BETH That was the best of the “package” films.

BROOM I agree. I think that was significantly superior to the last two.

ADAM Well, it wasn’t better than The Three Caballeros.

BROOM The last two: it was better than Make Mine Music or Fun and Fancy Free.

ADAM That is true. It was slicker and more orderly than The Three Caballeros, but Three Caballeros had an anarchic glee that I enjoy.

BROOM The Three Caballeros is probably more fun overall, but I thought this was an encouraging improvement on both the story and technical fronts.

BETH Mostly technical.

ADAM Yes, the stories were still pretty indifferent.

BROOM They were dippy but there was better timing. There was just a real dead dumbness to Bongo that was depressing, and we’re moving in the right direction from there. I’m not saying that this was great.

ADAM We should say, before we move on, that Beth had been dreading this screening.

BROOM She dreads them all. She’s been dreading all of the 40s movies.

BETH Yes, I have. I want to get to something good.

BROOM I really enjoyed this one, especially because I had no expectations for it. I found myself feeling really pleased that it had some verve and panache. In places.

ADAM In places.

BETH I really expected it to be terrible, so it was nice to see some pretty backgrounds and fun animation.

ADAM But let’s be clear: it wasn’t actually good.

BETH No, it wasn’t good.

BROOM But it was superior to Make Mine Music, which it was essentially a continuation of. Short for short, almost all of them were better than the average of Make Mine Music. Maybe. Let’s talk about them and see if that’s true.

BETH It’s true.

1. ONCE UPON A WINTERTIME

ADAM If you’re curious where I had seen that before…

BROOM Oh, very curious.

ADAM … one of the things we had taped off of the Disney Channel freebie hour was a Valentine’s Day special.

BETH It does seem very Valentine’s-y.

BROOM It was like a greeting card.

ADAM I don’t know if I saw them spiral onto the ice, but I definitely saw the part where the bunnies make the interlocked hearts with their butts.

BROOM A lot of the action was dumb and was rehashing either Bambi or the short On Ice. The thing with ice breaking and going over a waterfall was played out, even by then. It wasn’t very creative on that front. But visually I thought it was very impressive.

ADAM The backgrounds had a stylish two-dimensionality to them, which was attractive.

BETH And the colors used were very unusual and effective.

BROOM Since this subject is probably the richest source of discussion for the movie, I’m just going to go into it a little bit deeper. Part of the depressing quality of the last two movies, and overall of the 40s movies, comes from the fact that the lush storybook quality of the first few movies was no longer suited to the period, but they hadn’t yet really found anything new to do. Mickey and the Beanstalk, design-wise, didn’t have any new place to go, but it didn’t believe in what they used to do. It was between styles and so had no style. It was like they were going through the motions of doing an earlier style that they clearly felt was dated, because they didn’t have any new way of doing things. I think in this movie we saw them finding something new.

ADAM It has a late-Matisse feel, like early pop art.

BETH Yes, it’s the beginning of that great flat style of animation.

BROOM The Mary Blair look. I think that Mary Blair had a hand in some of those background designs, especially in “Once upon a Wintertime.”

ADAM Of course we did see this sort of thing in “Pink Elephants on Parade.”

BROOM That’s slightly different. There’s phantasmagoria and then there’s this stylized surrealist design.

ADAM Well, they’re still thinking of it in keeping with the phantasmagoric style, if you will. That was what “Bumble Boogie” was. They have this tradition of abstract craziness…

BROOM Yes, that’s a mode they have and I’m happy they’re keeping it around, but I think that what we saw in the backgrounds of “Wintertime” was something new, a new sense of design.

ADAM Yes, it was a marriage of the flatness with more-or-less realism.

BROOM I felt like the only precursor to that kind of design was in Bambi, when things occasionally became stylized and angular and they would make very strong color choices.

ADAM But you talked at one point about a scene with a black backdrop with pink and yellow on it, do you remember that? In one of the earlier movies.

BROOM You’re right, the best thing we’ve seen in that style so far was that train scene in The Three Caballeros, which was also by Mary Blair.

BETH Yes, that was great, that black background with bright colors.

BROOM They were really embracing that here. In Make Mine Music, I suppose that one that you guys really hated, that lonely window one, sort of touched on it, but they didn’t seem to know what to do with it. This movie really seized it. And I think by Alice in Wonderland we’ll see them knowing what to do in the foreground to make the most of it.

BETH Here they seemed more excited about the background than they did about the foreground.

BROOM But I think even the animation, and not just the design, also had more kick to it in this movie.

BETH The character designs I didn’t like.

BROOM I guess if we’re just talking about the first segment, I agree.

