Christmas Shelf Reviews: Pluto’s Christmas Tree (1952)

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When I made my list of favorite Mickey Mouse shorts, I had a hell of a time combing through his filmography for what I considered “real” Mickey cartoons. This is because a good many films in the mouse’s oeuvre have the supporting characters like Donald Duck and Goofy quickly steal the spotlight from him. And that’s not the only thing they took: as more characters were ingrained into the Disney canon and Mickey was reduced to being a bit player in his own features, the scrappy traits that once endeared him to the public were siphoned away to his costars. And what was left for him once the childlike curiosity, playfulness, brash temper, big heart and fierce determination were gone? What kind of personality could Mickey cultivate for himself into when there was no personality left?

Thanks a lot, Lisa.

By the late 40s and early 50s, everything that made Mickey enjoyable was scrubbed away into a bland, neighborly squeaky-clean corporate-friendly icon. He was good for selling merch, but his cartoons suffered severely for it. Mickey was paired up with his faithful dog Pluto to keep things more interesting, though that resulted in him getting far more to do than his master. I always thought Pluto worked better as a supporting role rather than the main star, so I’ve never been crazy about the Pluto shorts or these in particular because…well, let’s look at a comedic dog and master duo done right:

Wallace, for all his mechanical ingenuity and good nature, is more than a bit of an idiot. Gromit is vastly smarter and is capable of expressing a variety of relatable emotions despite never uttering a word (though that has less to do with him being a dog and more due to the fact that he has no mouth). Whenever there’s trouble (usually of Wallace’s own making), Gromit steps up to the plate and the two always manage to work past their shortcomings together to save the day. They may not always be on the same level as each other, but their camaraderie and the situations they get into certainly make for an entertaining time.

As for Mickey, he may have been a lot of things in his prime, but he certainly wasn’t stupid. So seeing the resilient rodent who sailed steamships, conducted his way through storms, battled giants, saved kingdoms, slayed dragons and controlled the very cosmos have his IQ substantially lowered just so he could play second fiddle to his pet…well, it feels downright insulting. Pluto’s Christmas Tree was the second-to-last short made before Mickey’s thirty year-long retirement, and it’s a prime showcase for all the problems that come with his extreme flanderization, right down to the fact that his name isn’t even the one that’s in the title.

March Review: Sleeping Beauty (1959)

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Whenever I discuss Sleeping Beauty with someone who doesn’t share my enthusiasm for Disney, they have an irksome tendency to get it muddled with Snow White; their excuse being “it has the same plot”. I’ll admit, there are some surface similarities that even the most casual viewer can pick up on: a fairytale where a princess is forced into unconsciousness and wakes up with some necking, the comic relief and villain being the most beloved characters, a little frolic in the forest with animals, the antagonist plunging off a cliff, you get the idea. In fact, Sleeping Beauty even reuses some discarded story beats from Snow White, mainly our couple dancing on a cloud and the villain capturing the prince to prevent him from waking his princess. Yet despite that, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty are two wholly different movies shaped by the era and talents of the time.

I’ve discussed how Walt Disney was never one to stick to a repeated formula, no matter how successful it was. He must have noticed the parallels between his first movie and this one, but decided to make one crucial change for Sleeping Beauty that would forever differentiate the two: the look. We all know the traditional Disney house style: round, soft shapes, big eyes; charming as it was and still is, Walt was sick of it after several decades. Meanwhile, artists like Mary Blair and Eyvind Earle were producing gorgeous concept art that rarely made a perfect translation into the Disney house style.

Walt wanted to make a feature that took the pop artistry of their designs and made the animation work for it instead of the other way around – which brings us to another animation studio that was doing well at the time, United Pictures Animation, or UPA.

