Classic Cartoon Critic: Alpine Climbers

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Rating:  ★★★

The last few minutes of this cartoon really make me want to give it four stars, but the sad fact of the matter is Pluto takes up a large part of this short’s runtime with largely boring antics.

Mickey, Donald and Pluto are going climbing this time around, for edelweiss flowers and eagle eggs, apparently. Why they brought Pluto is a bit of mystery, as he seems to only exist as dead weight (in both a literal sense, to Mickey and Donald, and a metaphorical sense, to this cartoon). Donald goes for the flowers and gets entangled with a baby goat, Mickey tries to take some eagle eggs and gets attacked by an eagle mother, and Pluto pretty much reacts to things and gets drunk.

Because of Mickey’s shenanigans, Pluto ends up dealing with a baby eagle, which is arguably his most interesting moment in the cartoon. Afterward, he falls below into the snow and gets unfrozen by a beer-carrying St. Bernard. He acts super gay, too, tbh – I’ve seen you make those same goo-goo eyes at lady dogs, ya bisexual pup.

Mickey doesn’t get to do too terribly much, but what he’s there for – upsetting mama eagle and a bunch of baby eagles – is fun enough. His role in the finale of the short is mostly just ‘gripping things in terror’, but again, fun enough.

Donald, for neither the first nor last time, is the true star of this one. His scenes shine, whether he’s trying to hit a baby goat with an ice stalactite, headbutting an angry adult goat, or charging a flying mama eagle, he’s a joy every time.

The finale of the short, when Donald tries to rescue Mickey from the attacking birds, is a high-intensity ride from start to finish, and it, coupled with Donald’s scenes, make me recommend the short, overall, despite the lackluster Pluto bits.

 

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Classic Cartoon Critic: Moving Day

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Rating:  ★★★★

It’s time for another Mickey, Donald and Goofy cartoon, and it’s a fun one, the only problem is they forgot about Mickey!

With rent that’s six months overdue, Sheriff Pete is selling Mickey and Donald’s house and everything in it. Goofy, the friendly neighborhood ice delivery man drops by, and the mouse and duck recruit him in their scheme to take all their stuff and run for it. It goes poorly.

The cartoon starts off strong, with some great animation on Pete, and an amazing sight gag of him nailing things to the wall. Goofy drops by, and then there are three main segments of the cartoon that follows.

One, we’ve got Goofy and the piano. Try as he might, Goofy can’t seem to get the piano to stay in his truck – it keeps rolling back into the house. This escalates to the point of perfect absurdity, as the piano starts playing hide and seek with Goofy, among other things. It goes on a bit long, but honestly it had me laughing, so no complaints.

Next is the Donald segment, which isn’t nearly as strong. It’s “stuck” humor, something Disney uses liberally in most Pluto and some Donald cartoons eventually, and generally it’s not my thing. Donald gets a plunger stuck on his tail, and struggles to get it off. Once he finally does, a fish bowl gets stuck there, etc. It’s a bunch of Donald flailing and being angry, and some of it’s pretty good, but it’s very one-note.

And then, finally, Pete re-enters the house, and we have the finale. After lighting a match the building explodes, sending most of the furniture and our trio into Goofy’s truck, while Pete is left behind in a bathtub.

You might notice that, after the first two paragraphs, I didn’t mention Mickey once, and that about sums up his presence in this one. He’s there in the beginning and end, and gets one very short moment with the suitcase, but otherwise he’s off camera the whole time. For that reason in particular, this isn’t one of the better ‘trio’ cartoons, but, fortunately, it’s still a decent short overall.

 

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Classic Cartoon Critic: Mickey’s Rival

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Rating: ★

This cartoon introduces a new character with a lot of potential that is immediately squandered. Mortimer Mouse is apparently Minnie’s ex, since he refers to her as “his old sweetie”, and the two seem to still be on good terms. But Mickey is, of course, absurdly jealous from the get-go, and then it’s quickly proven that Mortimer is, to put it lightly, a tremendous jerk.

