Christmas Shelf Reviews: The Muppet Christmas Carol

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A Christmas Carol, Bean Bunny, Bless Us All, Bob Cratchit, brian henson, charles dickens, Christmas, christmas carol, Christmas review, christmas special, christmas story, Disney, disney muppets, disney review, Ebenezer Scrooge, film review, Fozzie Bear, ghost of christmas future, ghost of christmas past, ghost of christmas present, ghost of christmas yet to come, gonzo, It Feels Like Christmas, Jacob Marley, Jim Henson, kermit, kermit the frog, marley, Marley and Marley, Michael Caine, Mickey's Christmas Carol, movie review, Movie Reviews, muppet, Muppet Christmas Carol, Muppet Movie, Muppets, Muppets Christmas Carol, musical review, narrator, One More Sleep Til Christmas, penguins, piggy, puppet, puppeteers, puppetry, puppets, review, rizzo, rizzo the rat, robin, sam the eagle, scrooge, statler, statler and waldorf, Thankful Heart, the muppet show, The Muppets, Tiny Tim, Uncle Scrooge, waldorf, When Love is Found, When Love is Gone

So, is me reviewing a different version of A Christmas Carol every other year going to be a thing? Mind you I’m not complaining, each iteration has something interesting worth discussing, but if I had a nickel for every time I revisited the story for the blog on a consecutive even-numbered year I’d have three nickels.

“…which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened thrice, right?”

But enough memery, let’s go back to 1990, a magical year marred only by the passing of Jim Henson. Much like Walt Disney, the studio he founded was at a loss without their main creative driving force. Could the Muppets and the brilliant people who brought them to life go on without him?

The short answer, yes.

The first idea Jim’s son Brian had was a Halloween special. But when plans for that fell through, he turned to adapting classic literature with that singular Muppet charm. That in turn would charter the course the Muppets would take throughout the 90s and even affect them to this day.

Released through Disney since this was in that grey area before they outright bought The Muppets, The Muppets Christmas Carol was overshadowed at the holiday box office by another Disney feature, Aladdin, and one that they would eventually own, Home Alone 2. But the generation that grew up with annual viewings of this movie had the last laugh. It has since been reevaluated as a holiday classic and one of the best screen adaptations of A Christmas Carol. Yet…for the longest time I just didn’t get it. People claiming THIS was the best version of A Christmas Carol? I was convinced it had to be a nostalgia thing. To be fair, my early memories of the film weren’t exactly positive. Anything involving Muppets was a gamble for baby Shelf; there was a 50-50 chance of it being enchanting fun and games or pure nightmare fuel, and in this case it was the latter due to one scene in particular. But in 2016 I finally gave it another chance, and…

Guys, I am a Muppets Christmas Carol stan. Despite my lack of childhood sentiment, I understand what makes it such a beloved holiday fixture. When Muppets fans say this is their favorite movie in the franchise, I can smile and say “Good choice, it’s easily in my top 3-4, natch*”. Heck, for the past several years it’s usually the first Christmas anything I watch come December. Brian Henson and the Muppeteers brought their A-game as well as some familiar names in their repertoire to give it that classic Muppet feeling. Jerry Juhl returned to write the screenplay and Paul Williams, who previously wrote the songs for The Muppet Movie, crafted the ones heard here. This might be a controversial opinion, but The Muppets Christmas Carol has the best soundtrack out of all the Muppet features. Though the music in each film is usually top-notch, there’s always that one song I have no qualms skipping over (“Never Before Never Again”, “There’s Gotta Be Something Better”, you get the idea). Muppet Christmas Carol, however? Every song is perfect, and to lose any of them would be a huge detriment to the viewing experience.

And I mean any of them. Oh yeah, I’m going there.

Frosty (and I) Returns…to Channel KRT!

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Andrea Martin, Bill Melendez, Brian Doyle Murray, Channel KRT, Christmas, Christmas cartoon, Christmas review, christmas special, Elisabeth Moss, environmental message, environmentalism, frosty, Frosty Returns, frosty the snowman, funny, Jan Hooks, John Goodman, Johnathan Winters, magic, magic hat, obscure, obscure animation, podcast, snow, snowman, talking snowman, winter

Following up from the previous post, here I am back on the Channel KRT podcast to discuss the little-known Frosty sequel “Frosty Returns”! What happens when a studio that isn’t Rankin-Bass tries to build their own snowman with blackjack and hookers John Goodman, Elisabeth Moss, and the Flying Dutchman? You get an odd, not-quite Christmas special with environmental overtones that furthers the divide between snow lovers and snow haters. Come listen to us discuss the inexplicable reappearance of everyone’s favorite snow golem on Apple Podcasts, Podcasts Online, and now on YouTube!

