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Window Cleaners (1940)

*** (out of 4)

Donald and Pluto are on their job of cleaning windows when they run into one issue after another. While up cleaning windows Donald decides to be mean to a baby bee and this leads to his downfall.

WINDOW CLEANERS is a pretty good short from Disney as they give you the typical high quality animation but also a pretty good story with lots of laughs. There's no question that the highlight deals with the bee, the rather cruel prank played by Donald and of course the bee's revenge. Fans of Donald and Pluto will certainly enjoy this short since there are several good laughs and the two share some great chemistry even if they're never actually together.

A Walt Disney DONALD DUCK Cartoon.

Donald & Pluto are WINDOW CLEANERS on a large skyscraper, but the Duck's day comes unstrung when he plays a joke on a very belligerent bee...

This was one of a small handful of cartoons to co-star the Duck and the Pup, their very different personalities bouncing well off of each other. The addition of the Bee to the mix only adds to the vertiginous hilarity. The legendary Carl Barks wrote the story; Clarence Nash supplied Donald with his unique voice.

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.

Donald and Pluto team up once again in another hilarious cartoon short, where Donald is in charge of cleaning the windows of an apartment high-rise (brave of Donald doing so without any safety harness!), while Pluto attempts to help. Unfortunately, the lazy dog rather sleep, and Donald gets himself tangling with an angry bee.

It's another beautifully animated short with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments; Donald was absolutely hilarious in this one, from him attempting to wake up Pluto with his cackling voice to him accidentally splashing a buckle of bolts onto a window instead of water.

Donald's singing is sure to crack anybody up, and his little fight with the bee was pretty entertaining. It's just too bad Pluto wasn't of much help in this story.

Funny stuff here!

Grade A

Donald is window washing on a high-rise scaffold while his co-worker PLUTO is snoozing instead of passing up a bucket of water. Donald makes a hilariously vain attempt to waken the sleeping dog but nothing works. When Pluto does wake up, he sends the wrong bucket and Donald throws what he supposes is a pail of water against the window but is really a pail full of bolts.

More misadventures follow when he plays a prank on a busy bee enjoying himself on a flowerpot--"Buzz-Buzz" again--and the bee finds ways of getting even when Donald sprinkles him with water. One of the bee's prank has Donald walking dangerously along a flag pole but managing to hold his footing--sort of borrowing from a Harold Lloyd comedy.

He and the bee go through some strenuous routines (all of which were done better in some of the other "B" movies), but by the story's end the bee is too exhausted to put his stinger into Donald.

Amusing and must have been a welcome addition to double features back in the good old days.

As a fan of Disney, Donald and Pluto I was all for seeing Window Cleaners. While not one of my favourites, it is very entertaining regardless. As ever I loved the crispness and colour of the animation and the energetic character that the music had. The gags, while slower to unfold, are well timed and very amusing, though there have been more hilarious gags in other Donald cartoons. The best ones were those when Donald shouts down the drain and the one with the bolts. The story is interesting and nimbly paced, but it is one particular sequence and what is done with Donald that makes Window Cleaners. Pluto's role is not very prominent, mainly to sleep actually, while the bee is a good foil. The sequence where the bee lifts his stinger up to get at Donald is beautifully animated and as a child I remembered in a way feeling inspired by it for some reason. Donald on the other hand is a sort of everyman person, but not one ordinary everyman. You see several sides of his character, first he is happy with not a care in the world, later on he is angrier and more easily frustrated, something I found very interesting to watch. Overall, a good cartoon if not a great one for me. 8/10 Bethany Cox