ADAM It was sort of strange to have those contemporary-looking backdrops with the old-timey people figure-skating.

BROOM But I think that kind of juxtaposition is something they explored quite a bit; I think of that as a particular Disney feeling. I’m not sure but I think we may see a more refined version of that in the next movie, in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

BETH I feel like we talked enough about that one.

2. BUMBLE BOOGIE

BROOM I thought that was awesome. I totally enjoyed that.

BETH It was right up your alley.

ADAM Albeit very similar to a number of things we’ve seen.

BROOM It was most similar to “After You’ve Gone” from Make Mine Music.

ADAM Was that the thing with the instruments?

BROOM Yes.

ADAM They really love this idea that they’re marrying music and animation.

BROOM I thought this was one of their strongest efforts at that since Fantasia. The sync was very satisfying and the atmosphere was fun.

ADAM It was psychologically satisfying, and sort of creepy. That giant snake-caterpillar thing made out of piano keys.

BROOM And the rate at which you were bombarded with new, strong images was satisfyingly high. It was very enjoyable, and it made me sit up and think, “we’re seeing something good again!”

ADAM I agree with that. What did you think of it as an adaptation of Rimsky-Korsakov?

BROOM It’s just a thing that was done in those days, to take a classical piece and boogie it up. It was a pretty rudimentary boogie-ization, but it was fine, and the choice of piece handed them the bumblebee as a character. I thought it was a little odd that when the flowers were scary to him, he got his revenge by boxing the flowers and destroying them. They didn’t really follow through on the concept of what a bee actually does with flowers.

3. THE LEGEND OF JOHNNY APPLESEED

ADAM This was the dreckiest of the segments.

BROOM It was undistinguished. But if you think of it as the descendant of, say, “Casey at the Bat” or “Peter and the Wolf,” it was better animated than those. It wasn’t quite as strong as “Once upon a Wintertime” but it still had some nice design in the backgrounds. It had good atmosphere, a nice autumnal Americana.

ADAM I thought the cornpone Parson Weems quality of it was disturbing.

BROOM Why? That’s what it was.

ADAM Why? Because that’s what’s going to make John McCain president.

BROOM Well, right now may not be the best time in history for us to be thinking about these things, but I think there’s room in life for Norman Rockwellisms, and it’s okay to indulge them sometimes. I thought that Johnny Appleseed was pretty gay, and it made you feel like, “I guess it’s good that we have apple trees, but nobody should want to be like that guy.”

BETH Here’s my problem with this movie as a whole: none of the characters – except for the chipmunk – seem like Disney characters. There were no characteristics of their faces or their bodies that reminded me of classic Disney. They weren’t like Bambi or Dumbo.

BROOM Can you characterize that? Is it a warmth of characterization that they were lacking?

BETH Well, the bodies of the animals – like the bunnies in “Wintertime” – they were husky in a strange way. They didn’t seem as lithe, as nimble, as animals usually do in Disney. And their faces seemed dumber.

BROOM That’s definitely how I’ve felt about a lot of characters we’ve seen in the past few movies. I feel like they’re on their way out of that here, but they still have that look.

ADAM The bunnies in the first segment here were cut-rate.

BETH Johnny Appleseed had this weird, not-quite-characterized face.

ADAM He started out as a bubble-nosed young man – he looked basically identical to the young man in “Once upon a Wintertime.” And not that different from Pecos Bill or Little Toot, frankly.

BROOM It’s a tough job, though. Let’s ask ourselves: have they at any point, all the way back to Snow White, created a semi-realistic human character to our satisfaction? I think they just haven’t solved that problem yet.

ADAM Slue Foot Sue looked a lot like what Cinderella’s going to look like, a couple movies from now.

BROOM I think we’re going to find Cinderella herself to be quite bland. I don’t think that’s the solution either. If you picture the man from 101 Dalmatians – that’s a good solution to making a cartoon person. He’s very gangly and has a very strong cartoony characterization but he’s also a person. He’s nicely in-between. I think that this blandness was just the best they had come up with. Remember Geppetto being so blobby?

BETH I think they tried to make Johnny Appleseed look a little different, and it just didn’t quite work. He looked creepy to me.

ADAM He grew up from being just “a young Disney man” to being like “The Martins and the Coys.” The same way that Pecos Bill looked just like “Casey at the Bat.” They’ve only got like six types.

BROOM And are any of them human enough to really relate to?

ADAM I’ll bet it seems worse to us having watched them all in a row, because we can recognize them as stock characters.

BROOM I recognize what Beth is saying as a basic reaction: “I don’t relate to that character. I understand what the character represents, but I don’t feel like I’m in the company of a person.”