UPA didn’t have the kind of budget Disney normally had for their animated projects, but what they lacked in fluidity they made up for in style. Watch The Tell-Tale Heart, Gerald McBoing-Boing and Rooty-Toot-Toot to see what I mean. UPA were pioneers of limited animation, taking their scant resources and creating some striking visuals with bold geometric designs. Through this, they defined the look of 50’s animation. Though perhaps unintentional, Sleeping Beauty comes across as Disney’s response to UPA, or what would happen if UPA had the funds they deserved. The characters’ contours are angular but effortlessly graceful, defining their inherent dignity and royalty. And the colors, ohhh the colors…

Because of the immense amount of work required to animate in this difficult new style (and in the Cinemascope ratio, no less) as well as story troubles and Walt barely supervising the animation studio now that he had his hands full with live-action films, television, and a theme park, Sleeping Beauty had a turbulent production that lasted the entirety of the 1950s. For a time, Chuck Jones of Looney Tunes fame was set to direct. Director Wilfred Jackson suffered a heart attack partway through production and Eric Larson, one of the Nine Old Men, took the mantle from there before Walt Disney replaced him Clyde Geronimi. And even after that, Wolfgang Reitherman teamed up with Geronimi as co-director to get the film finished after no less than three delays. Also, Don Bluth got his foot in the door as an assistant animator for this feature, beginning his short-lived but impactful tenure at Disney. Did all this hamper the movie, or did they succeed in what they set out to accomplish?

Well, one of the reasons why this review took so long was because I had a hard time not repeating “MOVIE PRETTY” and “MALEFICENT AWESOME” over and over. Make what you will of that.

April Review: The Pagemaster (1994)

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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.

January Review: Fantasia 2000

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Last year I talked about Fantasia, which is not just one of my favorite Disney movies, but one of my favorite movies in general. And if I may be self-indulgent for a moment, it’s also one of the reviews that I’m the proudest of. Fantasia is a visual, emotional masterpiece that marries music and art in a manner few cinematic ventures have come close to replicating. One question that remains is what my thoughts on the long-gestated sequel is –

…you might wanna get yourselves some snacks first.

As anyone who read my review on the previous film knows, Fantasia was a project ahead of its time. Critics and audiences turned their noses up at it for conflicting reasons, and the film didn’t even make it’s budget back until twenty-something years later when they began marketing it to a very different crowd.

“I don’t wanna alarm you dude, but I took in some Fantasia and these mushrooms started dancing, and then there were dinosaurs everywhere and then they all died, but then these demons were flying around my head and I was like WOOOOOAAAHHH!!”

“Yeah, Fantasia is one crazy movie, man.”

“Movie?”

Fantasia’s unfortunate box office failure put the kibosh on Walt Disney’s plans to make it a recurring series with new animated shorts made to play alongside handpicked favorites. The closest he came to following through on his vision was Make Mine Music and Melody Time, package features of shorts that drew from modern music more than classical pieces.

Fast-forward nearly fifty years later to the golden age known as the Disney Renaissance: Walt’s nephew Roy E. Disney surveys the new crop of animators, storytellers, and artists who are creating hit after hit and have brought the studio back to his uncle’s glory days, and thinks to himself, “Maybe now we can make Uncle Walt’s dream come true.” He made a good case for it, but not everyone was on board. Jeffrey Katzenberg loathed the idea, partly because he felt the original Fantasia was a tough act to follow (not an entirely unreasonable doubt) but most likely due to the fact that the last time Disney made a sequel, The Rescuers Down Under, it drastically underperformed (even though the reasons for that are entirely Katzenberg’s fault. Seriously, watch Waking Sleeping Beauty and tell me you don’t want to punch him in the nose when Mike Gabriel recalls his opening weekend phone call).

Once Katzenberg was out of the picture, though, Fantasia 2000, then saddled with the less dated but duller moniker Fantasia Continued, got the go-ahead. Many of the sequences were made simultaneously as the animated features my generation most fondly remembers, others were created to be standalone shorts before they were brought into the fold. Since it was ready in time for the new millennium, it not only got a name change but a massive marketing campaign around the fact that it would be played on IMAX screens for a limited run, the very first Disney feature to do so. As a young Fantasia fan who had never been to one of those enormous theaters before, I begged and pleaded my parents to take me. Late that January, we traveled over to the IMAX theater at Lincoln Center, the only one nearest to us since they weren’t so widespread as they are now, and what an experience it was. I can still recall the feeling of awe at the climax of Pines of Rome, whispering eagerly with my mom at how the beginning of Rhapsody in Blue looked like a giant Etch-A-Sketch, and jumping twenty feet in the air when the Firebird’s massive eyes popped open. But did later viewings recapture that magic, or did that first time merely color my perception?

