The Barnyard Battle

Mickey joins the army, and the mice fight the cats!

Relatively slow paced in my opinion.

Strange like many of the early Mickey cartoons, though interesting!

Some amazing perspective shots which clearly mark the work as a product of Ub Iwerks' incredible mind!

Some clever gags, my favourite being Mickey running out of machine gun bullets and using piano keys instead, to musical effect!

Musical Mickey almost always seems to have a handy piano at hand!

I think the best thing about this is the wonderful pastoral world of early Mickey Mouse. The universe, though sometimes scary, is wonderful all the same. This also makes me see what people are talking about when they say that the early Mickey Mouse cartoons have very insubstantial two-dimensional characters at best. In my opinion, Steamboat Willie was great, The Karnival Kid even greater, and everything else I've seen from this era really pales in comparison! The Karnival Kid is just such an incredible outlier for such an early work (only the ninth animated Mickey Mouse cartoon, just two after this one), it's strange to me that it took so long to reach that level of quality once again. I've honestly never seen one better, though for reference, I still have not seen any Mickey Mouse cartoon beyond 1933! I await what's ahead with excitement!

6.7/10.

This was a well made but rather morally dubious cartoon from the early days of Mickey Mouse. Like most of these early films, they are in black and white and feature sound effects and occasional voices, but are (for the most part) like a silent film with added sound effects.

The film begins with Mickey and his fellow mice all running to volunteer for a war against the....well,...whatever those other Pete-like characters are supposed to be. Oddly, the mice all dance to "Dixie" and wear Confederate-style uniforms while the enemy wore helmets that looked like WWI Germans. Why they were fighting is uncertain but it sure looked fun...and very violent. For 1929, this played pretty well but today it felt a bit unsavory--with the allusions to the South and the way it portrayed war as great fun! It's probably a film you best watch with and explain to your younger kids, but as an adult I enjoyed and appreciated the artistry of the film--Disney Studios was miles ahead of the competition in quality.

Apparently, Mickey and his comrades are members of the Confederacy, but they don't seem to be fighting the union. The enemy is a herd of cats that seem to be like Nazi's. Although the time period is a bit off. Anyway, the two forces come together and the mice seem to have the upper hand, even though the cats are enormous. Of course, they are also stupid.

The Barnyard Battle (1929)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

A war is about to break out so Mickey Mouse goes down to enlist. Once he gets approved he finds himself on the front lines going up against a large cat. THE BARNYARD BATTLE is one of the best of the early Mickey shorts as it contains some great animation, a wonderful score and plenty of funny action. The action mostly takes places on the battlefield where the animation really gets the shine because of all the stuff going on from mice running around to cannonballs flying. Another highlight happens towards the end when Mickey must get creative to knock off some of the bad guys (a trick used in an earlier Walt Disney film). If you're a fan of Mickey Mouse or animation from this era then THE BARNYARD BATTLE is certainly a classic and a must-see. The film runs a very quick seven minutes and there's really not a dry moment to be found.

As a great fan of Disney, and someone who likes Mickey Mouse a lot(though I prefer Donald and Goofy as characters). The Barnyard Battle is one of the best of the early Mickey shorts. Some may be disconcerted by Mickey's lack of voice, but that doesn't harm The Barnyard Battle in any way(in fact I found it far preferable to the instances where Mickey did have a voice but sounded as though he was still trying to find it). The short is not much new in terms of story, apart from a violent subject being dealt with in a more politically correct but endearing and inevitable way, but it is what is done with the story that makes it so good. The gags are crisply timed and very fun, especially when Mickey manages to escape and claps a mouse trap on Pete's tail and the body distortion gags. But if anything The Barnyard Battle is more intriguing than it is funny, though it is the latter as well. The introduction of the cats is very well-done and to see Mickey for once not taking advantage of those around him by here having those around him taking advantage of him was interesting. But the highlight has always been Mickey in the old house with the machine gun and then Pete comes in and starts menacing him. The animation is what makes it so, while the backgrounds are smooth and all the characters well drawn(with the mice all looking like Mickey), it is Mickey's character animation that is the real revelation here, some of the best there is from any Mickey cartoon in my opinion actually. In this scene Mickey is understandably fearful and nervous, and the body language from the nervous smiling to the shuffling of feet perfectly reflects that. The music is as ever rousing and energetic, and Mickey and Pete are strong characters here. All in all, really good, one of the better early Mickey shorts. 9/10 Bethany Cox