11. The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)

The last of Disney’s six package films is The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, which, like Fun and Fancy Free, features only two shorts with a prominent narrative; in this case, “The Wind in the Willows” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” - based on the classic stories of the same names - which star the titular Mr. Toad and Ichabod, respectively.  Like “Mickey and the Beanstalk”, both these films originated as full-length features, but had to be cut down to shorts due to production troubles and time constraints that Disney rain into due to their involvement in the Second World War. Though generally an improvement on Fun and Fancy Free, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad still suffers from some of the familiar issues of weak pacing and a lack of originality and creativity, in lieu of simply being “cute”.

The film doesn’t have much of a framing device, it simply shows a library featuring the books of “The Wind in the Willows” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and then opens them up to reveal the story; not exactly creative, but effective and refreshing, considering how Fun and Fancy Free’s attempts at establishing a more concrete framing device for its shorts only served to hurt the movie as a whole. First is “The Wind in the Willows”, narrated by actor Basil Rathbone – famous for playing Sherlock Holmes – whose dignified, upper-class British accent matches the setting and tone of the short perfectly. Narration is used much better here than in some of Disney’s other shorts, particularly “Bongo” and “Peter and the Wolf”, where the narrator constantly describes what is going on and never lets the characters or visuals speak for themselves, or “Mickey and the Beanstalk”, where the short is constantly interrupted for stupid jokes and snide comments from the narrators. The narration here sets the scene well, but it knows when to stop and let the characters talk, or when to let the action speak for itself – it knows that good animation should rarely need narration to explain it and follows the age old technique of “show, don’t tell”. The animation is nothing new or innovative, but it’s certainly very enjoyable to watch – the animals don’t exactly have creative designs, but look good enough and are very lively in their movements, which fits the comical and over-the-top style of the short; the physical humour here is really quite funny. The backgrounds are even better and, as always, are lovingly and carefully constructed; Disney has a real talent for creating natural, pastoral atmospheres, their woodland backgrounds from this short, as well as films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Bambi are always fantastic and some of their finest pieces of art.

Mr. Toad’s Really Fucking Balls to the Wall Ride

The characters are larger than life and very engaging, Toad in particular holds the short together by being lovably wild, energetic, restless and most of all, fun; though careless and often selfish, you can’t help but enjoy Toad’s lust for life and happy-go-lucky demeanour, which means you genuinely care about his plight and want things to turn out alright for him. Also of note is Cyril, Toad’s wise-talking horse and partner in crime, who speaks in a Lancashire accent; he is lovable in the same ways, though a bit of a troublemaker, you can’t help but get invested in his reckless behaviour and he’s always a lot of fun. The other animals aren’t quite as interesting, but they work effectively as straight men to Toad – together they form a solid ensemble whose interactions and charming and funny. The best parts of the short are the courtroom scene, which has some amusing satire towards the legal system and the climax, which features a rather inventive and exciting chase scene. “The Wind in the Willows” doesn’t break any new ground and is ultimately a pretty standard Disney cartoon, but it’s probably one of the better ones.

This is such a funny image to me look how small Toad is how does he even reach the pedals even the gun is bigger than him he looks so sad hahah

Unfortunately, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is not quite as engaging and falls back into some old bad habits. It’s narrated by the legendary Bing Crosby, whose voice is as charming as always, but the narration isn’t used as well here as in “The Wind in the Willows”; while that short knew to keep the narration limited and let the short present its own story, here, Crosby’s narration is pretty constant. This means that we don’t get to hear much from the characters, while Crosby does explain their personalities and we can get a glimpse of them through their actions, it becomes a little difficult to be too interested in Ichabod’s story when we pretty much never hear him speak. For that matter, Ichabod is actually kind of a jerk! The central plot of the short – not that it ever really gets resolved – is Ichabod’s desire to marry the beautiful Katrina, but as Crosby tells us in detail, Ichabod is pretty much only interested in Katrina for her money; not only that, but he takes advantage of many other women’s feelings for him by getting them to cook for him, while clearly having no interest in them as people. It’s kind of hard to root for Ichabod, to want to see him get the girl instead of the burly Brom Bones (Who, despite being a bit of a trickster and jealous of Ichabod, is said by the narrator himself to generally be a pretty nice guy) or to want him survive his encounter with the Headless Horseman when he’s a bit of a selfish jerk. By all means, Toad is selfish, but not intentionally – it is clear that he does care about his friends and doesn’t mean to put them through any trouble, but his childish naiveté and reckless thirst for adventure causes him to do stupid things without thinking about it; ultimately he does learn his lesson and makes amends, even though it’s clear that he’s still prone to a little reckless mischief. Ichabod on the other hand, is calm and in control, he is very clearly aware of his actions and acts deliberately – he intentionally leads women on in order to receive gifts from them, he pursues Katrina with the deliberate intent of getting his hands on her money and land; he quite clearly doesn’t care much about anyone but himself and is willing to take advantage of others to get what he wants. I know it’s a goofy, comical cartoon, but it’s still a little unsettling to have Ichabod as our hero, meaning he isn’t a strong enough protagonist to hold the short together – unlike Toad – and as a result, the short kind of falls apart.