Rankin-Bass Month: Cricket On The Hearth (Review)

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Ladies and gentlemen, I have found it.

The lowest of the low.

The Rankin-Bass special that even Rankin-Bass fans despise.

Call it a hunch, but I think Charles Dickens really had a thing for Christmas. His most popular novel has the holiday in the title and has been adapted for the screen and stage at least over 200 times. Dickens set a few other tales at Christmastime, no doubt to recapture the magic and spirit of the holiday in the same way A Christmas Carol did, but those were met with less success. Does anyone here remember that classic “The Haunted Man”? That one was a ghost story that also took place at Christmas. Where are the hundreds of versions of that tale? Or “The Chimes” for that matter? Or “The Battle of Life”?

Then there’s today’s tale, “Cricket On the Hearth”, which only received two silent film adaptations (the first directed by D.W. Griffith) and a long-forgotten stage play. For yet-to-be-fathomed reasons, Rankin-Bass deemed it the perfect material to follow up their smash hit Rudolph three years prior. Instead of stop-motion animation, however, we get hand-drawn animation. While that would normally be a plus in my book, I’m not kidding when I say this is some of the cheapest, most unpleasant animation I’ve set my eyes on. It’s heavily recycled, the character designs are unappealing, and it cheats numerous times by just showing long periods of still images with nothing happening. I also had to be careful grabbing screenshots because the far-right side of the video flickered and was several frames off for some reason. And it wasn’t a corrupted file issue either, this is straight from the dvd. They aired this special on national television, how could they not be bothered to fix that?

And those are just the issues I have with the visuals.

The characters are one-dimensional tools, the songs are at best forgettable and at worst unbearable, and the story manages to be both devastatingly bleak and disgustingly saccharine while also insulting to its audience. Now, Charles Dickens was a talented writer knew how to properly mix those elements to tell a compelling and resonant story. In his Christmas tales, the sentimentality and darkness complement each other and ring true.

But guess who did such a bang-up job encumbering a song about ableist reindeer with a meandering hour-long plot that he was given free rein over the story?

Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo? Deny thy special and refuse thy Writer’s Guild card. Or if not, throw thyself into the roaring cauldron of the sea and let the sirens peck at thy swollen flesh…sexist pig.

Well, this preamble has gone on long enough. Grab your insect repellent, folks, let’s look at Cricket On The Hearth.

Rankin-Bass Month: Frosty the Snowman (Review)

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Well…this is awkward.

When I first wrote this review, it opened with Cynicism saying “Bad news, Shelf. Since you shat on Rudolph last week, Patreon’s taking money AWAY from you. If you don’t say more nice things about this week’s special, we’re going to have to file for bankruptcy.” Just a fun little way of letting you know today’s post is going to be a bit less harsh than the previous one.

But then I checked my Patreon hours after the Rudolph review went up, and the numbers had shrunk substantially.

It actually happened.

A silly one-off joke I wrote to ease you, the reader, into the review, accidentally came true.

It’s like the universe itself is punishing me for daring to not like Rudolph.

Okay, the truth of the matter is a bit more complicated than that, but nobody actually quit being a patron based on my feelings towards Rudolph, for which I am relieved and grateful for. It’s already been sorted out and I certainly don’t hold this mishap against anyone because of events beyond their control.

Anyway, enough of my rambling. If you can’t already tell, today’s holiday outing is Frosty The Snowman.

Frosty, Frosty, Frosty…yeah, not a big fan of this one either.

“YOU HATE FROSTY TOO, YOU MONSTER?!”

“I didn’t say THAT!”

Frosty, like Rudolph, was another Rankin-Bass special I lost my taste for due to forced overexposure. It’s light on story and character, the animation is nothing to write home over, and we trade a bunch of subpar songs for one song dragged across the entire affair. But I’ll give it this over Rudolph:

1. It’s shorter. Slashed right down the middle of Rudolph’s runtime, Frosty’s only twenty-five minutes of schmaltzy bland holiday fare instead of nearly an hour.
2. The only jerk in the special is the clear-cut villain, who’s the most fun character in this thing.
3. The cheap stop-motion has been replaced by cheap traditional animation. Not much of an exchange, I’ll take any crumbs of hand-drawn goodness I can get these days.