Also, face reveal. Merry Christmas.

My Top 20 Favorite Goofy Shorts

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2D animation, a knight for a day, Action-Adventure, African diary, animated, animated short, animated shorts, animation, animators, cartoon, cartoon review, Comedy, Disney, disney animated, disney animated short, disney animation, disney cartoon, disney cartoons, disney golden age, Disney Plus, disney review, disney short, disney shorts, favorite cartoons, for whom the bulls toil, foul hunting, gooft gymnastics, goofy, goofy gymnastics, goofy sports cartoon, goofy's glider, hand drawn animation, hockey, hockey homicide, House of Mouse, how to, how to be a detective, how to be groovy cool and fly, how to be smart, how to cartoon, how to dance, how to fish, how to goofy, how to goofy cartoon, how to haunt a house, how to hook up your home theater, how to play football, list, motor mania, Mouse Works, sport goofy, sports cartoon, sports goofy, sports goofy cartoon, the art of self defense, the art of skiing, the olympic champ, tiger trouble, top 20, top 20 list, traditional animation, two gun goofy, Walt Disney

It’s the 90th anniversary of everyone’s favorite goof. Whether you know him as Dippy Dawg, George Geef, Mickey’s loyal pal, Max’s dorky dad, one of Donald’s many sources of frustration, or just the character you compare to Pluto when debating pants and anthropomorphism, Goofy is the best kind of everyman. He’s adaptable to any situation and a master of physical comedy. Name a sport, and he’s “mastered” it. Name a job and he’s tackled it; his resume is nearly as long as Homer Simpson’s. Goofy’s cartoons have aged the finest out of the Fab Five’s thanks to a healthy dose of slapstick and wry modern commentary. He even survived the move to mundane 50s suburbia with most of his good humor and personality in tact. And like his costars before him, we honor him and his nine decades of goofing it up here today.

The usual rules apply: no bits from films, only short features (but A Goofy Movie would be Number One if that weren’t the case). And while Goofy works just as well on a team as he does solo, this thankfully won’t be another matter of sorting through Mickey cartoons where he steals the spotlight. But before we begin, here are some well-deserved Honorable Mentions:

• Goofy and Wilbur – Goofy officially gets his moniker in this charming short where he and his grasshopper pal risk life and limb in the name of fishing.
• Victory Vehicles – Goofy and his ilk develop a variety of creative and implausible modes of transportation as a response to the war effort.
• How To Be a Sailor – The reason why I barely saw this cartoon growing up is because the ending is one big screw you to the Japanese due to Pearl Harbor. But everything else up to that point is fantastic.
• Goofy’s Big Kitty – This Mouse Works short has Goofy confuse an escaped circus lion for his new kitty.
• How to Wash Dishes/Be a Waiter – These shorts appear to have misleading titles as they instead show Goofy globetrotting and becoming an actor respectively…but how they circle back to what the titles promise is genius.
• How to Play Golf – Playing a good game is easier said than done when an angry bull gets involved.
• Baggage Buster – Gags run amok when Goofy is tasked with unloading a magician’s trunk.
• Get Rich Quick – Goofy catches the gambling bug; a quick reminder that golden-age animation was created with adults in mind.
• Double Dribble – The rules of basketball barely apply when Goofys of varying size are involved.
• Fathers Are People/Father’s Day Off/Father’s Weekend/Father’s Lion – Goofy’s first forays into fatherhood come with many pitfalls and pratfalls – and the occasional risqué joke.
• The How To Stay At Home shorts – These extra-short shorts were created for Disney Plus in response to the pandemic, but Goofy learning to adapt to these unusual circumstances will make you smile.
• Goofy’s Radio – Goofy spends a day in the countryside, oblivious that his radio is the only thing keeping him from being a mountain lion’s lunch.
• Teachers Are People – Nothing but respect for good teachers in my house, even though Goofy doesn’t get much of it here.
• How To Take Care of Your Yard – Goofy gains a green thumb but destroys his home in the process.
• How To Sleep – An insomniac Goofy tries varying methods of getting forty winks when it’s time to actually go to bed. Shockingly relatable.
• How To Be A Spy – Paranoid that his neighbor is out to get him, Goofy attempts to master the art of espionage.
• How To Be A Rock Star – Goofy pursues stardom in the music world.
• How To Camp – This How To short takes an interesting turn when Goofy is abducted by aliens.
• A Goofy Movie – How could I not mention this? It’s Goofy as we’ve never seen him before, a fully-developed, compelling character that makes you feel things other than humor.

