Cold War

A Walt Disney GOOFY Cartoon.

Poor Goofy is miserably home in bed fighting - and losing - the COLD WAR.

Goofy steps back into his oddly human-like persona of George Geef in this amusing little film. Anyone who's ever suffered through a bad cold will ache in sympathy with our hero who must deal with unswallowable pills, freezing feet and the kind but painful nursing of a well-meaning spouse.

Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by pictures & 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 comic 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 childlike simplicity of message and lots of hard work always pay off.

Poor Goofy (using a different name). He gets a horrible cold. Had he been a hypochondriac we wouldn't feel sorry for him But in this case, he is really sick. He even tries to stay at work. When he gets home, his wife is playing bridge. He does his best to self medicate. Once she gets home, she has no regard for his plight. She literally tortures him. This is supposed to be a little Disney advice on how to treat a cold, but it is pretty harsh.

It was just a coincidence that I was having a cold when watching this cartoon, so, I could totally relate to poor Goofy when he was suffering from the effects of the sickness - from cold feet to a runny nose, and from the shivers to sneezing.

The narrator is back once again, telling the story of Goofy being set home by his boss because of him catching a cold, and of his wife giving him all kinds of remedies to cure his sickness - from stuffing his mouth full of medicine to soup, and from heating pads for his feet to putting in nose drops.

Not a bad cartoon. Not too funny, but a little entertaining.

Grade B-

"Though the virus wins few friends, he influenza's many people". Yes, that's the standard of gag that's not be sneezed at as "George/Goofy" is sent home from work because he is loaded with the cold. His wife is off playing bridge, so he's all alone with his own particular brand of "man flu". He raids the medicine cabinet, pops a pill - well tries to, then shivers his way through a nice warm foot bath. When his wife does return home, she takes charge and nurses him to within an inch of his life! Two weeks later, he is back at work - but that pesky virus is never far away! I quite enjoyed this. It does take a particularly masculine approach as we deal with the life-threatening sniffle - trying just about everything short of amputation to be rid of the thing. The pseudo-scientific narration is quite fun too, even if it does repeat the jokes once or twice.

After finding Home Made Home (1951-also reviewed) to be a delight,I got set to see Goofy go to war with a bad cold.

View on the film:

Zooming in on the cold landing on Goofy's nose, director Jack Kinney follows Goofy's sneeze from the office to being sick in bed with wonderful brightly coloured hand-drawn animation, which pushes Goofy's attempts to find a cure, to a zany exaggerated level.

One of the very few Goofy titles from this era to not be voiced by Pinto Colvig, (with Bob Jackman doing the voice of Goofy with the sniffles instead) returning screenwriters Dick Kinney & Milt Schaffer keep the attempt to find a cure for Goofy's cold moving at a slap-stick pace of hilarious antics that make Goofy get boiling hot one moment,then ice cold the next,in this cold war.