Bee on Guard

Donald Duck suffers the usual indignities of having to be on guard from bee attack in BEE ON GUARD, an amusing entry in the Donald Duck cartoons of the '40s and '50s.

The bees are on a mission led by a King Bee and decide to land in Donald Duck's garden while he's there doing his gardening chores. Donald knows where the hive is, guarded by a funny looking bee who asks each entrant for a password. Donald is rebuked when he tries to gain entry and comes up with the foolish notion of disguising himself as a bee so the dumb guard will talk to him while he plans to steal the honey.

The dumb guard has a voice like "Gus-Gus" from "Cinderella". He falls asleep after Donald has managed to siphon all the honey from the hives while having chit-chat with him. The bees return, led by the King Bee, and are angry to find the hive emptied. The bee guard is given his walking papers.

Fortunately, he traces the theft to Donald's house, gets the goods on Donald and heads back to be treated like a hero by his fellow bees.

It's amusing enough, but lacks the style of the early bee pictures with "Buzz-Buzz" as his main enemy. Animation is up to the usual Disney standard.

From the title of this cartoon short, you would know immediately what the program was going to consist - a fight between Donald and the bees, with Donald possibly getting stung a few times. Here, Donald wants to steal some honey from the bees' lair in a tree trunk and, therefore, disguises himself as the insect himself and distracts the guard while he loads up the honey into two buckets.

The animation is great as usual and the bees' army is quite the nice special effect. However, the overall cartoon lacks the humor and slapstick comedy you've come to expect in Donald cartoons. While Donald did get his fair share of mishap in the cartoon, he at least ended up keeping the honey he funneled from the bees.

Grade D+

Master gardener Donald Duck notices the bees who pollinate his flowers have a huge hive and that means honey. He proceeds to work out a method of stealing it by misleading the bee who guards the place. One thing leads to another and Donald finds himself on the short end of the stick once more. There were so many of these bee films.

I didn't remember Donald's doubtful character, I thought he was just grumpy, not without character, and the rogue species that wants to take advantage of other people's efforts, how ugly Mr. Donald...

Disney and Donald Duck are always worth watching. Bee on Guard is not among their finest hours but if the short is nice enough it does its job well, and that's what Bee on Guard does. The story is nothing original and gets to a slow start and the supporting characters are just there and don't have much to do. Donald however is as charismatic and funny as ever and his personality is complimented nicely. The bee is rather dumb but amusing enough and he works well with Donald. Bee on the Guard has some amusing and well-timed gags if never not having much that is laugh-out-loud hilarious. The animation is full of lovely colours and fluid detail, which makes it very beautiful to watch, while the music is lush and characterful.

Overall, unexceptional but amusing and colourful enough to entertain and to warrant it a watch or two. 7/10 Bethany Cox