Joe Talks About Stuff: 9. Fun and Fancy Free (1947)

Disney continued their run of package films with Fun and Fancy Free, which features only two shorts with a much stronger and clearer narrative than we are used to from the previous package films. Both these shorts were originally intended to be full-length features, but as I said last week, Disney’s involvement in the Second World War meant that they not only had to divide their time and lost much of their staff, but also a lot of the original production material for each film. Ultimately, they decided to just use what they had as best they could to make two shorts that could act together as a feature length film – an admirable effort, but one that didn’t quite pay off. Fun and Fancy Free is one of the most odd and ramshackle of all of Disney’s films; it jumps from scene to scene with only a hazy connection between them and has very little sense of direction. You can see the potential for at least one, maybe two good films here, but the overall product is just a mess.

The film opens, as usual, with a song, and not a bad one, it’s hardly one of their best, but it’s fun and catchy enough. Then, we see who is singing the song: Jiminy Cricket from Pinocchio! It is here where many problems of this film start. Why Jiminy Cricket? What’s he doing here? For that matter, who is he? Now, obviously anyone reading this is going to be familiar with Jiminy Cricket because we’ve already talked about Pinocchio, I imagine most people in this day and age will probably have grown up watching Pinocchio anyway and I’m sure at the time it was popular and a lot of kids had seen it then too; I don’t doubt that a lot of people recognised Jiminy Cricket, but not everyone would have. The problem isn’t that Disney brought back a previous character for this film, the problem, other than the fact that his presence is entirely pointless anyway (I’ll get to that in a second), is that they never explain who Jiminy Cricket is. He kind of introduces himself to another character at one point, but not properly and he never introduces himself formally to the audience; he also never mentions he’s from Pinocchio or talks about anything or anyone from that film. Again, I’m sure a lot of kids would have seen this and gone ‘Oh it’s Jiminy Cricket!’ and needed no more and that’s fine, but you can’t just assume that – if this was Pinocchio 2, then sure, fine, you go into a sequel with the assumption that the audience has seen the previous movie and thus should know the story and characters, if they haven’t then that is their own fault. But this movie isn’t called Pinocchio 2, it’s called Fun and Fancy Free, at no point are you led to believe you need to have knowledge of a previous Disney film to understand or enjoy this; though to be honest, it hardly matters if you’ve seen Pinocchio or know who Jiminy is anyway, because he’s ultimately completely irrelevant. I understand the concept here, Jiminy Cricket was a popular character (I assume) from a previous Disney film so they decided to bring him back, I get it... but what I don’t really get is what they brought him back to do. I assumed Jiminy was going to play the role of a host, to introduce the two different shorts to the audience and act as a framing device, like Deems Taylor in Fantasia or José and Panchito in The Three Caballeros, but he doesn’t really do that. Jiminy enters a library singing a song, then just kind of stumbles onto a record that starts the first short, so I suppose that sort of counts as introducing it, but then he goes to a birthday party and just sits in the background while the next “host” takes over - and believe me I’ll get to that guy - and we barely see Jiminy again. Why was he there? What is the point? Was Disney really so desperate to somehow fix this movie that they decided to throw in a previously known character just to keep people’s attention? Did they have that little confidence in these shorts? It’s not really clear, but in my opinion the reasoning behind Jiminy’s inclusion is related to another of the film’s biggest problems – padding, which I’ll get more into later.

WHY ARE YOU EVEN HERE JIMINY GO HOME (Also, heavy reading, yeesh)

For now, let’s get into the first of the two shorts, “Bongo”, which follows a famous circus bear that decides to run away and live in the wild. The animation is pretty good and the backgrounds of the forest are very nice, but there’s really not much going on here; “Bongo” falls into this familiar problem of being cute, but not much else – that’s something you can get away with a few times, but by this point, it’s becoming a bit tiresome. At least most of the other times we’ve run into the issue it’s been shorter segments that run only 6 or 7 minutes, in a film that collects a pretty big number of shorts, but “Bongo” is over 30 minutes and is one of only two shorts in this film - it is a lot more important for it to be good, because it takes up half the movie. You really start to feel the length by the end, too, even though 30 minutes really isn’t that long, it really drags on; the final section, featuring a fight between Bongo and the villain, seems to last forever, the pacing is simply bad. It’s not terrible or anything, there are some cute visual gags, good animation and a decent song or two, but there is just no substance to this, you don’t get pulled into Bongo’s world or invested in his plight, you don’t become interested in any of the “characters”, there’s just nothing to really get that involved in.

