Reviews by JxSxPx

"The Robber Kitten" is very adorable, but there isn't much available for an older audience. It follows an obnoxiously cute little kitten who dreams of becoming a highwayman and runs away from home. Along the way he meets Dirty Bill, a bulldog who is a real robber. The bulk of the cartoon is the two of them chatting with each other, and it ends with the little kitten running off back home having learned that this is where he belongs and it's best to leave the more dangerous bits of reality to his imagination.

For a cartoon that is nearing eighty, it looks pretty good. The animation is fluid, the colors are still pretty bright, the audio is clean and intact. Some of it may be a little crude compared to what one is used to seeing from the studio, and in hand-drawn animation in general. But it still features all of the highlights and hallmarks one associates with a work from Disney.

To borrow an Internet parlance: "The Ugly Duckling" hit me right in the feels.

A dialog-free retelling of the fable, 1939's "The Ugly Duckling" was actually the last Silly Symphony cartoon produced by the studio. It was also their second attempt at animating it. And it is a perfect nine-minute pantomime of the tale.

Who knew a tiny animated baby swan could make me want to reach through my TV, scoop it up and hug it so very much? The scene where he finds a large fake duck and mistakes it's lack of disgust or horror with his appearance for motherly affection is pretty gut-wrenching. His elated plays with the cold object soon comes to a crashing end, but at least the ending gives you a nice emotional payoff which wraps the story up neatly and cleanly and leaves you feeling a sense of elation and warmth. "The Ugly Duckling" ranks right up with "Three Little Pigs" and a few others as one of the best short films the studio has ever produced.

Playing fast and loose with Kenneth Grahame's original novel, The Wind in the Willows is a solidly made morality story which plays like a primer for the 1950s output from the studio. It's not hard to see where the pastoral look of Lady and the Tramp, the manic energy of Alice in Wonderland and camera/animation tricks of Cinderella get their origins. It's all here in a compact thirty-five minute featurette.

The Wind in the Willows tells the story of Mr. Toad and his close friends who must constantly keep a close eye on him and clean up his many messes. Mr. Toad is also a bit of a bored upper class individual who must blindly and mindlessly buy the latest gadget to demonstrate his status and provide a few minutes entertainment before zipping off to his newest obsession. There's a timely and timeless element to a story of a crassly spending character, bankruptcy and foreclosure. It probably will go over the heads of many children, but for the adults there's something smarter going on in this one.

Having said that, the film does play out a little slowly and with a slightly dated feel. It was made in 1949, and unlike many of the feature films that Disney routinely polishes up both in visuals and audio, Willows could use a good cleanup. The colors frequently appear too dark and the audio sometimes sounds too low or muffled.

But it's still one of the better shorts to come out the 1940s package films that the studio turned out. I wish they had the resources to expand it into the feature length that it was planned on being originally. It has a great energy, a lot of fun and unique characters -- there's enough life in here to last for at least a solid 80 minutes. But it's a pretty perfect thirty-five minutes as is.

Shorts from this early in a character's development are pretty fascinating to see just how radically they change over the years. Here, Mickey Mouse's personality of sweet everyman seems to be slowly forming. His romance with Minnie and her friendship with Clarabelle Cow are all present. The most radical departure here, and something that is a little odd to see considering how things turned out, is Mickey and Goofy (still called "Dippy Dawg" here) being on opposing sides.

"Ye Olden Days" tells a charming enough story, even if it isn't that memorable after a single viewing. Mickey is a wandering minstrel who stumbles upon an arranged marriage between Princess Minnie and Prince Goofy. He serenades her outside her window and the next thing you know he's challenging Goofy for her hand in marriage, an oddball/slapstick-heavy fight ensues and the short is over with Mickey and Minnie riding off into the sunset and "Happily ever after" together.

It's fairly routine, nicely animated, but like many shorts of the era, especially the Silly Symphonies type from Disney, stuffed to bursting with unmemorable songs. I guess they felt like something must always be being said or done in a cartoon to keep your attention. It's never rising to truly great status at any given moment, but it's a solidly built little machine that runs smoothly and performs its assigned tasks well.

WWII was a particularly rough era for the Disney studio. Short on funds and with many of their more ambitious features having to be tabled due to limited resources, they often took shortcuts in animation. Most of their features were slap-dash affairs in which a bunch of random shorts were put together as package films -- Fun and Fancy Free, Saludos Amigos, etc. It cut costs because it meant a lot of time and effort could be placed into something that had to only last about a half hour.

Their shorts weren't immune from this cost-cutting either. And "A Knight for a Day" features some pretty obvious cuts in the background animation. The story is endearing, entertaining and filled with gags that work very well and make you smile if not laugh aloud. Of course something starring Goofy should be expected to do no less. Unless you somehow have an aversion to Goofy, in which case, I don't want to know you. And if you somehow don't like him, best to avoid this short altogether as it features him playing every single role. It gets its laughs and has a lot of fun with silly, puny character names, but I don't know if it ranks amongst the greatest of Goofy's shorts. It's certainly funny and entertaining, and, by God, that goes a long way already.