BETH I’m saying that they don’t feel like the Disney characters that were established in the late-30s, early-40s. They don’t have that look, and they don’t have the 50s look. They have an uncertain look.

BROOM Just a pale face with some features stuck on it.

BETH Just uninspired. They care more about the backgrounds than the people.

BROOM There’s an impersonality to a lot of these. And I think that’s why my favorite ones are the ones that have to do with music and splashes and lights. Fireworks displays instead of stories. Okay, so the “Johnny Appleseed” one was a little disappointing.

ADAM Also weirdly Christian.

BROOM Yes. All that emphasis on the bible, and the song about “my lord.” I was surprised.

ADAM It comes up also in “Trees.”

BROOM Is this the first explicit Christianity in any of these? Previously he seemed to avoid it – every time things went in that direction, it would just be a castle in the sky, or trees curved like the arch of a church. But never a crucifix and god and a bible with a cross on it. I was surprised. Anything to say about Johnny Appleseed’s dramatic death in the course of the cartoon? I thought that was surprising.

ADAM I thought that was surprising too. It would have upset me as a child.

BROOM “That’s just your husk, John.”

BETH “That’s just your husk” is an upsetting thing to hear.

BROOM And yes, that chipmunk did seem to be either Chip or Dale. And the red Indians? Comments?

ADAM It was historically inaccurate.

BETH It was the time.

4. LITTLE TOOT

ADAM I thought it was pretty adorable, in spite of myself.

BETH I enjoyed “Little Toot.”

BROOM I thought the effects animation, and other features of the animation, were very impressive. He was rounded and shaded in complex ways the whole time.

ADAM His dad was actually a pretty well-designed character; you saw a family resemblance but also a stern, proudly working-class quality. He seemed like an individual.

BROOM He’s not a person, he’s a tugboat. They’re okay with things and animals, I think we’re saying.

BETH I thought the characterization of those tugboats was better than any of the animals or people in this movie.

BROOM Those buoys with angry faces and claws made of water were quite scary.

BETH That scene was scary! And that chanting…

BROOM “… bad boy! …”

ADAM “… shame! …”

BROOM And then they sang “Do or die!” There was an intensity to “Little Toot” that surprised us all.

ADAM It beat the pants off of what happened to Pedro the mail plane.

BROOM It was reminiscent of Pedro the mail plane, but in “Pedro,” there was a wink in the narrator’s voice the whole time. This one, even though it was the Andrews Sisters, was more intense.

BETH This was also easier to relate to because it happened in the city rather than some remote place where only an airplane can fly.

BROOM It was within sight of the New York skyline that I see every day. The terrible, terrible catastrophe that Little Toot causes was out of proportion to your expectations.

ADAM That was like a Cloverfield level of violence.

BROOM It was Speed 2. Thousands of deaths, surely.

BETH He didn’t mean to. He didn’t know. He just should have figured it out sooner.

BROOM Anyway, “Little Toot” was pretty good.

5. TREES

ADAM This was the campiest thing I think we’ve seen in any Disney film. Certainly in the top three campiest moments.

BROOM There were interesting things in the look of it; when the wind was blowing in the trees and their shapes were strange and elongated, I thought that was neat. But it was not a good of visualization of the poem and the whole concept was just kitsch.

ADAM It was pious and weird.

BROOM Again, I think that their draftsmanship has improved significantly since the last couple of movies, and you could see it watching those leaves blowing around. They can’t help themselves but draw those – we saw those leaves blowing in the wind in Fantasia, in Bambi, and again in Make Mine Music, and we might even have seen it in Fun and Fancy Free. And then we saw them again here. But they were better here than they’ve been recently. In fact I thought it was very cool when the scene of the tree and the sunset becomes the smear of colors on another leaf blowing away. There were nice effects in this segment, but they just sort of flew past and we didn’t notice them because the piece itself was stupid.

ADAM Joyce Kilmer. Man. I think my brother performed “Trees” at the poetry festival in second grade. It’s a terrible poem.

BROOM So “only God can make a tree” – there’s no actual reference there to the “tree” on which the Lord Jesus was crucified.

ADAM Lord Jesus was not crucified on a tree!

BROOM “On crosstree” – that term is in Ulysses. [ed. It’s a nautical term]

ADAM There’s no reference to the cross in the poem.

BROOM Well, I don’t know about the poem, but it seemed like the Disney studios, whom I’ve never known to go Christian when they don’t need to, went Christian at the end of that segment. The tree turned into a cross with a halo around it.

BETH It wasn’t the cross of the crucifixion.