Now, I aint’saying he’s a gold digger...

The animation and story are nothing special, there’s not much going on here; the pacing is pretty crappy, the Headless Horseman only appears in about 4 minutes of the 30 minute short and it’s a little disappointing. The story doesn’t even naturally lead up to the confrontation either, I could understand if most of the short acted as build-up to the eventual climactic chase, but most of it is just scenes of Ichabod coming to town, being a bit of a jerk and trying to woo Katrina before, in the last 10 or so minutes, we are introduced to the idea of the Headless Horseman in a story. I suppose this is supposed to be setting up Ichabod’s character, but as I said before, his character is never really established that firmly and the few parts of his personality that we do get are pretty negative and unlikeable. I understand the short could hardly be 30 minutes of the Headless Horseman chasing Ichabod, but you’d think this would at least be the central focus of the short, as opposed to being something that is suddenly brought up near the end and then only featured in the last few minutes. This really makes the short feel messy, with a trailing, slow and rather dull story that runs through most of it before suddenly being abandoned for a chase scene; the Headless Horseman looks cool and all, but he practically comes out of nowhere and has nothing to do with the story we’ve seen so far. The ending is very sudden and awkward, Ichabod... dies, maybe? Then Katrina marries Brom and we hear that maybe Ichabod is alive, but maybe not and then the movie is over. I understand Disney was following the ending to the original short story on which this is based, but I dunno, they’ve changed things before to fit the format of their stories better, so why not this? They at least could have approached it differently, as it is, this hardly works as the ending of a relatively light-hearted and comical short – the tone and pacing of this short is all over the place and it results in a disappointing, if harmless, segment.

‘Hey Ichabod, if they made a movie of us what actor do you think would play me?’

‘Um, I dunno, Christopher Walken?’

‘Hahahaha good one man, you’re a funny guy’

That’s pretty much all there is to say about The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, considering it follows the same kind of format of Fun and Fancy Free and has some of the same problems, there isn’t really much I can say here that I haven’t said about that, or any of Disney’s other package films. The film is not especially bad, it is just the last in a long line of package films, an idea that, by this point, had become very tired and worn out. While nothing spectacular, “The Wind in the Willows” is still a fun and memorable short with some great characters, jokes and animation, but the confused and poorly paced “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is not a good enough follow up, which drags the film as a whole down. The film is certainly still an improvement on Fun and Fancy Free, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s a good thing that The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad was the last of its kind.  

Other Thoughts

• At the end of “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” at Disneyland you die and GO TO HELL JESUS CHRIST 

Happiest Place on Earth™ !

5/10

Next Week: Cinderella!

Email: joetalksaboutstuff@gmail.com

Twitter: @JSChilds

10. Melody Time (1948)

So next was Melody Time, which is basically just Make Mine Music 2, it follows the same format of shorts based around (mostly) contemporary music, as opposed to the classical theme of Fantasia and similarly forgoes any framing story or continuing narration in lieu of just showing the name of the shorts on screen and letting them play. However, there are only 7 shorts here to Make Mine Music’s 10; while this only seems like a very small difference, it has a reasonably strong impact, as having just 3 less makes a lot of the shorts in Melody Time feel a little too bloated. Make Mine Music certainly had some duds in the mix, a few of the shorts were a lot slower and less interesting, but because they didn’t last too long and there was a lot more of them, the slower moments ultimately didn’t hurt the film quite as much in the long run. In Melody Time, however, the weaker shorts just last a little too long, there are less better ones to round out the mix and even some of the better ones drag on a bit too long as well, making it difficult for the film to live up to its predecessor.

