Fun & Fancy Free

"Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum."  There's giants ahead in this week's Disney movie: Fun & Fancy Free.  The film premiered in 1947, is made up of two segments/stories, and runs just over an hour at 70 minutes.  Jiminy Cricket is back to introduce the audience to the two stories. 

Fun & Fancy Free was another Disney movie that I had never seen before... however it does turn out that I've seen the second half of the movie as a short story/movie all its own, but before we address that, let's talk about the first story.

The first segment of Fun & Fancy Free tells the story of three little bears.  (Nope.  It's not the story you're thinking of...)  The story is about Bongo- a circus bear who yearns to be free to roam the wild mountains and forests.  He ends up running away from the circus (as opposed to running away to the circus; oh the irony!) and finds himself at last in the untamed wild.  Learning the ways of the wild turn out to be a bit of a challenge for him... until he meets Lulubelle and it's love at first sight... and then the boorish (and massive!) Lumpjaw (who also has a crush on Lulubelle) enters the scene and the expected chaos ensues. 

I was very excited during this segment because I thought that at one point the bears in the forest were going to perform an epic square dance; but alas it ended up being a musical number about bears slapping each other as a sign of affection.  Who knew?

The second story/segment in Fun & Fancy Free is "Jack and the Beanstalk."  Where "Jack" is Mickey (with Donald and Goofy as his sidekicks).  I do remember seeing this when I was little, but I'm fairly certain it was it's own video cassette.  Just Mickey and the Beanstalk.  In Fun & Fancy Free, this segment is narrated by Edgar Bergen, a ventriloquist, and his dummies.  I want to say I found it creepy (but I feel like that would be stereotyping dummies), so I'll just say it was unappealing.  Also the live action narration made this animated feature feel disjointed, as opposed to enhancing or adding cohesion to the film.  On top of all of this, the segment seemed somehow different than my memories of Mickey and the Beanstalk...

Because Mickey and the Beanstalk  has a completely different narrator!  Mickey and the Beanstalk as a standalone segment is narrated by Professor Ludwig Von Drake and his friend Herman (the bug)!  When Disney re-released the Mickey and the Beanstalk portion of Fun & Fancy Free, they changed the narrator.  Mickey and the Beanstalk is available on Netflix Instant Stream so I ended up rewatching the entire Mickey and the Beanstalk segment, but this time with Professor Ludwig Von Drake!  I enjoyed it so much more!  Definitely would recommend the Prof. Drake version over the Edgar Bergen ventriloquist version.

The beanstalk segment plays out much like one would expect a "Jack in the Beanstalk" story to play out.  Poor farmers/peasants sell cow for magic beans which grow a beanstalk.  At the top of said beanstalk is a fearsome giant who must be faced to restore happiness to the land below.  A rather bittersweet did you know fact about the film is this was the last animation where Walt Disney voiced Mickey Mouse. 

With that, I will leave you with a quote from the man himself, Walt Disney:

I only hope that we don't lose sight of one thing - that it was all started by a mouse.

 

 

Coming Up Next Week: Melody Time

Make Mine Music

Hello, Hello! my faithful Disney fans!  Thanks for joining me on this journey through Walt's masterpieces!  With that said, I must confess that these compilation/package movies are not quite at the level of Disney magic that I expect from the Disney name.  However, this week's movie still had some wonderful moments.

 

Film 8 on our Disney journey is Make Mine Music.  The film actually reminded me of Fantasia, particularly in its musicality.  The film premiered in 1946 and is 75 minutes long.  Make Mine Music is comprised of 9 animated shorts.  Much like Fantasia, some of the shorts I really enjoyed but others I could live without...

Once again the overly artistic and abstract shorts I found boring not engaging.  The Make Mine Music shorts do have singing and/or dialogue, and they run much shorter than Fantasia's lengthy numbers, so they are definitely easier to sit through.  My three favorite shorts were "Johnny Fedora and Alice Blue Bonnet," "Peter and the Wolf," and "All the Cats Join In."

 

 

The "Johnny Fedora and Alice Blue Bonnet" segment is sung by the Andrews Sisters (their voices are so wonderful!).  The short tells the story of a fedora and bluebonnet who meet and fall in love in a department store window but become separated when the bluebonnet is sold.  The music and magic of Disney definitely shone through in this short.  If you saw Monsters University in theaters, you most likely also got to see The Blue Umbrella- the short played before the film.  The Blue Umbrella definitely draws from the same plotlines as Johnny Fedora. (I love it when old school Disney meets new school Disney!)

The second short that I really enjoyed was "Peter and the Wolf."  The music was superb and the story used humor beautifully.  It was fun to watch the antics of Peter and his comrades in their hunt for the evil wolf.

If I had to pick just one short from Make Mine Music as my favorite, I would have to go with "All the Cats Join In."  A bit of a surprising pick for me as there's no plot... but there's dancing!  (Have I mentioned that I love dancing!?)  This short is very creatively done in that it is actually being drawn as it's playing out.  For example, at one point characters are jumping into a car, but they take off before all the wheels are drawn, thus a stop sign is drawn to stop the car so that the wheels can be finished.  I found this short clever, amusing, and just plain fun.  And to top everything off, the characters swing dance!  Great music, great humor, and dancing!  I'm in!