BROOM It wasn’t?

BETH I mean, I guess any cross is that cross, but I don’t think it was meant that way.

ADAM I agree. It was just a throwaway.

BROOM You think it was just a God-signifier?

ADAM Yeah – “let’s throw in some Christian appeal.”

BETH Anyway, “Trees” was no good.

ADAM “Trees” was the worst.

BROOM I thought that, for bad kitsch, it was better than the one in Make Mine Music that you guys also didn’t like. It had more going on visually. But yes.

6. BLAME IT ON THE SAMBA

BROOM A little bit sad that that was the showing for Jose Carioca. I had high hopes for his reappearance, but he didn’t say anything. Donald didn’t say anything either.

BETH It was colorful. I enjoyed it.

ADAM Ethel Smith was no Aurora Miranda.

BROOM I thought it was cool that this Tex Avery mayhem threatens a real live human. It had sort of a Roger Rabbit quality – the Aracuan bird is going to blow up the actual Ethel Smith? But she seemed to be okay.

ADAM She was not a very good actor. She didn’t convincingly interact with Donald or Jose Carioca.

BROOM Well, when she was on fire, it wouldn’t have been appropriate to the tone for her to look like she was actually on fire. I think her mock-surprised look was exactly right. I really enjoyed when they were blue and then listening to the music cheered them up and gave them their proper colors. I enjoyed that fairly sincerely.

BETH You did? Even though you knew that was exactly what would happen?

BROOM I’m not saying it surprised me. It was just a nice visual. That when you’re in a bad mood, the sound of the cabasa can put the red into you and then the purple, and then you’ll shine because you’re happy again. I also liked that the segment wasn’t just a callback to the characters, but was specifically a callback to The Three Caballeros in that they were walking into a pop-up book restaurant. But the song wasn’t as good. It wasn’t as good as the music from Three Caballeros.

BETH No, but it was still fun.

7. PECOS BILL

BROOM This had the pre-Roy Rogers segment, the Roy Rogers segment, and then the story of Pecos Bill.

ADAM It was much too long.

BROOM Obviously the part with Pecos Bill being wild was the fun part, and they took ten minutes to get there. They warned us they were going to be slow about it, but that still doesn’t make it fun, especially at the end of the movie.

ADAM My favorite thing in the whole movie was when the state of Texas fills up the entire continent, including the peninsula of Florida, so Florida has to grow its own subsidiary peninsula.

BETH I thought that was funny too.

BROOM I was interested in the fact that Sue was…

ADAM …brutally dispatched?

BROOM No, not the story. That when she arrived, she was basically showing it all. She was wearing little white panties, but her dress flew all the way up so you could see them. She was riding a catfish down the river. She was a pin-up drawing that they put in the cartoon. That’s something that they wouldn’t venture again until the 90s.

BETH Do they do that now?

BROOM Well, they don’t exactly do that…

ADAM But the female characters are much sexier now.

BROOM The pin-up drawings that the animators do in their spare time have gotten much closer to being in the movies these days. And that’s clearly what Sue was, with a little demure face put on her. I was a little surprised to see that. It was also a little creepy to see her pretty face kissing the googly cartoon face of Pecos Bill. He wasn’t the male equivalent.

ADAM It was weird that the horse murdered her.

BROOM Yes. It was weird that Pecos Bill sucked at the teat of a coyote just off screen.

ADAM It was weird that he kissed the horse on the lips. Much of the psycho-sexual quality of this short was disturbing. And I thought it was fairly misogynistic. She’s killed because of her bustle? What a terrible terrible thing.

BROOM What was the rhyming line? “It put the classy on her chassis?”

BETH Something like that. “It was quite classy and it completed her chassis,” or something.

ADAM It just goes to show that they can’t abide a strong woman.

BROOM And when they first mention her, Bobby Driscoll groans, “A woman in the story?”

ADAM The interaction of the live action and the animation was not very successful.

BROOM They didn’t even try. I really liked those little quails running through the desert with the long shadows. I know, it was the same quails from Bambi and several other places.

BETH They really love doing that.

BROOM I liked the atmosphere of that, with that weird music playing, and them running through the desert with those long shadows. I know you guys were saying “get this over with” at that point, but I thought it looked cool, and I thought the pencil-drawn tumbleweed effect was a cool, smart choice.

ADAM I liked that. I also liked when Trigger participated in the storytelling.

BROOM I’m not ready to say I liked that.

ADAM That was a staple of popular culture, right?

BROOM Roy Rogers and Trigger? I think so. They were the absolute first billing in this movie, before the title.

ADAM And who was the female counterpart? Dale Evans?