The first short is “Once Upon a Wintertime”, a love story between a boy and a girl (and two rabbits as well, I guess) during... well, the wintertime. It’s okay. The animation is pretty interesting, it’s a style Disney hasn’t really used thus far – there is a softness to the lines, everything is quite rounded and very stylised, the characters look sort of like they are out of an old Archie comic, it’s a pretty cool style. The music is pretty standard in comparison though and overall the short falls a little flat as an intro. The next short, “Bumble Boogie”, is a lot better, but a little disappointing for different reasons; it follows a bumble bee being chased by hostile music and instruments to the sound of a jazz variation of Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee”. I think this fits the idea that Melody Time and Make Mine Music were supposed to be Fantasia for the modern era of music better than a lot of other shorts, it takes a piece of classical music and mixes it with contemporary music to put a modern spin on it, that seems to fulfil the ambition they had in mind pretty well. The almost neon colours are vibrant and eye-catching and the animation is spirited, creative and fun, on the face of it this is a great short; what’s a little disappointing however, is the fact that at this point, I feel like I’ve just seen enough Disney shorts play a piece of music and have the animation match every step of the rhythm and in particular, where they just show the musical notes and instruments moving around on the screen to the sounds - this short is very similar to the Make Mine Music short “After You’ve Gone” in this regard. There’s nothing wrong with the idea in and of itself and I know it’s kind of the point of the film, so I can hardly get mad, but “Bumble Boogie”, while definitely fun, just approaches this idea from the exact same angle as so many others we’ve already seen. The idea was just becoming a little tired to me, by this point, it’s still a good short but I found it hard to get too into it, because of this.

Be the bee.

Probably the most famous segment of the movie is “The Legend of Johnny Appleseed”, which retells the life of the famous American pioneer and folk hero. This “short” (It’s almost 20 minutes long!) is more like a mini-Disney movie, it is not set to one piece of music, but is narrated in rhyme and has several unique songs within the narrative, just like a full length Disney animated feature would. This segment is definitely flawed, but still one of the highlights of the movie, the animation is nothing experimental or anything, but it’s good and has some great imagery, such as the many apple trees stretching out into the clouds. The narrative is very schmaltzy and a little too sweet  - the narrator literally says ‘well shucks’ at one point – but you can forgive it and it is still pretty charming. The songs are pretty great, in particular Johnny’s main song, “The Lord’s Been Good to Me” – which reminds me a little of “Bless your Beautiful Hide” from Seven Brides For Seven Brothers – which is very sweet and memorable. This isn’t one of Disney’s greatest shorts, but it’s definitely still a good one and one of the strongest of the movie, I think it might have worked better as a full length feature though. Next is “Little Toot” which is... I dunno, forgettable is really all I can say, there’s really not much to it; it’s about a boat who causes some trouble for his Dad and then ends up helping him at the end. Yay...? I don’t know, the animation is definitely very good and the music is catchy enough, but there doesn’t seem to be much soul or creativity to this one; once again, it falls into that problem of being cute, but not much else - it’s hard to really criticise it too much, but there isn’t much to praise either.

‘Are those police boats?’

‘They have boats?’

