À cheval!

When the film begins, you don't think it's a CGI or 3-D film. It looks like a Mickey Mouse film circa 1929--complete with scratchy film stock! However, when the baddie, Pete, tosses Mickey THROUGH the screen and he becomes a full-color 3-D character, you know you are in for something unique! What's next? See the film--it's well worth it.

This is an interesting case where it turns out that I liked the short more than the feature film it accompanied. In the case of "Get a Horse!", it was shown before the Disney CGI film "Frozen"--a moderately enjoyable full-length film. However, the short was indeed magical and appeared to be a real work of love. I say this because the folks who made the film did a great job of trying to replicate the exact look and sound of the very early Mickey Mouse cartoons--something that is no small feat! Unlike most 3-D films I've seen, I think it's very important you try to see "Get a Horse!" in 3-D. This is because rarely has another 3-D film tried so hard to incorporate this sort of camera-work into the film (another exception being the underrated "How to Train Your Dragon"). Most 3-D films, to me, seem as if they just tacked on the 3-D at the end and didn't plan for the use of 3-D all along (this is especially true of the live action 3-D films).

Overall, a wonderful little film that no doubt will get nominated for Best Animated Short for the Oscars. If it doesn't, I'll be incredibly surprised as the film isn't just fun but an amazing film technically.

UPDATE: I just saw this short again as part of the Oscar-nominated Animated Shorts show in selected theaters. Although it was NOT shown in 3-D this time, it didn't really seem to matter. Why I am doing this update is that in comparison to all the other nominees, "Get a Horse!" is light-years better. And, because it's so far superior I am changing my original score from 9 to 10. What a wonderful film and I like the rather playful and fun nature of the short.

Get a Horse! is a fantastic short film with a quick but very enjoyable storyline filled lots of fun and colourful characters.I really enjoyed the mix of the old fashioned black and white animation and the CGI animation that is used in every animated film that's made today.The film showed before Frozen,and it really got me in to the Disney spirit and got me excited for the feature film.Ir was great seeing the very lovable Mickey Mouse for the first time in years on the big screen once again,and this was a very interesting way of bringing him back.All in all,Get a Horse is a great short film that Disney fans will love.

Mickey and Minnie Mouse go on a wagon ride,but Pete gets in the way when he tries to once again kidnap Minnie.

Get a Horse! (2013)

*** (out of 4)

This winning short from Disney was originally released and played before the FROZEN feature. The story is quite simple and Mickey and Minnie are trying to battle Peg-Leg Pete who eventually throws Mickey off the "movie" and into the movie crowd. Once in the crowd Mickey has to use some imagination to try and rescue Minnie who is still in the movie. GET A HORSE! was rather remarkable to see on the big screen because it starts off in B&W just like the original Mickey Mouse shorts and I thought this was a great way to show younger kids a bit of the past. Once the characters start falling from the movie, Mickey then turns to color and he even makes the screen wider to fit today's movies. For the most part I thought this 6-minute short contained a lot of wonderful imagination and especially once the characters were off the screen and seeing how they could defeat the villain. There were a lot of great laughs throughout the picture and especially with some of the harmless violence that was in so many of the original cartoons.

When me and my movie theatre-working friend went to watch Frozen at the place he works at, this cartoon short was attached to it. Begun in the old school black-and-white drawn phase with the original screen dimensions, when Mickey is thrown off the screen, he becomes a 3-D computer-generated color character filling the rest of the current outlines of the frame. And with that, the real fun begins as many tricks suddenly become possible with various ways of turning the screen-or frames-whichever way one wants it to go! I also was surprised that Walt Disney himself was credited with the voice of his famous mouse before finding out here that the studio not only used vintage tracks of his from previous cartoons but also those of Marcellite Garner for Minnie and Billy Bletcher for Peg-Leg Pete. I found most of the thing quite creatively funny so on that note, I highly recommend Get a Horse!

I am very much in support of short films getting into cinemas, even if it mostly occurs either as part of festivals, or as large studio projects which accompany a main feature film; so it is cheering how many people would have seen this short film ahead of the film Frozen – albeit as they would have seen it as a free cartoon rather than having their eyes opened to the world of short film as a form. Anyway, this short opens in the frame size and animation style of the 1930's cartoons, with a simple scene of Mickey and Minnie Mouse heading out on their wagon, only for the "wave of the future" to come up behind them in the form of Peg-Leg Pete in his motor car, and start to make trouble.

Watching this short without any knowledge of what it does is quite a lovely experience, because just as you start to accept the rather small square image in the middle of this larger screen, suddenly the 4th wall gets broken and we have action occurring within the theatre itself as well as back inside the 1930's cartoon. It is cleverly done so that the animation transitions between modern CGI style, and black & white drawings, as the characters move between the sides of the screen. I also enjoyed the way the screen itself moved and was affected by the action – I really am not interested in watching films in 3D, but it would have been fun to see what this played like if you were not expecting it.

The action itself is a good lot of slapstick and, while I wasn't roaring with laughter throughout, I found it consistently amusing and fun, which is all I was really looking for. Perhaps understandably it won the Best Animated Short and, as much as I prefer that the big players do not dominate these smaller categories, I don't begrudge Get a Horse! because it is cleverly done, and delivered with a lot of energy and cheer.