BROOM Yes, but she wasn’t here. But Luana Patten was back.

ADAM I’m glad to know she escaped that party.

BROOM And this party.

ADAM Yes, instead she became apprentice to this harem of sexless cowboys.

BETH She was kidnapped.

BROOM She got out of that house somehow but just ended up in the desert, where these men were happy to entertain her with more creepy stories in the middle of the night. But Bobby Driscoll was there with her this time. The two of them were the kids from Song of the South, and, as Leonard Maltin said in one of those countless Leonard Maltin featurettes, Disney was trying to cultivate a stock company of performers. By bringing back Luana Patten over and over he’s trying to work on the brand. “If you see a Disney movie, you’re going to see that cute little girl!”

ADAM She was the Dakota Fanning of her day.

BROOM Well, she was the Dakota Fanning of these two movies. And of Song of the South and of that other companion movie to Song of the South [ed.: So Dear to My Heart]. Anything to say about the interstitials, or the singing mask at the beginning?

ADAM I thought that the paintbrush theme was not that successful.

BROOM Even that I thought was nicer than Make Mine Music.

ADAM We all agree that Make Mine Music was the nadir.

BROOM I think Fun and Fancy Free was the nadir.

ADAM Oh. I get them confused.

BROOM We’re clearly coming out of the woods. Things are going to be better. I feel it.

[we read the New York Times review]

ADAM I think that Bosley Crowther is getting archer as he ages.

BROOM I think Bosley Crowther is pretty good, based on these.

ADAM He must have been gay. [ed. I don’t think so!] I’m picturing him as being like the second Mr. Wilson on “Dennis the Menace.” [ed. this guy?] He looked like he should be in a smoking jacket.

BROOM Every time, Bosley Crowther says exactly something I’ve already said, and I feel vindicated. But I don’t agree with him that the Johnny Appleseed songs were catchy. I thought they were pretty bad. Okay, next time: The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad.

ADAM We’re coming out of the tailspin, Beth.

BETH That was not my favorite. That sucked, okay?

ADAM Yeah. That was pretty bad.

BETH The first half was truly bad. It wasn’t at all entertaining.

ADAM Do you want to talk about them in order?

BETH Yes.

ADAM First let’s talk about the framing device.

BETH Okay.

ADAM I thought it was lazy of them to resurrect Jiminy Cricket and Cleo for such a shoddy purpose.

BROOM They resurrected more than just those two. There were all kinds of callbacks.

ADAM The crows.

BETH It’s like they weren’t even trying, like they weren’t even thinking.

BROOM A whole lot of it was stuff they had done before that they were doing again in a calculated way.

ADAM It was terrible. It was an uneven pastiche of all sorts of crazy things.

BROOM It was thrown together in the most ridiculous way.

ADAM There was no thought whatsoever apparent in the construction of the stories.

BETH But it was after the war. It’s not like they have an excuse for being that lazy.

BROOM I think the studio was shaken pretty seriously by the war.

BETH Okay, but it was two years after the war. I don’t know. I don’t know anything about what it was like. But – creatively they were shaken? Could they not have come up with a story? The story of that first section was… not a story!

BROOM It takes several years for each of these to be in production. I don’t completely know what the history was, but I read somewhere that both “Bongo” and “Mickey and the Beanstalk” were things they’d been working on for a while, and then they just decided, “okay, we’re putting them together.”

ADAM I thought the story of “Bongo” was okay, but it was just a little derivative of Babbitt. You know?

BROOM I didn’t think it was “okay” at all.

ADAM I was joking.

BROOM I know.

ADAM It was like, here’s this circus plotline, and then here’s this unfit-for-the-wilderness plotline, and then here’s this… bears slapping plotline. Also, as a paean to spousal abuse, it was irresponsible.

BETH That was one of the worst Disney things I’ve ever seen.

BROOM What I was thinking while we were watching the second half was: “This isn’t very good either – but it’s better than the first half – but it’s not very good… but really, what it’s like is an ordinary Disney cartoon.” If you watch one of those shorts where Donald chases a bear through Yellowstone Park, or bees try to eat him…

ADAM Or Goofy and the volcano.

BROOM I don’t know if I’ve seen one with Goofy and a volcano.

ADAM I’ve told you about this one in the past. Goofy goes on a Hawaiian vacation and ends up getting sacrificed to the Polynesian god Pele.

BROOM That really happens?

ADAM Yes.

BROOM Anyway, you watch those and you think, “Yup, that was another one.” You don’t feel offended, like, “Oh my god, Disney, what happened to your standards?” They’re just shorts, and a lot of them are stupid. The only thing that’s distinctive about these is that they were packaged as a feature-length movie and included in the feature canon. But it’s just some shorts, of not very high quality. It’s not that shocking.