Next a recitation of the poem “Trees”, set to some images of, shockingly, some trees, as well as nature in general. This one slows things down a little and is more heavy on atmosphere and mood than narrative or crazy visuals, which is good, it is a much needed rest and isn’t so slow as to kill your enthusiasm too much. Like “Blue Bayou” in Make Mine Music, “Trees” feels kind of like the resident call back to Fantasia - its highly detailed, rich backgrounds, use of atmosphere, slow pace and focus on nature and careful movement are all reminiscent of Fantasia. While this makes for a good short, again, at this point the constant attempts to recapture the magic of Fantasia are getting a little tired and it can get a little frustrating waiting for Disney to just move on and embrace something different; the short’s still good, though. We continue to cling to the past with “Blame it on the Samba”, which brings back José Carioca from Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros, as well as the latin theme those movies shared, as he and Donald go to a cafe and dance to samba music. The music is perfectly fun and upbeat, as is the animation, but again the creativity is sorely lacking because we have seen this enough already – two whole movies were dedicated to this idea, we didn’t need any more shorts based around these characters or this type of music guys, move on. The attempts run even further than this when they not only bring back that stupid little bird who looks like Woody Woodpecker AGAIN (I’d say he’s starting to turn into “The Hooter” of these package films, but to be fair he’s a lot less annoying here) but they also bring back the live action woman who danced with Donald in The Three Caballeros for another “revolutionary” scene with blends live action and animation. We get it guys, you can put live action and animation together. It’s impressive. Great job. Do you think you could do something else? I dunno, maybe I’m being  a little too hard on Disney here, but I’m just getting a little tired of seeing the same stuff from them at this point and it made me kinda lose interest in the film.

FUCK OFF

Thankfully, the film brings back some energy and creativity with the last short, “Pecos Bill”, which – after a rather tedious and unnecessary live action introduction – follows the adventures of the titular cowboy, the ‘toughest critter West of the Alamo’ and his adventures alongside his trusty horse, Widowmaker, a name which sounds like a finishing move for the Undertaker. This segment is great, there is so much energy and creativity to the animation here, the crazy, hyperactive and over-the-top imagery fits the ridiculous nature of the Pecos Bill legends perfectly. There’s a lot of Disney’s signature style of making the movements as insane as elaborate as they can, as opposed to just the bare minimum and as always, it’s a joy to watch, especially after some of the previous shorts seemed a little phoned-in; there are just so many imaginative moments, my favourite of which has Bill’s horse riding on him, as Bill propels them across a river by shooting his guns repeatedly, like a boat’s motor. Like “The Legend of Johnny Appleseed”, “Pecos Bill” is a longer short with a heavier narrative and while it does run out of steam little by the end, it always holds your attention and is mostly very fun. This is probably the best short of the bunch and a great ending to the movie, reminding us that, despite some less imaginative shorts along the way, Disney still had a lot of creativity in them and still knew how to throw out a hell of an ending.

Just an odd sight

It’s hard to criticise Melody Time too much, because it honestly does try and has a lot of good moments, but it’s hard to get too into it either, because a lot of these ideas just seem tired by this point. This is the fifth Disney film to feature shorts paired with music and the third to feature music-based shorts exclusively; while the idea is, as always, a sound one, new ideas and creativity were clearly running a little dry. I just think they’d done a few too many in this format and I imagine Disney agreed, because – as previously mentioned – they only released so many package films in a row due to the issues that World War II caused for them and after Melody Time, they didn’t release another musically themed package film until Fantasia 2000. Melody Time is hardly a triumphant farewell to this format and definitely doesn’t live up to Fantasia or even Make Mine Music, but it’s still a pretty fun movie; on the whole, there are more weak shorts than strong ones here, but the better shorts are definitely strong enough to make Melody Time a reasonably fun time, but that’s about all.

Other Thoughts

• Oh God more vultures 

They always have that same face it is the FACE OF EVIL

5/10

Next Week: The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad!

Email: jschilds@gmail.com

Twitter: @JSChilds

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. 

Other Thoughts

• The tradition of just copying other animal character designs continues with Chip and Dale, look it’s Chip and Dale yaaaay

Okay, yeah Dale has a red nose but come on

• For all the issues that plague “Mickey and the Beanstalk”, making a song out of ‘Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum’ is pretty cool and impressive.

