Runaway Brain

I have come across a few criticisms over this short, but even those didn't ruin if when I finally saw it. First off, the animation was great. I love the way they did. They basically kept Minnie and Mickey's designs and freshened them up. The only thing I can complain about was the pace, since it did move a little too fast. But I think it is a great way to evolve Mickey into current trends and it'll still appeal to teenagers. Honestly, when the classic Mickeys were put out, do you think that the time was and trends were the same? I think not.

Also, for the people that say it's too scary. I find that hard to believe. I showed this to a 7 year old, and they like it. Played three times more. I also showed it to my pops, who seemed to enjoy it and laughed at the references. So I think this was a success.

The only reason I think some didn't enjoy it was because it came as a surprise as how dark this was. I guess some people didn't catch the commercials that were being shown on Disney channel that I saw when I was like...7 or 8. Anyway, this was a great way get put Mickey in the current time. And I see they're doing the same with "House of Mouse". They actually do have some good jokes in the show.

You can see and feel in every second of this cartoon that it is a pretty new Mickey Mouse cartoon. It looks and feels to fresh. Mickey (voice of Wayne Allwine) has forgotten his anniversary with Minnie (voice of Russi Taylor) and has to make up for it. By accident he promises her a trip to Hawaii that will cost him a thousand dollars. Pluto (voice of Bill Farmer) shows him an ad where he can make that kind of money. When he arrives on the location he meets a Dr. Frankenollie (voice of Frasier's Kelsey Grammer) and he becomes a test person for a brain switch. He switches brains with a big monster (voice of Jim Cummings) who falls in love with Minnie. Of course Mickey has to solve this problem.

This short has some nice touches. We see how Mickey is playing a video game where he is Dopey and he has to fight the evil Queen from 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'. Another fine touch is when Mickey shows the monster a picture of him and we see the black and white Mickey from his early cartoons. Besides those moments I didn't think this cartoon was very good. The 'Frankenstein' story is nice but that's it. Personally I think this could have been a lot better.

When I actually had the chance to see this bizarre cartoon, I had one immediate reaction:

WHOA.

It's difficult to describe my reaction to this one apart from that one word. It's usually easy to comment on things I've seen, especially since I have a rep for stating my most precise, honest feelings on any subject you'd care to hand me and making myself perfectly clear. But this is one of the rare things I've ever seen which has put me at a complete loss for words.

The cartoon is easily the weirdest Mickey Mouse cartoon ever made, and it made me feel strange for the longest time after seeing it with my reaction of, "What on earth was THAT?!!"

There's one thing about it which I *can* state, however; my peers in the animation industry and I have loved making jokes about this short featuring the "real" Walt Disney Mickey Mouse being turned into the Michael Eisner Mickey Mouse!

I've got a little confession. While I love Disney movie and the shorts with Donald and Goofy, I have never understood the world's love affair with Mickey. Generally, he is a very bland character and lacks the edge and fun of the rest of the Disney gang. I'm sorry, but that's how I've always felt.

However, when I saw RUNAWAY BRAIN, I finally saw a Mickey Mouse cartoon that I absolutely loved. Gone was the sickeningly sweet Mickey and instead this "new Mickey" was like the old one done by the folks who made Ren and Stimpy or Tex Avery!!! The art style was much more "elastic"--with lots more action and weirdness than you'd find in ten traditional Mickey shorts. The new Mickey was also part action-hero and I really liked what I saw. Plus, with a plot involving brain transplants, you know this is definitely NOT your grandpa's generation mouse!!

A wicked sense of humor, fantastic animation and more than anything else FUN--this is the type Mickey Mouse cartoon I would like to see a lot more of in the coming years!

By the way, if you want to see this film, get a copy of "Mickey Mouse in Color: Volume 2"--it's included in this nice collection of Mickey shorts.

"Runaway Brain" was an attempt (or so the Disney studio announced before its release) to recapture the spirit of the earlier Mickey Mouse cartoons - not the series involving the dull suburbanite which fizzled out with "The Simple Things" in 1953, but the lively everymouse of the 1930s. But here's what they forgot: the banal Mickey Mouse cartoons c.1940-1953 were ALSO an attempt to recapture the spirit of the earlier Mickey Mouse cartoons. And THAT was an attempt made by the very same animators, writers etc. who had worked on the originals not long before. (The original directors, admittedly, had mostly either left the studio or gone on to work on features. The director of the later Mickeys was usually Charles Nichols, who HADN'T been responsible for the earlier ones, which makes him an easy target for blame - but some of his Mouseless cartoons, like "The Legend of Coyote Rock" and "Wonder Dog", show that he was a formidable talent, if not by the standards of his day, then certainly by the standards of ours.) If THESE people couldn't resurrect Mickey Mouse, what made Chris Bailey, with no prior credits at all (at least according to the IMDb), think that HE'D be able to?

The truth is that the charm of Mickey's earlier cartoons, while undeniable, is highly elusive. In one of his last great triumphs, the Oscar-winning "Brave Little Tailor" (1938), Mickey battles a giant, in a climax that ISN'T played for laughs, even though it has some comic touches. Ditto "Runaway Brain". But the danger of the earlier cartoon is real; the danger here is completely fake. The Gothic mad science of "The Mad Doctor" (1933) or "The Worm Turns" (1937) was not violated by the inclusion of a giant cartoonish rodent; here, no particular atmospheric effect even gets a chance to establish itself. The sometimes over-deliberate pacing of the earlier cartoons somehow failed to hurt them in the least. Here, the overly zippy pacing is fatal. What's wrong with "Runaway Brain"? In a sense, EVERYTHING. It's a complete failure.

In order to create GOOD new Mickey Mouse cartoons, Disney will have to set up a semi-autonomous short subjects unit and force it to churn out, say, twelve cartoons a year, of whatever kind strikes the animators' fancy, and hope against hope that in some years' time there will emerge a heroic cartoon director who feels strong enough to tackle the Mouse. Such a short cartoons unit would of course make a guaranteed, substantial loss, EVERY year, and I don't blame Disney for baulking at the idea. But it's the only way.