Christmas Shelf Reviews: Olive the Other Reindeer

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20th century fox, 2D animation, adventure, animated, animated special, animation, artwork, cgi, cgi animation, children’s book, Christmas, Christmas cartoon, christmas elves, Christmas review, christmas special, computer animation, dan castellaneta, drew barrymore, ed asner, elf, fox animation, futurama, j. otto seibold, jack russell terrier, james otto seibold, joe pantoliano, Matt Groening, michael stipe, north pole, olive, olive the other reindeer, penguin, reindeer, santa, santa claus, Simpsons, television animation, television review, television special, tv, tv review, tv special, underrated, vivian walsh

While I remember the hype for the FOX Christmas special Olive The Other Reindeer back in 1999 –

…

…

…Excuse me, I was suddenly struck by the realization that I’m old.

Anyway, while I remember the promotions for it before it premiered, I’m ashamed to say I never got around to watching it until several years ago. Shame, really, because it’s been among my personal favorites since. Olive The Other Reindeer is loosely based on a children’s book by Vivian Walsh and award-winning artist J. Otto Seibold, the main conceit being “Hey, doesn’t that one line from the Rudolph song sound like they’re saying Olive The Other Reindeer instead of ‘all of the other reindeer’? Wouldn’t it be funny if someone named Olive got confused over it and tried to become a reindeer?” The book is fairly straightforward with little-to-no stakes, though it has some wonderfully stylized and colorful artwork. Naturally the leap from page to screen meant the story had to be significantly fleshed out, but who could possibly step up to the task?

Eh, how about the guy behind the biggest animated adult show of all time?

To this day I have no idea why Matt Groening took the job but I sure as hell am grateful for it. He, along with Futurama co-creator David X. Cohen, took what could have been another simple Christmas special and injected it with the sly modern wit and cheeky sense of humor they’re known for (the fact that Olive premiered on the same night Futurama did couldn’t have been a coincidence either). They spice up the proceedings with wonderful touches exclusive to this adaptation: the other characters with mondegreen names; the snappy dialogue; the background sight gags that you have to watch multiple times to catch; the running joke with the cordless drill; the self-depreciating jabs at Fox, and more. The smart writing in addition to the unique animation gives this outing a strong sense of identity without losing the heart and charm that’s inherent to the story. It also marks Olive as the only “family-friendly” thing Groening’s made to date; an interesting designation to have, but not a bad one at all.

By The Cover: 30 Years of Simply Mad About The Mouse

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Hi. It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, hasn’t it? I’ll level with you, on top of the usual burnout, every time I’ve done a By The Cover post, I’m always struck by some kind of bad luck immediately, or something bad happens in the world that affects me personally. Don’t believe me? The last time I did this was in February 2020; do I need to remind you how things went after? Still, I couldn’t resist dragging this series out of mothballs to honor the 30th anniversary of something that’s very much the reason why By The Cover exists at all.

On September 27th 1991, Disney released Simply Mad About The Mouse, a 35-minute collection of music videos featuring some of the most popular artists of the time covering, what else, Disney songs. It’s not the first time a well-known musician has taken Disney classics and made it their own, but none of them ever made a high-profile music video to go with it. These videos were exclusive to the Disney Channel and I remember occasionally hearing the songs on Radio Disney (yeah, remember when Radio Disney was a thing?) The CD version comes with two more songs; En Vogue’s “One Song/Someday My Prince Will Come”, which I already discussed in the first By The Cover, and an instrumental jazz version of “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” titled “Mad About The Wolf” by Kirk Whalum – but we’re not here to talk about the CD. I had the VHS tape when I was a kid, and it had me spellbound. Without realizing it, I was introduced to singers who would go on to be some of my all-time favorites. As great as these covers are on their own, each video is a unique experience perfectly tailored to its artists’ genre and style. That tape I had disappeared ages ago, but an acquaintance gifted me a brand-new one after hearing me rave about it, and another friend even ripped me a higher-quality laserdisc copy for my birthday.