‘I smell the blood of a guy who watches too much RiffTrax’

• CLEO’S BACK 

HELL YEAH KAWAII FISH LIFE

• Also more crows booooooo 

RACIST

4.5/10

Email: joetalksaboutstuff@gmail.com

Twitter: @JSChilds

8. Make Mine Music (1946)

During World War II, much of Disney’s staff had been drafted into the army or were working on propaganda cartoons for the US Government (On that note, check out the short “Der Fuehrer’s Face” if you want to see Donald Duck as a Nazi), as a result, they had little time to work on any full narrative projects; thus, through the course of the war and a few of the following years, they released a series of six anthology or “package” films which tied a number of different shorts  together to form a full feature. Unsurprisingly, these six films are some of Disney’s lesser-known works, likely due to their different format and style and I must confess that, until now, I had only seen bits and pieces of most of them. The first two of these six are the previously discussed Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros and next up is the appropriately titled Make Mine Music, which used a musical theme to tie its shorts together, as opposed to the South American theme of its predecessors.  Disney had previously planned to do a series of films in the style of Fantasia, but the poor financial success of the film, coupled with the high cost of the extremely elaborate animation and potentially alienating use of classical music means they were never able to do so (At least, until Fantasia 2000). So, they decided to form Make Mine Music into a kind of spiritual successor to Fantasia, featuring shorts based around more contemporary music, with a few classical pieces and even a poem thrown in. The result is a spirited, fun-filled romp that won’t fail to bring a smile to your face.

Make Mine Music doesn’t really utilise a framing device to tie the shorts together, it just introduces each one with a brief title card, as if you’re at a concert and checking what’s next on the program. This works just fine, it knows what kind of film it is and doesn’t try to fake a narrative or introduce each piece extensively like Deems Taylor in Fantasia; thankfully, this keeps the film moving along at a steady pace as each short quickly transitions into the other, ensuring that if you don’t like one, there’s another one coming up in just a minute that you might.  The animation is a step up from Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros; while most segments are still animated in more of a classic cartoon style than Disney’s narrative features, the rough edges have been smoothed out a little and on the whole it looks a lot better. The animation is still relatively simplistic, for Disney anyway, but it’s well suited to the short format and there are still some very original ideas in here. The film starts off with “The Martins and the Coys”, a comic retelling of the Hatfield-McCoys feud; it’s silly, over-the top and actually, surprisingly violent and morbid! There’s a lot of shooting and a LOT of death, but it’s never gory or serious, the fighting is all cartoonish and silly, so it never becomes too grim; it goes on maybe a little too long and isn’t exactly the best start, but it’s fun enough and the music is pretty catchy. Next up is “Blue Bayou” (Probably the origin of the Disneyland restaurant of the same name) a simple piece depicting birds gliding across the Florida everglades. Apparently, this segment was originally intended to be part of Fantasia and I can see why, because it certainly fits the style of that film better – the backgrounds are beautiful, highly detailed and rich in colour and atmosphere. There’s something missing here that doesn’t quite capture the magic of Fantasia though, I heard that the music accompanying this short was originally supposed to be the classical piece “Claire De Lune”, but the version I saw featured the original song “Blue Bayou”, so I checked out the original version that had been cut from Fantasia and I definitely think it fits a lot better – a shame it was reworked for Make Mine Music because it really is a beautiful piece.

‘If this is supposed to be a Cajun restaurant, then WHERE’S THE FUCKING CRAWFISH?’

Next is “All the Cats Join In”, a jazzy short featuring a bunch of teens dancing to swing music, while a pencil draws the action as it happens. This one is great, it’s just pure fun and energy, the music is super upbeat and catchy and the use of the pencil is very clever and creative; one notable moment occurs when the pencil starts to draw the car the characters get into, but they drive off before it can finish, leaving only half a car. Another is when the pencil draws a girl but accidentally makes her butt too big, much to her annoyance; this is not only legitimately quite funny, but the fact that the pencil can’t always keep up with the very action it is trying animate just emphasises how fast-paced and energetic this short is – it’s definitely one of the best in the film. It’s followed by “Without You” which, to be honest I barely even remember; it’s  kind of similar to “Blue Bayou” in that it’s more about the backgrounds and the atmosphere than any kind of narrative or animation, which is nice and all, but a little dull. A lot of the film consists of this structure of following a more high energy and comical short with a more serious and atmospheric one, which is a good idea in theory, as it keeps things from getting too crazy or too heavy, but I’m not sure if it really worked that well in practice.