There are two other shorts that while they were not my favorites they still deserve honorable mentions.  "Casey at Bat" is a funny clip about a baseball player and everyone's belief that he is unstoppable.  "The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met" is a comic tragedy about a whale who can sing like an opera star and the impresario who tries to find him while mistakenly believing that the whale has swallowed an opera star.  This short should have tugged at my interest more (given the subject matter: a singing whale), but I guess my suspension of disbelief only goes so far...  These two clips are still iconic Disney fare and worth checking out though.  Also, all of the singing in "The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met" is done by Nelson Eddy (Amazing!).  His range and voice were out of this world!

This week I'll leave you with the opening lyrics to Make Mine Music because no matter what, at the end of the day, music is one of life's greatest pleasures.

When melody fills the night,

And even the stars go dancing,

To the music of the moonlight,

Make mine music,

And I'll dream of you,

 Make mine music,

And the dream comes true,

Music will play the shadows away,

 When everything seems to go wrong,

So make mine music,

And life will be a song,

Make mine music

Coming Up Next Week: Fun and Fancy Free

The Three Caballeros

I am happy to report that The Three Caballeros was much more enjoyable for me than Saludos Amigos.  :)

The Three Caballeros is another compilation/package film that centers around Donald Duck's birthday and his gifts from his friends from Latin America, specifically Jose Carioca (the parrot) and Panchito (the rooster).  The film premiered in Mexico City in 1944 and runs about an hour and 15 minutes.


The first segment of the film is "The Cold-Blooded Penguin."  I had never seen The Three Caballeros, but Pablo the penguin seemed very familiar... and then it hit me.  He starred in one of my favorite books from childhood: The Penguin who Hated the Cold.  :)  Pablo is a penguin who hates the cold and dreams of moving to a warmer clime.  His attempts to get to the equator usually turn out poorly for him, but they're still very fun to watch.  :)



Most of the film is made up of Donald, Jose, and Panchito's travels to several different locations throughout Mexico and Latin America.  The film is a combination of animation and live-action.  Some scenes involve animated scenery and backdrops with live actors while others provide live-action reel time and have the animated figures of the three caballeros drawn into the scenes.  But what almost all of the scenes had in common was... dancing!  So much live music and singing and cultural dancing.  It's not exactly a secret, but I love dancing!  This made The Three Caballeros very fun to watch.  :)

I definitely prefer the full-length feature Disney films to the package films, but The Three Caballeros was still very enjoyable.

This week I'll leave you with a piece of my own wisdom.  A basic but accurate parameter to use when critiquing a movie:

Surprise dancing in a movie = good.  Surprise aliens in a movie = bad.  (Please note: Expected aliens aren't very good either...)

Coming Up Next: Make Mine Music

Saludos Amigos

Saludos Amigos!  Hello Friends!

 

Saludos Amigos is Walt Disney’s 6^th animated feature… though it does not seem like it belongs in the Disney animated feature film collection.  The film is a compilation of 4 animated shorts interspersed with some live footage of Disney animators and artists traveling around South America.  The film runs just over 40 minutes and was released in 1942.  This is the first of six animated “package films” that Disney released in the 1940s.  So I guess this won’t be my only foray into the land of animated shorts compilations...

 

 

Saludos Amigos is set in South America and was actually produced as part of a Goodwill Mission from the US to South America.  World War II and tensions between countries, lead the US to take steps to solidify/improve their good relations with their neighbors.  Walt and a team of 20 animators, musicians, technicians, and the like traveled to South America to tour Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Peru.  The result of their travels is Saludos Amigos.

 

 

Saludos Amigos is made up of 4 animated shorts.  The first is "Lake Titicaca" and centers around Donald Duck as he explores this South American destination.  The second short is "Pedro" and tells the story of a young plane and his struggles to make the mail run over the mountains.  The third short is "El Gaucho Goofy" and features Goofy and his attempts to be an Argentinian cowboy. (It was fun to watch the narrator/Goofy rapport in this segment as appears in many of Goofy's "How to" cartoons.)  The fourth and final segment is "Aquarela do Brasil" or "Watercolor of Brazil."  This was the most abstract short, but it did focus a good amount of time on the dance of the samba which was fun.  Also Jose Carioca is introduced in this short.  He will also appear with Donald in The Three Caballeros.

 

 

Prior to this project (53 Disney movies in 53 weeks) I had never heard of Saludos Amigos, so I was really looking forward to some "new" Disney.  Unfortunately, I found myself very bored.  There was no plot, no riveting music, and no Disney magic.  It was fun to see Donald and Goofy in their respective shorts, but as a whole I found the film uninspiring.  I'm hoping its sequel, The Three Caballeros, is more engaging.

 

 

 

 

This week I'll leave you with some inspiration from Walt himself:

 

In bad times and good, I have never lost my sense of zest for life.

 

 

 

Coming Up Next: The Three Caballeros