Disney Animated Shorts (1931)

In Traffic Trouble, Mickey Mouse is a cab driver fighting puddles, potholes and other cars for space on the road. He loses one passenger, but picks up Minnie. Can she get her to her destination on time? 

In The Castaway, Mickey washes ashore on a deserted island with a piano. His music starts attracting the animals of the island, but what will Mickey do when gorillas, lions and crocodiles take an interest? 

In Fishin' Around, Mickey and Pluto ignore the "No Fishing" signs and try their luck at catching something. But the duo have their hands full when the fish prove to be smarter than they thought. What will Mickey do when the police arrive? 

Much better. 

My reviews since Steamboat Willie have not been kind to the rodent. Each of the Mickey Mouse animated shorts has seemed to focus on nothing more than watching our title character make random noises to music (often while abusing other animals). 

Here we get some specific if slight stories. There are actual conflicts. None of it is Citizen Kane, but having some plot to propel you through seven minutes is essential. 

The best of the three was Fishin' Around. Besides the giddy thrill of seeing Pluto on-screen, there's a real tale here. It's basic (Mickey and Pluto trying to outsmart a school of fish), but it works. There's a nice book ending within it as Mickey sinks a No Fishing sign, only to end up on the run from the police when he's caught. 

Traffic Trouble has the most fun visuals. Mickey's cab is constantly stretching, contorting and losing pieces as it tries to reach its destination. It made me smile, but contains some of that animal abuse I've come to dread in these as Mickey turns a pig into an air pump. 

The Castaway is utterly forgettable. It's closer to the previous efforts I've come to hate. Mickey is shipwrecked on an island, but that's really just a set up for him to play some music. 

On the whole, these were much more enjoyable than what I've been getting from Disney. I hope it continues in 1932. 

Traffic Trouble - **1/2 out of ***** 

The Castaway - ** out of ***** 

Fishin' Around - *** out of *****

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Disney Animated Shorts (1930)

Produced by Walt Disney Studios

In Autumn, all of the creatures of the forest are busy making their preparations for winter. Squirrels gather nuts, a porcupine spears some apples and the beavers finish up their dams. Of course, each one of them contributes to the music of the forest in their own way. 

In Just Mickey, the titular mouse performs music on a violin for an unseen audience. He has to deal with an obnoxiously cackling heckler and cries his way through a sad number. 

In The Cactus Kid, Mickey arrives at a saloon in the Old West where Minnie works. At first, he fails to impress her, but when Minnie is abducted by a peg-legged villain, Mickey must become the hero. 

Each of the three Disney shorts here is six or seven minutes long. They are light on dialogue, story or characters and heavy on music. Like every single move a character makes finds a corresponding member of the orchestra. Color me annoyed. 

They're such simple plots, there isn't a ton to say. Just Mickey almost seems like a 3D short in places with the exaggerated scale and perspective they use. The only other surprise was to see Mickey strap on a pistol and get into a gunfight in The Cactus Kid. Not quite the image we have of the character today. 

These are all very slight, so I won't say much more. I was exceedingly bored by each of them. No official ratings, but I can't recommend anyone check these out.

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Mickey Mouse in Haunted House and The Opry House

Directed by Walt Disney
Produced by Walt Disney Productions

In Haunted House, our verminous hero finds himself stuck in the middle of a terrible storm. He seeks refuge in a dilapidated home, but soon learns this haven may be more terrifying than anything Mother Nature can dish out. Will the home's undead occupants prove too much for Mickey? Or will he be able to keep them toe-tapping to some organ music long enough to make his escape?

In The Opry House, the rascally rodent performs a vaudeville show for the residents of a small town. The mouse is literally a one man show. He sweeps the theater's porch, performs every role and plays every instrument. But will he be able to handle all of these responsibilities?


After the giddy kick-in-the-pants that was Steamboat Willie, I was excited to revisit some more of Walt Disney's early Mickey Mouse cartoons. The animator's sound breakthrough reveled in the hero's mischievous attitude and the short's innovative use of music and noise.