Little too much junk in the animated trunk

Next is probably one of the more – if not the most – famous shorts from the film, “Casey at the Bat”, a musical recitation of the poem about an arrogant but beloved baseball player. I like this one a lot too, it has a lot of really great physical humour and some truly outlandish and bizarre visual gags. The animation is all really fast and exaggerated and there are a lot of good jokes about the famously complex and hard to understand rules of baseball - lots of images of balls being thrown back and forth seemingly randomly, players doing apparently meaningless hand gestures that are so complex and awkward they end up tying their fingers in knots, it’s great. Casey himself is wonderfully cocky, he’s such a smug asshole, the very particular decisions in his design and style of animation – his big, puffed out chest, shit-eating grin and slow, cocky swagger of a walk – are all very clever and help cement his character, which only makes it all the more satisfying when he fails. When Casey strikes out, the scene suddenly changes to an idyllic picture of chirpy blue birds and frolicking children in a park, before cutting back to Casey, who is now crying and snivelling like a spoiled child because he finally struck out. This is such a strange moment and the ridiculously sugar sweet imagery of the park almost seems like a self-parody of Disney’s style and some of their odd transitions, such as cutting from the extremely dark moment of Bambi learning of his mother’s death to a bright and sunny forest, also with a bunch of chirpy blue birds; I had to laugh. Funniest of all is this one guy who is rooting for the rival team, he has a delightfully goofy voice and design and when his team is doing well he innocently cheers them on... only to get beat up by the home team’s fans; then, as the home team starts to make a comeback, this poor guy just sits there, looking more and more defeated as the home team fans continue to beat on this poor guy! It’s so hilariously pathetic, the guy looks so sad. This is a really funny short. Once again, this is followed by a more serious short, “Two Silhouettes”, which just features... well, two silhouettes, dancing. It’s a neat effect and a nice idea but it can’t really capture your attention after “Casey at the Bat”.

Mudville - the Millwall of the baseball world

Next the classic “Peter and the Wolf”, which is one of my favourite pieces of music ever, so I have to admit I’m a little bias to this section, even though I can acknowledge that the animation isn’t really as good as the music. The introduction is great, explaining all the characters and corresponding instruments and they even borrow a bit of imagery from the opening to Fantasia in the form of the colourful shapes representing different musical instruments, but the short itself is a bit too... on the nose for me. I know “Peter and the Wolf” has always had a narrator to explain the story, but I don’t know how much it was really needed here, I think the animation should have stood on its own and told a story with the music, isn’t that kind of the point of the film? Maybe it’s just the narrator’s weird voice, but for some reason he kind of gets on my nerves, I don’t know I just think he kind of puts a damper on the segment and doesn’t really need to be there. It’s still a good segment and the music is, of course, fantastic, but I think it’s sidetracked a little too much just so they can have a bird acting goofy and a guy make jokes over it, I dunno. Thankfully the next piece, “After You’ve Gone”, picks up the pace a little as a bunch of anthropomorphic instruments dance to a jazz song; the song is great and the animation is fun to watch, but I dunno I think I was kind of getting tired of this kind of short by this point. Don’t get me wrong, Disney are always great at matching animation to the rhythm of music and creating interestingly abstract shapes and colours to represent different sounds, but I dunno, we’ve seen a bit too much of it by this point. It’s a fun short, but it started to feel like the creativity was running a little dry.

Look at the duck it doesn’t give a shit

Next is “Johnnie Fedora and Alice Blue Bonnet”, a musical love story about two hats that fall in love in a department store but are torn apart when bought by different owners and must find their way back to one another. This one’s a sweet idea and the song is nice, but it doesn’t exactly go anywhere that interesting; some of the gags about the different hats are pretty funny, but that’s about it. This one reminded me a lot of the recent Pixar short “The Blue Umbrella”, which is about the titular blue umbrella, carried by a man, falling in love with a red umbrella he sees carried by a woman; the two are separated when the man and woman walk separate ways and the blue umbrella escapes from the man in his search to be reunited with the red umbrella. It’s pretty much the same basic narrative, right up to the point where both the blue umbrella and Johnnie Fedora are trampled, damaged and left in the street, before finally reuniting with their loved one. It’s very possible that Pixar got their inspiration from this short and that’s pretty cool to see, but I think they ultimately did a better job than this; not to say there’s anything wrong with this short, it’s cute, but that’s it. Finally, the film ends on “The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met” (Descriptive, but not very succinct ) which chronicles the story of an opera singing whale who is hunted by a composer who believes that the whale has in fact swallowed an opera singer and is determined to get them out. Most of this short is just okay, but I have to admit being impressed by the very strange and original premise, the idea is almost Seussical (Is that a word? I feel like that should probably be a word). Most notable is the fact that this short and thus, the film itself, takes quite a dark turn and ends on a very bittersweet note when we see the whale achieve great heights as an opera singer, only to discover this was all a dream of what could have been possible, had he not been killed by the misguided composer. It’s a genuinely tragic climax - appropriate, considering this is supposed to be an opera - but the film closes on a hopeful moment as the whale sings on in heaven and the audience is promised that ‘miracles never really die’. It’s a surprisingly mature and thoughtful moment and a satisfying close to the film.

