Mission Canard

This Disney propaganda film made towards the end of World War II was designed to raise morale amongst the American troops.

A scared Donald Duck accidentally lands in a Japanese jungle and takes on the troops. You don't see much fighting more the aftermath of broken planes. There's loads of silly and amusing slapstick moments. As you would expect from a film from this time, there are some crass Japanese stereotypes. This is elevated above many of the Disney propaganda films of the time due to excellent animation and some amusing antics from Donald Duck.

The film appears on out of print and fairly expensive On the Front Lines collection and it's one of the best on there. The picture quality is decent, but not amazing. Unless a HD upgrade is released it's as good as you can expect.

The heavily supplied "Donald" must head to a Japanese airbase on a remote island. There he is to surround and wipe them all out...! Well narrowly avoiding a couple of crocodiles upon landing, he sets off on his mission whilst the vocals of his well camouflaged enemy indulge in some stereotyping pidgin-dialogue about only shooting people in the back. Quickly, "Donald" realises that his inflatable dinghy isn't bullet proof, nor is it much use on waterfalls either, especially when more and more full of water and expanding exponentially - though the resulting inundation clearly has it's uses. Cartoons were regularly used as propaganda tools, but I rarely remember one quite this aggressive. Not just in the animation, itself, but in the whole presentation. Somehow, even the perilous antics of the duck didn't inject much humour into this and I didn't love it.

Donald is a commando (duh) who has to wipe out an entire Japanese airbase all by himself. I love it when he gets his commands: 'surround them!'. Reminded me of Chaplin's 'Shoulder Arms', where Charlie claims to have surrounded a dozen enemies all by himself.

Donald doesn't get far though as his parachute gets stuck in two trees, and a lifeboat is all that's left of his belongings. Who knew that lifeboat would flood the entire airbase though!

Funny if silly little WWII short, with not that many nasty references to the Japanese, except when one Japanese guy says to another: 'Remember the old Japanese saying: always shoot a guy in the back!'.

6/10.

Donald Duck as a paratrooper has to surround (he is alone) a whole Japanese base and then attack the enemy. Most of the things go wrong, of course. This is a quite funny Disney short. The Japanese enemies have some nice one-liners and the ending is quite funny as well. 7/10.

Easily one of the worst soldiers the Army has ever seen (judging by his previous cartoon hijinks), Donald is dropped out of an airplane and right into enemy territory. That's somewhere in the Japan jungle actually.

The air is ripe for typical wartime xenophobia as things go wrong for poor old ducky right from the start. He sniped at by stereotyped Japanese soldiers and runs for his feathered life. The funny thing is, while running he tries to escape on a rubber raft. But the raft gets caught under a waterfall and fills up with river water. Soon it becomes a massive waterballoon and Donald running for his life once more, tho not from the 'Japs' but from the impending doom of a mile high water balloon.

It's very funny and highly inventive. Definitely one of Donald's better wartime efforts.