Sadly, these shorts feel like a bit of a step back. Mickey never really gets to shine through as a character. In Haunted House, he enters a house, gets frightened by some spiders and bats, and is forced to play music for a room full of skeletons. Stuff happens to him and he just passively takes it.

In The Opry House, he's just putting on his show. There's not a lot of conflict he's dealing with (except for his efforts to fit a portly audience member through the front door).

Both shorts are gag-driven and I could forgive the issues above if they were funny, but they're not. Haunted House is monotonously boring. Skeletons dancing over and over. At least The Opry House switched things up a bit by having Mickey perform different numbers. Even these though seemed more a showcase for an animation style (which is unavoidably dated) than for producing laughs.

Throw a racist portrayal of Mickey as a Hasidic Jew into the mix and I get nothing but disappointment. The Opry House is slightly better than The Haunted House, but both are pale shadows of Steamboat Willie.

Photos from Wayfaring Mouse and Mickey Mouse Cartoon

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Steamboat Willie (1928)

Mickey Mouse pilots a steamboat down a river, merrily whistling along to the music of the ship's steam engines. Mickey is not the captain, and when the real pilot shows up he angrily kicks Mickey out of the cabin.

The boat pulls into a dock and loads up on farm animals. Minnie Mouse arrives too late to board, forcing the quick-thinking Mickey to snag his squeeze with the boat's crane.

When a goat eats Minnie's sheet music and guitar, the mice are forced to improvise. Can Mickey still put on an impromptu show?  And what does the ship's captain think of this?

So here we have a piece of movie history. Walt Disney's first short to feature a synchronized soundtrack was actually Mickey's third foray onto the screen. Steamboat Willie was not the first film to use the new technology, but it was the most popular and launched a movie studio as well as a media and merchandising empire.

The technology is front and center here. Films like The Jazz Singer used "sound-on-disc" technology. The music and dialogue would play independent of the film. This worked wonderfully as long as neither the sound or the film skipped or changed speeds.   The technology required someone to constantly monitor the presentation.

"Sound-on-film" technology eliminated the synchronizing issue. The sound is on the same reel of film as the images so if the projector is at the wrong speed, the sound still plays with right frames of film.

As I said, Steamboat Willie was not the first to use "sound-on-film," but it was the film to popularize it.

So is the film any good?



It is, but it still has some of the issues we've seen in Disney's previous work.  Mickey as a character is a lot of fun here. He's mischievous and looking for a good time on his boat. His humor and playfulness are infectious in a way Disney failed to reach with his previous creations Julius and Oswald. It's easy to see how the mouse became an icon.

The other big boon to the story is the sound and it is a real achievement. After watching almost 20 years worth of silents, the contrast between those and Steamboat Willie is staggering. Every movement by each character produces a whistle or a grunt or a song.

In fact, there are moments where the novelty of the sound becomes an issue. In a couple of scenes, the film lingers only to show off the sounds being made. It's the equivalent of a 3D film constantly jamming foreground objects in your face. The filmmakers understand the novelty of what they are doing and show off a bit.

The other problem here is the way some of the animals get treated. Mickey plays a cat as an instrument by swinging it around by its tail, turns a duck into a bagpipe and pulls a half dozen piggies from their mom before playing the sow by pulling her... well, you get the picture.

The only thing that saves these sequences is their brevity and the fact that we've already built up some goodwill toward our hero. It's a minor quibble, but it's there and unfortunately distracting from this landmark film.

I've probably seen the opening 30 seconds of Steamboat Willie a hundred times, but this was the first time seeing all seven plus minutes. It remains a fun and impressive achievement. Flaws and all, this is definitely required viewing for film fans.

 **** out of *****

Photo from DisneyWiki

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A Couple of Alice Comedies (1927)

Directed by Walt Disney

Once more, I step into the abyss that is the Alice comedies from Walt Disney.