As of writing this, the individual songs are available for purchase on most online music stores, but the videos, either as a whole or individually, haven’t been re-released since 1991; it’s not even on Disney Plus. Thankfully, fellow Disney enthusiasts have kept the memory of Simply Mad About The Mouse alive through the magic of YouTube. So come with me as I explore this unearthed musical corner of Disney history and see what makes it worth going mad over.

Christmas Shelf Reviews: Home Alone (1990)

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1990's, A Christmas Carol, catherine o'hara, Chris Columbus, Christmas, christmas carol, christmas classic, Christmas review, christmas song, Christmas star, christmas story, christmas tree, church, classic comedy, Comedy, comedy review, daniel stern, film review, Home Alone, home alone traps, joe pesci, john candy, john heard, john hughes, john williams, Kevin, maculay culkin, marley, mccallister, movie review, old man marley, review, tarantula, trap, traps

See that face smack dab in the middle of the poster there? That’s the face I made when I found out I’d be reviewing one of my favorite Christmas movies (and also when I realized I wouldn’t be publishing it on time; Happy Valentines Day!) Because, honestly, what can I say about Home Alone that hundreds before me already have?

There’s an argument to be made that Home Alone shouldn’t count as a Christmas movie because it’s a story that can be done on any given day of the year – except that Christmas is tied into this film’s very identity. Kevin’s house is full of reds, greens and whites, the soundtrack is stuffed with Christmas tunes, even beloved classics like It’s A Wonderful Life, How The Grinch Stole Christmas and Miracle on 34th Street are playing whenever a TV is turned on. Add themes of family and togetherness and a magical score by John Williams, and you’ve got a movie with Christmas in its DNA.

While Home Alone didn’t impress critics upon release, it made enough bank that it held the title of highest-grossing comedy of all time until 2011. It’s entered the pop culture lexicon not just here in the states but abroad. The film’s release in most former Soviet-occupied countries aligned with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and is so tied to that feeling of holiday cheer and nostalgia for a monumental positive change that it’s broadcast with the same heartfelt frequency as It’s A Wonderful Life in America. “It’s not Christmas without Kevin” has become something of a popular slogan for most stations that air it. But why does this simple story retain so much of its appeal 30 years later?

Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue Review

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30th anniversary, alan menken, ALF, alvin, alvin and the cipmunks, animated special, anniversary, anti-drug psa, anti-drug special, anti-drugs, baby gonzo, baby kermit, baby piggy, barbara bush, brainy smurf, bugs bunny, cartoon, cartoon all-stars to the rescue, cartoon review, cartoon-all stars, corey, daffy duck, Dewey, disney review, drug psa, drugs, ducktales, frank welker, fuck ronald reagan, garfield, garfield and friends, george bush, george c. scott, ghostbusters, gonzo, howard ashman, Huey, kermit, kermit the frog, looney tunes, lorenzo music, Louie, Michael, michelangelo, miss piggy, muppet babies, nancy reagan, nephews, papa smurf, piggy, pooh, pooh bear, psa, review, ronald reagan, simon, slimer, smoke, smoking, smurfs, teenage mutant ninja turtles, television review, the real ghostbusters, the smurfs, theodore, tigger, turtles, tv review, tv special, winnie the pooh, wonderful ways to say no

30 years ago today (well, yesterday when I was originally writing this and was meant to go up but couldn’t finish it in time due to carpal tunnel), television history was made…well, for my generation, at least.