Yep, that’s uh, that’s a bear alright

The other short is “Mickey and the Beanstalk”, which is, unsurprisingly, a retelling of “Jack and the Beanstalk” starring Mickey, Donald and Goofy; but before we can even get to this short, we have to meet our new “host”. Jiminy Cricket decides to crash a little girl’s birthday party (Yeah it’s as weird as it sounds), which is done in live action, rather than animation – Disney seems to have become obsessed with mixing live action and animation at this point, it was nice to see in The Three Caballeros guys, but you don’t have to keep doing it, please, try something else. Anyway, this section of the film is hosted by a guy and his two creepy looking puppets, who are telling the story of “Mickey and the Beanstalk” to a little girl, but not before some “comedy” with the puppets, first. This scene looks like something out of a fucking nightmare, these puppets look so weird and seem to just talk and move on their own, this man talks to a weird face he drew on his hand and this little girl is all alone with this man and his puppets, we know he’s not her father, where are her parents SOMETHING IS VERY WRONG HERE. Seriously, this is straight from the mind of John Wayne Gacy or something, it is so strange and the weirdest part of all is, just like Jiminy, WE ARE NEVER TOLD WHO THIS MAN IS. He doesn’t introduce himself or his puppets or explain anything about who he is or what is going on; why is this man here? Why are these puppets here? It’s like a fucking fever dream, nothing makes sense. After the film I did some checking and found out this guy is called Edgar Bergen, an actor and ventriloquist whose act included these two puppet characters, Charlie and Mortimer. Cool, BUT WHY SHOULD I KNOW THAT!? It’s the same problem as with Jiminy, I’m sure Bergen was quite popular at the time and many people would have known him, but you cannot just assume that knowledge is inherent – if you don’t know who this guy is, then you get NO explanation and are just left confused, which wouldn’t be a problem if it was just a guy telling a story, that could be anyone, but he is a guy with two weird looking puppets that have established personalities and jokes that you are supposed to already know about. It’s like you came into a different film half-way through, like Jiminy got bored of the last one and just said ‘Fuck it let’s go see what’s going on in this house.’ And the two of you just walk in on this guy entertaining a little girl with puppets and a face he drew on his hand, which out of context is really surreal and confusing and even in context is still FUCKING NUTS. I find it hard to believe that kids at the time really knew who this guy was or got what was going on, but even if they did, it’s still odd and a kid today would have NO chance; this doesn’t just date the film, but it fundamentally damages its “narrative” – if you can even call it that – and makes it difficult to follow or understand and even harder to get into.

David Lynch’s Fun and Fancy Free

Now, perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if that was where it ended – you get this bizarre scene of a man and some puppets talking to a little girl, but whatever, Disney movies have weird, seemingly irrelevant scenes all the time you can just ignore and just watch the short. At least you could, if the PUPPETS WOULDN’T STOP FUCKING TALKING OVER IT; Bergen narrating “Mickey and the Beanstalk” is fine, that’s what he’s there for, but what is not necessary is a constant barrage of “jokes” from his two stupid puppets. I’m trying to watch the short which is, by the way, well-animated and very fun at times, but it’s extremely hard to get engrossed in it when these puppets won’t stop making fun of it and being stupid – one of the puppets in particular, Charlie, is obviously supposed to be the funny one and he won’t stop being snarky and sarcastic; it’s like watching a really obnoxious form of Mystery Science Theatre. No, you know what, that’s exactly what it is – it’s a guy and two puppets talking over a movie and making snarky comments, it’s Mystery Science Theatre except Mystery Science Theatre was actually, you know, FUNNY. Honestly, it is exhausting, a couple of the jokes are alright but they just will not give it a rest and let the short run and on top of that, they keep stopping it entirely to cut back to the live action scene of Bergen and the puppets so they can make even more jokes. This ties back to that fundamental problem of padding I was talking about, clearly Disney’s wartime issues meant that they didn’t have time to flesh these shorts out as much as they wanted and so they had to stuff irrelevant scenes in-between to extend the run time to full feature length. I get that, I really do, but it doesn’t make it any easier to watch – I want to watch “Mickey and the Beanstalk”, which is honestly a good short, I don’t want to watch some 1940’s Jeff Dunham make stupid quips with his weird looking puppets; you can clearly see Disney trying to stretch the short out for as long as possible by frequently pausing it to cut back to Bergen and again, I understand why they did this, but that does not make it right. I know they were trying to make the best of a bad situation, but they should have done so by just putting what they had out there and letting it speak for itself – Saludos Amigos was only 42 minutes, so I don’t understand why they couldn’t just let this one run short and not waste our time with these embarrassing attempts at padding which not only slow down the movie’s pacing, but also hurt “Mickey and the Beanstalk” by killing its momentum and undermining it, which is a real shame because, like I said, it’s honestly a good short.

‘If that puppet tells one more joke it’s gonna be Virginia Tech all over again, that’s how crazy I am right now’

Fun and Fancy Free is a very confused movie, full of weird scenes with little connection to one another, awkward attempts at padding and pandering to the audience and an overall attitude of, if not laziness, then at least defeatism. There are honestly some decent ideas here, “Bongo” has an interesting concept, some fun character designs and good animation, “Mickey and the Beanstalk” has a good style and look, a fun and simple premise and a pretty enjoyable character in the form of Willie the Giant. Unfortunately, both are hampered by the awkward attempts at framing the story, the lack of general direction and the fact that “Bongo” is just too long and, as a result of being stopped and ignored for several minutes at a time, “Mickey and the Beanstalk” feels too disjointed and badly paced. Once again, I understand the problems Disney were having at the time and why it led to this, but that is no excuse for what is, quite frankly, a pretty bad movie.

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