In Alice's Circus Daze, we see a variety of scenes from the big top, including a rubber man and a lion decapitating his tamer then playing keep away with the head. The short culminates with a tightrope walker balancing Alice atop a dozen chairs.

In Alice the Whaler, our heroine commands a whaling vessel. The crew faces challenges from swabbing the deck to finding eggs on the open sea. The finale has a cry of "Thar she blows!" as the crew tries to take down the powerful whale.

First question: Why is Alice even in these anymore?

When the comedies started, they were an interesting mix of live action and animation. They were never as interesting or clever as the Out of the Inkwell series, but I saw the potential and stuck with it.

It's devolved into cartoons that barely even remember Alice is supposed to be in them.

Take Alice's Circus Daze for example. We get a scene of Alice preparing for her act. She's off in the corner of the screen while the zaniness happens around her. She's not involved at all. Then in the end, it's a wide shot with Alice as pixels at the top of the screen cut with extreme close ups of her face.

Alice the Whaler is worse. Her role in the short is only to react to what other characters are doing. There is almost no interaction between the live performer and her cartoon environment and cohorts. There's a monkey swabbing the deck; cut to a closeup of Alice reacting. Julius spots a whale; cut to Alice reacting.

All of this would be fine if the animation was interesting or funny. It's not. There are a couple of inventive moments like a janitor removing a giraffe's spots to polish them or the mouse on the boat nailing the goat to the deck, but none of it made me laugh. It didn't even make me smile. At best, there are moments that are interesting.

This is the end of the Alice shorts and I for one could not be happier to see them gone. Walt Disney moves on to Oswald and ultimately Mickey (and you can see echoes of the famous rodent in both Oswald and the mouse in the Alice comedies). As a step in the evolution of Disney animation, these Alice shorts serve a purpose. As entertainment? Not so much.

Alice's Circus Daze *1/2 out of *****
Alice the Whaler * out of *****

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A Couple of Oswald Shorts from Disney (1927)

Produced by Walt Disney

In addition to the Alice comedies, Disney started producing cartoons featuring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. In watching a couple, I'd note that they are even more saccharine than the Alice shorts (particularly as Oswald thus far avoids violence and racism).

As for plot, these don't really have them. Trolley Troubles follows Oswald as he attempts to deliver a trolley car full of cats to a destination we never learn. In All Wet, he runs a beachside hot dog stand and becomes a lifeguard to impress a female bunny.

Both are fine in a smile-inducing way, but there's not a genuine chuckle to be had. If I had to pick, I'd say All Wet is slightly better just for the way it handles the hot dogs.

All Wet ***
Trolley Troubles **1/2

Both are embedded below:

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Alice Comedies of 1926

Disney and KKK-like killers

Produced by Walt Disney Productions

I recently watched Alice's Mysterious Mystery, Alice's Little Parade, and Alice's Orphan. The experience allows me to say without hesitation:

Walt Disney was a messed up guy.

Of course, I say that as a modern viewer revisiting these. I am sure they are "of their time," but I just do not get it.

Let's start with Alice's Mysterious Mystery. I figured a fun detective comedy would be a way to forget my issues with the 1925 shorts. Man, was I wrong.

The "mystery" is solved pretty quickly as Alice and her cat follow footprints to a bird with shoes. But that leads them to a mouse and what-I-am-assuming-is-a-bear are operating a dog catching racket where they capture canines and ship them to a sausage factor.

How do they do this?  By donning KKK outfits, sorting the dogs (grade A or B) and sending them to the death chamber. Especially disturbing was a scene where a dog is pacing on death row and a priest arrives to give the last rites. The dog begs for his life, gets dragged into a death chamber and moments later, is dragged back out as links of sausage.  For a viewer in 2011, it's hard not to view this short through the eyes of World War II Germany.

