It’s not exactly a bad thing when your biggest issue with a documentary is that you wish it were a multi-part series instead. That’s exactly how I felt at the end of Disney Handcrafted. Director Leslie Iwerks uses, fittingly, a deft hand to show how Disneyland went from an idea to a reality in an impossibly short amount of time. And she does so in a way that makes a well-known story feel fresh. The doc is told entirely with stunning, never-before-seen archival footage and audio recordings. We only hear from the people responsible for building the iconic theme park. The result is a doc that works whether you’re a Disney diehard, simply love watching talented people work, or just want to be transported to an era that feels both distance yet tantalizingly close. I just wish my time in the park wasn’t so short.
Leslie Iwerks knows how to give both Disney fans and Disney newcomers/skeptics a compelling look behind-the-curtain at the Mouse House. She helmed Disney+’s 2019 The Imagineering Story, an absolutely fantastic docuseries I absolutely love. I took those high expectations with me into Disneyland Handcrafted. But this is not just a de facto extra episode of that show. This film is different in both tone and style, even if she treads some territory she has previously covered.
Disneyland Handcrafted tells the story of how Walt Disney and and an army of people turned a giant plot of dirt into an icon. And they did it in just twelve months. The seeming impossibility of that endeavor—which we see with monthly updates where so much remains work undone throughout until the final moment—drives the documentary. There’s a feeling of, “No, seriously, how did they do this?” that hovers over everything. It adds real tension to a story whose ending you know. But the doc still makes good on its promise to reveal “the extraordinary artistry and grit it took hundreds of craftspeople to bring Walt Disney’s impossible dream project of Disneyland to fruition.”
There’s a lot of that, and it’s the best reason to watch. Iwerks lets us see and experience the building of the park without telling us why we should appreciate this archival footage. It’s obvious enough on its own and she trusts her audience to understand why. And the smaller the acts of artistry we watch, the more the wonder of the Disneyland comes to life. It’s certainly impressive to see something like Adventureland built from literal scratch. And, despite a too short runtime of just 79 minutes, we get to see plenty of the macro in Disneyland Handcrafted. But Iwerks uses the big picture to frames the best aspect of the documentary. There’s an enchanting grace to watching a single artist paint a single line on a single decoration in a park that has millions of small details.
Watching someone shoot concrete onto a giant fake rock formation is fun. Seeing an unnamed worker diligently taking the time, all amid true chaos, to quietly carve a perfect line into that formation is riveting. I could have watched hours of that without even any voice over. There’s a graceful simplicity, free of skepticism, to all of it.
Getting these glimpses at the countless contributions made by so many artists, painters, designers, sculptors, and more is also why I wish Disneyland Handcrafted was so much longer. Even another 20 minutes would round it out and make it feel fuller. It’s brevity holds it back. I would have been happy to watch an entire documentary about each of the 12 months in the yearlong process.
I’d love to see an entire special about the people responsible for the ships on the Peter Pan ride. Not everyone, not even every Disney fan, would care about such a specific element in a theme park with (literally) too many to focus on. But, in a real compliment to what Disneyland Handcrafted achieves, I do think even some who don’t care about Disney would feel the same way after watching. People who love the process of creation itself will enjoy this doc. It’s easy to spend hours enjoying true craftsmanship of any kind. They’ll also wish they got to see even more of it.
That includes the fact that this archival footage—the result of Walt Disney hiring a film crew to document the park’s creation—also shows the workers as people and not just cogs. Seeing them sitting and eating, failing and having fun, shows actual humans did this, not just faceless employees. The world they inhabit feels far away, a bygone era when OSHA would have sounded like a silly idea. But because the doc treats the people in it like people they feel so close to us. They, just as much as the actual footage, make watching Disneyland Handcrafted feel like going into a time machine rather than just looking at old home movies. Like everything else, my complaint is that I wanted to see a lot more of them.
Inevitably that desire for more is a double-edged sword. Disneyland Handcrafted isn’t incomplete. It just doesn’t feel as complete as it could be and maybe should. In the macro it works as a perfect appetizer for people who don’t know anything about the building of Disneyland. It will invite them to learn even more. For people who already know much of this, it’s a way to experience this story in a new way. But old or new, you will leave wanting more. It’s like going on the tour of a house and passing by rooms full of great stuff. You want to stop and look everything inside that room at for awhile. But instead you must continue walking to peak into many other rooms full of interesting things. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s not ideal either.
But just as Walt Disney famously excused/explained his new park’s issues/unfinished elements by saying Disneyland will never be completed, Leslie Iwerks and the Mouse House can make the same claim about telling the story of why. It’s not the worst thing when a fun, engaging documentary makes you want to learn more about its subject.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. He’ll be the first in line for the Peter Pan Ride doc. Seriously. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.