Disney Animation Review 8/9 - Make Mine Music & Fun and Fancy Free

Disney Animation Review: 8-9/53 - Make Mine Music & Fun and Fancy Free

Ryan Dosier - Today’s review covers both Make Mine Music (1946) and Fun and Fancy Free (1947), two more of Walt Disney’s “package films” that contain two or more animated shorts or a mixture of live action. The films were made to recoup some of the losses the studio faced during World War II. Although they surely kept the Disney studio afloat, it’s a shame that these films couldn’t have been better.

Make Mine Music features ten cartoon shorts, all unrelated, all set to different kinds of music. It is a very odd film and only four or five of the segments are worth watching. “All the Cats Join In” is about teenagers having fun and is lively and entertaining but ridiculously sexist (but what in the 40s wasn’t?). At one point a girl with a slightly bigger ass than the other girls is rejected by a boy, so the artist’s pencil erases her ass and draws it smaller. I was stunned.

Thankfully, the rest of the film is innocent and harmless (for the most part). There are a few real gems here such as “Casey at the Bat,” which features great music and narration and animation. “Peter and the Wolf” should be better than it is... but it lacks quite a bit. “Johnny Fedora & Alice Blue Bonnet” is an adorable, wonderful little short that clearly inspired Disney and Pixar’s recent short film efforts such as “Paperman” and “The Blue Umbrella.” Finally, there’s the story of Willie the opera singing whale, which is enjoyable and a delight, but features a shockingly tragic ending.

But for the most part, Make Mine Music is a collection of boring, uninspired, and downright lame cartoon shorts. There are a handful of truly fun pieces, but overall I found myself bored and ready for it to be over.

Then there’s Fun and Fancy Free, which is one of the most polarizing movies for me. I adore the second half, but I fall asleep during the first half. The film features Jiminy Cricket as the sort of narrator for no real reason. He leads the movie into the story of Bongo the circus bear who winds up in the woods. The story is so dull and really does not contain any sort of Disney magic. There’s a bit of fun during the bear square dance, but 95% of Bongo is boring.

Fun and Fancy Free picks up momentum with “Mickey and the Beanstalk,” narrated by the great ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his puppets Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd. But they don’t really matter, since the real stars are Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy. This 25 minute cartoon reminds viewers how spectacular Mickey, Donald, and Goofy are as a team. They work off of each other so well, especially in this. Donald has one of his greatest, craziest angry flip out moments and the animation is to die for.

Goofy sings a great, funny little song about “pancakes a foot high” as their hungry desperation sits in. Mickey gets to be the hero (which he always excels at). It’s just a lot of fun and the animation is top notch. Willie the Giant is a little lackluster and the magic harp is lame, but Mickey, Donald, and Goofy make Fun and Fancy Free worth your time (at least the second half of it).

Make Mine Music - 2/5 Blue Bonnets

Fun and Fancy Free - 2.5/5 Magic Beans

The Mickey Mindset, mickeymindset@gmail.com

Disney Animation Reviews #2 - Pinocchio

Disney Animation Review - 2/52: Pinocchio

Ryan Dosier - It’s amazing to me that I am only two films into my review countdown of Disney animated features and I’ve just watched Walt Disney’s masterpiece. That film is Pinocchio, Walt Disney’s 1940 piece of brilliance, his magnum opus (words I don’t often use lightly) (because I don’t really know what they mean).

From the opening credits and the chords of “When You Wish Upon a Star,” Pinocchio sets itself apart from the rest. It is clear almost immediately that this film is brimming with heart, charm, and unflinching artistry. Jiminy Cricket steals the picture right away and never gives it back. Jiminy’s voice (provided by radio man Cliff Edwards) is so distinct and his mannerisms are so funny that he shoots to the top of my list of favorite Disney characters. Jiminy also benefits from being animated by a Disney master: Ward Kimball. Jiminy dances and jumps and flirts hysterically all through the film with some of the finest character animation of all-time. He quips and insults and solidifies himself as the movie’s moral compass, driving force, and most entertaining character.

That isn’t to say that Pinocchio himself does not make for a wonderful protagonist and a true hero. As soon as the Blue Fairy brings him to life, Pinocchio is funny, sweet, and adorable. Unlike his forebear (I can’t believe I used that word either), Snow White, Pinocchio is interesting, entertaining, and adorably flawed. The little wooden boy is innocent and ridiculously naive, but this never works against him. If anything, it makes him more lovable and fun to cheer for. Just look at the lively “I’ve Got No Strings” song for Pinocchio’s most charming moment as a character. There are moments where Pinocchio fears and we fear with him, where he laughs and we laugh with him, where he is heroic and we root for him. That is the making of a great character, and that is what Pinocchio is.

The other characters in the film are truly wonderful as well. The Blue Fairy is a stunning animated feat—she’s so realistic it’s incredible. Gepetto is the film’s most sympathetic and lovely character. Figaro, the cat, and Cleo, the goldfish, serve their purposes as comic reliefs well. Each character has a sense of purpose, fun, and magic, something that was painfully lacking in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Disney’s story department had evolved immeasurably for Pinocchio.

Through it all, there are an incredible five villains in Pinocchio. Honest John, his sidekick Gideon, Stromboli the puppet master, the Pleasure Island Coachman, and Monstro the whale. Unbelievably, all of these villains work to enhance the movie. They are all unique, whether they are sly and silly (Honest John and Gideon), a cruel blowhard (Stromboli), pure evil (the Coachman), or just an unstoppable force of nature (Monstro), all of the many villains filter in and out of the film and provide a new sense of danger or comedy, working wonders for the fantastical plot.

The movie is clearly a fantasy, with the wild Pleasure Island, the fact that Honest John is a fox and Gideon is a cat... oh, and it stars a talking puppet and a talking cricket. But Pinocchio possesses a sense of fun and joy that elevates it from the weird plot points. Viewers simply pass off the outrageousness of an island where little boys turn into jackasses because they are having so much fun with Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket. It is remarkable that a film with so many crazy things can work so wonderfully.

Everything about Pinocchio is masterful. The animation is perfect, the backgrounds and layouts are remarkably gorgeous, and the colors burst from the screen. But the true wonder of the film is its characters. Pinocchio, most of all, wins by fighting for his happy ending himself. He saves the life of Gepetto, sacrificing himself in the process, and so becomes a real boy. But unlike Snow White, Pinocchio grabs his happy ending himself. He earns it and he deserves it, and Walt Disney and his team of animators and filmmakers earned this film and deserve the label of masterpiece.

5/5 Russian Puppets

The Mickey Mindset, mickeymindset@gmail.com