In a similar vein, Alice's Big Parade has a misleading title. It's actually about preparing and executing a war.  Alice is the general, but her cat is the recruiter/field commander. As in previous shorts, the feline can remove his tail to use as a weapon. As they battle the mice, the cat stations himself at one end of the enemy's trench and leaves a slice of cheese.  As the mice are drawn to the smell, the cat clubs them over the head with his tail.

Alice's Orphan is about an orphan cat that Alice and her pet take care of. There were again some cringe-worthy moments. Early on, the cat is watching a female cat ice skate when she falls into the lake. He makes the save and she instantly falls in love with him.  But there's a problem: she's ugly. So the cat throws her back into the hole and seals it up (presumably drowning her). Later, when he unsuccessfully tries to get the orphan to sleep, our cat hero resorts to using a mallet on the child. Not funny. Not even smile-inducing.

The shorts continue the trend of completely sidelining the title character. She's slightly active in Alice's Mysterious Mystery, but in the other two, she's a non-entity. In Alice's Orphan she is barely in it and does nothing. I thought part of the appeal of these was the interaction between live action and cartoon characters?

I have never watched anything by Disney and felt like I needed to shower afterward. Until these Alice shorts. They are an historical curiosity but nothing more.

Alice's Mysterious Mystery: * out of *****
Alice's Little Parade: ** out of *****
Alice's Orphan: *1/2 out of *****

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More Alice Shorts by Walt Disney (1925)

Produced by Walt Disney Productions

In Alice Solves the Puzzle, Alice is having trouble with a crossword puzzle when her cat convinces her to take a break and go to the beach.  They go for a swim, but when Alice returns, a bear named Pete insists that she give him the puzzle.  Pete, it turns out, is a collector of rare puzzles.  Alice refuses and Pete chases her into a lighthouse.  Her cat shows up at the end to make the save.

In Alice's Tin Pony, Alice and her cat use a train to deliver a big payroll.  One of Pete's gang gets wind of the loot and informs his boss.  The gang plots to capture the train and steal the loot.

In Alice Chops the Suey, Alice is kidnapped by a Chinese gang.  Her cat rescues her, but from there they are on the run from the villains.

As silly, fanciful pieces of entertainment, Alice Solves the Puzzle and Alice's Tin Pony work.  The point of these is never plot.  It's all in the simple animation and the cleverness of how Disney uses it.  The cat is seems able to use his body to solve any situation.  He can weaponize his tail or pull his eyes off to create a bike.  Surreal, but interesting.

Alice Chops the Suey is godawful.  The short opens with a blatant ripoff of the Out of the Inkwell series with an animator's hand drawing the animation.  Then Alice is kidnapped and thrown in a bag.  The cat rescues her from stereotypically racist villains and then we get a pretty repetitive chase sequence.  Bad, bad, bad.

The big change from the 1924 Alice shorts is that are live action main character exists entirely within a cartoon world now.  In the previous two shorts we reviewed, there was a real world sequence bookending the animation.  Here, the actual actress only appears in the cartoon world.

Beyond that, with each short, Alice is there less and less, and the cat really comes forward as the star.  In Alice Solves the Puzzle, she and the cat have equal screen time.  In Alice's Tin Pony, she barely in it.  And in Alice Chops the Suey, she's kidnapped in a cartoon bag and spends almost the entirety of the short in that sack.  The series feels like it's starting to sideline its lead which makes the films just animated shorts without the cleverness of Alice's interaction with the cartoon world.

Alice Solves the Puzzle ***out of *****
Alice's Tin Pony **1/2 out of *****
Alice Chops the Suey * out of *****

NOTE: Alice Solves the Puzzle features the first appearance by Disney's longest running animated character Pete.  Here, he's a bear but in his later iterations he's a dog or a cat.  He most recently appeared in the game Epic Mickey.

