Never Saw Such a Dismal Pair

Being the huge Disney fan that I am, I often get asked what my favorite Disney movie is. That’s like asking me to pick a favorite child. That is if I had children. It’s my Sophie’s Choice as I like so many of them for so many different reasons. On the other hand, if you were to ask me what my least favorite Disney movie was I now have a firm answer: 1947’s Fun and Fancy Free.

What’s strange about me not liking it is that this package film contains one of my favorite Mickey Mouse cartoons, Mickey and the Beanstalk. I get great nostalgic feels from this one, I remember it was always paired with Dumbo when it aired in syndication. It has some really great character moments with Mickey, Donald Duck, and Goofy, a fun villain in Willie the Giant, and tells a classic fairy tale. Telling the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, Mickey and pals are on a quest to rescue the Magic Harp from Willie and restore happiness and the harvest to Happy Valley. The Harp falls under the underrated Disney beauties list, she’s gorgeous! But what I didn’t know was that in the feature film, this short is bookended by a really creepy birthday party for a little girl that only attended by Edgar Bergen and his ventriloquist dummies Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd. While I appreciate the snarky comments made by McCarthy, the whole endeavor becomes really odd. Does this little girl have no friends her age? Where are her parents? The live sequence last too long and all you want them to do is get to the damned cartoon.

Preceding Mickey and the Beanstalk Jiminy Cricket sets the stage for the story of Bongo, a circus bear who longs to live in the wild and gets his wish by breaking free while traveling on a train. He meets a female bear by the name of Lulubelle and they both form an attraction to each other but he also has to win her hand from a rival male, Lumpjaw. Lulubelle chooses Bongo by slapping him. Yes, slapping him. Square in the face. Bongo misinterprets this bit of violence because in the bear community a slap is how one shows affection. We are treated to a marathon length song about smacking the one you love. Lulubelle accidently slaps Lumpjaw and he takes her away as her own. After Bongo realizes the slap means I Love You, he challenges Lumpjaw. Spoiler Alert: Bongo wins and can finally slap Lulubelle. This is all lovingly narrated by Dinah Shore. Not only is this whole slapping thing really weird and disturbing, but the short as a whole is a little boring. I think my head scratching from all the slapping is what kept my interest.

This is one jumble of a mess of a movie. Mostly, the package films of the 40’s work pretty well, but Fun and Fancy Free really feels disjointed. The connecting threads don’t make sense and the first half is a total snooze. Glad I saw it, but I probably won’t be watching it again for quite a while.

Aquarela do Brasil

1942’s Saludos Amigos is a bit of an odd duck in the Disney Animation Studio canon. It’s only 42 minutes long and a good portion of it is live action. I didn’t expect to enjoy it as I don’t have a great memory of the package films of the 40’s, but I thought this was a great little gem of Disney History.

We get to tag along with Walt Disney and a group of hand selected artist on their good will tour through South America. Sure, it reeks of the Good Neighbor Policy but it is so much fun to see parts of the world that were foreign to the eyes of a pre internet world. The Disney animation buff in me is totally delighted in seeing favorite artist like Frank Thomas and Mary Blair do their sketching and doodles in living color.

Playing more like a travelogue than an actual film, the shorts are tied together with the story of the animators getting inspiration from the surrounding lands and cultures. You’ve most likely seen the first 3 stories as standalone shorts and the animation, though consistent in quality, is no more groundbreaking than any other Mickey Mouse/Silly Symphony that was released in the past. We get to see Donald Duck being tourist in Lake Titicaca. We see the first installment of the Planes franchise in Pedro, the little mail plane who bravely flies through a storm over the country of Chile. We visit El Gaucho Goofy as he learns how to turn from an American Cowboy to a genuine Argentine gaucho with hilarious results.

The fourth short, Aquarela do Brasil, is where animation gets to do what animation does best: be wonderfully surrealistic. Translated to “Watercolor of Brazil”, a paint brush is animated painting landscapes of the country with each splattering of paint becoming something alive. A dash of blue paint becomes a flowing river. With a few drops of yellow a palm tree becomes an exotic jungle bird. Magically, a bunch of bananas are transformed to a flock of toucan with a mere splash of black paint. It’s beautiful, fantastic, and awesome. Once the scene is set Jose Carioca, the green parrot most associated with the Three Caballeros, is introduced to samba the night away Donald around the color streets of Brazil.

Not the best feature out there, and I probably wouldn’t recommend it as a must see to the casual fan, but if you have any interest in the Disney Animators of the 40’s, it’s a real treat. Bonus points for any anthropologist out there as all the live action footage has some great stuff from the native cultures of South America and Mid Century era Brazil.

“Recalling thrills of our love, there’s one thing I’m certain of. Return, I will, to old Brazil.”