Get off the stage you downy-clown ass fuck

The shorts of Make Mine Music are hit and miss; though thankfully they hit more than miss, those few missteps do unfortunately hold it back from being a truly great film. Though the idea of doing a version of Fantasia with contemporary music is an exciting one, Make Mine Music doesn’t quite live up to its predecessor, but obviously that was a very hard act to follow. Viewed by its own merit, the film has a great sense of humour, some catchy music and a lot of fun, if not revolutionary, animation. If this is one you’ve never seen, I definitely recommend checking it out.

Other Thoughts

• The bird in “Peter and the Wolf” looks kinda like that Woody Woodpecker bird from “The Three Caballeros” and is just as annoying, no more of this bird please.

What kind of bird suffers from male pattern baldness

6/10

Next Week: Fun and Fancy Free!

Email: joetalksaboutstuff@gmail.com

Twitter: @JSChilds

6. Saludos Amigos (1942) and 7. The Three Caballeros (1944)

Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros are two rather unusual entries into the Disney animated canon that are perhaps quite often forgotten today; their origin, however, is an interesting story. On the cusp of the United States’ entry into World War II, Disney were asked by the US Government to go on a goodwill tour around Latin America, in order to strengthen the bond between the two, as several South American countries had ties to Nazi Germany and the US wanted to keep things friendly between them. The result is the aforementioned films, two anthology or “package” films, which combine a number of different shorts, each based on different aspects of Latin American culture. The result is an, at times interesting, but often confused and somewhat tedious affair; as these are not traditional movies, with little narrative, characterisation or direction, it is hard to talk about them in detail, but I’ll try as best as I can to share how I feel.

The animation in both films is serviceable, if nothing special. As said before, the films are made up of a number of different shorts, unsurprisingly, then, the animation style here is more reminiscent of Disney’s previous short cartoons, as opposed to their full-length features. The animation is still good, but it is certainly not on the level of quality of any of the previous Disney movies, like I said, it’s just in the style of their normal cartoons, nothing different or extravagant. One point of interest however, is that several sections of The Three Caballeros combine hand drawn animation with live action footage, in one of the earlier experiments with this technique, as far as I know. While this technique has hardly been perfected, yet – it’s still a long way off til Who Framed Roger Rabbit – it still looks good and is quite impressive for the time. While you don’t always think that Donald or the other animated characters are really in these live action locations and you rarely feel that the live action actors are in the animated backgrounds (they hardly blend in at all) there are times when the interaction between the two is quite impressive, such as when Donald is thrown up and down on the beach or is dancing with a woman. Again, there are a lot of flaws in the use of this technique, but it’s charming to see it in its infancy and must have been quite novel at the time.

Well, you know what they say about big bills

Each film has somewhat of a framing device that ties the shorts together, though in neither case is it particularly strong and in Saludos Amigos it is kind of hard to call it a framing device at all, as it is simply just a narrator explaining how the Disney animators came up with the different shorts and then introducing them; still, this is no worse than Deems Taylor’s introductions in Fantasia. The live action footage and narration is actually very interesting, it is fascinating to see the Disney artists and animators in their environment, to see how they drew inspiration from their surroundings, how they formed that into a solid idea for a short and the various different levels of concept art. Funnily enough, their concept art and breathtaking sketches and paintings of the South American landscape are a lot nicer to look at than the animation of the actual shorts. Still, though entertaining, these live action segments feel a little out of place; the way they are presented and narrated makes them feel less like they are part of a feature film and more like news reels, or  behind the scenes footage you might find in the DVD extras. Perhaps if the film had taken a different approach as more of a documentary about Disney’s travels around South America, as well as an examination of how they got their inspiration and interpreted the world around them, it would have been a lot more interesting, but as part of a collection of animated shorts, it doesn’t quite work and makes the two parts of the movie – the framing device and the actual shorts themselves – feel very separate and disjointed. The framing device of The Three Caballeros is a lot more traditional – Donald Duck receives a number of gifts, each of which tell a different story about Latin America; though this fits the format of the movie a lot better, it is hardly a strong narrative and doesn’t really glue the shorts together much better than its predecessor.

