Most critics lean warm, and the praise gathers in two places: the animation, which nearly every review singles out for its cathedral set-pieces and the climactic assault on Notre Dame, and the film’s willingness to go darker than Disney usually dares. Frollo is the most consistently admired element, a villain several reviews find properly frightening, and the themes of lust, prejudice and acceptance are credited as unusually adult for the studio. Roger Ebert calls it the best Disney animated feature since Beauty and the Beast.
The reservations centre on what has been done to Hugo. Most reviews note that Quasimodo has been softened into a gentle everyman, and the joking gargoyles and cute sidekicks draw complaints for undercutting the tragedy. The New York Times and The New Yorker are the sharpest dissenters, finding the tone manic and the happy ending forced. The songs divide critics outright: Empire dismisses them, Radio Times finds them solid. The spread is wide, from raves to flat rejection.