, of being scorned for looking different or not belonging to the right social group, "Hunchback" may just be the movie "Welcome to the Dollhouse" wishes it could be. It combines squirm-inducing humiliation, desperate romantic devotion, and surprising dignity in the face of disgrace. At the end of "Beauty and the Beast," the spell is broken; with "Dollhouse," one can leave believing the Wienerdog will eventually outgrow her dorky looks. But "Hunchback," amazingly, suggests that the secret of happiness is not in transformation, but in self-acceptance -- that it is possible to be very different and still be eminently lovable. If kids come out of this movie howling for "Hunchback" plush toys, eager to embrace a character with insurmountable deformities, yes, it's great marketing. It's also, in its own small way, a subversive triumph for outcasts everywhere.

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