The Three Caballeros (And Greg)

The shorts on their own are perfectly fine, but nothing special; as I said before, they are just standard Disney cartoons, nice but nothing more. The exception to this in Saludos Amigos is the final segment, “Aquarela do Brasil”, which shows a paintbrush forming a watercolour painting of Brazil that slowly comes to life; this looks like something out of Fantasia and is animated appropriately – it is bright and colourful, plays with your expectations in terms of shapes and perspective and perfectly matches sound and movement. The segment featuring the titular song from The Three Caballeros is also pretty good, the song itself is nothing special, but the speed and energy of the animation that accompanies it is pretty impressive; it is very energetic and has a lot of ideas and images flying around, but never gets out of the animators’ control. There are some other visually impressive shorts that combine sound and animation, like in the end of Saludos Amigos, but they tend to go on a little too long and get too strange; though the energy of these segments is initially admirable, they ultimately get a little too hyperactive and there is just too much of it, you start to feel exhausted and want things to slow down a little, but the film never does and then it just ends suddenly. This is perhaps best defined by the fact that one short partway through and then most of the end of the film seems to consist solely of Donald Duck chasing hot live action women; while this is a pretty funny concept, it’s also a little strange and gets kind of exhausting by the end. Like, I get it Donald they’re hot, but take it easy man, Daisy’s gonna be pissed; I dunno, it just seemed like a really odd choice to centre a great deal of your movie around. Speaking of Donald, I don’t really know that I care for how he’s used here – it’s Donald alright, I guess, but there’s something a little unrecognisable about him in these movies. He’s a little unlucky and gets mad a couple of times, but I dunno, I don’t think they really give him enough time to be the Donald we know; we get little glimpses of his personality but his scenes don’t get to breathe enough for the film to really tap into the funniest aspects of Donald’s character. The pacing is just too fast and hyperactive, there’s always something going on visually and it never stops or slows down to really let Donald react or be funny, he’s only really there to be a recognisable Disney character, really, his role could have been filled by anyone. Overall, the shorts aren’t bad, they’re just decent and at worst, a little boring.

‘Winston tastes good like a cigarette should gya-huh!’

I really don’t know what else to talk about, to be honest, these are pretty strange and unconventional films in terms of their format and are pretty short – Saludos Amgios isn’t even feature length, clocking in at 42 minutes – and don’t have much to them, so I don’t know what I can say. I think the idea and background behind these films is more interesting than the actual films themselves, the history behind Disney’s South American tour and the footage of their experiences and ideas is very interesting. It’s also cool and also quite informative to see all these different aspects of Latin American culture and actually a little heart warming that Disney managed to bridge the cultural divide a little and introduce some of the beauty and wonder of South America to the US; the South American theme behind the shorts is, for better or worse, a lot more interesting than the shorts themselves. Again, that’s not to say the shorts suck or anything, but I don’t think any of them are really good enough to stand out and even all of them can’t really hold a whole film together. I just don’t think the format worked, we know that Disney can construct a great movie out of a number of shorts, from Fantasia, but lightning didn’t strike again here; I think the different segments would probably work better on their own, as individual cartoons or shorts to be played before a feature film, rather than collected all together with a loose framing device around them. Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros are definitely two of the lesser-known Disney movies and, despite some interesting ideas, I can certainly see why – they’re nothing special. 

Other Thoughts

• This is just Woody Woodpecker, come on guys

It’s totally fucking Woody Woodpecker what are we doing

5/10

Next Week: Make Mine Music! 

Email: joetalksaboutstuff@gmail.com

Twitter: @JSChilds