Silly Symphony

Flowers and Trees

1 Comment

Original release date: July 30, 1932

Rating: TV-Y7 because of flowers and trees. It does feature the disclaimer of “It may contain outdated cultural depictions” which could be interesting.

Length: seven leafy minutes

Background: While not a Mickey short, “Flowers and Trees” is as historic as many of the other early Disney shorts. It was the first commercially released film in the full-color three strip format and the first Disney feature to be in full, beautiful color.

It was the first animated film to win an Academy Award and the first of many for Disney.

Review:

“Flowers and Trees” is basically the story of creepy trees. It starts out with the various plantlife of the forest waking up… flowers, mushrooms, and creepy trees.

Young Male Tree sees Alluring Female Tree and becomes smitten. Creepy Old Man Tree makes missed advances at Alluring Female Tree and, eventually, graduates to super creepy by straight up grabbing her.

The chase is on and, eventually, Creepy Old Man Tree creates fire to attempt to murder Young Male Tree. This of course backfires and he burns himself to ash.

As far as the cultural depictions, they are there a bit. Several of the flowers have faces painted in a similar way to the old minstrel show look. I’m not sure if it was intentional or not (I’d assume so if Disney decided to put a warning in) but it is there.

Extras:

There are no extra features. Creepy Old Man Tree was extra enough.

Should you watch it?

As a historical thing yes, watch it. It isn’t fantastic and it isn’t going to change your life, but it is cool to see where Disney color began.

Mickey Shorts

Steamboat Willie

2 Comments

Original release date: November 18, 1928

Rating: TV-Y7 because it’s Mickey Mouse. Mickey is downright mean to some animals and there’s about a minute scene of Pete having chewing tobacco hijinks (which somehow didn’t get the copious amount of warning that other things on Disney+ have received).

Length: seven glorious minutes

Background: You’ve heard of “Steamboat Willie,” even though you might call it “Steamboat Mickey.” It is technically the debut of both Mickey and Minnie Mouse, though they appeared in “Plane Crazy” which test debuted but didn’t officially debut several months earlier. Pete also appears, but he actually debuted three years prior in “Alice” shorts. That’s right, ol’ Pete has been around longer than Mickey. No wonder he acts like he does.

It was the first Disney cartoon with synchronized sound. It basically skyrocketed Walt Disney into fame and threw Mickey Mouse into the world as the most famous cartoon character ever.

Review:

It all starts with the famous scene you see at the beginning of every modern Disney animated film: Mickey whistling and driving the steamboat. Pete, the actual captain of the steamboat, appears and kicks Mickey off.

Mickey gets into hijinks as you would expect. He finds a whole area of animals and, at this point, pretty much becomes a brat. All to the tune of “Turkey in the Straw,” he kicks a nursing baby pig, plays music on the mama pig, and play’s a cow’s teeth like a xylophone.

Pete puts Mickey back to work in the potato peeling area of the boat, something all modern boats seem to be missing. Mickey throws a potato at a bird because, despite being an animal himself, he is abusive to other animals and that’s how it ends.

Extras:

There is one extra in the “extras” area: the retelling of “Steamboat Willie” using emojis. It is cute but probably unnecessary.

Should you watch it?

Well, obviously. It’s the debut of Mickey and Minnie and the short that catapulted Disney to the top, a level it hasn’t left in almost 100 years since. You’ll enjoy it, the kids will enjoy it, and either the whistle at the beginning or “Turkey in the Straw” will be stuck in your head for hours later. Watch it.

Uncategorized

A movie adventure!

1 Comment

Well friends, hello. I’m Andy. I’m a dad, an author, and a lifelong Disney fan.

When Disney+ was announced, I was sold immediately. A ton of Disney movies? Tons of “The Simpsons”? Classic shows at my fingertips? $6.99???

When it finally launched and I made it past the opening day issues, I began building a watchlist. Then I noticed my watchlist was basically almost the entire service. A plan hatched in my head.

What if I watched every movie? What if I did it in chronological order?

Could I do it? (Maybe.)

Do I have time? (Absolutely not.)

So here we are. I’m doing it. Will I finish? Probably not. They’re going to keep adding movies. Am I going to try? Absolutely. I figure if I knock out let’s say three movies a week, I’ll at least make it to the 80s.

If you look at the top of this page, there’s a chronological list link. I compiled this myself after not being able to find a good one online. It includes everything the app crew has thrown under the “movies” section. There are the classics. There are National Geographic documentaries. There are way too many early 2000s Disney Channel “D-coms,” which are their made for TV movies which seem to mostly star the Jonas Brothers. There’s the 2000s trend of making every animated movie again in live action form. There’s all of the Star Wars movies (including, for some reason, five LEGO adventures). There’s lots of Marvel. There’s a Garfield movie for some reason.

Quality is going to be up and down. There are greats like “Toy Story” and
“Snow White,” but there are also probable bombs like whatever “Eddie’s Million Dollar Cookout” is. There will be lots of interesting things to note, such as which movies have unsightly offensive things that might have flown in 1950 but in 2019 are no-nos.

There are also a surprisingly amount of movies I’ve never seen. I’ve missed a fair amount of the live action movies, even including the more recent ones. I’ve also missed most of the straight-to-video animated sequels that are on the service.

I’ll write a review of each movie as a post. Besides my honest opinions, I’ll also give you info on the “extras” provided by Disney+ for each movie. Much like DVDs (those were shiny discs that played movies, kids), Disney+ provides a section of extra features on many movie’s pages. I’ll tell you what is there and if it worth your time.

As this goes along, I hope to be able to re-release these posts in book-form (maybe in decade groups) along with extra, previously unpublished posts such as reviews of Disney+ television shows from the same time period.

Let’s start this journey!

Riding in the Disney time machine to review everything Disney from 1928 to today!

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started