Minnie’s characterization is terrible, at first oblivious and then apathetic toward Mickey’s feelings, and Mickey doesn’t come across any better, instantly jealous for no good reason and then, once he’s given a reason to hate Mortimer, just a sullen grumbling jerk for the majority of the cartoon. Mortimer, at least, is an interesting foil to the normally pleasant Mouse, a cocky bully whose nature would have been better highlighted if Mickey hadn’t immediately been scowling at him.

But there are far bigger letdowns in this cartoon than bad characterization. There’s some racism, when Mortimer dons a terrible Mexican accent and antagonizes a bull on the other side of an open fence. Once he realizes he’s in danger, he hops in his car and runs away, disappearing permanently about halfway through the short. The remainder of the cartoon is then primarily composed of Mickey, Minnie, and Mickey’s car running away from a bull. It’s an utter waste of a new character, as though the creators had a great idea but then realized halfway through that they had no idea how to actually capitalize on it.

But the most egregious thing, for me, is the cars. For some reason, Mickey and Mortimer’s cars have faces and can do things of their own accord. Mortimer’s car barely does anything, but Mickey’s car gets entirely too much screentime. For one, at this point we’re past the era where it’s normal for Disney to be putting faces on cars. Secondly, no one cares about this car, making it absurd that we’re forced to spend so much time with it.

This is just a really sub-par cartoon, unfortunately, filled with bad characterization, half-baked ideas, and annoyingly expressive cars. It also killed the character of Mortimer immediately; he never appeared in another classic Disney cartoon, or in anything else for that matter, until the 2000s, when shows like House of Mouse revived him.

 

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Classic Cartoon Critic: Thru the Mirror

 

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Rating:  ★★★★★

This one’s a classic as far as my childhood’s concerned. Its name is a reference to the Alice in Wonderland sequel “Through the Looking-Glass”, and it quickly becomes apparent why such a reference would be made. Dream Mickey steps through his bedroom mirror into a strange mirror image of that bedroom, where furniture and cards are alive, and often willing to dance.

This cartoon, generally, would actually fit in quite well with Mickey’s earlier endeavors, thanks to the light plot and surplus of dancing. But what makes this one so much better than what came before is the framing of it as a dream, making Mickey’s waking world not the odd one, as was the case in those older cartoons, but the dream world he enters, instead. It’s also just super imaginative, particularly when the cards come into play. And once Mickey enrages the King of Hearts by dancing with the Queen, things get ridiculous as an army of cards attempts to make Mickey pay.

It’s a tragedy that this is Mickey’s last solo venture, and one of the last ones where he stars as the main character, but at least we’ll always have this amazing cartoon.

 

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Classic Cartoon Critic: Orphans’ Picnic

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Rating: ★★ 

This is, essentially, the first Donald Duck cartoon. By which I mean, it has the classic formula of most 40s Donald cartoons – Donald succumbs to anger and pettiness while dealing with an irritating force. The force this time is the orphans, who we first saw in the classic “Orphans’ Benefit”. They’re basically tiny Mickey clones, but way more mischievous – in fact, in this short they basically serve as proto-nephews (Huey, Duey and Louie) – little kid antagonists – even going so far as to call him “Uncle Donald.”

Another reason this is basically a Donald cartoon is that Mickey has a small amount of screentime in the first third or so of the cartoon, and then he disappears completely from it. Make no mistake, this cartoon is about Donald.

There is, unfortunately, a gross Native American bit, where the orphans put feathers on their heads and do the stereotypical ‘war cry’ thing. At the end, there’s also this bit where a bee is inside Donald, and it batters around inside, including in his limbs, which I find severely unpleasant.

Overall, it’s an okay cartoon, but it’s basically a prototype of much better cartoons that will come later, and that coupled with the racism doesn’t give it much to encourage me to recommend it.