You probably already know Cartoon All-Stars To The Rescue from its reputation more than anything else. There’s plenty of online critics who have picked apart this bizarre little PSA before me, and more will with every generation that discovers it. This was an unusual attempt on behalf of the White House, the Ronald McDonald House charity, The Walt Disney Corporation, several powerful television stations, and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences to get kids to say no to drugs. Did they succeed? Probably not. But in order to understand why, we have to go back to the beginning:

In the 1980s, America was gripped by a crippling epidemic of drug users, urban monsters enticing children off the playgrounds into increasingly dangerous and deadly vices such as smoking and drinking – or so they believed. Ronald Reagan and his First Lady Nancy made headlines by declaring drugs to be the number one problem in the country and signed bills and acts into action that cracked down hard on even the most minute offenders. I don’t know, I could have sworn there was a real worldwide health crisis going on at the time that could have used more attention and early action, but maybe that was just my imagination. It wasn’t like this whole drug narrative was a desperate attempt by Ronald to create his own boogeyman that would distract the American public from a disease that predominantly affected an unfairly maligned group that he and Nancy liked to pretend didn’t exist, someone’s gotta think of the children dammit! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!

Never forget them. Never EVER forget them.

As nostalgic as it is to look back on the colorful anti-drug PSAs that plagued the airwaves in my day, learning more about why and how they were made as a result of Reagan’s manipulation leaves a bitter aftertaste. They also present blatantly unrealistic scenarios; never in my life has a shady-looking fellow come up to me and my friends in the schoolyard and offered us marijuana or crack. I didn’t even know these drugs existed until my school got a visit from D.A.R.E. In fact, the whole War On Drugs is downright hypocritical if you know anything about the Contra affair. This self-fabricated war mainly targeted African-American and Latino communities, which only served to inflate Reagan’s ego and fuel his open prejudices against minorities when not steering the country towards bankruptcy and the threat of nuclear war through a combination of greed, bloodlust, and encroaching senility. It makes you wonder, what kind of campaign did this old bastard run that got himself elected in the first place?

“…Either I’m on drugs right now or we’re all trapped in a time loop, and I don’t know which one is worse.”

The War On Drugs continued into the Bush administration with George Bush himself pushing this special as a huge step forward into saving children from drugs. He and Barbara Bush even filmed an awkward introduction for the VHS release. Cartoon All-Stars was a shockingly big deal at the time, not just for what it was trying to promote but for the fact that so many characters from a number of different studios were coming together all at once for the first and most likely only time. Roy E. Disney, in particular, played an enormous part in getting the special made. He stepped into the role of Executive Producer, ensured characters from some of Disney’s big Saturday morning cartoons like DuckTales and The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh appeared and had the special distributed through Buena Vista Home Video. Disney’s big name drew in more parties, and the use of other characters like Garfield and the Chipmunks got the personal approval from their creators.

Written and animated in the short time of eight weeks (startlingly quick turnaround time for animation), Cartoon All-Stars was part after-school special, part Who Framed Roger Rabbit/Avengers-style crossover, part commercial. The special was simulcast on four different major TV stations, and also freely distributed in video stores, schools, and libraries. I wasn’t born until after Cartoon All-Stars aired, but I spent my early childhood watching the tape fairly frequently. I enjoyed seeing all these cartoon characters I knew together, and admittedly the anti-drug message hit home pretty hard due to my grandfather passing away from lung cancer around that time. That part stuck with me longer than I care to admit. When you’re a four-year-old kid scolding an adult for smoking, it’s cute. When you’re fourteen? Eh, not so much.

April Review: The Pagemaster (1994)

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1990's, 20th century fox, 2D animation, 90's, 90s movie, adventure, animated, animated feature, animated movie, animated movie review, animation, animators, book, books, captain ahab, cartoon review, christopher lloyd, classic literature, david kirschner, dr. jekyll, dream away, edward hyde, fairies, fairy tale, Fantasy, film, film review, frank welker, frankenstein, george hearn, ghost stories, hand drawn animation, haunted house, henry jekyll, Horror, James Horner, jim cummings, joe johnston, leonard nimoy, library, literature, living books, macaulay culkin, moby dick, mother goose, movie, movie review, mr. hyde, Non-Disney, nostalgia, obscure animated movie, obscure animation, pagemaster, patrick stewart, puns, review, stephen king, The Pagemaster, the strange case of dr. jekyll and mr. hyde, traditional animation, treasure island, turner animation, wendy moten, whatever you imagine, whoopi goldberg

I expected this movie to have a few votes from those who remembered it as kids. I never expected it to win by a landslide. Lesson learned: never underestimate a nostalgic kids’ movie from the ’90s.

