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