A vastly underwhelming affair that isn't particularly pleasantly animated, filled with memorable music or gags that last long in the imagination. Really, it's more of a cutesy idea with poor execution than anything else. Old King Cole is throwing a wild party and all of the characters from Mother Goose's popular rhymes and stories make at least quick cameo appearances. They sing and dance for seven minutes straight and that's pretty much all there is to it. A brief warning though, characters not only appear briefly in blackface (some of the little old lady who lived in a shoe's kids to be exact), but there's an extended sequence in which gross stereotypes about Native American culture and identity gets extended air time. It's an ugly reminder of what used to fly in polite society back in the day.

"The Pied Piper" as done by Disney is a pretty faithful retelling of the story. But it's always been an odd story, and somehow making it as a Silly Symphony just highlights how dramatically inconclusive it is. A town with a horrific rat infestation problem agrees to pay a man to lure the rats away and refuses to pay him for his services. As punishment he lures away all of the children in the town and drops them off in a Pleasure Island style location.

That seems like dark, disturbing ground to cover, but "Pied Piper" prefers to just engage in rubbery animation that looks rough and unappealing and pack as many wildly unforgettable songs in its short running time as possible. I'm sure there's worse shorts in the back catalog that Disney has buried deep in the vault somewhere, but their instance on presenting "Pied Piper" as some benchmark of quality and value in the studio is kinda dubious. It's not really all that enjoyable, entertaining or even memorable. So with a shrug, I end this review.

I think that by this point Disney has reinterpreted just about every classic English tale one can think of. Typically in animated form with their most beloved and iconic characters in the leading roles. Case in point: "The Prince & the Pauper," a 1990 animated short in which Mickey and co. act out the well-known Mark Twain tale of a peasant and a royal trading places and seeing how the other half lives.

"Prince" is pretty solid from top to bottom, perhaps a bit too rushed and an ending that is too neat and tidy, but still the studio was only barely beginning to operate back at its peak form in the early 90s. What's most lasting and noteworthy about this film though is how somber, emotional and serious it can get. Often times the slapstick humor feels a little too forced and rammed in to balance out scenes like Mickey meeting late at night with the dying King or the prince discovering the gross amounts of misused power and poverty outside of his hermetically sealed world.

While it may not stack up with the best shorts that the studio has to offer like "Mickey and the Beanstalk" or "Three Little Pigs," it's still holds a place at least as equal to "Mr. Mouse Takes a Vacation" or "Brave Little Tailor." It's also probably one of the best shorts that the studio has put out in the past twenty-five years.

"Mr. Mouse Takes a Trip" may be a pretty routine cartoon chase short, but it is still pretty engaging, humorous and warm. Mostly it follows the exploits of Mickey and Pluto trying to take a train ride which won't allow dogs (for some reason...?) and out-smarting Big Bad Pete as the conductor. Granted, Pete has never been the brightest of foes to tackle with, but Mickey has also never been the troll-like irreverent maniacal schemer that Bugs Bunny is. So we forgive it for being a little too formulaic.

Being Disney, the look of the film is nothing but warm watercolor backgrounds and pleasing colors. The animation is consistently good and there's more than a few worthy chuckles and appropriately physics defying body contortions or quick costume changes. "Mr. Mouse Takes a Trip" may not break any new ground or shake up the formula in any way, but it does everything it sets out to do really well and gives you more than a few good chuckles and smiles along the way. And if Sullivan's Travels taught us anything it's that anything which brings a bit of joy and laughter into our lives is a good thing worth celebrating.

"Thru the Mirror" was one of many early incarnations and uses of the Alice in Wonderland books by Disney before finally making the movie outright. And it's a charming little variation of the story. The only characters who occur from the books in this short are the playing cards, but that doesn't really matter much. The sheer amount of visual whimsy and sense of play and parody on display is more than enough to enchant.

The animators strongest efforts are probably the sequences in which Mickey changes sizes. In one instance he grows very large before promptly shrinking down to the size of a normal mouse, and in another he grows back to his usual size while running. It's a pretty smooth transition and the amount of technique and skill required to keep him even relatively consistent while in such fast motion and changing through so many sizes is pretty staggering. Truly, they had some great artists working behind the scenes to craft these shorts.

There's not too much in the way of story -- Mickey dreams up walking through his bedroom mirror and entering into an alternate version of his living room, one in which all of the household objects are alive. He engages in a bit of Fred Astaire style choreography with a match, top hat, gloves and a cane. The match in particular is flourished with some nice touches, like smoking with each frantic dance move before finally lighting itself on fire. There's also a Busby Berkley-like dance number with playing cards.

All in all, it may be light on plot and not as humorous or gag heavy as other shorts, but there's a lot of great craft on display. It's more enchanting and whimsical than anything else. And it's one of my personal favorites.