BETH But it is offensive that it was packaged as a movie, because that means it should have been better. They should have known that. They had their own standards that they had already met and defined. What happened?

ADAM Let’s play devil’s advocate for a second. There were some cute things in “Bongo.”

BROOM That’s the harder one to redeem, I think.

ADAM The second one is easy enough to redeem because it’s just a story that already exists. With creepy child-molestation interludes.

BROOM The value of any of these is not going to be whether the story is interesting, but I do think it was a particular weakness of “Bongo” that the story was nothing. Just nothing. I thought that what happened to him in the forest was going to be somehow connected to his past. I thought he was going to have to go back to the circus – or go to a better circus – because he would have to accept what he was. But no. It was just about getting a girlfriend. Even if he’s a sissified city bear, he can still get up a tree; other animals will push him up. There’s just barely anything there.

ADAM What was the title of the slapping song?

BROOM “Say it With a Slap.” Bears say it with a slap.

BETH “Say it With a Slap”!

BROOM And did you hear the lyric that was like, “When a whippoorwill’s in love, he can whip her?” [ed. online sources give the lexically doubtful “he can whipper.”] I thought the best thing in “Bongo” was at the beginning, when he was dreaming and the voice was singing, “Bongo, come out!…”

BETH When he saw a vision of himself, translucent and large, sliding down mountainsides. That was okay.

ADAM It was sort of like a picaresque.

BROOM That’s what was a callback: all of that first sequence was stuff from Dumbo. The circus train, and the tent. I liked when the tent got sucked in and out of the train; that was cute.

BETH Well, I give it all a C-minus.

BROOM The pacing was just terrible. Another major problem with it was that Bongo was not well drawn. He didn’t look good.

BETH Neither did his girlfriend.

ADAM It was lucky she had that bow on, because it was hard for me to tell apart the male and female bears.

BROOM And the bad-guy bear was just so disappointing in every way.

ADAM Again: what did Sinclair Lewis have to do with this story?

BROOM I believe he wrote it as a story for a magazine or something. Here’s something I wanted to say: I watched the opening titles of this movie on Youtube last week…

ADAM Cheater.

BROOM I did cheat. And I watched a little of the opening song…

BETH I liked the titles.

BROOM Beth liked the titles because they looked like a party.

BETH That was the only thing that looked like a real party in this movie.

ADAM Not the party with Miss Luana and Edgar Bergen and some creepy fey clowns.

BETH That was no party.

BROOM We’ll talk about the party in a second – I just want to say one thing, which is that I watched a little of Jiminy Cricket’s song about being fancy free [ed.: “I’m a Happy-Go-Lucky Fellow”] – which sequence I didn’t mind – anyway, when he stands on the newspaper to show us why it’s important to enjoy ourselves, and the headline on the newspaper is “Catastrophe Seen As Crisis Looms!!” – I saw that, and thought, “that’s somehow familiar to me.” So I googled it, and found where I had seen it before: in The Incredibles, that’s a newspaper headline. Which must be a reference to this. And no one on the internet had made the connection.

BETH You’re going to be the first one!

BROOM I’m speaking it so I can type it!

BETH Hey, that’s cool!

BROOM That’s Disney nerds working at Pixar.

[ed.: This needs further comment. I just now tried to find the visual of the headline in The Incredibles but couldn’t – it’s possibly hidden in there, too small to be seen in Youtube, but in that case it’s not what I’m remembering, since I originally saw it on a tiny airplane screen. However, Brad Bird apparently used “Disaster Seen as Catastrophe Looms” prominently in The Iron Giant (so maybe that’s what I’m remembering), in relation to which it has been pointed out that the headline is taken from a newspaper in Lady and the Tramp. In this forum posting someone reports that Bird was unaware, when told, that a similar headline is also in the earlier Fun and Fancy Free; he only knew it from Lady and the Tramp. Anyway, what this adds up to is that people have in fact noticed this before.]

ADAM Can we talk about the party?

BROOM Okay, let’s talk about the party, which is the most interesting thing about the movie.

BETH What is it?

ADAM Just as in The Three Caballeros, the terrible shock of seeing live-action people is almost physically upsetting.

BETH It was! Because it went from a cartoon of the house to the real house.

BROOM Part of what was scary about it…

BETH What was scary was that you weren’t expecting those puppets!

ADAM You expect to see her body in a closet twenty minutes later.