If I may elaborate on the latter, the designs for the characters and backgrounds are kind of interesting. The man behind them is Paul Coker Jr., who also created comics for MAD Magazine, hence why the characters have a bit of a unique geometric aesthetic but are still kind of…weird-looking. Alfred E. Neuman wouldn’t feel out of place among this cast.

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.

My Top 20 Favorite Mickey Mouse Shorts

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As a lifelong Disney fan I can’t understate how much of an impact Mickey Mouse has had on me. In childhood, he was an icon and friend – instantly recognizable, a source of joy and entertainment, a hero and a role model. I know this is making me sound like one of those cheesy sponsors reading off a cue card, but when you’re talking about a mouse, expect plenty of cheese to be involved.

In the spirit of Mickey celebrating his 90th birthday, I’d like to share with you my 20 favorite shorts he starred in. Why 20? Because I couldn’t narrow it down to ten and I like to go nine steps beyond as opposed to one.

There were only two rules I set while making this list:

1. Mickey is the main focus, or at the very least he must be given as much to do as the other characters he shares the cartoon with. There’s a lot of great shorts out there that has Mickey’s name in the title – Mickey’s Parrot, Mickey’s Circus, Mickey’s Birthday, Mickey and the Seal, Mickey’s Christmas Carol, etc. – or has his face in the intro that advertises it as his adventure, but upon watching you find they’re really about Donald, Goofy or Pluto or literally anyone else but him.
2. Shorts only, no segments from full-length films or direct-to-video works. This means no Mickey and the Beanstalk from Fun and Fancy Free or various bits from Mickey’s Once/Twice Upon A Christmas, but sadly no Sorcerer’s Apprentice from Fantasia. I thought of excluding any short that ran over the usual length of five to seven minutes to about twenty, but that made my job even harder.

Now before we get to the countdown, here are a few Honorable Mentions:

• Mickey, Donald and Goofy in The Three Musketeers – If I were including full-length films on the list, this would be in the top five, bar none.
• The Sorcerer’s Apprentice from Fantasia – It would easily take the number one spot if it didn’t overlap with the #2 rule.
• Plane Crazy – The mouse’s first appearance on the silver screen, though he wouldn’t make as quite a splash until his sound debut in Steamboat Willie a few years later
• Orphan’s Benefit – One of my favorites as a kid. It made me laugh something fierce and still does, though a large part of it has to do with Donald and Goofy’s segments, hence why it’s only an honorable mention. Also, did you know that the color one we’re mostly familiar with is actually a remake of an earlier black and white version?
• Mickey’s Delayed Date – Pluto and Mickey tussle for attention in this outing.
• Haunted House – Spooky and atmospheric. Classic Disney nightmare fuel.
• The Gorilla Mystery – Mickey plays Minnie’s white knight yet again as he goes to-to-toe with a dangerous gorilla.
• Two-Gun Mickey – An American Tail: Mickey Goes West.
• Mickey’s Surprise Party – After Minnie’s dog spoils the cookies she was making for Mickey, he saves the day with some shockingly transparent corporate sponsorship. At least I take comfort in the fact that Mickey’s favorite cookies are the same as mine.
• Hansel and Gretel – Mickey and Minnie stumble upon a treacherous witch to the ominous strains of Danse Macabre.
• Mickey’s Cabin – Mickey outwits Pete and his dimwitted cousin with a little reverse psychology when they hold him hostage in his winter cabin. Hilarity ensues.
• Croissant – Mickey’s first short in the modern style proved you can’t keep a mouse on a mission down.
• Yodelberg – Continuing with the previous short, it’s modern Mickey at its most fast-paced and stylish fun.
• Shanghaied – It’s up to Mickey to save the day and Minnie again, this time from Pete and his dastardly crew of pirates.
• Mickey’s Christmas Carol – Mickey’s first cartoon in 30 years has him slightly out of the spotlight, but still got him back in the public eye for good.