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A Couple of Disney Shorts (1924)

Directed by Walt Disney

Starring Virginia Davis

Produced by Walt Disney Productions

As I thought about approaching my first Walt Disney-created footage, I reflected on the animator's place in film history.  There are obvious cinematic pioneers like D.W. Griffith, Orson Welles, Martin Scorsese... but I think Disney has got to be in the conversation at least.  He was a pioneer of not just animation, but musicals and camera movement (albeit drawn at 24 frames a second).  Half a century later, he is still the producer of the definitive versions of Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Pinocchio.  Seeing how I can't get my kids interested in anything over 12 hours old, that's a feat.

All that as prologue to say how disappointed I was in my experience watching these Disney cartoons.

In Alice's Day at Sea, an alarm clock comes to life to wake up Alice's dog, who dresses himself and wakes up Alice.  The dog then drives Alice (yes, you read that right) to the beach where she talks to a sailor and falls asleep in a boat.  She awakens to discover her boat has been whisked out to sea where it sinks to the bottom of the ocean.  She interacts with animated fish and a menacing octopus, before waking up to discover it was all a dream and she's still on.

In Alice's Spooky Adventure, she's playing with a group of kids when their ball flies into the window of a spooky old house.  Alice is the only one with the courage to go and retrieve the ball.  Once in the house, she encounters a box that moves on its own (thanks to the black cat inside it).  She ends up covered in a sheet, looking like a ghost, before pulling off the impromptu costume and having a ceiling collapse on her.  Unconscious, she dreams of an animated haunted town where she is being chased by ghosts.  One of the ghosts asks her to "take it off" (minds out of the gutter, people!) and under the sheet is a black cat.  Alice and the cat successfully battle the ghosts and the cat professes his love for her, kissing her hand.  Alice awakes to find the black cat from earlier is licking her hand.  She finds the ball and runs out to find a policeman who noticed the broken window.  The officer takes Alice to jail for the crime.

First, the good.  I think some of the live action sequences that bookend the cartoons are interesting and humorous.  There are some subtle and innovative animation and effects incorporated into those sequences that work.  Disney takes Alice's dog and makes him a real character (in fact, he's a lot like a real life version of Mickey Mouse's pet Pluto).  I found myself wishing the cartoons were about the dog and not Alice.

The animated sequences that are the meat of the films come off as a pale imitation of the Fleischer Brothers' Out of the Inkwell series.  Where that series has some truly remarkable interaction between the cartoon and real worlds, here Alice basically stands around looking cute in the middle of the animated environment.  There is not a lot of physical contact between the worlds and when they do touch, it's not a great effect.  It seems like a step backward.

Virginia Davis (Alice) looks the part, but is not that great an actress.  When she stretches after waking up, it looks exactly like someone telling a kid to pretend they are waking up.  Of course, for most of the film, she's just pointing and laughing at things going on around her so it's not like there is much heavy lifting.

The narrative here is just an excuse to get to the animation.  And the animation is that style that annoys me.  I get why in the early days of the medium they had a lot of repeated movements (you can reuse the same drawings), but it makes me impatient watching it.

Overall, these feel more like exercises in film-making than actual short films.  I loved everything with the dog, but that was about it.  I'll probably check out more in future years to see if there's a progression, but so far I am underwhelmed.

Alice's Day at Sea: ** out of *****
Alice's Spooky Adventure: *1/2 out of *****

NOTE: While Alice's Day at Sea was the first released short, it was not the first one Disney made.  He created Alice's Wonderland with Davis in the lead role while heading up Laugh-O-Gram Studio in Kansas City, MO.  The studio went bankrupt, Disney moved to Los Angeles where he raised money to get a fresh start and he asked Davis' family to relocate.  The rest is history.

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Gertie in the Flesh

I'm visiting family in Florida and we went to Disney's Hollywood Studios.  So (of course) I had to snap a shot of Winsor McCay's remarkable creation Gertie the Dinosaur.  In Disney, she exists as an ice cream shop, but Disney Imagineers included her in the park's design to pay homage to a big influence on Walt Disney.

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