Once upon a time, David Kirschner, producer of An American Tail among other things, took his daughters to the New York Public Library. This visit inspired him to write a story about a fantastical adventure that would get kids excited about reading. The result was The Pagemaster, a 1994 box-office bomb that would go on to develop a cult following among children like me who grew up watching it. Animation historians tend to lump The Pagemaster in with the likes of Thumbelina or Quest For Camelot: 90s features that tried to coast off the success of Disney’s Renaissance films yet failed to match their caliber. But actually, trailers for The Pagemaster played in theaters and on home video a good four years before the movie was released…it was still in production for most of that time so the amount of influence Disney had on it is up for debate, but the point remains. I’m willing to bet what played a major part in its delay was the myriad of problems that cropped up during the filmmaking, from David Kirschner suing the Writers Guild of America for not receiving the sole story credit he felt was owed, to the plot being rewritten in the middle of the animation process, which is never a good thing. I’ve also heard stories about Macaulay Culkin being a diva on set, but knowing what we know now about his abusive father explains a lot so I’m not holding that against him.

And here’s another fun fact I dug up while doing my research: apparently Stephen King of all people wrote the treatment for The Pagemaster, which certainly explains the film’s more horrific elements. Does this means this movie is technically part of the King multiverse? I can see Richard hanging out with The Losers Club on weekends and trying to avoid killer clowns and langoliers in his spare time.

Though it was released under the 20th Century Fox banner, The Pagemaster was the first of only two animated films created by Turner Feature Animation, an off-shoot of Hanna-Barbera founded by media mogul Ted Turner. In hindsight, it’s not surprising that Turner had a hand in this children’s flick with an educational message. Let’s not forget the last animated project he invested himself in was all about teaching kids environmentalism in the cheesiest way possible.

But unlike Captain Planet, does The Pagemaster hold up after all these years? Will it get kids sucked into the magic of reading? And how long can I go without forcing in a Home Alone reference? Read on and find out.

Siskel & Ebert Blogathon: The Critic – “Siskel & Ebert & Jay & Alice”

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Al Jean, animated show, blogathon, critic, Ebert, film critic, film critics, Gene Siskel, it stinks, Jay Sherman, Jon Lovitz, Matt Groening, Mike Reiss, movie critics, Roger Ebert, Siskel, Siskel and Ebert, siskel and ebert and jay and alice, siskel and ebert blogathon, television animation, television review, The Critic, The Simpsons, tv review

Well lookee here, I’m participating in another blogathon! This time it’s 18cinemalane’s Siskel & Ebert At The Blogathon, which honors the iconic film critic duo of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. For my part, I decided to look at something Siskel & Ebert-related that doesn’t get as much attention as their reviews.

For those of you who are unaware, The Critic was a short-lived but popular animated series by The Simpsons writers Al Jean and Mike Reiss. It aired on ABC in 1994 before moving to Fox for its second and final season in 1995. It centers on Jay Sherman, the titular film critic (played by Jon Lovitz) and his life, focusing mainly on the colorful cast of friends, family and coworkers, and the many, many bad movies he’s stuck reviewing.

The highest compliment I can give The Critic is that it combines the best of The Simpsons (no big surprise there) and the best of Family Guy; its humor bounces between hilarious parodies of contemporary and classic films, playful dialogue, and zany surreal moments that you can only get away with in animation. Its characters are just as good as the casts from either of the aforementioned shows, and there’s barely a stinker in the entire series’ run. But perhaps the most fondly remembered episode is Season 2’s “Siskel & Ebert & Jay & Alice”, aka, the one that stars Siskel and Ebert playing themselves.

Siskel and Ebert are not the first recognized film critics to be featured in this series; Rex Reed and Gene Shallit also appeared multiple times. They even have a few lines in this very episode. As a matter of fact, Siskel and Ebert reviewed the first few episodes of The Critic on their show – and gave it a thumbs down. This isn’t a reflection of the series or their judgement, however. The problem is ABC aired the episodes out of order. After the pilot was supposed to come the official second episode “Miserable”, a humorous take on Stephen King’s Misery, but for whatever reason they showed the less interesting “Marty’s First Date” instead. It affected Siskel and Ebert’s view of the show overall despite their high praise for the movie spoof segments. But how does their premiere in the world of prime-time animated television hold up?

I think we’re in great hands.