BROOM She’s alone with Edgar Bergen, who even without the puppets doesn’t seem like he would be nice. He’s wearing a bathrobe – he’s dressed like Hugh Hefner…

BETH And the craziest party hat ever.

BROOM Yeah, like a bag on his head. They’re alone in a house, dimly lit…

BETH It’s an ugly, awful house.

BROOM It’s not even like he threw a party for her; it’s as though she was tricked into going to a so-called “party” by that invitation that he sent to her cartoon house across the way. And there she is, listening to him cheerfully.

BETH It’s so awful.

ADAM I imagine her realizing with a shock of horror, “Charlie and Mortimer aren’t people!”

BROOM Like Ten Little Indians, where they’re isolated and one of them must be the killer, and the puppets would fall dead and she would realize that the only one who could have been doing it was Edgar Bergen. Anyway, the setup is creepy, but what’s also creepy is that you know the house is surrounded by animation. It’s so claustrophobic; it’s like being in a submarine. There’s nowhere they can go.

ADAM Charlie McCarthy is an asshole. I had never seen him before. What a…

BROOM …wiseacre?

ADAM …like, a little… I don’t know, I was going to call him “a little fag,” but that’s not appropriate. And he’s gotta be all meta all the time, and keep interrupting the story. Which is a weird choice also. What is that movie that everyone loved where the old man is telling the story about the guy with the six fingers –

BROOM and BETH The Princess Bride?

ADAM Right. Why do they keep interrupting that? It was just like that. Well, less dramatic.

BROOM You were annoyed with The Princess Bride by the fact that there were interruptions?

BETH How could you be annoyed at that?

ADAM I just think it’s a weird meta choice. You’re quaking – if you are – that Mickey is in danger, and then Charlie McCarthy’s asshole little voice comes wafting through the air.

BROOM In defense of The Princess Bride, I think there it was a smart choice, because it made the fairy tale be meta in itself. That’s the premise of the original book, that’s it’s about what we make of fairy tales, and intentionally is about indulging in tropes recognized as tropes. Whereas here, they made a short, and then their scheme for fitting it in to the feature length was to have it narrated by a celebrity! “How about Edgar Bergen? And Charlie McCarthy will make wisecracks?” And they just put that on top of it. Seemed like the animation had been done independent of them. Well, except for the red barn, I don’t know about that. But apparently somehow they were able to de-Charlie-McCarthy it for later releases.

ADAM How weird that they never even knew Jiminy Cricket was there.

BROOM That is a little weird. He was purely a voyeur. And that’s also weird: if they’re going to sandwich these two things together that have nothing to do with each other, you’d think they’d have made the frame have something to do… with each other.

ADAM At least in The Three Caballeros, it was like, “Donald’s opening presents. Now he’s opening another present.” Here it was like, “First he finds a record in her deserted room, and then he goes to a party with her.” It was just really shoddy.

BROOM I found more atmosphere to enjoy and be creeped-out by in the frames than I did in the actual stories. But I will say that my favorite part of the whole movie was the vine growing in “Mickey and the Beanstalk,” the ballet of the vine growing and them flipping around. It was like in “Clock Cleaners” where they keep almost falling off the building. And the vine was really nicely done. There were also a couple of special effects in this movie that were new. Like when they showed the record coming out of its sleeve and the real printed label moved with it.

BETH That was nice.

ADAM It reminded me of the technique in “Bloom County” where a realistic photograph of a celebrity is pasted into the drawing.

BROOM It’s harder in animation, because they made it move. When the record spun around, the shape changed with it. It was very well done. And something else was similar, just before that. I forget what [ed.: the newspaper].

ADAM So who would Dinah Shore and Edgar Bergen be equivalent to today?

BROOM Pretty big people!

ADAM But it would be, like, weird people, right?

BROOM It would be like, “hey, it’s… Mariah Carey and Jack Black!”

BETH It wouldn’t be Jack Black; it might be Mariah Carey.

BROOM Jack Black is too big? Edgar Bergen was pretty big.

BETH He’s just not quite right.

BROOM There are no ventriloquists these days.

ADAM David Blaine.

BROOM He would do a terrible job.

BETH Fred Willard.

ADAM Edgar Bergen was a novelty act.

BROOM But back then, doing a novelty act wasn’t itself that novel. Today it would be a throwback. Then he was just a celebrity who happened to do ventriloquism. Maybe it would be Candice Bergen!

ADAM He’s not a very good ventriloquist.

BROOM He’s terrible!

BETH They shouldn’t even be showing him.

BROOM It’s remarkable that he was so successful. He was a bad ventriloquist, his jokes weren’t that funny – that’s assuming that he had some influence on the script. Which didn’t seem very Disney-like, so I assume he did.

