The New Neighbor

Is this cartoon short, Donald moves into the new neighborhood and meets new neighbor Pete. He is nice at first but eventually takes advantage of Donald, eating his food, borrowing his tools and letting his dog dig in his backyard. Soon, it results in an all-out war between the neighbors and the entire community comes to watch, with the media broadcasting it like a boxing match.

It's a typical cartoon story made out to be too much like a boxing match. I thought the sportscaster was and looked annoying and the cartoon lacked the slapstick humor and charm found in more conventional Donald cartoons. Still, you will get a few chuckles here and there, especially where Donald turns the hose on Pete. The animation is good and still can't go around with Donald's classic frustration. But, it's more of an average Donald cartoon.

Grade C+

In this Disney short, Donald Duck has a new neighbor, a real jerk played by Pete. Immediately after moving in, Pete starts throwing trash onto Donald's lawn and then 'borrows' everything in Donald's fridge. Soon, Pete's behaviors are so awful that the easily angered Donald loses his cool and an all out war takes place. You really can't blame Donald too much...Pete is simply awful. And, it is HIGHLY entertaining watching this war get worse and worse and worse...culminating with the local news covering it like a sporting event....and spectators egging them both on to do more!

In the 1950s, many familiar Disney characters seemed to mellow with age...particularly Mickey. However, in this one, Donald hasn't mellowed and the cartoon is violent...exactly the sort of unsophisticated stuff people prefer! A very good and enjoyable outing for the duck.

As the new neighbor on the block, Donald Duck tries to be courteous to Pete, the inconsiderate slob living next door. But there's only so much a guy can take. Pete dumps his garbage in Donald's flower bed, mooches every scrap of food from his refrigerator, steals all his dishes, tricks him into tasting his dog's food, borrows all his gardening tools, leaves the tools out in the rain, and more. Muncey, the dog who buries his bones in Donald's yard, is a co-conspirator in Pete's game of making Donald's life hell. Finally, the roiling conflict erupts into an all-out feud. The television news covers it like a sporting event as the neighbors gather on the roofs to watch and cheer them on.

Donald has a deserved reputation as a hothead, but no jury would convict him of being quick tempered in this cartoon, in which he does his level best to suffer Pete's rudeness, until it all becomes too much. Jack Hannah directs a very funny film, in which the comic situation is expertly built up to a crashing finish.

Having seen Pete often paired with Mickey, it was interesting to see Donald taking on Pete. And you can see this in The New Neighbor with hugely entertaining results. The story is crisp, with a situation that almost everybody will relate to, and never with a dull moment. And it also worked to Donald and Pete's trademark if contrastingly(to one another) different personalities perfectly, Donald is temperamental yet endearing and Pete is suitably dastardly and rude. The writing is very funny, with Donald and Pete each having good lines, and the gags helped by good timing likewise, seeing them go at it at the fence is just one part of the entertainment. The animation is smooth, beautifully drawn and colourful, and the music has much energy and character as well as having lush orchestration. Clarence Nash and Billy Bletcher are perfect as Donald and Pete.

Overall, highly recommended. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Jack Hannah must be THE most underrated cartoon director of all time; in my estimation he is second only to Chuck Jones. In quality of output, that is. He MAY not have been as inherently talented as Tex Avery or even Friz Freleng (I must grit my teeth as I say this), but he had one inestimable advantage over them and all his other more highly regarded contemporaries: he worked for Disney, and so was allowed to direct the most rounded, passionate, comically inspired cartoon character of all time: Donald Duck.

Donald is not just, as popular belief would have it, someone who gets mad. He's someone with ungoverned, ungovernable passions, of which anger is just one: hunger, weariness, envy, spite, lust and love are some of the others. The humour comes (in part) from the fact that all along he thinks he's in control. And in fact, the resulting cartoons ARE more controlled. Donald does not break the laws of physics as often or as outrageously as Bugs Bunny does - he cannot pull a stick of dynamite out of nowhere just because it suits the plot - but when he DOES do the impossible, one feels the sheer force of his personality pushing him. It's like watching (and listening to) a jet as it crosses the sound barrier.

This cartoon proves my points as well as any other. It's one of Donald's and Hannah's very best. The 1950s could easily have been their finest decade together, if the economics of production hadn't cut Hannah's Disney career short in 1956. Very likely it WAS their finest decade even so. Even if "The New Neighbor" were the routine Donald outing you'd expect from reading a synopsis of the plot, which it isn't, the strength of Donald's character would be enough to make it funnier and more vibrant than the ritualised gaggery Warner Brothers was churning out at the time. -Except, that is, for the cartoons of Chuck Jones - another director who understood the value of building his humour on a strong foundation of character.