 

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Classic Cartoon Critic: Mickey’s Polo Team

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Rating:  ★★

This is one of those celebrity showcase episodes that I generally dislike, that I actually enjoyed more than I expected. Most of the celebrity scenes do fall flat, though, no longer meaning much of anything unless you’re a fan of old movies like I’m a fan of old cartoons. And the fat jokes with Oliver Hardy are really laid on thick, taking the cartoon down a whole star.

Mickey and Goofy also pretty much just cameos in this one, and are given nothing to really do – Clarabelle, in a fun little flirting scene, actually is given more than them. But we do get some enjoyable stuff with the Big Bad Wolf, from Disney’s Three Little Pigs cartoons, and we get some really great stuff with Donald. It’s no wonder the duck rises to become Disney’s biggest star in the 40s – it’s an absolute joy to watch him. His scenes in the last third or so of the cartoon are the reason I rate this cartoon as high as I do.

Overall, an interesting piece of history with some really obnoxious fat-people jokes but some really fun Donald Duck moments.

 

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Classic Cartoon Critic: On Ice

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Rating:  ★★★★

This is a fun one. It’s one of two classic cartoons featuring Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Goofy and Donald all together in the same cartoon (not counting a cameo at the end of a Chip and Dale cartoon). It’s also the only classic cartoon to have those five characters and Clarabelle and Horace in it (though these two just cameo at the beginning).

Despite some pacing issues (Pluto’s segment in particular drags on a bit long with no interruption), it’s a delightful cartoon that gives each main cast member some time to shine (even Minnie, a little). And it ends with Mickey getting to save the day without damseling Minnie, which is nice (it’s Donald who must be rescued).

Final note: Goofy feeds chewing tobacco to fish and then they spit it into a spittoon, and it’s really… gross.

 

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Classic Cartoon Critic: Pluto’s Judgement Day

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Rating: ★ ★ ★

This is an interesting one. The cartoon starts with Pluto chasing after a cat and disrupting Mickey in the process. After being told off by the Mouse, Pluto goes to sleep and has a dream where he’s put on trial by cats for his crimes against them (which apparently involve chasing two of them to their deaths and giving another mental health issues).

It’s a surreal cartoon, to tell the truth. A very interesting short to watch, but not exactly the most enjoyable. It certainly doesn’t inspire a desire for repeated viewings.

A few final notes: there’s some nice dog-emotion animation in the first part before the dream, and there’s a racist Uncle Tom bit during the trial, which drastically lessens the appeal of the cartoon.

 

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Classic Cartoon Critic: Mickey’s Fire Brigade

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Rating:  ★★★★

Another delightful ‘Mickey, Donald and Goofy doing a job’ cartoon. As would be assumed from the title, this time our trio are firefighters, trying to put out the flames engulfing a burning apartment building.

There’s some really inventive uses of perspective and the fire they’re fighting against, and a cute “Three Little Pigs” music cue at one point. Clarabelle Cow also makes an appearance – naked, at that.

A bit more action-packed and experimental than “Mickey’s Service Station”, this is a great short that’s getting us closer and closer to the perfection of 1937′s run of Mickey, Donald and Goofy cartoons.

 

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Classic Cartoon Critic: Mickey’s Garden

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Rating: ★★★★

This is one of the Mickey Mouse cartoons I used to watch a bunch as a kid, replaying it over and over again on a VHS tape. It’s a bright and colorful cartoon about Mickey trying to rid his garden of bugs. But when Pluto accidentally runs into him, spraying him in the face with bug poison, he starts hallucinating that the bugs want their revenge.

There’s a lot of really imaginative (and frankly, sometimes horrifying) uses of the bugs, whether they’re eating fruits and veggies, walking around drunk on poison (I don’t know how that works either), or trying to kill Mickey and Pluto. There’s some great musical direction and sound design in this one too, to really sell some of the scenes.

And Mickey, you should know better than to stare down the nozzle of anything, especially a spray can of poison.

 

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