Beach Picnic

The BEACH PICNIC for Donald & Pluto is frustrated by a rubber sea horse named Sylvester and a marauding tribe of Red Indian ants.

This is a very enjoyable little film which features great animation and lots of laughs. Watching the reactions of the Duck and the Pup as the complications pile up against them provides much of the humor. Clarence Nash once again excels as the voice of Donald.

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.

This one is kinda ambiguous, Donald and Pluto appeared in this cartoon "Beach Picnic", But the pair of them isn't get along there, though the both had appeared in Donald and Pluto (1936), how in the world that they had to get together again?Humph! Donald was in a picnic at the beach, he spotted Pluto there and have fun teasing him (Pluto didn't do anything to him), ugh, how bad Donald were, also seen in the poster of the film. Then Donald spread the infinte flypaper and try to stick the ants, which happened to caused the curious Pluto to get stuck on it, and the moves like the film "Playful Pluto", and what's more, Donald laughed more hysterically, that could be hateful enough, and when Pluto unintentionally stuck Donald's buttock with him, Donald ranted at him to left him alone, spit out lots of abusive salivas and profanity, Pluto, understandably had enough, swung Donald away with the flypaper with one fierce blow, caused Donald to get completely stuck by the flypapers, and Pluto started to lick Donald like in Donald and Pluto (1936) too, and Donald get his comeuppance. This cartoon isn't really funny, but anyway, it's rather good.

Beach Picnic (1939)

** (out of 4)

Donald is on the beach trying to rid a rubber horse but he keeps getting thrown from it so when he sees Pluto sleeping he decides to have some fun and watch the dog fight it. Soon a group of ants (acting as Indians) show up to steal their food. BEACH PICNIC has some great animation and one good sequence but overall it's a pretty lackluster short from Disney. The one great sequence is when the ants start taking away the food because the music and the animation is just so good here. I think the weakest part of the film is the opening bits with the rubber horse as there's just really nothing too clever or funny going on here as we simply see Donald and Pluto fall around. Fans of the characters will probably want to watch this but the rest should look for a better film.

Another Disney short from the classic era, that I watched as it was next alphabetically on the Disney Plus short film channel. I've enjoyed quite a bit of this run through, but "Beach Panic" wasn't one of the stronger efforts.

Donald Duck (Clarence Nash) heads to the beach. He lays out his Picnic and then heads for a swim. He and Pluto (Lee Millar) frolic in the sea with his inflatable horse but meanwhile his Picnic is infiltrated and stolen by a colony of Ants. But Donald has come prepared and sets out some sticky flypaper to try and stop them from getting away.

It's not, I think, a case of time not being kind to the short, I recently watched "The Band Concert" which was genuinely charming and actually funny. The animation style of this the same and there is still, a timeless appeal to classic Disney animation. I really didn't find it funny though. The relationship between Donald and Pluto is ill defined, you'd assume that Pluto is his dog, but Donald seems to enjoy tormenting him. The interaction with the ants, which should perhaps have been the focus of the short, is mostly ignored in favour of just the flypaper business, which isn't that good.

I know there are better shorts that I'm going to come across in this section of Disney Plus, hopefully I won't see many more as disappointing as this one.

It's beach fun for Donald and Pluto. Them grappling with the inflatable horse was pretty funny, but, as usual, they fall victims to a bunch of bugs, in this case ants who steals their food. For once, I would like to see the annoying bugs actually getting beaten back by the Disney heroes.

Grade D