My Top 21 Favorite Donald Duck Shorts

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Last November we celebrated a milestone for one of Disney’s most iconic characters. Today we gather for another – Happy 85th Birthday Donald Duck!

There’s a certain irony to Donald’s popularity: in the theme parks or shows like The Mickey Mouse Club or House of Mouse, Donald is portrayed flagging behind Mickey in fame and adulation if not outright forgotten. But in the real world so many people prefer Donald over Mickey, and I can see why. Mickey’s status as the company’s mascot rarely allows him to be a mischievous rascal like in the old days. Donald on the other hand has always been the feisty fowl generations could relate to due to how much he’s put through the wringer and his resulting temper flares.

Because he’s not on as high a pedestal as The One That Started It All, he’s given more freedom of personality, and, as a result, much more to do. Donald’s worn a variety of hats throughout his five-and-fourscore-long career. This also expands beyond traditional media. You’d be hard pressed to find a Donald Duck video game that isn’t at least a little fun to play. Getting to bash things with his trademark temper tantrums is a treat, and Disney always takes full advantage of it. In fact, before Sora was created to be the protagonist for Kingdom Hearts, Tetsuya Nomura imagined Mickey as the main character, but Disney wanted it to be Donald! They’re well aware that no matter how bad the scenario, Donald can take a licking and keep on ticking, and that’s done him well these past 85 years.

So to mark the special occasion, I’m counting down my Top 21 Favorite Donald Duck Shorts. Why that many? Because I like to go eleven steps beyond.

The rules from before apply: I’m not counting segments from or complete feature films like Saludos Amigos or The Three Caballeros. Donald has to be the main focus of the entire short feature, and not just “Mickey’s name is in the title though Donald takes up 90% of the action but it’s totally a Mickey short, you guys, for reals”.

But par the course for this blog, a few Honorable Mentions first:

• Pomp and Circumstance – This highlight from Fantasia 2000 has Donald assisting Noah before the flood then reenacting An American Tail with Daisy on the ark.
• Trick or Treat – A Halloween classic where Donald falls victim to a witch’s tricks after he deprives his nephews of their treats.
• Donald and the Wheel – Two spirits of innovation try to inspire caveman Donald to invent the wheel, but it doesn’t quite stick. Meant to be educational, but the music is unbelievably catchy.
• Drip Drippy Donald/Early to Bed – These shorts featuring Donald being robbed of a good night’s rest would be hilarious if they weren’t so relatable.
• Donald’s Dilemma – The title’s a bit of a misnomer; Daisy’s the focus and there’s barely a dilemma. But it reveals a darker side to her romance and shows just how far she’d go to hold on to him.
• Orphan’s Benefit – While an ensemble piece for Mickey and Friends, it’s Donald who steals the show as usual.
• Commando Duck – Horribly blatant anti-Japanese sentiment aside, this World War Two-era short of Donald behind enemy lines has a fun chase at the climax.
• Cured Duck – Donald tries to cure his temper once and for all with an insult machine.
• Slide Donald Slide – Another one of Donald’s quarrels with Spike the Bee wins points for mirroring the World Series game playing on the radio, but winds up here because Spike is technically in the wrong this time around.
• The Wise Little Hen – The one that started it all.
• Donald’s Double Trouble – Donald hires an inexplicable doppelganger with better manners and English to win back Daisy only for it to backfire terribly.
• Donald’s Golf Game – Donald goes golfing with his nephews and their usual amount of mischief.
• Donald’s Valentine Dollar – Donald must retrieve his last dollar from all sorts of shenanigans in order to purchase a valentine for Daisy. It’s completely silent, but that repetitive piano music can get grating.
• Donald’s Camera – Donald’s attempt to shoot wildlife with a camera instead of a gun goes as well as you’d expect. Interestingly, I never knew about the original ending for years since they abruptly cut it off whenever they aired it on tv.
• Sleepytime Donald – A sleepwalking Donald takes Daisy out on a late night date, and it’s up to her to make sure he doesn’t wake up in a precarious situation.
• Mickey’s Philharmagic – Yes it’s a 3D show in the Disney parks and Mickey’s name is in the title, but don’t be fooled. Donald is the star of the show, and seeing him interact with some of the most iconic musical moments of the Disney Renaissance in stunning CGI animation for the time is astounding.