ADAM He didn’t have anything to do with the script, but he wrote his own wisecracks, obviously.

BROOM That’s what I mean: the script of the wisecracks.

ADAM “It’s a dragonfly!” “Flyin’ in the front, and draggin’ in the rear!”

BROOM That was a great one. But worst of all – he’s not endearing or appealing or anything. He brought the maximum possible creepiness to that party.

BETH It wasn’t a party!

BROOM All right, I’m just going to face it: it wasn’t a party. Is there anything else to say about this?

BETH No! It sucked, the whole thing sucked. I hope I never have to watch it again and I’m really glad you didn’t buy it.

BROOM I told you guys this was going to be the worst one. And I believe that’s the case.

BETH Okay, I hope it really was.

ADAM Is it really worse than the preceding one?

BETH Yes, it was.

BROOM We all enjoyed Make Mine Music better than this.

BETH A lot of bad shorter pieces are better than two long really bad pieces.

BROOM The second half of this was not “really bad,” but we had been hurt by that point. When they ate the translucent slices of bread and a sliver of a bean…

BETH Yeah, that was kinda cool.

ADAM And when Donald freaks out.

BROOM When Donald got murderously crazy, that was fun.

BETH That was my favorite thing in the whole movie.

ADAM I love Donald.

BROOM It was also cathartic that after all of this “oh my god we’re watching Bongo” and then Edgar Bergen, Donald shouts “SHUT UP! SHUT UP! I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!”

ADAM It was also cathartic to see Donald, Mickey, and Goofy after all these off-brand characters.

BROOM That was the flavor of this whole movie: “Let’s just get out the stuff that we have, and use it, and put something in the theaters.” There’s also a feeling of nostalgic sadness saying goodbye to them, because we’re not gonna be seeing them again in this project.

BETH But the audience did not know that.

ADAM Is that true, we never again see Donald, Mickey, and Goofy?

BROOM In the features.

ADAM What about Fantasia 2000?

BROOM We will see Donald in it.

BETH And Mickey, right?

BROOM And they reprise the Mickey portion from the original Fantasia but it’s clearly old footage. Is Mickey in the interstitial stuff? Does he say “thanks, Mr. Levine!”?

BETH I thought he was.

BROOM I don’t think we see Mickey again; I don’t think he’s in any other movies. I mean, he might make an appearance as, like, a Mickey doll on someone’s desk in one of the nouveau-Disney movies, but I don’t think he’ll be squeaking at us ever again.

ADAM Well, that is sad.

BETH But we as 1947 moviegoers were not aware that that would be our last time.

ADAM That’s often how life is.

BETH And it’s sad that that was it, I think.

BROOM It’s not exactly sad, though, because the reason it’s going to be that way is that they’re going to hold themselves to a higher standard for features from now on.

BETH Yes, that is good.

BROOM Well, not from now on, from two-movies-from-now on.

[Here we read the New York Times review, linked below.]

ADAM Oh, Bosley.

BROOM Too positive for you guys.

ADAM Well… maybe he didn’t know that they would ever return to form.

BROOM I thought his affection for “Bongo” was too strong by any standards, historical or otherwise.

ADAM It is true that “Bongo” featured that ridiculous scene with the bear cupids.

BROOM That was the high point of “Bongo”; I was wrong about it being when the spirit called to him.

BETH It was the hearts exploding.

BROOM For me it was the other stuff in that sequence, it was, like, a little trap door opening in a cloud.

ADAM And a spout of water coming out.

BETH Yeah, that was crazy and fun. That was fancy free.

BROOM And that those little bear cupids were idiot bears, that they had really goofy faces with little pinpoint eyes. And that they dropped snow on our heroes until they became puffy white teddy bears for a second. As though they weren’t already teddy bears. Beth, during the watching of that, you said that it looked like an attempt to be like a Warner Brothers cartoon. I think that bears saying again. Say it.

BETH Okay. I thought they were definitely, with that cartoon, inspired by Warner Brothers, but, as I said at the time, they didn’t know how to do it. It wasn’t as funny, it wasn’t as slick, and it just looked like an imitation to me.

ADAM I agree. In conclusion, Mary, I don’t think even you will enjoy Fun and Fancy Free.

BETH Do not watch this!

BROOM I don’t think that’s the case; this isn’t very good, but Mary has a place in her heart for second-rate thirties cartoons. I don’t know about second-rate forties cartoons, though.

BETH Okay. Everyone else: avoid Fun and Fancy Free.

BROOM You guys are good sports and I’m glad you’re still with me in this.

BETH You owe me five dollars.