Old Sequoia

If you are a fan of Donald Duck you will have a great time with Old Sequoia. It is a beautiful-looking and fun Disney short that manages to have a familiar concept but does something unique with it. Technically, Old Sequoia is faultless, with colourful, beautifully-detailed traditional animation that doesn't date the short a bit. The music has always been a key part to the success of the Disney shorts I feel, and with the characterful and attractively orchestrated scoring it certainly doesn't disappoint here. The story is simple, but not simplistic, predictable or routine and it plays to Donald's strengths. The gags are equally terrific, the ringing phone, Donald trying to put all the sawdust back in the tree before it exploded and Donald underwater and literally cracking after being fired were the best parts. Donald is perfect here, you don't see his frustration as often as you did previously and since- though it is not at all absent- but that approach does work here, sometimes when used before it didn't quite. The beavers are good foils, energetic yet antagonistic, kind of like Chip and Dale but perhaps more tolerable to some. In conclusion, wonderful and I have no hesitation recommending it. 10/10 Bethany Cox

A Walt Disney DONALD DUCK Cartoon.

The protection of OLD SEQUOIA, a huge & venerable tree, becomes the primary concern of Forest Ranger Duck.

In this humorous little film Donald is confronted by a pair of rapacious beavers, whose completely unintelligible dialogue makes them adequate temporary replacements for Chip 'n' Dale. Clarence "Ducky" Nash supplies Donald's own unique voice.

Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by drawings. As a lad in Marceline, Missouri, he sketched farm animals on scraps of paper; later, as an ambulance driver in France during the First World War, he drew figures on the sides of his vehicle. Back in Kansas City, along with artist Ub Iwerks, Walt developed a primitive animation studio that provided animated commercials and tiny cartoons for the local movie theaters. Always the innovator, his ALICE IN CARTOONLAND series broke ground in placing a live figure in a cartoon universe. Business reversals sent Disney & Iwerks to Hollywood in 1923, where Walt's older brother Roy became his lifelong business manager & counselor. When a mildly successful series with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was snatched away by the distributor, the character of Mickey Mouse sprung into Walt's imagination, ensuring Disney's immortality. The happy arrival of sound technology made Mickey's screen debut, STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928), a tremendous audience success with its use of synchronized music. The SILLY SYMPHONIES soon appeared, and Walt's growing crew of marvelously talented animators were quickly conquering new territory with full color, illusions of depth and radical advancements in personality development, an arena in which Walt's genius was unbeatable. Mickey's feisty, naughty behavior had captured millions of fans, but he was soon to be joined by other animated companions: temperamental Donald Duck, intellectually-challenged Goofy and energetic Pluto. All this was in preparation for Walt's grandest dream - feature length animated films. Against a blizzard of doomsayers, Walt persevered and over the next decades delighted children of all ages with the adventures of Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi & Peter Pan. Walt never forgot that his fortunes were all started by a mouse, or that simplicity of message and lots of hard work always pay off.

This short is well-executed technically (what else would Disney do in this time period?), but this short is only average. Tex Avery had already made this kind of short regularly and did them so much better. One character is supposed to have some task or is protecting something against antagonists and the remainder of the short consists of sight gags relating to the conflicting interests involved. The intentions here are good and it is an amusing short, but Avery was a comic genius at this sort of thing. Worth watching.

This is probably my all-time favorite Donald Duck cartoon one could label as tragicomical that I could watch over and over without getting tired of it. It features Donald Duck as a park ranger assigned to a sequoia tree district centered by the eponymous tree Old Sequoia, with two beavers strikingly similar in their voices and tactics to Chip and Dale attempting to down the tree. Donald's boss also sounds similar to Pete (even having the same voice actor), and while there are liberties taken with things such as Donald's park ranger outfit topped by an iconic campaign hat and some missed opportunities, I would definitely recommend this cartoon.